He learned a stealth technique known as 'Shadow Camouflage,' which made him get lost in the shadows. The only thing was that this was a tricky technique that required a lot of practice to master. With this addition, his 'stealth combo,' which he had learned by combining different techniques, has become much stronger. If he can integrate this shadow camouflage technique into this combo, he will be able to fool anyone and will be able to escape if he doesn't attack anyone.
His increase in affinity and control in the shadow element also allowed him to enhance the effect of his 'Shadow Walk' skill. He could now use it for five minutes, enough to escape most of the situations. His only regret was that even when he had improved so much, he could still not use powerful skills such as 'Animate Shadow,' 'Shadow Construct," and many more.
Animate Shadow was a skill that allowed him to summon the Shadow of someone killed recently and fight for him. This was a very rare shadow skill. It allowed the Shadow summoned to be equal to a part of its previous self's strength. The strength of the Shadow summoned would depend on the mastery of this skill.
He was training when a thought came to his mind: "I forgot about the box; let's open it now." He took out the box and opened it. Inside was a sword sheath inside a beautiful blue and black scabbard.
He also found a manual with it and went through it before taking out the sword. He took it from its sheath and realized it differed from other swords. It was made from a hybrid compound that looked like a mix of metal and crystal.
This sword didn't have a jar-shaped knuckle guard like his previous sword. The knuckle guard was added to increase the grip, but it restricted the movement of someone like Rishi, who used unorthodox swordsmanship, so he didn't ask to add it to his new sword. The blade of this sword was way sharper than his previous sword, and in the center of its blade was a magic rune shining in white.
Rishi made a big cut on his hand and dropped his blood. Despite the pain, he needed to do it because a small cut would recover instantly, giving him no chance to get his blood. He used the 'Regeneration' skill and recovered the wound instantly; the magic rune shone in a red glow before disappearing.
Rishi sighed and started to use this sword. It was slightly different, but he got used to it after a while. He swung it freely before stopping and using his sword Aura. His Aura was attracted to the sword and started surrounding it without harming it.
He tested some skills and found out that he now needed to waste less Sword Aura and didn't need to use sword energy, which he could save for using sword techniques. After practicing for a while, he was tired of using the sword aura continuously. He was also sweating, so he took a shower before entering the 'Tower of Champions.'
He appeared directly at the place where he had logged out. He saw the same place, which was dark and spooky; after training here for some time, he had gotten a little familiar.
Silent Shadow appeared on time and started teaching him; he learned a little about him after spending time with him. He was also from India, which Rishi realized after some days; this helped a lot as he knew how to speak Hindi like him.
He knew English well, but it took him more time to converse in it, while Hindi was natural for him. His mother tongue was Kumaoni, a language from his state, but he was equally comfortable in Hindi. He guessed the place where his teacher was due to his Hindi accent.
Hindi was a language that was spoken almost all over India. Every state had its own local language, which they mainly used, while Hindi was used to converse with people from other states. In today's time, when most people learn Hindi from home or online, everyone had a little accent; only some scholars spoke fluent Hindi, while most people used mixed Hindi.
Hinglish, a blend of Hindi and English, was commonly the most popular version of Hindi used. While learning the language he was more comfortable with; he improved at an even more rapid pace.
His training got harder and harder each day. At first, the teacher only taught him like any other student, but when he learned that this talented idiot was from India and could become famous in India, he decided to train him his best, as he was sure he would become famous. This would make him very famous; he could open his own coaching classes and swim in a pool of money.
He coughed; it's only one of the reasons; the main reason is that I am helping a talented person who would win many international competitions and make the nation proud. Yes, this is my primary motivation. It will also help me come out of the swarm I am in. I will need to create a fake identity, which will help me hide my past and my ties with the underworld. It's good that changing identities is something I mastered a long time ago.
...One more week passed.
This past week was very harsh for him. He was able to improve, but the pain he felt was way too much, even when he had already changed 'pain sensitivity' to half. If he had known it earlier, he would have changed it to zero, but now he needed to wait for one month before he could finally change the setting again.
The only fun thing that happened in the past week was that he was able to learn a technique known as the 'Shadow Curse.' By using it, he was able to cast a curse at the opponent. He could use this curse to make the Shadow of the opponent do something.
The first type of curse he used was ordering the opponent's Shadow to bring him close to him. By using this, he didn't need to personally control the opponent's Shadow. Many ideas appeared in his mind as he thought of how to use it. He could use it to set a curse on an opponent, which would activate when he did something like that.
He could now curse an opponent that he can't sleep; now whenever the opponent tries to sleep, his Shadow will wake him up. This was just the beginning; he could do things way worse than this, but he needed to master the 'Shadow Curse' spell for it, which was not an easy task. He also needed to code the actions of the Shadow in his spell, which was a very difficult task even for mages.