*THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *CRACK*

  Among a group of several palm trees gently swaying in the wind, one tree shook quite violently. Each time it trembled, a droning thud accompanied it, reverberating into the calm ocean waves. Occasionally, that thud would be repced by the sickening sounds of breaking bones.

  ~ GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: ICHOR, HOW TO USE IT? ~

  Training External Ichor mainly consists of finding good pces to cut, and ways to ‘throw’ or use whatever your blood turns into. While Internal Ichor focuses on collecting blood inside of whatever body part accepts it and seeing what happens. This body part usually starts tingling when you first generate Ichor, so you should know where it is.

  One way to gain more power is to increase your maximum heart rate through intense exercise or meditation. The higher your beats per minute are, the more Ichor will be created. If you reach a certain threshold, your powers might even evolve. Not only that, but a higher heart rate will also increase general fitness, things like power, speed, brain functionality... Even the non-Daemon apprentice knights of the Sky Kingdom could increase their rate to 600 bpm.

  There is also another way to train, a way that was only recently discovered by our scientists, a method that should be entirely unknown to whoever reads this journal. It’s called partial training, and it can permanently increase your blood capacity. This training method aims to compress the bones by hitting one’s limbs on a hard surface like a stone or a metal pipe.

  This method was discovered after observing how Ichor users at the top seemingly had infinite blood reserves. After the autopsy of one such Daemon, it was observed that their bones were many times denser than those of regur humans. This was probably the result of the many battles that the being had fought. These battles can be simuted by introducing shock to the skeletal system.

  WARNING: heart rate training, and especially partial training, may not be overdone! It can result in permanent injury, so listen to your body. Or did you think you would receive such a magnificent frame as myself, Sir Siegfried, while overtraining and ignoring your body’s natural warning signs?!

  ~~~

  Ginn had just finished his training routine and grabbed a fallen coconut from the tree he was punching. He cracked it open, but to his dismay, no liquid came out. “Urgh, too young… That was the st one too. Guess it’s time to leave this pce.”

  His knuckles were bloody, yet Ginn wore a smile. It had only been three weeks since his vein readjustment, but he already felt as though he had the power to swim toward the STAAL isnds.

  Besides partial and heart rate training, Ginn had also familiarized himself with the Ichor coursing through his veins. The pattern of bones granted him a few unexpected, but welcome, benefits.

  The first aspect reted to training. Since he could shape and grow his bones however he wants to, Ginn was able to undergo much more partial training than the average person. If his bones ever broke completely, he could grow the pieces back together and continue training. However, this had a limit; healing broken bones did cost some Ichor, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t grow bones denser than the ones he was growing them from.

  But the young mans Ichor could also be used offensively.

  He pulled back his hand and focused on his arm, a white bone broke through the skin of his palm and grew until it could almost reach the ground. The bone, dripping with his blood, had an edge on both sides and ended in a point. The bony bde wasn’t very sharp or straight, but when Ginn swung at a nearby bush, he managed to cut off a couple of branches nonetheless.

  After Ginn lost focus, the bde started retracting back into his arm, leaving behind only a small bleeding wound. “I guess fighting like this will leave some scars…”

  Ginn heard of circus folk that could poke a rapier through their chest and survive, they wouldn’t even bleed. Mary told him that these people would simply impale themselves in the same pce over and over again until a sort of tunnel formed, made of scar tissue.

  Well, Ginn hoped to make a tunnel like that in his right palm. And although it hurt less than in the beginning, the wound would still bleed.

  “Sword-fighting isn’t really my style, but I gotta admit, it does look cool.” Ginn admired his newfound powers.

  He then grew a bded edge along his shin, turning his leg into a heavy axe. “But I can’t chop down a tree with ‘cool’.”

  He walked over to one of the few trees still standing on the small isnd and started kicking it. Alternating high kicks with low kicks, and after a few minutes of work: *CREAAAK* *KRAAAAAAK* *THUD*

  Blood was spttered all over the base of the fallen tree, but Ginn paid it no mind as he dragged the trunk over to a group of five other logs that shared the same familiar blood sptters.

  The five other logs were tied together, resembling some sort of make-shift raft. Ginn then took some of the woven-together vines he had crafted and attached the freshly cut tree to the others.

  Although first intending to swim to the STAAL isnds, he might as well save some stamina by using a raft. Ginn also hoped to avoid the underwater creatures with this float, but he knew that was just wishful thinking; zeppelins weren’t just the default mode of transport because they were fast…

  “The sea here isn’t that deep, the creatures can’t be that dangerous… right?” He asked no one in particur.

  Ginn then gathered all of his things into the chest he had dug up. Tomorrow would be the day he finally left this isnd.

  The chest was filled with two pieces of dried fish, three coconut shells filled with rainwater, and the leftover readjustment wires he hadn’t used. It probably wouldn’t be enough for another readjustment, as he had used over half of the second set, but he wasn’t just going to leave it here on the isnd.

  The only thing missing from the chest was the journal of Siegfried. On the st page of that journal, Siegfried urges the reader to burn it. The secrets it contained shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and Ginn agreed. He was going to read it one st time before going to sleep, as he had done every night since he dug up the thing, and then… he was going to throw it into the campfire.