Whoosh!

As if all of the imperfections Valyr had noticed on the training dummy so far decided to show him the answer to his query, the young man soon noticed that almost all of the imperfections on the dummy seemingly had a connection between them, the origin of which was an imperfection that seemed to affect more than what meets the eye.

However, that imperfection was not the only one of its kind.

Soon enough, more and more imperfections that were the cause of other surface-level imperfections gradually began to pop up the longer Valyr looked at the dummy, only for him to find out that those deeper-level imperfections were connected as well, tracing their origins back to an imperfection that would affect even more imperfections than before.

“Is this what Jekyll meant by finding its weak spots?” Valyr muttered to himself, unsure of what he was discovering was right or not.

As someone who had been a veteran of the battlefield in his past life, it went without saying that Valyr had brewed his own type of combat sense for things like these, taking advantage of openings and weak spots in order to dish out more damage to his foes.

Though, as he continued to think about this combat sense while continuing to stare at the training dummy before him, he eventually came to realize that this combat sense he had brewed only worked effectively against those that were humans just like him, or monsters that were made up of flesh and blood.

Of course, his combat sense also encompassed a couple of beings that were beyond the scope of what he had come to known as his boundaries. However, those beings were mostly monsters that had glaringly obvious weak spots, or perhaps weak spots that would come to reveal themselves in due time.

With that in mind, the fact that he was finding weak spots in what was basically an inanimate object seemed absurd to the young man, even though his findings so far and the sight given to him by Gambler’s Discerning Eyes more than confirmed that such an idea was not absurd at all.

“Huuu…” Continuing to gaze at the training dummy even further, Valyr soon began to find even more of the deeper imperfections on the training dummy, all of which were unsurprisingly connected once more, leading him to what looked to be the origin of all imperfections on the training dummy.

“A hairline crack on the surface of the wooden pole…” Taking in a deep breath as he came to discover this imperfection, Valyr eventually noticed that the skill had actually marked this incredibly deep imperfection with a dark red circle, something that did not disappear even when he turned his head away and looked back at it.

Getting the feeling that this dark red circle was the exact thing Jekyll was waiting for him to discover, Valyr turned to look at the man seated a fair distance away from him. “Hey, Jekyll. Have I become successful in finding a weak spot once a dark red circle appears in my vision?”

“Eh?” With his eyes briefly widening in disbelief from Valyr’s words, Jekyll stood up and moved closer to where the young man was. Once there, he took a look at the training dummy in front of Valyr before returning to the young man. “What weak spot did you find in the training dummy before you?”

“I noticed that a hairline crack on the dummy’s wooden pole seemed to be the root cause for many of the training dummy’s imperfections,” said Valyr in response, prompting Jekyll to finally look at the young man with utter shock.

“And how long has it been since you began looking for the dummy’s weak spots? Like 15 minutes or so?” Letting out a sigh filled with disbelief, Jekyll looked at Valyr for a bit before turning his head towards the ceiling, pinching his forehead in the process. “Within that short amount of time, you’ve already discovered a weak spot?”

“Man, the Herald of the Zeihardt clan is really no joke.” Saying these words, Jekyll let out a chuckle, which soon turned into full-blown laughter.

‘I guess I can finally say I understand what others feel after someone who inherits your legacy does it faster than you,’ thought Jekyll while laughing. ‘It feels… great.’

With a smile adorning his face, he then asked Valyr to find the weak spots on the training dummies besides the one he had been looking at all this time.

Though it took him quite some time to go through the layers of imperfections on the training dummies, Valyr was eventually able to identify a weak spot on the other training dummies, prompting Jekyll to let out laughter that increasingly grew louder the more weak spots the young man discovered. 𝒐𝚟𝑳𝐞xt.𝓬𝑜𝑚

“Alright.” Letting out a faint sigh of relief, Jekyll called for Valyr’s attention. “Even though it takes you a while to find a weak spot in the training dummies, it’s still plenty fast at your level. Plus, as long as you finish second step, searching for weak spots becomes second nature to you anyway.”

“With that being said, let’s move on to the next step,” said Jekyll soon after, prompting Valyr to nod in response. “As I’ve mentioned before, the first step involves discerning imperfections and using those imperfections to discover weak spots.”

“Now, for the second step, what I want you to do is to skip the discernment part and head straight to discovering those weak spots directly,” he continued. “Then, once you do that, look through the various weak spots you’ve discovered and search for the weak spot amongst those weak spots that seem to contain more importance than the others.”

“In other words, the vital spot,” Jekyll told Valyr, which the latter committed to memory. “Once you find one of the training dummy’s vital spots, not only will you have made searching for weak spots second nature…”

“You will have also proved yourself worthy to inherit the second part of my legacy… no.”

“The true beginning of my legacy.”