[Hōzuki Keneō]

Meaning that even though his opponent was only between his ears, he was actively using his stepping method in collaboration with the cat style evasion while putting in a few throws of his own. Straight and simple jabs were more or less the best that he could do, as the average student learned how to at the very least throw hands as part of the curriculum. Nobody could be expected to leave the academy when one could not even manage to defend themselves against another unarmed opponent, not even Taiso. And so he kept moving, he kept stepping from side to side, moving forward and back when needed in order to get up to or away from his opponent in their make-belief sparring match.

It was the kind of battle no one would ever be able to see, though in Ken's eyes, it was quite something to behold. He had made sure to draft up an adversary that was faster than himself, possessed a good deal of attacks that he himself could conjure up in his mind and wouldn't stop moving when he himself got tired. Using the cat step to move aside while then using the new shadow style step to instantly close that distance again with another attack of his own, he got so involved with just getting the proper footwork down that he hadn't even bothered to try and learn how the flash step technique functioned. Which was in and of itself quite odd as that was the thing he had set out here to learn the most.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But it hadn't been the first time where Ken's hyperfocus got him into trouble with his own planning, as the last time he had come here to train, he had only managed to study two out of the six techniques belonging to four different styles in total. That was what ended up happening when he started having fun with his training and it turned more into mastering the specific thing he is working on rather than getting through as much different stuff in as little time as possible. Sure, he was rapidly learning new techniques and figuring out how to counter them in the process, though he knew that if he truly set his mind to it, he could still do a whole lot more than he had been doing up until now.

And that was fine, as it meant that there was still plenty of room for self-improvement that he could start ramping up once he stopped having fun with it and truly got serious. But as it was right now, fighting against an enemy he had made up by himself was just more fun as it wasn't like fighting himself. Quite the opposite, it was a version of himself that was faster and more capable at the thing he wanted to learn. So in a sense, it was like fighting a future version of himself that had already reached a point that he was currently struggling to get to. And in a way, the very idea of that held something philosophical at its core, something about truly envisioning the place one wanted to get to.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But with the cat style defensive shake step trained while actively using the new shadow style's stepping method alongside it, the boy had been gradually overtaxing his own body by moving in a way that was unnatural to him, but was still deemed to be highly effective. Allowing his muscles to release their tension as he exhaled a deep sigh, the Hozuki had determined that this training had been a success, and that if he was to have another successful round of exercise tomorrow, he would likely need to call it quits by now. If he were to push himself too far and keep himself from getting an appropriate amount of rest, he wouldn't be able to get a whole lot done tomorrow, and there was no excusing that.

Packing it in for the day, the fact that he was once again packing in a bunch of scrolls gave him a flashback of a little while ago. Not so much the fact that he had been training and reading from practice scrolls back then too, but because of when he picked up all of his scrolls, he had the same feeling about himself. The feeling that he had set out to get more done but really only managed to get roughly halfway with it all. With the sheer amount of time he still had left before he would need to move over to the land of storms though, he was certain that he had more than enough time to get all of these techniques down and still have time to spare. For now, he was at the very least content with the things he had learned, and could at the very least return home semi-happy.


[Exit]