There were a lot of talented people in the Altered Hunter association, and Ashen could have taken a few of them under his wing. The problem was, nearly everyone who was introduced in the Altered Hunters was introduced by someone else.
Similar to even Blake himself who had been brought in by his father. This meant that all the talent was pretty much accounted for and being looked after. Meanwhile, Ashen was too busy doing his duty to try and find someone to raise on his own.
It wasn’t that Ashen never wanted a pupil it was just he was far too busy, he wanted a talented student while also raising them in the Altered Hunters association from the ground up, and right now, was the perfect opportunity so he said yes without hesitation.
‘There is also something interesting about this town. If I have a pupil here, then I can use it as an excuse to visit more often.’ Ashen thought.
“Thank you, thank you, so much!” Innu said, hitting his head on the floor.
“As I said, I don’t have much time that I can spend here. I already wasted most of it getting lost. So it will be best if we start now.” Ashen explained.
It was already late in the evening but Innu stood up as straight as a bamboo shoot, and was ready to take on anything.
“Alright, follow me, let's head on outside to the streets.” Ashen said.
Innu and Blake were following him out of the dojo, until Ashen turned his head and cleared his throat before speaking.
“I’m sorry Blake, but what I’m about to show is between a master and pupil only. I hope you understand.”
With that, Innu and Ashen walked off, outside of Blake’s house leaving him at the dojo, dumbfounded and staring off into space.
‘What just happened?’ Blake thought. ‘Is a five star Altered Hunter just roaming around the streets of Slough? No, I shouldn’t even be worried about that. What is he going to teach Innu, that I’m not allowed to see? Is Innu going to become a better Altered Hunter than me?’
After seeing the skills of Ashen, Blake knew that there was a long way to go, and he understood how it might not be right for him to be taught by another. However, his father was away most of the time, and even when they were together his father's teaching methods were mostly self teaching methods and there wasn't really any teaching involved at all.
‘Now I feel restless.’ Blake thought.
------
While following Ashen out of the housing estate, and into a more city-like area, Innu was starting to worry as he realised something.
‘Wait a second, where is he even taking me? Why am I the one that's following him? Didn’t he say he’s never been here before?’ Innu thought.
“This should do.” Ashen stated, as he walked down a fairly large alleyway that was in between a few restaurants. The alleyway was wide because the restaurants threw a lot of their rubbish behind the shops, and it was safe to say that the area absolutely stunk to the point where Innu was finding it hard to keep his food in his stomach.
‘Why is he taking me here... is there some sort of secret technique to train your stomach, so that way I can learn to use Qi better?’ Innu thought, because when looking at Ashen he seemed to be completely fine with the smell.
Turning his head to the left and to the right, he could see that there was no one else present so he decided to pick up a small stone from the floor, and threw it up in the air a couple of times.
“Do you remember what I said before?” Ashen asked. “I won’t be teaching you Qi, that would take far too long and with what I have told you already you should eventually be able to figure it out on your own. If that's the case, then I am not really going against the rules.
“But, what I am about to show you is something completely different, and it might seem a bit out of this world.”
If Innu hadn’t met Ashen before he would have thought he was simply overhyping his capabilities, but after having seen him do what he had done before, he was expecting something quite big.
Ashen then threw the rock in the air, down the alleyway it went quite some distance away, but eventually dropped onto the floor.
“That... am I missing something?” Innu asked.
Ashen smiled as he saw this and picked up another small stone.
“Watch carefully, watch it till the very end.”
Ashen threw the stone down the alleyway once more, and Innu tried to not blink. The stone continued and just like last time fell down onto the floor again.
“I didn’t see anything different.” Innu claimed and was wondering if this was all a big prank from Ashen.
“Alright... I’ll try to make it a little more obvious for you.” Ashen said, holding out his hand, and this time there was nothing in his hand as he stretched it out with his fingers stretched open.
Innu was now watching his hand carefully, when suddenly a small stone appeared in it. Ashen grabbed it at that moment, and started to throw it up and down again.
Innu looked left, he looked right, and started to rub his eyes.
“That stone... where did it come from? Did it just fly into your hand? What is this, is it a magic trick!”
Ashen started to chuckle.
“It's not magic, although I'm not quite sure what it is myself. You see, one day, I was just able to do things like this. Control where objects moved. When I was throwing the stone earlier, if you had paid attention you would have seen it swerving to the left or the right.
“But as long as the object isn't too heavy, I can bring it back into my hand like so.”
The stone was now levitating in the air, in front of him. Innu was sure that there were no strings, so he had to just believe what the other said.
“When I saw your axes, it made me think of this. Imagine if you had this power? If you learnt how to transfer your Qi into the axe, and threw it towards your enemy, if you could control its path it would hit your enemy without fail, and then with the power, the axe could come back right to the palm of your hand.”
As Ashen explained, Innu was imagining it there and then. How useful something like this would be when going up against Midwak.
“You see, this isn’t something the Altered Hunters teach you, nor is it anything related to my current position. This is something that one day I could just do. It allowed me to hunt for Altereds easier, and I haven't shown any others this skill or ability if you want to call it that.”
Now Innu was understanding why Blake wasn’t allowed to tag along. After hearing Ashen’s explanation it did make him have a thought.
“Wait, you said that you just knew how to do this one day, and no one taught you it before, right? So does that mean, you're not even sure if it's something that can be taught to others?” Innu asked.
Ashen nodded.
“That's right, I have been wanting a student for a while now, to see if it's possible to teach others how to do this. Oh and of course, if this all does work out. I would tell you to only use it in emergencies. If people were to find out about this, they might hunt you down and take your body apart.”
Innu didn’t like the sound of that, and more so, he was a bit disheartened that it might be the case that he couldn't learn this ability. If it was, then wouldn't a lot more people have powers, or maybe those with powers were just hiding themselves like Ashen.
In the end, Innu couldn't help but think, how much of a plus it would be if he could do something like this in a fight.
“Let’s do it, lets try and learn this power!” Innu excitedly said.
“I knew you were the right person for this.” Ashen smiled.
Innu quickly started to grab some stones off the ground, as he was ready to begin his training. He would work day and night for this, and time was short.
Meanwhile, Ashen looked at him, thinking if this worked out, maybe it would change the world, or even the future, but one thing was for sure, Innu would become a five star hunter in no time.
“Ashen, are you okay?” Innu asked. “Your nose is bleeding.”
Ashen quickly wiped the side of his face.
“Oh... this... it's alright, let's start your training.”
*****
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