A Bit of Training

Corvin walked onto the training field, avoiding the odd spar here, dodging a fireball there, and made his way to the puppet training area. Not yet having a puppet of his own, but wanting to keep his skills sharp for the day he had the money, he picked up one of the dummy puppets in order to get some more practice with his chakra threads. Learning to focus his chakra into threads was easy enough. It was indeed one of the very first things he was able to learn with any degree of skill. However, watching the puppet masters train meant that he knew the potential that this ability had, and how far from that potential he was. So, here he was on this bright day at the Sunagakure training grounds to get better.

The first thing he knew he needed to do was increase the range at which he could control a puppet. His own range was only maxing at around 10 meters before he lost control, which was abysmal for someone intending to not be a close ranged fighter. So he attached his strings to the puppet and tried focusing on sending it out further than his 10 meter limit. He had made two marks on the ground 10 meters apart from one another and stood at one end. With each attempt, he tried pushing himself to be able to maintain absolute control just a few inches further than the time before. Each time, when he felt he was at his limit, he would stop the puppet and have it do something. He would make them dance, fist pump into the air, wiggle each individual finger, anything that took a good degree of control to do. He found that over the course of the day he was able to quite easily increase his range. It turns out all he needed was to devote some time to practicing and getting the feel for it.

Soon enough lunch time came around and he was pretty hungry. By this time he had already increased his effective range by 7 meters, but was not nearly satisfied with that. He ate a nice big meal to gain back some of his strength and waited for his food to settle before heading back to the training grounds. He had already decided that he wanted to reach at least a 25 meter mark before quitting for the day. With that in mind, he made sure to pick a second puppet so that he could make sure that he could still control multiple puppets at these new ranges. His chakra was strong enough now that he could control each puppet with only four strings, so one puppet per hand was pretty easy for him. He started out at his 10 meter mark and danced his puppets forward until they reached the mark from before and continued his same process. Inch by inch, Corvin was able to reach his 25 meter mark by the end of the day. He relished being able to devote entire days to nothing but training.

His second day was devoted to his second biggest problem. Corvin's clearly visible chakra strings meant that it was extremely difficult to use them for surprise attacks. It was tough for the enemy to not notice the glowing blue strings leading to a spot behind them. He knew he could suppress his chakra to the point where the strings were invisible, but up until this point whenever he did that he had trouble lifting up a feather let alone an entire puppet moving at combat speed. He lifted his two puppets up with his strings and had them start mock battling one another. Every few minutes, he tried suppressing his chakra to the point where he felt he would lose control of one or both puppets. He would hold that level of chakra and duke it out with his puppets until he felt that he could suppress just a little more. It proved more difficult and frustrating of training than simply increasing his effective distance. This was likely due in large part to the fact that by lunch time, instead of a whole 7 meters to show his progress, all Corvin had to show for his half day of work was somewhat dimmer chakra threads. 

He took his time eating his lunch. It was a nice day with a good breeze, so he tried to let that relax him. He knew he could do this if he just kept at it. By the end of his first day, his chakra threads were noticeably dimmer than when he started, but still very much visible. He made sure to wake up bright and early the next morning and got right back to it. When he arrived at the training grounds, he was the first person there. He was not going to let this chakra thread training beat him. He decided to start the day with just one puppet this time around and work until he could get his threads invisible with just a single one. He had the puppet do various things like dancing and fighting a training dummy or punching a speed bag. All the while he was doing all he could to suppress his chakra more and more. By lunch time, he had finally gotten the strings to a point where he felt like he could no longer see them. 

After lunch, he picked up his second puppet and tried to see how far he could get the chakra threads to be invisible. They were again noticeably dimmer, but a good ways from invisible still. But that was all the inspiration Corvin needed. He fought those puppets with each other as sweat poured from him body. He worked hard at keeping the flow going steady and strong while suppressing it more and more. By the end of his second day at this, he finally got to where he could move both puppet at combat speed while the threads animating them were completely invisible to the naked eye. Now all he had to do was avoid any one of the numerous people with eye techniques making the last two days of training a waste of time he thought to himself with a giggle.

For the next few days, Corvin kept at this training. He made sure he could suppress his chakra with multiple puppets to the point of invisibility at his maximum range at combat speeds for lengthy periods of time. He knew he could do it, but he was avoiding the last part of his training since it would be the hardest of all. He even went so far as to double his maximum range, bringing it to a cool 50 meters. It took a lot of work, and was very time consuming, but every time he thought about the next and final step of his chakra thread training the idea felt daunting to the point of silliness. But finally, after maxing his range as far as he could possibly take it and making his threads invisible at that range with multiple puppets, he knew it was time. He had to get rid of the biggest weakness of all with this technique, and that meant he needed to be able to do all of this while moving.

Just the idea of it made Corvin tired. It took all of his focus to be able to do the kinds of things he did with his puppets. Incorporating all of these aspects along with splitting his focus to move so that he could dodge attacks seemed nearly impossible, but it was something he had to do if he wanted to be successful. He started out with just one puppet just a few meters away without even trying to suppress his chakra. While making the puppet dance he tried taking a step to the left. The puppet immediately fell to the ground. A single step?! Corvin reconnected his chakra strings and continued this process until he was finally able to take a single step without losing his focus. And truly that is what this was. It was concentration training more than it was chakra training. Next, he worked on being able to walk forward with just one puppet. It took several days, but he was eventually able to hold the one puppet up and walk steadily forward. And this is the process he used. Over the course of many days he was able to increase to two puppets, suppress the chakra of both puppets' threads to invisibility, and have them move around. It took a long time before he could get them to be able to move at combat speed, but by the end of his training Corvin was leaping around the training grounds while his puppets fought each other at combat speeds up to 50 meters away all being done with invisible threads. It was exhausting work, but Corvin felt that this was really as far as he could take his chakra thread ability.

(Word count: 1505, mastered all levels of Chakra Thread training, any other benefits I receive please let me know, thanks for your time ^.^)

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