Limits

Time flew by like this and 2 weeks passed. I finally managed to master the puppets skill and could control every single puppet independently. I also started to train with Shelly and used one puppet in the beginning to make Shelly accustomed to the training.

Shelly was doing rather well and adapted in a good pace to its new training. It still had issues when it came to attacking the puppet but the other aspects such as defence or dodging the puppets were carried out quite skillfully by Shelly.

My training on the other hand moved from puppets to Stringed Hidden Weapons. I first needed to figure out how to attach the dagger to the piece of string. It might seem as a simple thing to do but I had to consider all the factors, such as wind resistance or balance. If the string was attached in a wrong place, it would not produce desired effects. It could even make it more difficult to control the dagger.

I thought about it for a long time and tried different way of attaching the dagger but all the methods I tried were not very good. After so many trials and errors I figured out that the best solution would be to have a hole in my dagger's handle. This way the dagger would be tied to the string in the best possible way and if thrown, it would fly in a straight line. Of course provided that I didn't manipulate the string.

But there was a problem with that idea. My daggers didn't have any holes. Not in the handles or the blades. I would either need to create new daggers or modify my old daggers. I decided that modifying them was the only option I could go for. It was all due to the fact that I had no access to a furnace or materials used to create my daggers. A small hole through which the string could be slipped was all I needed.

I had no such tool that could be used to pierce the purified steel dagger. That was the problem I had right now. I could probably use one of my daggers as a kind of punching pin and a hammer to make a hole but it would sacrifice at least 1 dagger in case this didn't work. One dagger was not a lot and although I had limited supply, I was willing to take that gamble.

I prepared 2 daggers, one which will be used to punch the hole and the other which will contain the hole. I found a hard and flat rock the size of Shelly then placed one dagger down and started hammering. It would take some time as both daggers were made from purified steel. Although my daggers were very sharp, both contained the same metal and it would be much harder to punch through. If the materials were different in those daggers for example purified steel and iron then I could mass produce those holes but that wasn't the case.

I hammered for a long while and managed to make a hole that looked like the tip of my blade. The string would fit through it but because the hole was not round, the string could potentially move up and down. The perfect solution would be a round hole the size of the string but I worked with that I had and managed to produce something.

The dagger used for punching out the hole was damaged a bit but I decided to leave it for now. If I were to create more daggers in the future it would come in handy and I wouldn't have to damage other daggers. It would have to be sharpened before the next use though.

I tried to throw the dagger and retrieve it when it reached about 5 metres. I needed to learn how to throw and retrieve my dagger first. If I mastered that with 1 dagger I could add another dagger and so on until 10 fingers are occupied with 10 daggers.

Of course I knew that this would not be so easy because adding in just one dagger would increase the difficulty. I didn't have to throw the puppets then retrieve them back to my hand. I simply manipulated their positions. This seemingly easy step of throwing and retrieving my dagger was actually very hard.

I practised like this for couple of hours and then decided to have a break. I was also getting hungry and we would need to got and hunt something. I was now much more careful when it came to hunting. I always made sure that no animals were able to leave because I didn't want the same situation to happen again.

Shelly did the hunting as usual for the experience but I would also intervene if I noticed any of the beasts trying to retreat. I also noticed that the bears were wandering in bigger groups from the time we killed that silver bear. It must've been some kind of leader to the bears and its death made them very cautious, this must've increased the numbers of bears in the group while they wondered out.

I wasn't sure where the bears originated from but I was not in a hurry to find this out. Who knew if there were more silver bears there or even something worse. I called out to Shelly "Shelly, let's go and hunt". Shelly ran over to me and stood still. I took off the mask and we proceeded deeper into the forest. Shelly was still using the mask to run around and go around trees when I was busy with my own training. It would have to wait for me to finish while doing nothing so this was a better choice than just letting it sit idly for couple of hours instead of doing something.

I was tempted to use this mask in actual combat but I figured that it was still too early for this to happen. We searched for any suitable group of animals to hunt when I noticed a black wolf in the distance.

I already encountered silver and black wolf in the past. Both were fighting each other and the silver wolf won. I don't know if that black wolf was as strong as silver or stronger. Just because I saw one silver wolf defeat a black one, it didn't mean that black wolf's strength was much inferior.

I remembered that the black wolf from my memories was very fast. Faster than the silver one. So this should be a speed variant of the wolf. I started to categorise all the variants I encountered. For example a bear was a normal animal, then there was a black bear who was much stronger and tougher but with similar speed if not slower than the usual bears. Then there was a silver variant of the bear which was stronger than black bear and much faster than black or normal bears. The wolves were a bit different. Normal wolves were a lot slower than black wolves and a bit bigger but the silver one was slower than black as well yet it had twice the size and strength.

All variants had something developed better than other animals of the same species while they would also suffer in other aspects. I didn't know what negatives the silver bear had but I may be able to find out in the future.

The black wolf also saw us and howled loudly "Awooo" then rushed at us with an astonishing speed. I had to give it to that black wolf, it was much faster than the one I met in the past. I said to Shelly "We need to fight it, Look out for its speed. I will try to engage it while you wait for a chance to strike". Shelly nodded and we ran at the black wolf as well.

I was worried that due to the howl earlier, more wolves will arrive. Even if those wolves were normal ones, the black one with its speed was enough of a headache.