From Player To Npc

Chapter 29: Sword training

Shingi got ready to go back to call Annoue but noticed that there was something in the ground. It was a ring.

It wasn't there before, and he remembered noticing that ring at the fingers of the Player he was talking with just a few moments ago.

'It seems my luck is high today.' [Shingi]

When a Player dies, he would typically lose some exp, but there was a tiny chance for one of his items on him, either if they are equipped or not, to drop. This chance would increase if the Player who died were a Red Player, but if the killer's level were way higher than that of the Player, it would decrease. That was so that high-level players wouldn't bully low lever ones. That is why when he killed the Players outside the Goblin cave, they didn't drop a single of their items even if they were Red Players.

One of these Players' chances to drop something should be less than 1%, but it actually happened.

Shingi picked up the ring, and he didn't have to investigate it for long as, with one look, he knew what it was.

"Either their Guild is one whose funds are unlimited, or this guy was an important character to his Guild. Maybe a prodigy or something." [Shingi]

The ring was a Spatial Ring. Those rings had access to a pocket dimension that he could use to store different items. Still, unlike the storage of his Blessing of Dlog, which is limited to coins and precious gems, this could store anything that isn't living.

There are three different types of those rings depending on how many things they can store.

There is the small one which can store close to 100kg or items. Then there was the medium size one, which could handle up to 200kg, and the large one could handle a ton. The ring he found was a medium-sized one.

The small and medium ones could be found or bought by players if they had the funds. Still, the large ones were available only through special quests, and they were the only one of the three that they were bond to their user so that only he or she can use it. After the user died, the ring would disappear and hide for others to earn it.

Through his research, Shingi had found out back when he was a Player that there were 5 Large rings. They were created before the Great Pact, which was hundreds of years before the game started.

He was familiar with how the ring worked cause he used to have one himself, but he wasn't lucky enough to get one of the large ones, so he had a medium one then.

Others could use the small and medium rings, but they had to be unlocked first, which was impossible for the Large ones. To unlock the ring, he had to overpower its defense with his mana, which if one wasn't a Mage himself could hire someone to do it for him.

But he currently had used almost all his mana, so he had to do it after he was back at full power.

He then made his way back to Annoue. He didn't have to go far enough as it seemed like she had made her way here, and she was actually at the same shrub he was when he got here.

"I thought I told you to stay back and wait for me to call you." [Shingi]

Annoue took a deep breath and spoke or, more precisely, shouted with her eyes closed.

"I AM THE BIG SISTER, AND I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU. YOU SAID YOU WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE AGAIN." [Annoue]

Shingi was surprised and understood that Annoue seemed to depend on him more than he thought. He wondered if she didn't have her training while he was away, what would happen?

He just sighed at the thought.

But it didn't seem like Annoue was here for long, and she hadn't seen the players. She probably got here while Shingi was at his DOME OF SILENCE, which seemed to be what the System decided to call his new Spell.

While in there, no sound could be heard in the dome, and everything was pitch black. The shadows were consuming light and sound, so even his PERCEPTION was useless in there but not his MANA SENSE.

"Let's start your training. As I said yesterday, I will have you train in two moves which are quite basic for your class."[Shingi]

He brought out of his bag that he had bought a few days ago to keep his stuff, the two daggers. His Mithril one and his wooden one and gave the wooden one to Annoue.

She still seemed to be kind of upset about Shingi leaving her behind, but she took the dagger and heard him out.

"So since you have Air Element Mana this moves, I am gonna show you they are gonna be used differently from you than normal." [Shingi]

He made a vertical swing while turned himself to have Annoue at his right.

The swing happened with an incredible speed as he had used his ACCELERATION skill. It produced a wave of air that moved towards that direction with great speed and force, but it didn't hit anything, so none could be entirely sure how strong it was.

"As you see, this is a simple move but needs great speed or great force at your swing, but there is a way to make things easier and strengthen this." [Shingi]

Annoue seemed to understand where this was going, but Shingi explained further step by step what she needed to do.

And it was quite simple. Instead of using her speed and force of her swing to make the AIR SLASH he could instead create with her mana a ball of air around the tip of her blade, do the swing to form the slash like she was painting in the air using the blade as a blush and the air she manipulated as paint. Then she had to use the swing force and empower it with more of her Air Mana.

This would give the same effect. It would be stronger than a regular AIR SLASH as it would actually use mana so that it would turn from an ordinary Weapon Skill to a Mana Weapon Skill way more potent than their standard versions.

But this was more suitable by one of Air Element as their main mana as their manipulation of the air was at a different level of the others. Since they were using their mana and not the environment's mana, it would be more comfortable and faster to control.

"This is one of the moves you need to master to move on with your training. As for the other one, it is one focusing on defense instead of offense." [Shingi]

One more, he demonstrated the move, but to do it, he asked Annoue to punch him. Of course, she argued that she didn't want to hurt him, but he persuaded her at the end that it was just a demonstration and he wouldn't be hurt.

Annoue punched him, but before her fist connects with him, he brought his dagger and, more specifically, its blunt surface in the way of her fist. When they touched, he turned the blade down with great speed to move the force of the impact down, making Annoue losing her balance.

"This is DEFLECT, and it is a move that you can also empower with your Air Mana. Create some air around the source of the attack, in this case, it would be your fist, and push it towards the direction you want to deflect. Of course, in the middle of the battle, your control of mana has to be perfect to use it in that small amount of time, but we take small steps for now." [Shingi]

Annoue seemed to be impressed by her brother and the power he demonstrated by using these moves.

But she didn't know that those moves weren't even at half of their usual power. Not even the System was thinking them close to the Skills they were normally supposed to because they didn't become available to Shingi after demonstrating them. His stats were too low.

Of course, AGI was necessary for the AIR SLASH, but STR was just as important, and his was quite low to what was needed.

The same with his DEFLECT as his STR was lower than Annoue's, but his high PERCEPTION helped him use the move and adjust as needed.

He suggested that she try to master the AIR SLASH first and keep becoming familiar with the dagger and then move on to DEFLECT training. She needed to have someone attacking her to train on that.

Shingi, while keeping some of his attention on her, went into his meditate stance to feed his Mana Tree, restore his mana and work on unlocking the ring.

But as he started focusing, he noticed something he didn't last time he was here.

The hollow tree and, more specifically, his roots were emitting some mana. But that wasn't strange as even if it was somewhat hollow, it wasn't dead, so it still could produce mana, but the peculiar thing was the mana's color.

Mana was colored depending on their element, so there were red for Fire, blue for Water, green for Earth, etc. But this one had multiple colors blending like a rainbow.

This unique mana was very small in quantity, and he was sure that without his MANA SENSE being close to rank up to Master Rank, he would never have noticed.

Different element type mana has a different interaction with each other. Some were repelling each other, some had no interaction, and some were consuming the other. But here, Shingi noticed all Basic Element of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth being close to each other and blended in peace like they meant to be together. There was no sign of Dark or Light Mana, which kept things less crazy.

He had never heard of anyone else encountering something like that. Still, there was an instance of Players engaging with stuff that wasn't making sense, but almost all of the time, this meant one thing.

'This should be the trigger of a Quest.' [Shingi]