Calvin had seen and done many things in his long life from hunting for his village in his youth, hauling cargo on a merchant caravan and finally purchasing an inn back in his home village but this...

Alchemist Tang shouted at his lapse in concentration causing a small arc of lightning to jolt from the pan. "SLOWLY AND EVENLY" Tang shouted for what Calvin thought was the tenth time in five minutes. "I'm trying" Calvin muttered under his breath as he tried to get a better grip on the spoon with his thick rubber gloves. "Heaven's damed spark chickens" doing his best to scrabble the eggs without getting zapped. Gold and blue sparks danced in the pan as he worked his magic "ha, magic" he couldn't help but let out a bit of amusement and awe at what he was doing. "Eggs that cost more than my inn when I bought it" shaking his head at how funny life is sometimes.

"Are you sure about this" Hector Vale was nervous as those two thunder hens had taken the remaining foundational realm coins leaving them only the mortal coin generated by the local verdant path branch in Blackrock. "Relax, I know exactly what I'm doing" Hayden Pryor replied as confident as ever. Hector really wished he could be as calm and knowledgeable as expert Pryor.

Please work, oh God please work! Hayden was internally panicking, he'd like usual been making things up and hoped for the best. He had mostly kept to physical training like any earth athlete might do and that seemed to work for a time. Anytime one of the tournament team asks him a question he'd simply think up some mystical mumbo-jumbo and make sure they'd be too busy with work to think about it. The improved insanely fast and even Hayden started to think that he might be on track then out of nowhere it stopped working. Day after day they broke their personal records in all categories until yesterday.

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"Like an engine running out of fuel" he'd muttered to himself before it clicked, they need more energy to fuel growth or so he thought. That had led to Hayden sending out Hector to get some kind of beast to feed their athletes. He watched as Tang directed Calvin the innkeeper to dish out the shocking breakfast into rubber bowls they'd acquired. "Alright boys, eat up" he said hoping he wasn't about kill there only hope of getting out of this mess.

Markus sat in a circle with his teammates still feeling the phantom jolts in his mouth from breakfast. It had been a week of eating the experiments alchemist Tang and Calvin had cooked up. Somehow it kept getting more unpleasant each time, when he'd asked why the shocks kept getting worse they'd informed him that after some refinement Tang had figured out how to prevent most of the energy from escaping. The smile on the man's face admitting that he's doing his best to more efficiently electrocute made him want to throttle him.

Shaking his head at the thought Markus focused back on the task at hand, he focused on the chill in his bones and tried to shove it outward. He felt a small shift but nothing else like the last few attempts. This was the first step in the battle cultivation method his boss had provided to them but so far only Dimitri had had any success even if only for a second. "Alright guys let's end things here" standing up Markus stretched watching everyone else follow his lead. "Pair up, we're doing those wrestling drills Pryor showed us" he got a mix of cheers and groaning as the strange form of combat was received to mixed results.

Markus had to admit that the foreign way of fighting was hard to get used to. Instead of elegant attacks, powerful blows and graceful footwork cultivators are known for this was completely different, no trading blows and profound techniques but positioning and physicality. Grappling, Tossing, sweeping and pinning the opponent across from him seemed to fit their group just fine so far though they hadn't been truly tested yet.

"We should have a little bit of time before Pryor gets back and I want to be prepared" Markus shouted getting a much more enthusiastic reaction this time. They got right into practice knowing that Pryor was going out to get them some cultivators to trade points with before the tournament.