A few days passed quickly after I first began training with my mother by looking at a body encyclopedia, which I don’t know if I should call training. I was getting smarter and smarter, gaining knowledge about my body that had been vague to me, knowledge that I had never even known existed in the first place.
However, she never let me practice using trait transformation.
I wasn’t allowed to practice the healing magic using trait transformation, because if I made a mistake, it would be difficult to recover.
In the meantime, of course, I never missed my father’s close combat practice.
The routine of physical exercise with my father in the morning and study with my mother after lunch was completed, and I spent two weeks following this routine.
“Huh? Where’s Papa?”
Unusually, when I woke up in the morning, my father wasn’t there.
I asked my mother, and she told me with her hands in the laundry.
“He went out early in the morning. He said he had work to do.”
“I see…”
I remember that he has been taking time off work to train with me for a really long time now.
He made time for me in spite of his busy schedule. I’m truly indebted to my father. I want to be filial to him as soon as possible.
But that’s strange, isn’t it?
He said he would take a month off to teach me close combat, but it’s only been two weeks……. I guess he’s out of money and needs to be paid. Wait, do exorcists get paid?
“Your father went to work crying because he was breaking the promise he made to you.”
“Hehe ……”
Was my mother exaggerating when she said he was crying? Or is she telling the truth? Hopefully it’s the former. I love my father, but I don’t want to imagine him going to work crying with that look on his face.
But the Kisaragi family is my father’s one horsepower.
He’s the one who keeps us fed by his work. I would be disappointed that he had to break his promise because of unexpected work, but I know how hard work is, and I can’t blame him for that.
“Your father seems to be so busy with work, so don’t get angry with him.”
“I’m not angry!”
Instead of getting angry, I was just thankful that he had made time for me for two weeks.
While feeling a sense of gratitude, I went out into the garden with a training sword for children.
Even without my father, the training continues.
Or perhaps I should say that training alone is the true essence of my training.
Starting with the training to increase the total amount of magic power when I was a baby, I have been training for Kaijutsu and Shijutsu by myself for years.
Even though I’d be able to learn shijutsu thanks to Renji-san.
I look at the wooden dolls my father had lined up for me.
I could try out my swordsmanship skills on these immobile dolls, but I’m not sure how well I’d do in a real fight.
My father also said that training in close proximity is meaningful because it’s done in actual combat.
That’s why he went to the trouble of using the guiding thread silvate to move the doll, and even went to the trouble of overseeing my training.
If that’s the case, I’m going to have to get my partner to move, even if I’m alone.
Shall I try it?
I stretched out my Silvate and wrapped it around the doll.
I knew how to make it work because I had seen my father’s magic.
So all I had to do was try.
I let the doll take a step forward while hanging it by the thread silvate. The movement was so jerky that it almost sounded onomatopoeic, but it still actually moved forward.
“Whoa!”
The fact that I could move the legs meant that I could at least reproduce the motion of the doll flying toward me. Still buoyed by my first successful puppet manipulation, I moved the puppet’s arms further.
Vertically, It swung the sword straight down.
It was awkward, but I managed to reproduce it.
“……Alright!”
The legs move and the arms move.
If it moves that much, I’d say it’s a good job.
I muttered to myself as I struck a guts-punch in my heart.
“I can do this alone….”
But of course, no one was around, so I didn’t get any response.
Usually I do it with my father, so he can praise me if anything happens, Well, even if there is no response, the training will continue. This was what I was doing in order not to die. It would be too much of a turnaround to stop just because I didn’t get any praise.
And the good thing about training alone is that I can do whatever I want, however I want.
So, as if to shake off the cold, unresponsive air, I manipulated the doll and moved it to attack me. I jumped off the ground with my right foot, shifted my center of gravity forward, and swung my sword down.
“…… hmmm.”
I played the blunt sword, capturing the doll’s movements with my entire field of vision.
“As expected, It’s weak…”
It’s obvious without even thinking about it, but the doll in front of me is moved by me. Therefore, I know how it will move and with what strength it will swing its sword next. This is not sword training.
“…… No good.”
I thought it was a good idea because I would do it myself.
That’s not all. I thought it was a really good idea because I had seen in manga and such that they created and trained with imaginary swordsmen. I didn’t expect it to be a wooden doll with only such simple movements.
“Unnunu……”
I can’t train alone with this thing.
Is there a better way to do this?
I thought in my head as I looked back at the doll with dissatisfaction.
I thought to myself, “I should call this training with the doll “real image training”.
This could be a proper training program if I could get to the bottom of it a little more. What’s wrong with it? Is it that an ordinary person like me can’t do image training? Or is image training a product of manga only?
No, but I remember seeing a story on TV about how fighters and athletes do it in real life as well, not just in manga, where they imagine imaginary enemies and fight them.
In that case, do I lack proficiency in image training?
I extended the guiding thread silvate to the doll again and made it get up.
Then I decided to visualize the movement properly in my mind.
However, my mind is not so advanced that I can reproduce virtual movements without a model.
Who would be good….?
I guess it would be my father.
I moved a step forward, thinking in my head that the wooden doll in front of me was my father.
“……mu.”
It was a poor movement that even the untrained eye could see.
I knew that the movement I envisioned in my head and the actual movement of the body were different……
But it was the same with my swordsmanship.
I don’t know how many times my father warned me that I wasn’t in shape. But each time I fixed it, and somehow I grew up to be able to fight even though I’m not athletically inclined.
Moving dolls should be no different.
“Okay! One more time!”
I move the doll’s legs again.
One step forward, acceleration. Then, a diagonal upward thrust!
“……!”
I gasped at the precision of the movement of the doll, even though I had moved it myself. And then, I hurriedly adjusted my imitation sword.
Gah! And the heavy sound of wooden swords colliding with each other rang out, and I and the doll collided.
However, the doll, as if taking advantage of its large physique, held me down and suddenly relaxed. No, I was the one who relaxed the doll, but I, who had been devoting my resources only to defense, lost the point of my power in a moment and involuntarily stumbled.
“Whoa!”
I didn’t miss my chance.
I pivot on the doll’s left leg and deliver a spinning kick to the chest!
“Geho!”
It was blown backwards and bounced off the ground.
In that state, I laid down on my ass.
Yeah, I overdid it. Completely.
My proximity was too weak than I thought, and my magic exploded without mercy. I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I just know that my image training was a success.
By the way, I can tell where my weakness is in this training at once…….
One would think that I would never know because I’m attacking myself with my own magic. But there is so much difference between my magic skill and my combat skill that when ‘I, the magician’ looks at ‘I, the combat fighter’, I can find an infinite number of weak points.
“I’ll try it again…”
So, that is.
If I can destroy these weaknesses one by one, I’ll be stronger.
The foundation to accomplish this has been taught to me by my father so far.
I’m going to have to do it a lot more times after…….
I pick myself up and face the puppet.
And just as I was about to cross swords with the doll again, my mother called out to me.
“Itsuki! That’s enough for today.”
“Huh? Why?”
I rolled my eyes and asked, because this was the first time I had ever been called out of a training exercise. My mother isn’t the type of person who would say such a thing.
But she went on.
“Why? Because today is the day we’re going to buy that thing, right?”
“That thing?”
“School bag.”
A school bag……?
Ah, school bag!
That’s right. I completely forgot! Next year I’m going to elementary school!!!!
