Chapter 156: The Hero vs Jules(Part 1)
"Okay, let’s see here...oh, your Aura is giving a reading of 98,000. Which means you’re close to having mastered seventy percent of your Magic, and considering that it’s only been eight days since you were summoned, that’s incredible progress," Remarked Alphonse with a gleam in his eyes.
"I guess, but I can feel that it’s starting to get a lot harder now, my progress is definitely slowing down," Sighed Akila in response, adding, "It’s hard to explain, but I felt this instinctive feeling while training, it came weirdly naturally to me, even though I’ve never done anything like this before. But that feeling is slowly but surely starting to fade now, it seems like I won’t be able to progress at the same rate for much longer."
"Yes, that’s quite evident. However, it would normally takes years of training to progress to this level. I’d estimate that your current level of mastery puts you at around the level of a Vice-Captain...however, that’s only on paper. Considering that you have no experience whatsoever in real combat, it’s hard to say how effective you will be in battle. Your progress is astounding, but there’s still a lot of work to do."
"Yeah, I figured as much. It’s too bad I don’t have anyone to spar against, that would probably make for much more effective training."
It was the 24th of June, 1919. Akila had continued his training under Alphonse’s supervision, making remarkably fast progress with mastering his Magic and Combat Template.
But like Alphonse had pointed out, that was only on paper. The fact remained that Akila was completely inexperienced, so whether he could effectively apply the results of his training in practice was yet to be seen.
"This is quite encouraging, he’s improving at an unnaturally rapid pace. That instinctive feeling he mentioned, it must be a special ability given to summoned Heroes, to allow them to master their powers much faster than normal. His movements have been growing sharper and sharper with each passing day, and he’s getting a lot better at using his Phase Shift Magic as well. There’s still room for improvement, of course, considering his potential.
Even so, for him to have reached such a high level in such a short amount of time is excellent...given these results, I’d like to summon more people using the ritual, but that’s risky. It’s clear that he’s a naive do-gooder, he would never abide using a child as a sacrifice, even if it a random, worthless Commoner. Not to mention, with the way I previously went on about how guilty I felt for summoning him, it would be suspicious if I summoned more people. Perhaps I overdid it with my acting," Alphonse thought to himself regretfully, before adding, "Well, it’s too late to go back now, so I suppose I might as well commit to it at this point."
"Whew, that was a good workout! I wasn’t in the best shape in my previous world, and I gotta say, it feels pretty good to be fit. I am a bit sore though, so I think I’ll take a break," Declared Akila, stretching his arms up after sheathing his blades, before taking a seat on the stairs.
Alphonse walked over and sat down beside him, having decided to take the opportunity to gain more sympathy and trust from the unaware young man.
"I feel the need to apologize for having to rely on you like this...you have no connection to this world, nor any obligations to help me, I truly am grateful for your kindness, Akila. I wish that I was at least capable of fighting alongside you, but sadly, I lacked the talent for it. While I worked hard to master my Detection Magic, my affinity with physical combat was almost non-existent, I failed to master any of the Combat Templates despite my best efforts.