The following day, after breakfast, Drew calls me for training once again.
“Okay. Today, I am going to teach you how to not hurt yourself. I want you to break this with a punch. Try adding telekinesis to make your punch stronger”
I am a bit confused, but I nod my head and summon my Uua to cover myself, also activating the enhancement noer. He uses telekinesis to pick up a boulder from nearby and throws it at me. I throw a punch at the boulder, making sure to use a bit of telekinetic energy to back up the punch. My fist hits the boulder and for a moment everything seems to freeze. Suddenly the boulder bursts apart as I show far greater strength than I have ever shown. I can’t help but smile in triumph. It seems Drew’s idea of adding telekinetic energy to punches is quite effective. I am not too surprised though, from its definition, telekinetic energy is basically force, so by adding it I am effectively just adding more force to my punches.
He nods and picks up another boulder with telekinesis. “Again.”
He throws the boulder and I confidently throw another punch. Once again my fist hits the boulder. It is far tougher than the previous rock and I feel alarmed, but it is too late, I have already thrown the punch. Thankfully the boulder breaks apart but not without almost breaking my fingers.
“Dude, what the hell?” I ask Drew wide-eyed as I cradle my hand to my chest.
“Relax. You wouldn’t have broken your hand today, I just wanted to show you something. So far, you’ve been learning how to use your Uua in different ways that could cause massive damage to things, the only thing is that since you’ve not pushed yourself far enough, you haven’t yet realized that what you’re learning could also cause harm to yourself if you aren’t careful. For instance, when I taught you burst the other day. You didn’t realize it then but if you had used more force when jumping with it, you could have sprained or maybe even broken your leg. You were only safe because you’ve had your Uua for quite some time now and it has already begun to improve your body. If you had used burst like that when you first got your Uua. You would have broken a leg.”
“So how do I keep myself safe?” I ask.
He holds out his hand and a noer appears above it. “This is the strengthening noer. It gives a bit of a strength boost, but its main function is to improve your resistance. It strengthens the bones and toughens up the skin and does a whole lot of other things to make it so that your body can take more damage without it actually affecting you. Also, over time its effect becomes permanent so if you use it often enough, there will come a time when your natural body will be the same as when you use it. But at that point, the noer will no longer have any effect on you. But at that point, if you jump from the roof of a three-story building you should be fine when you hit the ground so it's not too bad.”
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“Wait, really?” I ask surprised. The effects of this noer are far better than I expected.
He nods. “From now on, If you want to do anything extreme with magic, use this noer. Now, I’m going to toss another rock, I expect you to break it with one punch, as usual.”
Once again he lifts a rock with telekinesis while I prepare myself. It takes me a bit longer to prepare myself this time since I am using two noers now, and I am not familiar with the second one, but after a few seconds, I manage to do it. He throws the rock at me and I punch it. There’s a noticeable difference this time. As I punch the rock, it feels like my hand is going through cardboard and not through anything really solid. It's so easy that for a moment I doubt I really punched a rock. Drew however doesn’t give me time to dwell on this feeling as he picks up another rock.
He keeps throwing rocks at me for the next quarter of an hour before stopping. He tells me to deactivate all my noers, before going on to explain that he wants me to only activate them after he has thrown a rock at me. His reason? To make it so I can activate the noer instantaneously if I need to. After that our training continues.
A couple of hours later, the training ends and I collapse on the ground staring at the sky. My hands are aching, like they were driven over by a truck multiple times before being smashed by a sledgehammer, along with my entire body. Drew made no effort to take things easy on me during the training. At least, I got something out of it. Instead of a few seconds, I can now activate the strengthening noer in less than a second. But at what cost, I think as pain zaps through my arm as I try to move my fingers.
“Hey Daniel, come here!” I hear Drew shout, before hearing footsteps coming toward me.
Drew and Daniel briefly discuss something before Daniel walk and crouches over me. I wonder what he is doing when I feel a tingling, itching sensation in my hands. This is followed by my muscles squirming in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable.
“Stay still,” Daniel says and I do my best to obey, fighting the urge to twitch one of my fingers to get rid of those feelings. After some seconds he moves on to my other hands. He soon stands up, leaving my hands pain-free and feeling okay but slightly numb.
“Thanks,” I say to him, as I sit up and begin to wiggle my fingers.
He nods toward me before walking away.
I get up and go towards the tents, intending to get some rest as my training sessions with Drew usually leave me drained. When next I wake up, it is late afternoon and I am feeling a bit hot. I think of the ocean somewhere beneath us and wonder if there is a safe way to get there without jumping off a cliff. A moment later I shake my head it would be better if I just as Drew to set up the portable shower.
Outside, I don’t see anyone, but I can hear their excited voices coming from somewhere below the cliff. I walk up to the cliff’s edge and look down. In the ocean below, I can see Drew and the rest swimming and having fun, disregarding the power of the waves which crash against the cliff wall. Lathia looks up and seeing me, waves for me to join them and for a moment I am tempted, wanting to let go and jump down. But, as I consider the distance between me and the ocean, I shake my head and back away. For one, I have no idea if there is anything I must know before I jump down. What if I jumped down, not realizing that I had to use some noer and died or seriously injured myself? Better safe than sorry.
I walk away from the cliff’s edge and find a spot where a small patch of grass is growing before sitting down. I close my eyes and begin to practice focusing my Uua. I stop around an hour later when I hear the footsteps signaling the arrival of Drew and the rest.