By the second week he had made no improvement upon his skills, but his fine control of mana was beyond anything he had ever had before. With each breath he began circling his Inner Flame formation and continuing to fight shadows of his own creation, letting only the purest pieces of mana filter in from around him. He began to feel the difference between the true mana that his body subconsciously sucked in to heal him and the fake mana that the room created in order to dampen his senses. He was still cut off from his concept, but he was at peace with it for the moment. He knew distinctly that it was the product of the room he was trapped in and that soon enough he would be strong enough to break out of the room with ease. He could feel that with his increasing strength there would come a day soon where he would simply walk out as no door in the prison would be able to stop him.
The third week he felt he was at peak performance, and he began practicing his martial skills once more. The first move he practiced was Yesod, his counter strike. It was a simple manoeuver, but one that was core to his entire skillset. He imagined a figure punching towards his head, followed the movement and then struck out with his hand. Catching the momentum of the strike, his body followed and picked up the figure in his mind, it arced over him as he threw and then he willed the sensation that he felt when he used Yesod to spread through his leg. Immediately mana shot through him and formed an illusory axe around his heel. As the heel-axe struck the ground there was a crack and a deep cut shot out from the point of impact towards the edge of the room. Feeling the moment of success had hit him, he whooped in joy before centering himself and trying to replicate the maneuver. Again and again he smacked his heel, his palm, his knee, his elbow into the ground and watched as the room slowly became more scarred up by his actions. As the certainty that he was on the right path flowed through him he felt nothing but elation. The steps he had made were the right ones, now all he had to do was replicate them.
By the sixth week Laurence had completely absorbed and refined the first three seats to his Empty Throne style. They had been far easier than he was expecting, but perfecting them had taken more time than he had hoped it would. He had developed several bad habits within Hod and Gamaliel that the time he had spent practicing removed. Time ticked on and by the end of the second month he had completed five of the seven martial skills. They were far more complete than when Laurence had first created them, but he was still not at a level where he felt comfortable escaping from his imprisonment. He continued to persist.
At the end of the third month he felt he was close to reaching a new level of skill entirely. He had mastered all of the nuances behind all seven of his created skills and felt like he was quickly approaching the steps to a new skill. He could feel the precision behind all the skills that he had fostered leading him to a new ability entirely. He felt that the precision he had worked upon could be applied to something other than just the skills he had created, but to combat in general. All Laurence could do to express his idea was to practise combat while working on this idea. He began practicing with a shadow he imagined and followed the movements of the invisible figure while thinking about each of the fights he had ever been through. With each figure he worked out a way to avoid their strike while responding with minimal movement and effort. He would take a thousand strikes from each figure and work out every opening within their body before moving on to the next figure.
Laurence moved in unison with his imagined combatant, feeling their strikes coming and reacting entirely before completion. With each strike he felt mana slowly flow through his body towards the point where he was impacting the enemy figure. He could feel that he needed to name his new seat as it was about to be formed and whispered into the aether “Arab Zeren”. As the words sprung out of his mouth he felt the mana within his body subtly correcting his movements in order to create the highest damage strike possible. He continued striking out and felt the corrections move him in very subtle ways. As the enemies he fought became more competent, more mana would be drawn from him as it took more power to work out the perfect angle and location for striking. As before he spent time perfecting the move, but due to the nature of the ability there was very little perfection to be done. All that happened was the skill took more mana and became insanely precise, to the point where he felt he could strike at the weak point of any creature, of any size.
With eight skills under his Empty Throne style he felt proud of his achievements, but he knew that he was still not close to complete. He needed two more to fill out half the seats of the style, so once more he began racking his brains and practicing fighting. His days were simple, he sat alone in his room, conversing with Jake and Damascus for some of the day, while practicing and calming himself the rest of the time. By the end of the seventh month he had developed a new skill that worked with the idea behind his Samael seat, the concept of piercing, called Geburah. Unlike Samael, the new skill was a movement skill like Tiphereth, but instead of being evasive and confusing he simply forced himself forwards at high speeds while making himself untouchable for a moment. It took a lot of mana to use, but was the easiest way for him to dodge anything coming at him.
Time continued ticking and soon Laurence knew he was close to not only becoming something far more than what he was, but also that he was nearly ready to escape. The last month of the year ticked by, and he felt the solution to his issues was slowly revealing itself. His final seat would revolve about him truly becoming his hammer in essence, but the concept escaped him. He touched the boundaries of the idea, but each time he felt close he could not quite take that final step. Aggravated by the issue Laurence sat down and crossed his legs, focussing on himself to see if there is some sort of issue with his body, soul or mind. The more he looked the more worried he became. The issue was obvious, there was something very wrong with his spirit reservoir, and by extension his hammer Jormugand. He examined the reservoir and noticed hundreds of tiny little cracks that spread all over his hammer. It was an unbelievable situation, and not one he had ever seen in the Book of Creation. This hammer was his soul, by extension it was him, and yet it was covered in cracks. It had been damaged, and he had no way of repairing it, so all he could really do was confront the creature that caused it.
He stood up and went into the middle of his room. Turning around, looking at the corners he finally spoke. “Come out, shadow. I know you did this”.
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