Chapter 61 Lost in The Thoughts (1/2)

I tried to modify the first diagram for a long time before I noticed that it was already well into the night. Shelly was sleeping besides me and the fire was dying out. I put out the fire and went to sleep. I decided I would continue tomorrow when I got the chance.

At the beginning, it seemed to me that it would take no more than couple of hours to modify the 1st diagram but I was greatly mistaken. Although I knew the anatomy of human body very well, my experience was still shallow.

The next day, together with Shelly we moved on towards the north. I found out from the map that the village I came from which was Freemount Village was located to the south of empire and not far away from the sea. The map in the bag that Nick gave to me, depicted much more than the map I received before traveling to the Grasshill Village.

The map covered the area of about one month's travel on horseback. That was a huge radius of land and it didn't even depict the Endros Imperial City. This meant that it must've been much further. On the other hand it showed 2 cities in that vicinity. The first city was the one Nick mentioned to me. It was Terent. Terent was located at the western part of the map and it was about 13 days of horseback travel from my location.

The other city was called Darun and it was located at the north east part of the map, about 21 days of horseback travel from where I was. I didn't know the sizes of the cities but if a village could have 200-300 households then a city must've been much much bigger.

We traveled at a normal pace, neither walking nor running. If we were to travel to Terent, it would take us about a month of time at the current pace but I promised Nick that I would avoid cities and villages before I could master my skills. With that in mind, I did loads of stops on the way towards north to train in the Art of Medicine, the Art of Stealth as well as the Art of Hidden Weapons.

The Great Forest was rich in ingredients to concoct poisons as well as medicines. Whenever I had an occasion to gather some herbs, I would make medicines, poisons and antidotes in order to practice my medicine making. While we were on the move, I practiced my stealth skills. I had no one to run away from or hide from but that didn't mean I couldn't practice.

The Great Forest contained many obstacles and hard terrains therefore I practiced my Art of Stealth constantly while on the move. Of course, I still couldn't figure out the ”avoid the light” thing. I gave it loads of thoughts but how was I supposed to avoid the light?

I already learned from the fish how to camouflage myself and due to that experience, I added another skill to the art which was to copy the aura of people. I looked for inspiration in animals but not every animal had such skills. I found the fishes by sheer luck, hoping to find similar skills in other animals was like hoping for the rain on a desert.

The last art that I knew was the Art of Hidden Weapons. I already knew how to manipulate and control 4 puppets but now the last step was left. I needed to now use my both hands in order to control extra puppet. It might seem easy but in actuality it was quite difficult. In order to control the 5th puppet I needed 1 finger from both hands, yet which fingers should be used?

I tried couple of combinations and none worked out for me. I would need to find a perfect combination or just accept one and grind my skills to such an extend that even something not suitable for me would become suitable. Of course, I prefered to do the 1st option which was to find a suitable method or combination that suited me.

I left that in the back of my mind as I still needed to properly master the control of 4 puppets. Only when I was able to control those puppets freely like my own hands, I would think about the final part of this training.

While I was lost in my thoughts, I suddenly felt something pulling on my pants. I turned around and said ”What is it Shelly?”. Shelly didn't have to make any responses as I already noticed something was wrong and Shelly was very alarmed about something. I quickly took a look around us and found that we were surrounded by a pack of bears. Not just one or two but 6 of them and at the very front was a bear with black fur that was a bit bigger than others. I assumed it was the leader of this pack and therefore the strongest of the whole group.