After training, Blight first went to swordsmanship. It was divided into different classes for the different branches. There was one-handed, two-handed, curved, and speciality swordsmanship.
He didn't yet consider the incredible variety and options available, opting to choose one-handed swordsmanship which focused on weapons such as the short or arming sword, at least for now.
He found that Bernault and Marsuu were also taking this class, so he joined up with them.
The instructor did not offer any groundbreaking information, as it was only the first day she focused on foundational knowledge on the different kinds of one-handed swords, sword poses, and basic movements.
At the conclusion of the lesson, they were given some material for them to practice the foundational sword poses and movements at the training grounds later.
Survival tactics was largely theory-focused. Teaching them about the world outside, the geography, flora and how to survive against the horrors.
After blight completed swordmanship and survival tactics, he arrived at sorcery.
At first, the sorcery class was extremely popular, but soon word had spread that it was a useless waste of time, and the trainees abandoned it in droves. By the time the second session was scheduled, it was vacant.
The room was much smaller than the other classes. Tables and chairs were squished together, unevenly lining the room. On them, there were towers of books and papers. At the end of the room, even more books were stacked to the ceiling. It had really no resemblance to any of the other classes he attended.
The man who looked like the sorcery instructor stood at the front of the room, his long white hair and thick beard flowing down to his chest. Wrinkles creased his weathered face, but he had a sharp pair of blue eyes that looked like they had seen through the secrets of the world.
He sighed, looking helplessly resigned and murmuring to himself.
When he noticed him, he turned to look at Blight and shook his head and waved his hands in a shooing manner. "Go away, young man. There is no hope for your generation."
The man stormed off, mumbling to himself, "ungrateful brats."
Blight was baffled and thought sarcastically, 'Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.'
But outwardly, Blight only smiled and said, "Hello, sir, are you the sorcery instructor? I am interested in learning sorcery."
"Is that so?"
"Yes sir, it is."
"..."
"Call me teacher."
"Yes, teacher, sir."
"Hehe," the old instructor looked pleased.
The sorcery teacher began to explain that sorcery was usually seen as one of the weakest branches of combat skills, but actually, to a resourceful individual, it could act as a sufficient supplementation to their main abilities.
There were three main kinds of sorcery:
Mantra, Resonance, and Surge.
"Surges are the most widely used form of active sorcery, using ether to create a physical or ethereal manifestation or force of something. It can be used almost instantly through gestures and ether consumption.
Tier one surges, which can be used by awakened humans, are slow, weak, and have short range. Most of them are limited to tier one without any progression, but some of them can be improved to higher tiers if you can learn the methods for them. It was said that Bastion could split the earth and the sky with his signature surge."
Blight gulped and could not help himself from fantasizing about wielding this kind of power. Could he one day do such a thing?
"Mantras are a form of empowerment sorcery which do not have physical manifestations. They have a wide range of uses and can be all attack, defense, and utility-related. The most basic form of Mantra, for example, increased ether regeneration in a small area."
"Resonance is a passive form of sorcery that binds individuals or actions together through conditional effects. Unlike a Surge or Mantra, which have an immediate or semi-immediate effect, Resonances can, in theory, never activate. The sorcerer creates a connection that triggers under specific circumstances, it is often used as a form of deterrence or last-resort defense."
"You can think of it more like, 'If I die, you die with me' or 'If you take another step, your friend gets explosive diarrhea.'"
Blight stared blankly at the old manner who was grinning.
'Was this the bearing an instructor should have? Why did this guy seem so out of place?'
"But don't worry about resonances and mantras for now. As an awakened, you cannot use any mantra or resonance, only surge."
Blight sat in the middle of the otherwise empty classroom while the old man taught him the basics of sorcery.
He learned that the problem with surge spells that largely made them useless for mere awakened was that the surges we could cast were weak, used a lot of ether, took too long, and had too short of a range. For a typical awakened, they would have been mauled long before they could make use of a single surge.
In addition to this, in order to learn tier one surges, one had to memorise and perfectly replicate sometimes up to a hundred different hand signs in seconds. This in itself would often take weeks to learn, and many more to gain proficiency.
Compared to investing your time in progressing your offensive and defensive capabilities, it didn't seem like it was worth anything to most of the trainees.
"But they all just lack vision, unlike you. I like you, kid, even if your eyes are a bit creepy."
"Hehe."
'If only you knew.'
Of the kinds of surge he was able to learn, he found a few in particular that he thought would be best.
The first was called Astral Projection. It was a kind of sorcery of the surge branch that had multiple tiers to it and, at later tiers, could act as an instantaneous blink ability, allowing him to teleport anywhere on the battlefield.
The tier one version of the surge, which awakened humans could learn and utilise, was not nearly as useful and allowed you to momentarily project your consciousness outwards and observe the world from around yourself while your physical body remained in place.
This surge spell was extremely unpopular. It used too much ether and provided no attack capability. In the eyes of the trainees currently, it was useless.
The reason why he found it so intriguing was how well it could potentially synergise with his lineage ability.
Blight quickly speculated after losing his vision and obtaining it that the ability could not predict that he had this ability, in other words, it didn't know of its own existence or at least could not predict that his thoughts could change due to it, until they did.
When observing the world around him, it was relatively straightforward and uncomplicated. But when it came to predicting himself, it became complicated.
It predicted his actions based on his current thoughts, but it could not predict a change in his thoughts when that change was caused by the ability itself.
Did that mean he could somehow find a way to trick Frayed Tapestry into thinking that he truly wanted to cast Astral Projection, could he then gain the ability to constantly view everything from his surroundings at all times without costing any ether?
It sounded too good to be true, but he would give it a try.
The next ability was called Spider Sling. It was a surge spell with no progression and little use, only capable of manifesting a white thread with ether which looked like spider silk up to a distance of 3 meters that could attach to a structure and capable of withstanding the weight of an adult man.
This was another extremely unpopular spell. It had no offensive or defensive capability and little use as far as utility went, but for Blight, who lacked any kind of active and immediately useful ability from his lineage and boon, he could imagine some situations where this could offer him some utility or survivability.
Blight asked the instructor, "Why is it not possible for me to learn tier two surges? Is it because I don't have enough ether to cast them?"
The old man shook his head. "While it's true that you wouldn't have enough ether for most of them, there are actually a few which even you can afford the consumption of."
"The issue is," he continued, "that you cannot control a tier two surge because you lack sufficient ether in your being. Only those who have ascended and undergone their second rebirth can control the powers in more powerful sorcery.
"Sorcery doesn't really have tiers. We only made them up, as we did with all of sorcery, to assign a corresponding rank to a realm of those who can safely use it.
The old man became melancholic and sighed.
"Unlike the abilities blessed to us by the gods which are natural and perfectly balanced, sorcery was crudely engineered from humans desire for power and survival."
Blight's perspective was changed.
The old man gave him a book with a recipe of sorts containing the different hand signs and ether channeling required to cast the two abilities he was interested in.
After completing morning battle training and all of his classes, Blight would return to the training grounds and practice his swordsmanship, movement footwork, and battle tactics until dinner.
'L-guard. Rising strike. Parry.'
'Plow guard. Thrust. Target opening.'
Like this, multiple days passed smoothly, with him making great progress.