The ceiling. It's old, and it looks almost like it's going to crumble and fall on top of me. There are small splintering cracks running across its entirety.
Why am I currently staring at the ceiling, you might ask? Well, it's quite simple really. I just had my ass handed to me.
So because of that I was currently on my back staring at the old, crusty and musty ceiling of my family's dojo.
Ever since I turned 8, I've been trained in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts using various weapons. My teacher is a no-nonsense type of guy; you can find him anywhere. In fact, he's someone I can imagine being a military soldier.
His name was Kuno Masayoshi. He had short dark hair and green eyes. He was fairly tall, about 6'2", and he was very built.
It's not surprising really given his job within the clan as the combat instructor to the other sorcerers in the clan.
He himself was a semi-grade two sorcerer, but his martial arts skills were no joke, as I had heard, he was one of the best in the business, even among higher-ranked sorcerers.
Even if I'm learning at a pace that no normal person could ever hope to compete with, I still haven't landed a meaningful hit on him even after training with him for more than a year. That tells a story: if a kid who is widely regarded as a prodigy within the clan gets absolutely floored each time he steps onto the mat with you.
I shook my head. This is no time to contemplate things like that.
I rose to my feet once again and analyzed my opponent. He was standing there in a relaxed posture, even though we had been sparring for about 30 minutes now, he didn't seem to be breaking a sweat. His stamina really was monstrous.
Our sessions always include a rule of not using any CE or techniques, so I can sharpen my skills without relying too much on my technique in the future. They told me it was because a sorcerer should always be able to defend himself even if he cannot use his CE.
I agree with it, and that's why I take these sessions more seriously than others might think.
Today we are not using weapons in our spar, It's a simple hand-to-hand confrontation, one that I have less than a 0% chance of winning, unfortunately.
I've done contemplating, I think.
I rush in, and my opponent takes notice he has a momentary shift in his posture, so he could appropriately respond to anything I throw at him.
As I rush at him, I use a light jab to gauge the distance between us. He simply ducks out of the way, so my fist never reaches him. I continue my onslaught of constant jabs, but he continues simply using head movement to dodge my strikes. As I continue jabbing, I prepare something else. As he slips one of my many jabs coming at him, I take advantage of the second of time I have to prepare an attack and I clench my right hand, and deliver a powerful punch to his side. At least I should have, but he blocked with his forearm. I continue throwing punches and occasionally throwing a wild haymaker in there, to hopefully make him drop his guard. It does not work; he slips, dodges, and blocks all my attacks.
I go in for a leg sweep, he simply jumps over my legs and delivers a hard knee to my face. I get launched a feet away and land on my ass once again, this time I get up faster. And we continue our exchange of punches, kicks, elbows and knees.
As our battle continues, I pretend to punch with all my might, he raises his arms to block, but this is a feint. I unravel my fist and try for an eye poke, It's a dirty move, but I don't care, I want at least one chance to land an actual blow on him before I get old and retire.
But as fate would have It my attack never lands, he leans his whole body back and my arm goes sailing past his body, In my momentary state of shock, he capitalizes on the opportunity and grabs my arms to fling me across the room.
I'm on my ass once again, how many times has it been today, sixteen? I lost count already but it might be even more than that. At my current level, I have no hope of even hitting him, so I can forget about beating him. It's just not happening. Not in pure hand-to-hand combat anyway; if I had Displacement, I could probably teleport him into a wall or something, but these spars are without techniques. God, that makes me so frustrated. I wish I could just punt him into the moon for handing my ass to me like this every day, but Kuno is a nice guy. I couldn't do that to him, even though sometimes I feel like I want nothing more in the world.
Suddenly, Kuno-sensei interrupted my inner monologue.
"You've gotten much better, Shimada. You're a far cry from how you were a year ago. That last attack almost landed; it was very impressive." He said.
But still while he might think It was impressive I did not, I could do so much better, no I should do much better, not even that i need to do much better, there's already so much expectation that's been thrust on my shoulders, I can't betray It. I don't want to take advantage of the clan's kindness towards me and turn out good for nothing.
As my inner turmoil continued to stir, I got up once again and continued our spar.
My life so far has been like running on autopilot. Wake up, train my body, train with my CT and CE, read on topics related to jujutsu, go train with my martial arts instructor, go to sleep, repeat.
A rather monotonous life, but I did enjoy it, even if I hadn't really been outside the clan's walls.
I didn't go to school; I was homeschooled in every subject. In fact, I would bet I was more educated than most kids my age. But even so, sometimes I want to do something more exciting, like go see the world, maybe fight a curse, go see other sorcerers and their techniques, but alas, I was still "too young" and the clan didn't want to risk anything happening to me. And honestly, I couldn't blame them. I was basically one of their last hopes. Of course, I had to be protected, especially because currently, I couldn't assure them that if I did venture outside, I could deal with every threat presented to me. I needed to get stronger, smarter, and more knowledgeable.
Sometimes I'm jealous that I'm not as special as someone like Satoru Gojo, who is so strong that he can already go and exorcise curses like an active sorcerer.
I bet his clan lets him go outside and let him do what he wants; he could handle himself if push came to shove, unlike me.
I did not like this feeling.
While training I have discovered that I have a natural aptitude for wielding weapons, I have talent with every weapon I've picked up, but my talent with a dagger far exceeded everything else, I was pretty good with a sword and spear too admittedly, well at least as good as a 9 year old could be.
That's why I've started to think about storing weapons in Inventory for later use in battle. It would be a versatile method of attack.
The only problem is that normal weapons aren't very effective against curses. Cursed tools are the only things that work. And the clan isn't very rich, so asking them to give me cursed tools for my use might be difficult.
Hmm. Food for thought.
When I was 10 years old, I got to leave the compound for the first time in my life. Admittedly, I had been outside but not in this sense. I had only been allowed to roam outside within the confines of the Masayoshi's clan's land.
Which included the compound, the garden, and the forest surrounding the base itself, sure It was a pretty huge forest.
But it's never anything like this. I marveled at all the different structures passing by while looking out the window of the black SUV I was currently seated in.
How did this situation even come to be? Just an hour ago, I was in my room reading up on a book about curses with mental techniques and the countermeasures needed to take against them. Honestly, I never knew that if a person is hit by a mental technique from a high-rank curse, the effect would carry over even after the curse is exorcised. The best way to deal with this is to wake up the said person by giving their body appropriate stimulation.
But anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Stupid thoughts. As I was saying, just an hour ago, I was reading in my room while my dad watched some sitcom about friends in the background. When the clan elder came into our room and requested I come with him, I obliged without even asking why. I was indebted to the clan elder. He has given me so much; I couldn't refuse a request from him. After leaving with him, I learned that he wanted me to come along on one of his missions. For experience, he said. Experience I needed before going on my own missions later. Come to think of it, I had never exorcised a cursed spirit myself, not even a weak one. So of course this excited me.
The mission was simple: some cursed spirit was haunting an all-girls middle school in Tokyo. So, currently, we are going there. It's supposed to be a pretty long car ride, given we live out in the rural areas. Anyway, the spirit is estimated to be Grade Two, maybe Semi-Grade One, because of this, the elder saw fit that I accompanied him. Given the fact that I would bear no danger, since the elder could easily handle a spirit of this caliber.
I'm so excited; I literally can't wait. I also want to see the elder in action; he is a Grade One sorcerer, so studying him could prove very useful, and give me a benchmark for what to strive for in the future.
Even though my thoughts were occupied by the coming mission, I couldn't help but appreciate the sights I was seeing while driving there.
When we arrived, it was already evening; the sky had darkened considerably, and the weather got a bit colder than on this so-far very uneventful spring day.
The driver who drove us, then cast a veil over the school, keeping outsiders from wandering in while the exorcism took place.
Then the Elder walked in and I followed closely behind him. As we walked through the school halls, I could clearly feel the ominous presence of the curse. It was a bit nauseating; this was what a curse felt like. I had never actually felt the energy of a curse as high-ranked as this one. The compound was clear of curses, and even the ones I sometimes saw in the forest were non-threatening grade 4 and 3 curses that fled the scene as soon as I spotted them.
We continued walking until we reached a classroom where the cursed energy was emanating. The elder signaled us to stay behind him as he opened the sliding door to the classroom.
The curse stood there, right in front of the classroom, by the blackboard.
It was an abomination; it looked like a blob with human heads growing out of it, and it had very long hair on each head. Its mouth, which drooled all over the floor, was right in the middle.
The curse noticed us almost immediately as we entered, and it lunged straight at the elder. He, in turn, used his technique.
Black flames shot out of his hand and immediately engulfed half the room, including the curse.
Interestingly enough, the flames didn't damage anything around them except the curse. The curse let out screeches of pain as it was engulfed in flames.
I thought it was over in an instant, but the curse proved me wrong when it powered through the flames despite its body breaking apart from the heat. It attacked by stretching one of its heads, which grew out of its body, and used it as a limb. It swiped at the elder who clicked his tongue and dodged. The flames then dissipated for a moment, and the curse regenerated the damage and burst forth to attack the elder who just raised one of his arms once more and shot out another burst of flames.
The beast was wailing in pain once again, but even then it erratically swiped and clawed at the flames, and lunged to attack the elder every chance it got. Each time the flame user let up his fiery onslaught for a moment, letting the curse regenerate and using the opportunity to try and hit the opponent.
This continued for a few minutes before the curse suddenly started expanding as it was being burned alive in the flames.
The older man noticed this immediately and grabbed me by the back of my shirt and backed away.
"What's going on!?" I asked, thoroughly confused, as the curse continued to expand and fill up the room really quickly.
"It's using its technique, and whatever it is, It feels dangerous" he explained.
It had been maybe thirty seconds since the curse started expanding, and it had already engulfed almost the whole classroom.
Then it stopped. And I noticed small cracks starting to spread through its body, holes starting to form, and a blazing light peeking through its body.
"Shit! It's going to explode!" The Elder exclaimed, grabbing me and running for the door. But then.
*BOOM*
A deafening explosion rumbled through the school, I had tried to use displacement on me and the elder to redirect the explosion as soon as i realized what was going on.
It succeeded as I redirected the flames, and the heat, but me and the elder were still thrown back by the sheer force of the explosion, careening through the door of the classroom as if it was made of paper, and crashing against the walls of the hallway, spreading cracks through the walls by the sheer force of our impact against them.
My body was in severe pain, and I couldn't help but black out.
I fainted right then and there in the arms of the elderly man.
AN : Not impressed with this chapter, it just makes me remember how horrible my writing is :P
any feedback is appreciated!
PS : Yes, Displacement didn't redirect the full explosion, and here's the reason for that I forgot to add in the chapter, basically Shimada focused on redirecting the attack made by the curse, which was the explosion, he did that, he redirected it, but the accompanying force of the explosion was not part of said attack, It was just the result of It, he would have had to redirect the force separately, because the CT was the flames and heat of the blast, the force was just a byproduct and wasn't the CT itself