บท 3: Training Begins
In the middle of having a dream, I suddenly wake up.
Making myself alert, I turn my head to the left and see a black outline standing in the doorway. The black figure continues to stare at me until I somewhat see the bobbing of the figures head. After nodding its head, Urokodaki's voice suddenly emanates from it.
"It's good that you are able to wake when someone else in near, you'll be needing that in the future."
After knowing that it was Urokodaki, I let out a small sigh of relief. Shakily propping myself on my elbows, I swing my legs out of the bed and drop myself to the floor. Stretching in place for a moment, I see the motioning of Urokodaki's hand for me to follow him.
Slowly following behind Urokodaki's pitch dark figure, we enter the main room where a single candle burns on the table. Urokodaki then moves off to the side and grabs what appears to be a lamp.
Lighting a wooden splint, he carefully lights the lamp which in turn, illuminates the entire room. Hoisting the lantern up to his height, he walks over next to the door where the fur pelt hung.
Gripping it, he hoists it off the wall before then throwing it at me. Catching the hulking weight of the fur, I wrap it around my body. When I look up again, Urokodaki has already opened the door and stepped outside.
Following him out, I hesitantly ask, "Where are we going?"
In return, Urokodaki points up the enshrouded mountain.
I stare at the mountain with a disbelieving expression and shakily ask, "So, we're going to be climbing the mountain."
Urokodaki nods his head. "You'll also be running down it as well."
With no way to fight against the wishes of someone who is both willing to give me shelter and train me, the two of us start to climb up the mountain. My breath turns ragged from very early on and my sides immediately feel like they're burning.
This is both because I'm not used to climbing and the mountainous climate. Even with the sun rising and hitting my back, the cold climate still consumed the very fiber of my being. Eventually, after an unknown amount of time for climbing, the both of us stop.
"From this point on, you will run down the mountain and reach back to where we started. If you manage to complete that task before noon, I will amp up your training." Urokodaki states before suddenly disappearing from where he was standing, leaving me completely alone.
Staring down the mountain while still breathing heavily, I let out a depressed groan before deciding to start my track down. Looking at the position of the sun, I roughly estimate that I have approximately two hours before noon.
After thinking that, I slowly start to run down the hill at a disgustingly slow pace. I know how slow I'm going and so I try to increase my speed, but I instantly trip and fall face first into the snow.
Having my face burning from the cold, I quickly stand up. My body, shaky and tired, tells me to stop moving, but I ignore my body and start travelling down the mountain again. Trying to increase my speed again, I discover the best way to travel which involves me sliding down the hill, getting back up again, and then repeating the process multiple times.
Continuing this process for the two hours, my entire body has frozen over, and my legs were completely numb, but I had made it back to Urokodaki's house. Breathing was laborious for me to do, and I knew that I no longer could move.
Thinking of how close I was to reaching my goal, I want to force my body again, but it completely refuses, and my vision starts turning fuzzy. I try to hold off from passing out, but I don't hold off long and eventually have my vision fade to black.
Bursting awake, I find myself no longer enveloped by the cold and a light fire stove burning next to me. When I try to move my body, my muscles scream in pain, and I stop trying after that.
"So, you've finally awaked. I wouldn't recommend you moving, your body is still trying to recover after the arduous exercise that it had been put through." I hear Urokodaki's voice come from behind the fire stove.
Turning my head, the only body part I could move, I see him staring into a soup pot while stirring it ever slowly.
"You have certainly surprised me though. I thought that your body would give out much sooner and then you'd die from hypothermia."
Surprised at Urokodaki's statement, I want to yell at him, but his next words silence me.
"But I'm glad you didn't. It would be painful to know that someone else had died because of something that I put them through."
Having a light smile on my face, Urokodaki continues to cook. Once done, he fills a bowl and feeds me himself.
"Now rest for the day." Urokodaki chuckles slightly after saying that, "Though, it's not like you can do anything other than that."
Following his advice, I almost immediately fall back into a slumber. Waking up with someone shaking my shoulder, I am immediately assaulted by the pain of my muscles being sore. Bearing with the pain, I look to the shadow that had shook my body and guess Urokodaki wants to do the same exercise again.
Grumbling, I move my body off the bed and cringe with every step that I take. We go through the same process we did yesterday, but at the, what I now know, the four-hour mark, Urokodaki starts talking.
"This time, as you run down the mountain, I want you to focus on your breathing and try to drag in the most amount of air possible. If you're able to stimulate your body by increasing your oxygen amount, the run will become easier."
After saying that, Urokodaki disappears and I left to ponder about his words and figure out, absolutely nothing. Even after having told me that, I don't know where to start first and so I run down the mountain the exact same way I did yesterday. I had tried to improve my breathing, but the fatigue and laborious task at hand prevented me from doing so.
This process of running down the mountain and sleeping in the afternoon continued for a week before I was finally able to get my breathing under control. With breathing no longer being such a problem, I finally focused on how to increase the amount of oxygen that I was receiving.
This also continued for a week, until I finally hit a breakthrough and found myself accelerating down the mountain without having to use the run and slide tactic.
Running headfirst down the mountain, I was able to reach Urokodaki's house an hour faster than my previous time. Knocking on the Urokodaki's door, he opens the door and I immediately feel a sinister smile start forming on his face.
"As you have completed the first task that I have given you, you will once again run down the mountain, but this time from the very top and we'll be starting after you eat."
Screaming inside my head at the cruel fate that I've been dealt, I slowly eat my lunch before getting dragged up to the very top of the mountain. Once at the top, I notice that the light of day was completely faded and that I would be running down the mountain in complete darkness.
As I look to find Urokodaki, it appears that he had already disappeared from where he was standing and had flown down the mountain. Carefully, ever carefully, I start running down the mountain.
When my speed starts to increase, a pitch-black pillar appears in front of my eyes, preventing me from running any faster than I currently was. Because of my continuous stopping, I continuously switch between my normal breathing and the quasi-breathing form. This both makes me get tired faster and my muscles start aching painfully again.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I finally manage to reach the bottom of the mountain and once again pass out from overworking my muscles and my lungs. When I wake up, I once again find myself inside Urokodaki's home and breath out an immense sigh of relief.
"Seems you're relived that I brought you inside." Urokodaki says while once again cooking stew. "You should know that I won't leave my students to die."
"Oh please." I wheeze out. "I bet you only saved me because I was right next to your home."
Urokodaki chuckles slightly. "You might be right. You might be wrong. But I'll save you since I really don't want such a promising student to die."
Groaning, I am fed by Urokodaki and then fall asleep. I continue the trial of travelling down the mountain with little to no light for the next week until I somehow manage to build a mental model of where each tree is on my path. With this, I no longer waste as much time on stopping my quasi-breathing technique and travel down the mountain. However, because of this training, I can now change properly control my movements even while using the quasi-breathing technique.
Even with the training "complete", Urokodaki makes me run down the mountain three more times before he suddenly forces me to rest for a day.
"I'm rather surprised that your body hasn't given out at this rate. The amount of strain and pain that you're putting it through should be more than anyone your age should be able to handle. So, to get your body completely back to pristine shape, you'll be staying here and resting for the day."
"Where will you be going then?" I ask.
"I'm going to get food to make sure that we stay fed over the winter." Urokodaki replies before walking out of the house and disappearing behind the door.
Comfortably resting for the day, I begin the next day by once again travelling up the mountain with Urokodaki. Finding it suspicious that we'd be doing it during the day, I keep myself alert. However, we reach the top without anything happening and I start blaming my internal instinct on what they were worried about.
When I start running down the mountain though, I start praying that my instincts will save me in the situation I've been placed in.
This is because booby traps have been placed everywhere across the forest. They originally started out small and far in between, but the closer I got to the bottom, the more booby traps started to show up. All the traps are of course non-lethal, but because the small body of a child still hinders me, I am battered and bruised by the time I reach the bottom.
Crying silent tears at the torturous training, I run down the mountain for another week until my body becomes accustomed to dodge automatically before I can be hit by any of the traps. Blessing the fact that I was able to discover my sixth sense, Urokodaki holds off my training for the day and has me climb the mountain at evening.
Knowing that I would be running down the mountain while being pretty much blind, I start complaining to Urokodaki, be he ignores everything that I say. At the top, I stare down the mountain with cold, dead eyes. The pain from being hit in the ankle, shoulder, back, chest, arms, legs, feet, hands, and head was immeasurable as I descended the mountain and I'm pretty sure that no one could identify me when I finished.
In response for putting me though so much pain, Urokodaki provided me with ointment that he got from his food run and lathered it over my entire body. When I woke up, the swelling and bruising of my body had gone considerably down and I could at least move slightly.
"I've used this ointment on some of my other students, but none of them have been able to heal this quickly." Urokodaki points out. "That must mean you have an increased healing factor for your body. How pleasant to discover. However, it doesn't seem to cure fatigue, how unfortunate."
Hearing the last part muttered by Urokodaki, I once again surrender myself to this fate. Because of my injuries, I am allowed to take a rest day, but the very next day, I'm back to running down the enshrouded mountain.
I receive less injuries my second go through, but I'm still injured enough to the point where I get another rest day. Because of me resting for a day, I am forced to continuing the training for three weeks and in that time, my sixth sense improves, and I can sense any sort of booby trap if it is to go off.
I of course couldn't dodge most of the traps even if I knew they were coming since the speed and build of my current body couldn't keep up with my mind. At the end of the three weeks, my sixth sense had improved to the point where I could barely detect the hidden traps before they are to go off. This allows me to ignore the tripwires and the ankle killer.
Urokodaki, knowing that my body wasn't prepared for the next step of training suddenly gains a more menacing aura, frightening me slightly.
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