Two powerful warriors faced each other in a high-tech sparring ring. The male warrior wore a fairly thin protective suit that offered decent protection and reinforcement. He held a pair of extremely tough and thin practice knives in his hands. The man jumped on his feet and kept twitching his limbs as if he was about to make a lot of strenuous movements. His flighty demeanor and the loose smile on his face gave off the suggestion that he was not taking this bout too seriously. The larger and more athletic female warrior opposite to him was not fooled. She had tangled against him multiple times over the years and learned that the man could hide quite a sharp edge beneath his casual facade. She was an experienced enough warrior to deal with all sorts of opponents and situations. She had honed her swordsmanship since her teens and refined it into an art of its own. She had shed the blood of many humans and aliens with her, but her Bloodsinger still yearned for more! There was no need for her to bring out the big guns for today. Given that she was about to spar against a fellow Larkinson, Ketis had opted to leave her Bloodsinger behind and opt to wield a pair of ordinary practice swords. The smaller weapons also made it a lot easier for her to control her strength against a dual knife wielder. "Heaven! Heaven!" Sharpie emerged from her head and dove into one of the swords, causing it to exude a much greater sense of threat. As Ketis assumed a combat mentality and tensed up her body, she carefully evaluated her current adversary. "Are you ready?" "Almost." Tusa spoke as he furrowed his brows for a moment. "This isn't as easy for me as it is for you. Resonating with these tiny blades is a huge pain, especially when they aren't made of resonating materials." "Resonance is a crutch if you rely on it so much." The swordmaster admonished. "I know it is important to expert pilots such as yourself, but skill and willpower are the root of your strength. Resonance will automatically come as long you are confident enough in your skill." Perhaps her words had an effect, because Tusa ultimately managed to click with his practice knives. Expert pilots were never meant to wield blades in their hands like swordmasters, but there was enough parallels between the professions to produce at least a small degree of resonance. That was enough for this practice bout. "I'm ready. Let's start!" The two fighters immediately ran towards each other as if they had finally been unleashed! Clang! Clang! Four blades collided against each other right away! The difference in physical might between the two immediately became clear as the male expert pilot stuttered backwards as if he had just rebounded against a wall. Though Tusa had tried to avoid a direct comparison in strength as much as possible by attacking Ketis from an oblique angle, his opponent was far too skilled and reactive to let him have his way. Ketis had to hold back a lot. The point of this practice bout was not to attain victory at all cost or to determine who was the stronger among the two. This sparring session was mainly to enable Tusa to hone his skills and warm him up for the upcoming engagement against the yurzen raiding fleet. This was why Ketis remained on the defensive despite possessing the skill and strength to do much more. She only occasionally thrust out her blades in order to take advantage of any loopholes revealed by her sparring partner, but other than that she mainly focused on blocking and repelling the incoming knife attacks. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The sounds of metal arms colliding against each other echoed throughout the sparring chamber. Despite the high exertion, Tusa increased his pace and began to incorporate more complicated movements in his routine. He automatically fell into the habits that he had ingrained through his training and began to spin and dance around like a performer rather than a fighter. He spun around Ketis and constantly tried to break her rock-solid guard. Unlike his opponent, Tusa did not hold back at this point. Each of his attacks could be considered lethal and they could definitely poke anyone full of holes if there weren't any defenses in his way! As Tusa began to immerse himself in the Shadow Dance Dagger Style, he began to perform all kinds of techniques that he had learned from ingesting the enlightenment fruit but never fully mastered. No matter how well the mysterious fruit stuffed so much theory and understanding in his head, there was still a massive difference between knowing how to execute an extraordinary technique and actually pulling it off in reality! His muscle memory was still inadequate, but that was fine because he was an expert pilot first and foremost. It was fine as long as he could pull off the moves with the Dark Zephyr. Yet as Tusa had become more adept with practicing this extraordinary art with his expert mech, he became increasingly more aware that he was lacking in an important area that hindered any further mastery of this exceptional fighting style. He needed to gain a greater comprehension and intimacy with shadows. This was rather difficult for Tusa as he had never become entranced with the power of shadows in the past. His inclinations were quite different. As a descendant of the Larkinson Family, he possessed an upright mentality towards combat. Even if he chose to specialize in piloting light skirmishers, he did so with the intention of outmaneuvering and overcoming opposing mechs with style. It was not until the fruit abruptly caused him to gain a talent in shadows that he had begun to grapple with this element and its traits. Before the Great Severing had occurred, Tusa had made relatively limited progress in increasing his understanding of shadows beyond the initial boost. Yet now that the entire Red Ocean had been displaced in an environment with an abundant amount of exotic radiation, the expert pilot found that much of the strange and whacky methods of the Shadow Dance Dagger Style was able to evoke this element in reality! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The benefits this brought to Tusa became increasingly more clear as he constant dancing and spinning maneuvers seemed to build up a certain kind of momentum in the air that caused the light around his form to darken. Shadowy mists began to trail his body like fading afterimages. Though these shadows only lasted for a few seconds, as Tusa continued to maneuver like no tomorrow, the shadows quickly accumulated over an area that partially hindered the vision of ordinary observers! It became increasingly harder to keep track of Tusa. The expert pilot understood the essence of the Shadow Dance Dagger Style, which was to dance around long enough to saturate an area with shadows and turn it into his execution field! Although it took a huge amount of energy and effort for Tusa to engulf the sparring ring with his accumulated shadows, his effectiveness constantly rose! He felt more at home inside the shadows of his own making. His vision remained as clear as ever. His movements became faster as if he was encountering less resistance. His knife attacks became deadlier as a hint of darkness enveloped the blades of his weapons. One of the greatest charms of the Shadow Dance Dagger Style was that it enabled a weaker practitioner to defeat a stronger opponent by maximizing the advance of shadows! Right now, Tusa tried his best to realize this as he struck Ketis with harder and more relenting execution techniques! Shadow Blade! The power of shadow concentrated onto his knives and threatened to penetrate or bypass his opponent's defenses! Leaping Shadow! Tusa bounced back a bit, but quickly proceeded to make a powerful forward leap! His forward momentum became so great that the shadows clinging to his body jumped ahead and struck Ketis a brief moment in advance! This forced Ketis to lift up one of her swords at an angle and block both dagger strikes at a clever angle. Fortunately, the force exerted by this shadowy apparition did not come close enough to the real deal. Nonetheless, this also forced the swordmaster to lift up her other sword at a slightly more awkward angle in order to block the much more forceful strikes of the real Tusa! CLANG! The physical momentum empowering Tusa was so great this time that Ketis couldn't help but take a few steps backwards at this time! This was amazing progress considering that Tusa never made Ketis move in many past sparring sessions. This little success seemed to lift the expert pilot's courage even further, causing him to resonate increasingly more with his knives and the shadows of his making. He moved faster and struck a little harder as he executed a host of other techniques. It was not until his momentum had surpassed a certain threshold that he felt ready to pull his ultimate move. "Ketis!" He shouted even as shadowy darkness clouded his form. Ketis already knew what was coming. She bent her knees a little further and held her blades in a firmer guard position. At the same time, she resonated with her practice weapons even further with the help of Sharpie, enabling her to form a thin but sharp defensive energy curtain around her body! "Come!" She roared! As Tusa danced around, his eyes abruptly grew sharper. At the same time, he finally evoked his companion spirit for the first time since this sparring session commenced! Chip! Chip! Blackwing flapped his wings and dove into one of Tusa's practice knives. The weapon began to exude a greater threat while at the same time look a lot less substantial than before. This was a strange contradiction of effects, but Tusa somehow made it work by leveraging the utmost of his willpower! As his will and focus started to condense, he swept both of his arms back before he surged forward while swiping both of his knives at once! The Finale! CLAAAAANG! "Ahhh!" Tusa fell back while crying out in pain! The surrounding shadows swept away as his momentum was completely lost! As his body bounced onto the sparring ring floor, Tusa tried his best to suppress his pain. He shook his hands in order to rid himself of the aches that came about when his weapons had been forcefully wrenched away. The sparring session had come to an end. "You failed." Ketis plainly spoke as she wound down with ease and placed the flat of her blades onto both of her shoulders. She hardly looked like she had gotten any exercise at all during the clashes! Tusa's expression fell. "I was sure it would work this time. I trained so hard to perfect this ultimate execution technique. I thought that Blackwing would help me turn into shadow and phase through your resonance barrier." "It's not the technique that is at fault." The swordmaster declared. "The strange and powerful fighting style that you have learned has a lot of potential. You're just not the right person for the job. You're not an assassin, Tusa. You're a duelist more than anything. You are not playing to your strengths by continuing to master this dagger style. I have noticed that you have been trying to modify and adapt the techniques that you have learned, but you have not gone far enough in trying to develop your own fighting style." "I know." Tusa sighed. "I often get stuff wrong. I truly want to find a way to overcome my greatest shortcoming and make myself more useful in the battles to come. If I can't find a way to phase through transphasic energy shields, my Dark Zephyr will never be able to make a significant impact in our future battles against those alien fleets." Ketis understood his difficulties. He was hardly the only expert pilot who was trying to resolve this common problem. "Keep trying." She advised. "I am not telling you to give up on leveraging the power of shadows, but I think you have already spent more than enough time on perfecting the Shadow Dance and its many techniques. What you need to do at this stage is to go back to your roots and remember how you originally fought. I think you will have a much better chance of succeeding in your goal if you leverage your original strengths instead. Fight with your heart, not with your mind." "Fight with my heart, not with my mind." Normally, Tusa would never think twice after hearing this phrase, but now that his state of mind was different, he truly began to understand what Ketis tried to convey. Maybe... Ketis was right.