Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Road to Ascension

The next morning was met with silence. Neither Bult nor any of the other contestants spoke to Mana at all. Granted, that may have been due to the magician's lack of trying since she just assumed that she once again squandered all of the respect and rights she had earned previously after losing. Wasn't that how this place worked? People had to fight and win to get the treatment that any human being deserved... Everyone just continued to stare at Mana uncomfortably and all the talking ceased immediately when she left the cell and walked around the hall during breakfast and the announcements of that day's fights.

From what Mana gathered there was a huge influx of new recruits. A small-time settlement was destroyed recently, not too far away from Agbarah, the work of the desert raiders who lately were becoming more and more aggressive as they gathered under the wing of their new leader, granted, Mana wasn't able to get any other clues about Fennec and his ambitions being involved. She thought it was very likely that it may have been a statement, maybe even a possibility that the cursed rogue was looking for the Konohagakure team that crushed the outpost of his subordinates.

Finally, when the fights were announced and everyone rushed out to peek at the fights through the small observation spots they could put themselves into, Mana, not feeling like looking at violence she failed to stop from happening decided to just return to her cell. The girl's feet dragged along the rough rocky ground so hard that she even tripped once and her sandals got full of sand. She lifelessly fell onto her bench and looked at Bult who was also laying and looking at the wall. Why would a veteran warrior withhold the pleasure of seeing some good fights?

"You know, I really expected this hatred treatment from everyone else but... I just thought you'd be different" Mana said with a dreadful combination of sadness and some scorn behind her voice. Perhaps she wasn't entirely just to suspect her cellmate of losing belief in her, for no longer looking at her like she was a human being but Mana was just too frustrated and crushed by her loss to deal with all of that bull properly.

Bult flipped over and looked at the magician, "No one's angry at you, we've just seen you give up out there and... We thought your dream was crushed, none of us are willing to get in your way now that you're going through what all of us had already gone through," the man replied, trying to smile gently for the girl just to soften her beaten and squished heart.

"He didn't crush my dream, I didn't give up because I gave up on my dream, I gave up because further violence would've been pointless. It was a deadlock, I could've kept on dodging him forever but I'd have never been skilled and fast enough to respond, in the end, he was just a superior fighter." Mana replied scratching her aching abdomen. Her head still felt a little dizzy, that all too familiar sensation of colossal slimy slugs sliding up and down her throat trying to force vomit to burst through as if trying to pull a mean joke on Mana.

"So you're still going to do something? You still plan on fighting him again?" Bult wondered looking at his own busted up hands and the wounds he sustained during his own fight with Damij.

"Yeah, I just... Need to figure things out, I don't know how to go at him, what went wrong... All I know is that I was too focused on what needed to be done and not enough on how to do it." Mana replied as her eyes dimly closed down. 

She was very far away from being on Damij's level. It was quite possibly impossible for her to ever reach such mastery of martial arts in her entire lifetime. Maybe there were more hacks she could've learned but she needed a master who knew them. Kouta knew perfect dodging techniques because he was a medical ninja, Meiko knew redirection techniques because she was a skilled sword user and knew some mysterious ways of punching someone in the face. All she could've learned here was pure martial arts and there was little to no point of doing it since Damij was better than anyone else there. Then there was still Mana's own quest of finding the Box of Ultimate Bliss and regaining her chakra manipulation.