Kaden set up himself a training plan. Due to the punishment Aden wanted to give him, he worked hard on learning smithing most of the day. The rest of the time he was cycling his mana system. He even tried to use the mana he had to reduce fatigue so that he could sleep less during night. As for eating, he couldn’t do much about. At his level, using mana to sustain yourself was impossible. That was a privilege of people far beyond his ability.

The fact that he knew how weak he was and how easily he could lose his life had given a hit to Kaden’s mentality about things. He did not like that feeling.

Kaden knew quite a lot about smithing as long as it did not require magic. His knowledge of magic smithing was not very extensive. Aden was not a Channel Opening stage, but this did not mean some magic inherent in the materials could not be infused into weapons and armor. Without Channel Opening stage ability of using mana externally, it was impossible to infuse mana on your own. Yet, using things like beast cores, minerals and such that had mana, some of it would still remain in the finished product.

“The further one progresses on the path of magic smithing, the less it is about hammering and shaping the metal”, Aden instructed Kaden who was hammering glowing piece of metal. “True masters will shape and adjust metal properties at will with their mana, giving it desired properties. I do not know much of such things, but I do know that these basics you have learned before and are learning now will still be quite relevant. How would these masters use their mana, if they dont know what to do with it. All this is very important! Basics are the foundation.”

Aden was teaching Kaden about methods of magic smithing. Even at their level knowing the materials and what to do, how much heat, which to mix and how and other special ways made up the knowledge that very few actually had. It was nothing when compared to true magic smith, but it was much more than nothing.

Magic smiths were very respected people. Most magic related crafters were. There was always greater need for all kinds of magic smiths, alchemists, artificers, engineers and such than there were available. It required not just talent and skill to produce a single crafter. There had to be resources and a teacher. Not just anyone could do it. For Aden and Kaden, it was Dashire that suported them and their ability was not even at level of true magic smith due to the fact that neither of them were even at Channel Opening stage.

Previously Kaden had only worked on things that didn’t really need any use of mana, but now Aden had him learn the use of mana. He would try to create some easy to make things as training. Unfortunately adding mana in the process made it far more difficult and Kaden failed many times ruining whatever he was working on. It was to be expected. I was all about trial and error until it became a skill that you could reliably use.

Kaden noticed this also helped his magic cultivation. He had to examine the materials every time before he could use them. He had to do this by touch and then slowly determine in what condition mana was in before he could finally use it. Doing such work made Kaden feel like his mind and perception was getting stronger.

This was indeed the case. Aden knew such thing would happen, but it needed to be slowly brought out. To do this one had to have in depth knowledge of all kinds of materials. In fact, Aden told Kaden that whenever he came to possess a material he was unfamiliar with or completely new, he should spend time studying it. It was neverending quest to know more materials and their properties. All of it would increase his understanding of materials and also ability to perceive things.

It took about two months before Kaden was able to slightly do it with basic and very simple materials. His father was a smith with lots of experience. He could determine the condition of materials almost immediately while it took quite a while for Kaden. It was difficult, if you could only feel the surface, but not truly see inside. You had to basically make educated guesses. A type of material would usually follow similar rules.

If Kaden had compared learning more in depth smithing and his magic cultivation, despite the difficulty of smithing, he would have said it was far more succesful.

He lacked resources to truly cultivate and a dedicated teacher. Not to mention the mana system he had was extremely low grade. He had his first layer almost completed when he started his cultivation, but now he was only at beginning of second layer. He could see the usual “fog” gather, but then even, if he could observe it being absorbed, it did not seem to have much of an effect.

He asked around and each layer should separate from the previous one eventually as amount of mana increases. Previous layer would be condense into smaller ball inside a new larger ball. There was no sign of such event happening as Kaden inspected himself carefully. There was only a month left until the tournament!

“At this rate I will not be able to beat anyone except perhaps those who had very low talent and haven’t been able to form even their first layer!” Kaden lamented. “Perhaps not even them. Many of them are hunters in training. They learn martial arts!”

This would not do! Kaden wanted resources! He would only get relevant amount, if he could show his ability!

Kaden barely knew any martial arts. Before Channel Opening stage, warriors of all kinds would learn martial arts. With help of mana, body was relatively good weapon. Once one reached Channel Opening one would be able to use magic tools and cast magic skills. There were many paths after that point.

“Should I steal cultivation materials from someone?” Kaden thought. It seemed like a potential idea, but he then discarded the thought. He would not be able to pull it off and it would be big trouble, if anyone found out about it. In conclusion it was probably about as foolish idea as his brave little trip in the forest.

Seemigly at dead end Kaden went out. He decided to go see, if he could get some ideas from watching hunter training. It was not unusual. People often watched the training, some for fun, some to get inspiration for themselves, some to see faults in training and so on. Hunters were some of the most important people in Dashire since they eliminated beasts and brought in materials. In fact most of the things and how small place like Dashire could survive was due to everything revolving around supporting them so lot of people showed interest in many ways.

Hunters mainly relied on bows or spears. You didn’t really want to get in fist fight with, say, a bear. It was much safer to keep distance, if possible. Despite this, they did still have quite a bit of martial arts. There were sometimes bandits too in which case there usually was close combat.

He watched for quite a while, but it wasn’t much of help. During his observations he even heard that they wouldn’t even be using weapons or armor in the tournament so that it would be more of test of strength and ability. What was the point of watching the hunters train then?

“Damn it”, Kaden cursed and left. “What am I going to do? I can’t be wasting time. Each day matters! Father wants me to come back soon for some smithing too. Thats fine, but it won’t help me beat anyone.”

Kaden muttered to himself that he had only ever defeated one opponent. The wolf. That he did accidentally. How did it even die like that? Kaden remembered he beat at it many times with his dagger and even if the last attack was mana enhanced, it was still a single strike with a simple knife.

Huh?

Kaden stopped. Indeed, why did the wolf die? The knife struck it in the neck and since the attack was strengthened it probably did more damage than ordinary strike. The wolf bled quite a bit. Could it simply have been too weak already and losing blood like that make it collapse? Could it be that he struck a weak point?

Don’t hunters usually aim at weaker points on beast bodies? Why shoot at a place where bones and thick fur and muscles will protect the beast?

“If I want to beat a human, shouldn’t I hit some weak points too?” Kaden thought. Then he realized this was something martial arts taught. “I don’t know much, but perhaps I can work with this! I’ll try to use mana to fill in where I have to.”

The more he thought about it, the better idea it sounded. Since he was weak, he should fight smart!

Kaden thought were it would hurt, if he was hit there. Head, throat, stomach, joints, groin. That last one probably wasn’t allowed in the tournament, though. There were several other places that were obvious enough. Maybe there were even more places that were more difficult to reach, but caused more pain.

Yeah, if ability didn’t cut it maybe fighting dirty would!

Kaden began to inspect himself and also examined places like bones and organs with the perception he had gained from smithing training. His opponents were going to be people and he could use his own body as reference. He wasnt a martial artist, but he could pretty much guess, if he did hit certain places with a mana enhanced punch, it would do great harm. Internal organs were not that far. He was pretty certain Peil would be able to heal any injuries, if it didn’t outright kill a person so he ignored most of the dangers he could think of.

There were problems, though. He was only able to inspect himself and get very good view of where everything was for himself. His opponents would have different proportions. If he was experienced fighter, he could probably tell by sight where to strike for non obvious places. Also his opponents would be moving and defending. Where would he get the chance to do anything?

“I need to get close”, Kaden thought. “If I can’t win relatively quickly, I will lose.”

With some effort, Kaden was able to come up with some ideas how to fight. His techniques were at best crude inventions by an amateur, but still it was better than going in flailing his arms and expecting results. Kaden knew this. He did know some basic fighting skills from before, but he had not learned much.

With clever use of mana and his ideas, he was hoping to get in a few hits and those hits would hurt a lot. He would get in close range and fight dirty. As long as he didn’t blantantly break rules, it would be fine.

Still, he needed to increase his cultivation, but at least he now had plans on how to fight opponents he probably had relatively low chance to truly win. This was a tournament. Not a life or death battle. Kaden only had to injure or debilitate his opponents so that they would lose. In a true fight, they would have weapons, armor and it would likely not happen on open area like an arena. In true fight, Kaden knew he would get his ass handed to him.

Still he was at disadvantage, but for now it would have to do. Kaden also wasn’t going to give up on getting second layer by the tournament. His talent was second best of his generation! It would have to mean something!