Spirit's Ascension

Standing not too far behind him was Eleanor, looking extremely leisurely as if nothing just happened.

"Teacher Eleanor," Cole said softly while straightening his back.

"Was that you just now?" he asked.

A strange smile formed on Eleanor’s face as she raised her voice to speak.

"You were able to dodge; impressive," she said.

She didn’t have to say anything further for Cole to actually understand what had happened.

"She attacked me.... But why?" Cole thought to himself.

"Why did you do that?" he raised his voice to ask.

"Hahaha, because you didn’t sense my presence before I did," she said again.

"Uhhh?" Cole thought in confusion.

He found all that had happened in the past few minutes extremely confusing and scary. Scary because he knew he had absolutely no way of defeating Eleanor.

"I am going to be teaching you how to do just that today," she said.

Hearing her words, most of Cole’s confusion was almost instantly wiped away, but it still didn’t chase all of the fear.

"If she could do that just to show me, what about if she wanted to kill me," Cole thought.

"She really is a demon."

While Cole was in his mind, Eleanor had already begun approaching him from her location.

When she got close enough, she suddenly whispered to him.

"I am not a demon,"

Something about the voice immediately made a shiver run down Cole’s spine while his neck shrunk.

"Get up and follow me now," she said.

Cole didn’t try to refute; he slowly stood up on his feet and followed her to the center of the combat hall.

Upon getting there, Eleanor stood valiantly before looking down at Cole and saying.

"I can see some muscle fatigue in you, so have a seat," her eyes carrying a much more authoritative air than what she said.

"Yes, ma’am," Cole obediently said before plopping to the ground.

Seeing Cole finally relaxed, Eleanor slowly began her teaching for that day.

"I have told you previously the intricacies of what a technique is, but today what we will be doing will be much different."

"Today we will be dealing with skill," she said.

"Skills?" Cole repeated with a confused face.

"What are skills?"

"Really ignorant," Eleanor said frustratedly.

"To cut it short, skills, unlike techniques and abilities, can be used by everyone any doesn’t really Life energy,"

Hearing Eleanor’s words, Cole’s eyes widened slightly as he felt a little bit shocked by something like that.

Especially the fact that it doesn’t use any Life energy. He had a firsthand experience of just how strong it could be.

"It doesn’t require any life energy," he muttered to himself.

"Yes, it doesn’t; the only thing it needs is a lot of practice," Eleanor responded.

"Skills vary extremely, and they are an extremely wide spectrum of things. Their strength depends only on the mastery of the user and nothing else."

"A very common example of one is the Basic Combat stances," Eleanor said.

"The basic Combat Stances are skills," Cole said with wide eyes.

"Yes, they are, but they are extremely common ones that don’t really need much to be mastered."

"What I Will be teaching you today is also a skill, and it is on a much higher level than the Basic Combat Stances,"

Thinking back to the impact of the skill Eleanor used previously, Cole immediately got interested in Learning it as soon as possible."

"let’s get started," Cole said enthusiastically.

"We have already started," Eleanor said, causing Cole to look up in shock.

He couldn’t remember when they began the training since he had been sitting here listening since

"How and when?" He asked.

Eleanor smiled slightly in response before actually opening her mouth to speak.

"Skills are just normal physical activities that don’t really have that much to them, but I intentionally made it sound all that for a specific reason."

Eleanor saw that Cole was just about to say something when she suddenly caught him off.

"While I was speaking, try thinking of something that changed in you all through my conversation."

Being someone that actually enjoyed thinking a lot, Cole suddenly realized what she was talking about after thinking for a while.

"My breath," he said softly.

"Exactly," Eleanor said with a nod.

"All throughout our conversation, your breath changed multiple times to accentuate and show your emotions."

"When you were shocked, confused, or scared, they all affected your breath, which affected your presence."

Listening to Eleanor’s words, Cole slowly realized something, which he quickly blurted out.

"So my presence is heavily controlled by my breath," he said.

"Yes, it is."

"Therefore, the process of hiding your presence is heavily influenced by how much you can control your breath."

"Now that we have all that out of the way, let’s get the real training started."

Before she finished speaking, Cole noticed Eleanor bringing out a piece of clothing from somewhere in her Combat attire and tying it across her eyes.

"Go over there and hand me a wooden stick," she instructed.

Cole did just as he was told and rushed towards a part of the hall to bring a wooden stick and hand it to Eleanor.

"Now you are to move all around me, why try your best to control your breath and prevent me from noticing you," She said again.

"Just controlling my breathing—how hard can it be?" Cole said to himself.

He slowly breathed as gently and slowly as he could while also moving away from Eleanor.

"She can’t possibly notice me like this," Cole thought as he slowly attempted to smirk.

His lips weren’t even done forming the smirk when he suddenly saw the blindfolded Eleanor kick the ground violently and charge straight at him.

His eyes suddenly widened, resulting in his not-really-hidden breath being more pronounced.

In no time, he suddenly saw Eleanor arrive in front of him and send a stick swing straight at his head.

While he saw the stick approaching, only a thought dominated Cole’s mind.

"I am so damn dead."