Talent System: I Instantly Master My Opponents Skills
Chapter 80: Opportunity Comes (2)

Chapter 80: Opportunity Comes (2)

Jason sat in deep meditation as the day drew to a close, with nothing better to do he resorted to continue practicing in his mindscape.

Image training was for training the mind, and it had its usefulness. If he couldn’t think properly under the heat of battle he would have been killed by the first Giant Arachnid Spider.

[Name: Jason Hachiman

Age: 13

Physical – Early Stage 5

Mental – Early Stage 3

Mana - Stage 000 Early

Skills: Advanced War Tactics, Advanced Cooking, Null eyes, Spirit Steps, War God’s Embrace, Blade Strike, Delayed Fist]

Jason’s physical stat had gone up after taking the Essence of a Being, while his mental had increased when he killed the Giant Arachnid Spider.

Apart from that he had no other increase in stats, his mana stayed the same.

’If I’m lucky I’ll be able to get some new talents.’ The elder that had visited – he could guess she was an elder due to her age – spoke very few words, and even at that they were vague, before leaving.

He had thought on it, and concluded that he was meeting the potential heirs of the Hachiman clan.

Not much was said on the potential heirs of the clan, except that they were dead.

’But that means they survived due to my interventions.’ Jason thought.

He already got his head chomped off by a giant wolf monster so he just left it at that, after the long thirteen years he had spent image training, it still didn’t show its mark.

He was still unable to kill 10, 000 monsters in his mindscape.

Jason got out of the cross-legged position and sat facing the wall, he stared at it for sometime before getting up.

The space ring on his finger glowed in a faint blue light as he applied pressure on it, the dagger that Zane had given him appeared in his right hand.

Jason couldn’t help but smirk.

"After so much time, the dagger those feel better in this hand." He remarked.

After losing his right arm and being stuck using the left arm for weeks he had come to appreciate his right arm, he finally understood how important it was to him.

He opened the door and stepped outside, stepping onto his lawn.

"Unfortunately, I was unable to test out Offhand on the goblins."

In the massacre his singular goal was to kill off all the goblins, he had also forgotten to test it on the hobgoblins because he was practicing the Delayed fist.

"I’ll just test it out." He muttered to himself, gripping the dagger in his grip harder.

His feet left the ground in a blur as he propelled himself in a sudden burst. In the fading light of the day he moved, his figure a consecutive series of blurry afterimages to the naked eye.

With each movement he swung the dagger, its familiar weight like paper in his grasp.

The weapon sliced through the air, his movements swift yet erratic, with a pinch of unpredictability.

As he swung the dagger for the last time he stopped moving.

’I almost trespassed on her grave.’ He thought.

Jason couldn’t force himself to feel any emotional weight on her loss, but he could at least try to respect her grave.

"Okay." Jason murmured, moving away from the grave-site.

"Blade Strike." He said under his breath.

In that moment it happened.

His muscles convulsed as he regulated his breathing, the mysterious effects of the breathing technique taking its effect. At that moment, he felt a flow of energy cascading through him.

He swung his dagger horizontally, the air seemingly parting as the blade sliced through it.

Jason’s feet continued to dance on the short grass of the lawn, with each movement his dagger followed with a slash.

Time flew by as he moved, but even then his speed did not slow down, his movements were with the same pace, even with fatigue.

Just as he prepared to give the final strike to end it all, so he could go into his home and rest for the upcoming day, to end his training for the day, he fell down onto the ground.

His body collapsed onto the cool grass, the world around his twisted into a bizarre display of twilight colors swirling together in an unfinished painting. The energy he had felt that pushed his strength forward was now exhausted, replaced by pain that lanced through his chest.

The air was suddenly thick, it made breathing a punishment, each breath he managed to take only made the pain he felt multiply.

His chest tightened, his lungs screamed for more oxygen, but it was constricted, caught in a rope that tightened after each breath.

With every beat of his heart, prickling sensations coursed through his ribcage, as if invisible hands were tightening their grasp on it.

Jason felt everything – the pain that came every time he took a breath, the prickling sensations, the pain in his chest, the pain that gradually increased in his lungs.

His breaths gradually became short and frequent, fleeting gasps that did nothing to decrease nor increase the pain he felt.

Just then, the pain in his chest vanished.

The pain that assaulted his ribcage and the prickling sensation in vanished.

The air became lighter to him.

His chest loosened.

Everything disappeared in a flash, as if it was never there to begin with.

"Why did it change?" Jason couldn’t help but ask once it was all over. "This isn’t how I remember."

With his near-perfect memory he could remember most things easily, and as he remembered the pain that felt emerged from the lack of oxygen.

"It clearly changed." He said to himself, getting back onto his feet.

All the pain that he had felt had completely disappeared, if not for his good memory he would be questioning if it was just fatigue that had caught up to him and he collapsed on the ground, instead of knowing the pain that he had experienced.

"Last time it was just the lack of oxygen, now it was pain that assaulted my chest and brought me to the edge."

With his memory of Blade Strike and the Breathing Technique he was 100% positive that this was not supposed to happen.

"Could it be because of the Essence?" He wondered.

It did seem plausible, after all, he had reason to believe the Essence of a Being he had taken had some adverse effects on him.

"Why?!" Jason asked again. "First it was memory loss and now it was this."

He looked at the night sky, there wasn’t any moon in sight.

"And after I had just gotten the perfect way to resist the effects of overusing the Breathing Technique." He couldn’t help but lament.

The Breathing Technique boosted one’s physical ability by quite a bit, but if one couldn’t maintain it or they went past their limits for using it, the effects it had were problematic.

If one overused it or couldn’t maintain the breathing technique in a fight and was hit with the after-effect, which was not being able to take in air, they would be forced to use mana.

Mana would have to be concentrated on not only boosting the body, but also keeping it alive until the duration of the after-effect.

Jason didn’t have mana, so he had to resolve to never overuse the breathing technique during a real fight. However, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t overuse the breathing technique during sparring.

But now he wasn’t sure if it was safe to overuse the breathing technique at all.

His gaze shifted from the moonless sky to a woman with green hair.

"A maid." He voiced his confusion out loud. "Isn’t that too many people coming to visit me today?"

The woman with green hair, the maid, walked over to him.

"The Grand Elder instructed me to give you these clothes to wear." She explained before he could ask why she was here.

The ring on her finger glowed as she input her mana into it.

Numerous stacks of clothing appeared on the grass of the lawn.

"She informed me to instruct you to wear the one that suits you best, and that you should be on your

best behavior tomorrow." The maid informed.

"Which Grand Elder?" He couldn’t help but wonder.

The maid didn’t spare him the time to talk, as soon as she finished her business she began walking away, her steps hurried as she left his home.

Jason didn’t mind, instead he stared at the amount of clothing he had been gifted.

"Was the grand elder the elder that told me to get prepared for tomorrow." He mused.

"Who cares? At least I have free clothes."

The clothes that he had been left with were too common for him, they reminded him of the typical clothing of your average individual, so he had opted to buy clothing for himself.

Jason pocketed the dagger in his space ring before getting up.

He made contact with the clothes, his space ring glowing before they disappeared, going into his space ring for safe-keeping.

"I just hope that I won’t be forced to sit in a dumb meeting."