After an hour or so, as his Stamina recovered to above 100, Aiden finally stood up. As he was laying down, he kept staring at his status while daydreaming, and had noticed something interesting - his vitality regeneration had increased with time, while his stamina regeneration slowly decreased. His vitality regeneration went from 3 per hour to 10, while on the other hand, his stamina regeneration went from 92/h to 88/h.
He could somewhat guess that his vitality regeneration was tied to his stamina somehow, but he wasn't sure why his stamina regeneration decreased. Perhaps it was because he was slowly getting hungry again? When he first arrived, he had been somewhat hungry, and after healing, he felt full.
Coincidentally, when he first opened his status, his stamina regeneration was rather low. After getting healed, when he checked, it was higher. He was basically guessing about the reason back then, but now, he was pretty sure that was the case.
After some stretches, Aiden came to realise that he was feeling much better than he should've been. After such an intense exercise session, he would've expected a few cramps at least, and could be certain that he'd have sore muscles for at least half a week. But now, the last few twinges of soreness went away with his stretches, and he felt better than he'd ever been.
'So this is the benefit of raised attributes... Amazing.'
Aiden experimentally tried out a few movements that were somewhere halfway between stretches and dance moves, while marvelling at the ease with which they came to him. His body was completely unused to the movements, but he was able to control it easily, and quickly correct any mistakes and slip ups. After a few minutes , he finally built up enough courage to attempt to do a flip, and with a quick breath, went for it.
The flight through the air was rather quick and disorienting, but somehow, Aiden managed to land perfectly. Well, *nearly* perfectly - he had stumbled a bit, but managed to correct it in an instant.
He had just managed to execute a perfect front flip on his first try, and didn't even fall.
Emboldened by the success, Aiden tried it a few more times, each time with increasing confidence. After a few minutes, he was running around the room, both on the floor and the walls, leaping over metres of ground at a time. Periodically, he executed flips, both front and back - either while running, or by kicking off a segment of the wall not covered in weapons. During all of this, he was whooping and shouting with joy.
Before he completely tired himself out, Aiden stopped. He couldn't recall the last time he had so much fun when running around... It must've been when he was a child, maybe even before middle school. Some days, he missed that childhood innocence - today was one of those days.
Thinking of his childhood inevitably brought up memories of his parents, which reminded him of his current situation, and the fact that they were most likely in the same situation right now. After a few seconds of contemplation, Aiden shook his head and tried his best to stop thinking about it, and shoved his emotions somewhere deep inside of him. There was no use pondering about things he couldn't change, after all.
These thoughts didn't manage to spoil his happiness at his newfound abilities, even though his overall mood had soured slightly.
Checking his status quickly, Aiden noted his stamina. It had fallen to 81 after his impromptu athletics show.
'I should try out the sword skill and see what it can teach me.'
With that thought in mind, he walked over to the sword laying on the ground and picked it up. With satisfaction, he noted that it didn't feel as heavy as he remembered - his increased strength was already showing its' uses. It was still to heavy for him to use it with one hand, unfortunately. Still, the skill didn't specify how one should use a sword, so it should be fine.
Ready for some practice, Aiden made his way to the door through which he entered the room. As his hand was nearing the door handle, however, a window popped up before him. Except, this time it wasn't a notification, but a warning.
<<<>>>
Warning! Upon leaving the course, it will be treated as a forfeit.
After surrendering, it will be possible to enter the course, but rewards for clearing it will be decreased.
<<<>>>
After reading the warning, Aiden reluctantly took his hand away from the handle. His entire reason for attempting the course was to grow stronger. The rewards for completing a course were a major part in increasing his strength so far - giving up on a course would mean decreased rewards, which meant lower overall strength.
After giving it a bit of thought, Aiden's mood recovered somewhat. After all, what was the big difference between this course room and the tutorial hub? The tutorial hub had a chair, a table and a bed. That's it. As he was thinking about it now, he wasn't exactly sure why he even attempted to leave the course room - here, he could use the dummy that still stood in the middle of the room to train, while in the tutorial hub, there was nothing of use.
'Alright then, I'll train here.'
Walking to stand a few metres before the dummy in his best approximation of a combat pose, Aiden was ready to begin - the problem was, how does one activate skills?
'It should be at least a bit similar to how I interact with the system... I think?'
With such a thought, he set out to search his mind, whether he would be able to... *feel* something he could interact with.
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Despite growing somewhat used to the sensation of interacting with the system, Aiden still had no idea how to describe it. It felt... It felt as though he was moving a part of himself he didn't know was there. No, that didn't sound right. He was always aware of that part of himself, and was able to control it, but it never amounted to anything, so eventually he started to ignore it. The best comparison he could make was trying to move in an empty void - with no sensations whatsoever, eventually a sense will become forgotten.
The system resided somewhere in that void, and by calling his status screen for the first time, he had gained awareness of it - it felt as though he knew where it was located in that void, and he could ever so slightly feel and interact with it.
Now, searching that strange part of himself and exploring the void, roughly in the direction of the status, Aiden found another entity there.
'No, wait... it's not another entity, it's still connected to the status somehow.'
Geometry and shapes weren't concepts that could be applied to that strange void, but the best way Aiden could describe the feeling these two entities gave him was that of two partially merged spheres.
The status sphere was... bigger? More pronounced? Easier to feel? None of these words perfectly described the sensation Aiden felt, but he couldn't find any better ones. Also, when he interacted with the spheres, the status sphere felt a lot more multifaceted - he could tell it had multiple functions, not just one like the other one.
'That smaller... thing should be the basic sword fighting skill. Alright, and... it's activated.'
As he mentally *pushed*, Aiden suddenly felt the compulsion to move his body in a certain way. It was subtle, but if he relaxed his body and didn't try to move, his body would move by itself.
The sensation was incredibly strange, and Aiden, both out of surprise and fear, tried to fight the sensation and move his body on his own.
Fortunately, after he strained against this compulsion for an instant, it completely disappeared, and his body was completely under his control once again.
'Alright, so the control can be broken... Dear god, that was a nasty surprise.'
Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, Aiden tried to recall the sensation.
'That compulsion... It wasn't violent - after I tried to strain against it even a little bit, it immediately disappeared. Also, those movements it made me do seemed to be correcting my stance... So that's how the teaching part of the skill feels.'
Aiden released a deep breath he had been unconsciously holding.
"Huh..."
'I can't waste time - I should activate the skill once again.'
With a bit of trepidation, Aiden activated the skill once again, this time expecting the sensation.
As the compulsion once again took control of his limbs, he tried to sense what it really was, and had some discoveries. First, his body wasn't really being controlled - it was just that instructions on how he should move appeared in his mind, along with a gentle push to execute them. Now, as he was studying these strange thoughts, he could sense that it would take him a mere thought to overpower and banish them, giving him a sense of security.
Content with studying the mechanism of the skill for now, Aiden turned to study the movements themselves. In the process, he found that even though he could theoretically take the backseat and relax his control over his body, let the skill control it through his thoughts, the movements produced this way were... imperfect.
In the thoughts implanted into his mind, Aiden could tell how these movements should be executed, and although the gentle compulsion that came along with them tried to correct his moves, it couldn't replicate them perfectly.
By now, Aiden, or at least his body, moved into a rather shaky fighting stance, and started an overhead swing at the dummy standing before him.
In the middle of the movement, Aiden took control of his body, but instead of fighting the compulsion, let it guide his movements.
The instant he took control, his strike increased in speed, and fell sharply on the dummy's head.
Yet, despite the power behind the swing, its' positioning was imperfect - the sword was slightly tilted to one side, and upon contact, the blade slipped in Aiden's hands, eventually striking the dummy with its' flat side.
At this movement, Aiden felt a sense of... disapproval from the skill. Yes, it was most definitely disapproval - in the communication, Aiden got the sense that his strike wasn't a good one, though he didn't need the skill to tell him that.
As he was pulling the sword back, the skill provided him with directions on what movements to execute so that he would be able to react to an enemy's attack, even in the middle of retracting. After he returned to what he thought was the proper stance, the skill very subtly corrected his movements - Aiden obliged, changing his stance accordingly, and when he managed to perfectly replicate the stance the skill communicated to him, he received a sense of approval, along with the command to execute another hit.
Aiden obliged, and tried his best to follow the directions he received from the skill. This time, he managed a little better, the sword staying stable upon contact, though his aim was still a bit off. The next time, he did better, and the time after that, he did even better.
As time passed, Aiden immersed himself in repeating this one movement - every time he repeated it, he made some sort of mistake, and in turn felt the skill's disapproval. Yet, with every strike, that sense of disapproval decreased in intensity - if at first, the sense of disapproval felt like someone shouting furiously at him, listing his every failure, now it felt as though a teacher was standing beside him and calmly telling him what he did wrong, and instructing him on how to fix his mistakes.
As time passed, and Aiden lost himself in the exercise, he felt himself improving. This sense of improvement was different from the increase to his attributes like before. The increase to his attributes was incredible, true, but this... ability; the sense of learning how to do something? It felt a thousand times better to Aiden. Constantly attempting to execute a single strike, correcting any mistake he might've made with another try; it was a slow, but sure improvement, and Aiden loved it.
Unfortunately, his relaxed training was interrupted, when Aiden tried to execute another strike, ready to fix any mistakes the skill might point out with its' sense of disapproval, only to feel a sense of approval this time; along with a window popping up in front of him.
Surprised, Aiden stayed his strike, and had the idea to return to some sort of neutral pose while still holding his sword, only to realise he knew none. Feeling as though he was caught in a lie, he stood awkwardly for a moment, before he let his right hand fall to the side, sword in hand, while he took a look at the notification.
<<<>>>
Congratulations! Your skill, Basic Sword Fighting has levelled up.
<<<>>>
The notification was welcome, sure, but the budding swordsman still felt a bit miffed about being interrupted. He still didn't feel ready to take on any combat, and training his swordsmanship was surprisingly enjoyable. However, a second notification that arrived mere seconds after the first, changed his plans.
<<<>>>
Warning! If you do not progress to the next part of the course within ten minutes, you will automatically forfeit the course!
<<<>>>
Reading the notification, Aiden couldn't help but clench his teeth, as his grip on the sword's hilt tightened. A single thought crossed his mind, and he couldn't help but curse.
'This system really hates me, doesn't it.'
"Fuck."