“Will I be able to fight Martial Artists of higher advancement, or have better protection?” Roy asked, feeling just a bit better, but only fractionally.
“Do not be foolish,” Irusaru said, immediately bursting his bubble. “Yes, your body is stronger, and your techniques will come faster, but you have yet to pass even the First-Stage of Body-Reconstruction. Yes, the impurities have all been burned away, making for a smoother process, but you still lack the actual power one would gain from advancing.”
Roy’s shoulders sagged as he realized that while he had just gone through hell, it would only show true results once he advanced further.
“For now,” Irusaru said, with a small glint in his eye, “you will run the circumference of the basin. You will need to eat after what you’ve just been through, but I want you to run before you do. Otherwise, you’re likely to throw up.”
Letting out a small groan, Roy nodded, allowing the Essence cycling through him to retreat back into his core.
“You have thirty minutes. Go!”
Roy took off, pumping his legs and sprinting along the path he’d worn over the weeks of running. As he ran, he found that his earlier assessment had indeed been correct. His body felt lighter, stronger, and moved far more smoothly. It was as though his joints had been rusted gears that had had a fresh coating of grease applied to them. He didn’t know how he’d managed up until now.
As he continued running, he soon began to find the limits of his body due to his advancement, and he began to flag. He kept running though, forcing one leg in front of the other, determined to beat the time just once.
When he came jogging up to Irusaru, panting for breath and desperately trying to hold his breathing pattern in place, he knew that he hadn’t made the time. Despite that, Irusaru gave him a nod, then motioned for him to sit and eat.
Noticing a small blanket spread out with a bowl of rice, stew, tea, and water, Roy dropped gratefully to the ground, taking a few minutes to catch his breath as he took small sips of the water. He couldn’t help feeling disappointed at his failure to meet the time, even after his body had been strengthened. He said as much once he’d caught his breath, but surprisingly, Irusaru didn’t seem upset.
“It is true that you failed to run the course in the time I gave you today.”
Roy noticed how he stressed that last word, putting heavy emphasis on it.
“What do you mean by that, Irusaru Sensei? I failed the exercise.”
“Yes, your time was forty-three minutes and twelve seconds. You did not complete today’s goal. Nevertheless, you did succeed in completing the run in under forty-five minutes. A run which, on your first day here, took you nearly two hours.”
Roy blinked in surprise. Had he really completed the run in under forty-five minutes without the aid of a Movement technique?
He could feel a grin spreading across his face when Irusaru went on to ruin his good mood.
“Then again, Aika completed the run in twenty-three minutes just this morning. A full twenty minutes faster than you.”
Roy sighed, deciding not to dignify that with a response, instead, going directly to his food.
Once he’d finished his meal, Irusaru ran him through all the usual exercises, and Roy found each one to now be far more manageable. The greatest surprises, however, came when he practiced the Unaru Kuma and attempted to cultivate under the waterfall, both of which he now found to be manageable.
Though the Unaru Kuma’s punches, kicks, and violent shifting of stances still strained his body, leaving his motions jerky, they weren’t nearly as difficult as they had been previously. And when he went to cultivate under the falls, he found that, for the first time, he was actually able to keep his Essence cycling as he pulled in outside Essence.
There was no sparring session with Aika, and Irusaru used the time to start him on an entirely new set of exercises. These exercises were just as challenging as the ones leading up to now.
Irusaru kept him working late into the night, thoroughly pushing every muscle, nerve, and fiber in his body to the point where he began to question if his body had really improved at all.
“Very well, that will be all for today. I expect to see you up and running at six,” Irusaru said to Roy’s prone form on the ground, then vanished in a flash of golden light.
***
Roy collapsed onto his bed. He’d never felt so wrung out in his entire life. His whole body throbbed in pain, his muscles still twitching and spasming randomly as he lay on his side, facing the wall of his small house.
Irusaru had been merciless, seeming to take great pleasure in bending Roy until he nearly broke, then pulling him back just long enough to recover so he could do it all over again. The man was a monster, as far as he was concerned, and had even gone so far as to tell him to wake up an hour earlier than usual tomorrow.
Grumbling to himself, he rolled over on his mat and came face to face with Aika, who was lying on the ground next to him with a wide grin on her face. He yelped in surprise, jumping out of his bed and scrambling back against the wall, his heart pounding so hard that it felt like it would be exiting his throat.
“Aika! What are you doing here? And how did you get in?”
He was sure he’d kept his Spirit Sense open, so she must have been suppressing her core.
Aika snorted out a laugh as she stood up and smoothed her robes. She looked the same as always, with her long black hair tied in a pony, her lips pulled up in a smile, small nose wrinkling slightly as her eyes sparkled with mirth.
The two of them had grown closer over the past couple of months. The amount of time they spent training together allowed Roy to become comfortable around her, but this was going just a bit too far.
“You’re way too easy to sneak up on,” she replied with a grin. “Now come on, there’s something I want to show you.”
Roy stared at the girl incredulously as she headed to his door and pushed it open. They had become what he considered to be friends, but what was she doing in his room? Aside from it not even being close to appropriate, it was two in the morning!
She turned back to him when he didn’t immediately follow and raised an eyebrow.
“Are you coming or not?”
“I really don’t think I should,” he replied. “I mean, it’s late, and we’ll have to be up early tomorrow for training, so…”
“So what? All you’ve been doing for weeks is training. This valley is full of wonders, and you haven’t even seen the Dungeon yet.”
That had been a sticking point for Roy, as Irusaru had refused to allow him into the Dungeon until he reached Yellow-Belt. He’d even asked today and had once again been denied, though he admittedly had bigger things to worry about.
When he didn’t reply yet again, Aika rolled her eyes and walked over to grab his sleeve, dragging him to his feet.
“Come on. If someone doesn’t force you to have some fun, then all this work is bound to kill you.”
“You know, I really shouldn’t,” Roy continued to protest, but there was nothing he could do to stop her from dragging him out.
Despite his newfound strength, she was still leagues above him when it came to strength. And, short of pulling his outer robe off, he knew he wouldn’t be able to break her grip.
“Fine,” he relented as he was dragged, stumbling out of his house. “One hour, then I’m going back to bed.”
Aika released his sleeve then and flashed him a grin.
“I knew you’d see sense. Now come on, there’s a spot I discovered the last time I was here that you absolutely have to see!”
With that said, she took off running, her body seeming to vanish into her surroundings. Despite the pain it caused him, Roy took off running after her, cycling Essence through his body to lend him what little extra speed it could.
Aika must have slowed down to allow him to catch up, because he soon caught sight of her as she ran into the small copse of trees, heading deeper in. Roy found it increasingly difficult to keep up as she dodged and weaved through the ever-thickening foliage with an ease he could not hope to match.