[you have received a memory, dancing blade]
' I actually got a memory and a weapon at that, dancing blade, I wonder can it move around enemy attacks or maybe increase mobility, if it's the latter I would be able to dodge enemy attacks and win the upcoming duel that way'.
adam quickly summoned the runes and concentrated on the memory he had just obtained
[dancing blade: a blade once wielded by a skilled swordsman, it obtained such a name due to the way it seemed to dance around the fight, leaping from hand to hand.
'so it's an ordinary sword that had a skilled wielder, maybe it has some kind of strong enchantment, maybe.
adam summoned the memory to find out that it was a rapier, he was rather lucky, a lot of people get memories that don't work with their skills.
he used the rapier to stab holes into the creature, his carving knife wasn't sharp enough, and eventually fished out a soul shard, storing it away, he dragged both the wolf and horse into a nearby river and kicked them downstream, he walked back over to both of the guards that were waiting with his horse, seeing his white clothing stained red and his clean blond hair caked with blood, they were slightly terrified.
he leapt onto horseback and rode upstream, all the while taking note of his surroundings the lush green vegetation around him all looked similar to the ordinary eye, but adam was much more skilled, he could tell every tree and bush apart, although he didn't know what they were called.
when adam was satisfied by how far upstream they had travelled he strode into the stream using the water to clean all the blood off of his clothes hands hair and face, now that he thought about it, he must have looked like a serial killer.
when he was thoroughly clean he walked to the edge of the stream, memory ready and waited, after a while he saw a salmon jump out of the water in order to travel upstream, he attempted to stab it and missed.
when he killed the direwolf earlier it had been his luck and plot armour as a main character doing the heavy lifting, he was still very inaccurate with the sword.
after the first fish many followed after, each time adam would attempt to skewer one and fail, but at last, after many attempts and a lot of time (enough that the guards had set a tent and fire up), he finally managed to skewer one, his timing was still off though, causing the beautiful rapier to skewer its tail, he smashed its head against a rock, killing it instantly.
he carried the dead salmon over to the fire, stabbing it through the middle with a stick and burying part of the stick in the ground causing the salmon to be held above the fire.
returning to the stream he continued to practice with the blade, he stabbed out over and over again before catching a fish, quicker this time, the salmon was only about a quarter cooked before he added another one, so it took 10-15 minutes
he immediately returned to the stream, practicing the same thrust over and over again, before it took ten tries to skewer a fish, now it took 8, improvement.
before long 4 fish were already cooking, adam took the first one he skewered and ate it, ten minutes later, one of the guards took the second and the final guard took the third.
adam's clothes and hair had long dried by the time the fourth fish was safe to eat, adam had been practicing the same stab as before, but now against a tree, the sword being a rank one awakened blade, was able to deeply skewer the tree, adam practiced over and over, twisting his body with the blade, focusing on his footwork, putting the rotation of every part of his body into the blade.
then finally as the summer sky darkened adam stabbed one more time, but this time his blade seemed to slither through the air, like a serpent, like a dragon, the sword soundlessly tore straight into the tree, most of the blade appearing on the other side, adam tried to pull the blade out but couldn't, eventually he gave up and dismissed the memory, but the second he did, sap poured out of the trunk.
the next few days blended into one another everyday adam attempted to recreate the dazzling technique he had demonstrated on that tree against the salmon, but he had only succeeded one in every five attempts, at least it brought him down from one in eight.
adam knew that this wasn't enough, he had ten days until the duel and he still only had a one in five success rate, the problem wasn't anything to do with the stab itself, it was about his mindset.
every time he successfully used the technique it felt as if he became the blade, a slithering dragon. but what he lacked was the ability to consistently imagine such a thing, he would need to be a dragon of imagination.
'what am I thinking, I should have named myself roselle with such blatant plagiarism. and now I'm lampooning' adam chuckled to himself, he was acting like every transmigrator aside from the one he named himself after.
adam stared at his blade, imagining that the two were one, both dragons soaring through the sky, deceiving the entire world manipulating their imagination, that was a true dragon of imagination, one that can manipulate billions and two main characters.
adam stood their in the stream trying to discern the figures of incoming salmon from below the frothy river. he saw a hint of a shadow and focused entirely on it, as if the only three things in this world were the fish himself and his sword, to dragons working together to trick a fish, without knowing it adam changed his stance into a far more elusive one, no-one else would understand when he would strike, aside from his companion, suddenly the sword, which had seemed to have been held reverse-grip in his right hand a moment ago appeared in adam's left hand and skewered through the fish, a dragon devouring it's meal, the food chain, the natural order of the world, that was the true nature of adam's elusive attack.