In the training classroom, Robin was frowning as he had his eyes closed just making his life force move through his thickest vessels and their connected acupoints and it finally returned after running through his body.
When he opened his eyes, he had to move slowly as he channeled the energy.
“Well, it sure isn’t easy to move like that.” Double’s clone said, smiling.
“Yeah… it reminds me of the time I was training to control Titan force.” Robin said as he started to just walk around and move his arms to get used to the active flow of energy.
The teachers had said to achieve the limit of flow capacity that they could move with.
“The shiny aura is quite impressive honestly.” Double said. “Reminds me of when I watched a cartoon where people used Ki, the life force infused chi, and any power up they had would flare up this flashy aura. Yours looks like flames though.” Double said.
“Supposedly, it isn’t supposed to be visible with actual mastery.” He said and hopped to see the reaction and he frowned when he had to stop and control the flow for a moment before getting up and walking to the wall and carefully took an attack pose.
Double just watched as Robin controlled his breathing and flow before punching.
His fist buried into the hard cement rock making a half a meter wide dent. His fist was trembling as the aura around his body dimmed and he stayed in that pose for about a minute as he controlled the flow again and slowly pulled his fist back and looked at the other holes on the rock and it was no different.
“It’s still 2 times the strength.” He said.
“What do you expect kid, you’re not using the full power of the flow, just the amount needed to properly move around. Don’t get impatient, heroes aren’t born in a day and neither are villains. Chasm Might became a hero when he was in his early 30s, he is currently in his 50s, you’re just a child with 16 years of age and you are worried too much about growing to the strength of a hero. Even if you are the disciple of a hero, don’t let it get to your head or it might end up backfiring if you hit too strong of an obstacle. I've seen a lot of people retire because their growth was too straight and hit the first roadblock and gave up.” Double said.
Robin listened without moving and nodded before looking at his hands before closing his eyes.
Double looked confused until he saw a faint mist join the flame like waves and shockingly the white color of the aura turned a light green.
“Hey kid, what are you doing?” He said and walked over to feel what was going on.
Robin wasn’t moving and the flow and energy he was using was getting smaller but he could feel a second energy flowing through his body now, alongside his life essence.
“Kid, it is dangerous to use two energies at the same time and have them return to the wrong source.” Double said but Robin was already deeply concentrated making Double frown and knew he couldn’t interfere after he started until he calmed down this experiment.
Robin felt his body like a lot of stars channeling power. The psychic energy he was flowing through his body would return to him a constant internal image of his body and he constantly checked the flow and changed a few things to help the flow of both powers. Of course, they were not in the same flow, they were parallel flows. Life essence in his blood vessels and psychic energy in his nerves but the trouble he was having was getting them to flow together even when they split to return to their sources.
He was constantly looking through his body until he found a spot that gathered the flow around his neck where both energies gathered and followed the same flow from then on.
He gathered his energy for a moment before releasing psychic first to channel the bit through his brain before his life force came out and as he gauged the timing, they both hit that acupoint together and flowed down hitting every acupoint along the thickest vessel and nerves together going through his body, one extremity at a time, until they split and returned to their sources and the flow restarted continuously.
When he opened his eyes, he slowly moved and smiled and next to him Double’s clone was slack jawed as the boy slowly moved and opened his hand and began to move.
“How are you parallel channeling?” He asked.
“It’s kinda hard but I just had to find a starting point that the flows connected at and just flow the energies together through all the acupoints along the thickest vessels and finish the flow back and I wouldn’t have to think as much about it. It is a bit harder to move though. It is actually a task and I'm already testing how much energy to cut back but it is already very little so I think the main thing now is training. Also, you shouldn’t worry, elastic control already uses both life force and mental energy as the primary energies to even work. I'm just training to use both energies actively instead of instinctively.” He said and started to do very slow stretches before going to a clear spot on the wall and taking a deep breath he punched.
BANG!
The crater that formed from his fist was a full meter wide instead of half meter and he smiled.
“Yeah, this is much better.” He said as the mist and flames slowly vanished from the surface of his body and he was moving normally. “If I learn to attack with both powers flowing, I might be able to achieve the same amount of power as the Titan force. If I get to keep the Titan force after merging it all into one then I can add it into a three way flow. Oh right Ruth is likely to try and train that.” He said.
BANG!
A shaking in the structures came from a nearby platform and Ruth was radiating all three energies just like Robin said and her fist was buried in the rock that was crumbling.
Her body had a firm green aura radiating from her body much more strongly than Robin’s because she had added True qi alongside the flow.
Both clones looked at her and then at Robin. “These are seriously two monsters. Both of them activated all three energies when elastic powers shouldn’t even get any and their talents with it is scary.” he thought.
The real one down below was next to Chasm Might talking when the big hit shook the area and he looked and learned what happened through his clones and frowned. “Those twins are seriously monstrous,” he said.
Chasm Might chuckled, “I know. Do you know, they have three siblings. Two younger boys have all been given the perfected human body meridian system and the third one is a girl who has just the hardening and also has it thanks to her brother. The two boys have Robin’s ability after he helped them awaken it and have been training to balance their traits. Those little monsters with someone to grow and admire are going to be coming here in three and four years from now.” He said.
“The entire family?” Double asked.
“The boy’s club obtains quite spectacular funding. Techno’s boys have a tutoring system with a breed of their digital spawns as well as renting out their spawns for life force users, the necromancer has pills that heal bone problems and is paid for his patent, the demon girl has beauty products and several other things. Getting money is the least of their problems. They are sure to make quite the impressive heroic company. Just the jobs they can produce with their club activities is impressive.” Chasm Might said.
“Not to mention the gamer boy.” Double said.
“Indeed, he probably brings in the biggest and fastest money.” Chasm Might said.
“I heard their club is quite small though?”
“Yes, not many people give a damn about common people and their powers. Although the Gamer space can nullify basically all major deficiencies, powers that require proper activation are still a research topic they dabble into constantly. They regularly frequent the institute of disabilities here in Richmond which have basically become centers for people with crippling but improperly activated powers. In fact, because of this, the institute actually got a lot more funding because it is far more likely to be a successful field than curing disabilities.” Chasm Might said.
Double sighed and looked at Robin, “To think this all happened because that boy wanted to avoid others being bullied for disabilities when compared to his sister. If he had not given her the internal energy, he would easily outclass her.” He said.
“True. So what was it that the kid did that you called monstrous?” Chasm Might asked.
“The boy parallel channeled life essence and psychic energy while the girl did the same with all three of her energies.” He said.
This time Chasm Might choked and looked at him with shock, “They did what now?!” he shouted.
“Parallel channeled their internal energies. The boy is avoiding learning to use his Titan force because he doesn’t know if he will keep it but he accurately pointed out how he wanted to do that and how his sister was trying it just moments before her punch. I'm checking both of them and… it seems neither of them have energy burn. The amount flowing was quite small but it had quite the strong amplification of power from their regular punches. If they master this, they could very well make any of their punches extremely scary once they can achieve the full flow.” He said.
That said he wasn’t looking at Chasm Might, instead he was looking around at the other students. He didn’t see the shocked expression on the hero’s face as he looked up at Robin before looking at two figures that had sat down and were unmoving near the bottom.
The first class had left a great deal of ideas in many people’s heads but among them, the most intense were those who were rivals to the strongest in the class. Ruth had come with an annoying shake to Marcus and Silk that there were still many people with a lot of potential.
Marcus was working the system with a frown at the moment before he finally made some kind of decision and exp crystals and money came out of his inventory and turned into energy and covered his body for a moment before he used his stats and he imprinted whatever trait he achieved.
After that he walked over to Chasm Might, “Sir, I want some help.” He said.
“What exactly?” Chasm Might asked.
“I want to produce Ki, the kind that the teacher yesterday said had an effect on transformation abilities. Although I've been growing, I've noticed that the bigger I get and stronger, the worse my control, speed and even capacity to do heroics like a normal hero. I've mentioned it to my parents but they just want to see me reach hero status like all power based clans.” He said.
“What exactly do you want to accomplish?” Chasm Might asked.
He sighed and looked around before sitting down next to them, “I heard that Ki has a capacity to… how did they call it… it said refine but I don’t get it. It ‘refines’ transformation power users. Most research done on transformation power users have resulted in their transformed forms becoming more efficient and humanoid as well as extremely powerful.”
Chasm Might smiled, “Refining basically means that something that is usually raw or rough becomes processed, aka refined. It concentrates whatever it is into something much better. What did you actually tell your parents.” He asked.
“I was hoping to distance ‘strength’ from ‘size’ so that I wouldn’t need to grow larger than I already am to grow stronger. They were totally against it because King Kong is like Godzilla and can reach hundreds of meters tall but after training and fighting for over a year getting my power strengthened and even analyzed, working out the genetic problems the system had showed me, I honestly found that what my clan wants is a weapon, not a hero. They are literally taking ‘nuclear deterrent’ level strength to the limit, they want me to be a size capable of nuclear level destruction just by transforming and existing.” He said.
The two looked at one another. Double looked to the side and spat, “This is why power clans are so stupid. It should be completely outlawed. The most would be people with similar powers gathering into clans to prevent mutations and crazy things coming into existence that are dangerous for the child as much as the world.” Double said.
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Chasm Might rubbed his head and looked at the boy, “I get you want to but…”
“I know it will mean you helped me ‘go against their interests!’” Marcus said.
“Don’t worry, your family can’t do anything to me even if they wanted to. I'm just thinking about what to do about all this. The primary problem is your lack of life force to achieve it.” he said.
“I just purchased the full human triple meridian system but the system said that I am still unlikely to form life essence without an initial trigger. It said I need either chi or mental energy and neither of them my body can naturally form without exterior help so I need pills.” he said.
“Ah… so that was the trait you purchased.” Double said, looking at him.
Chasm Might looked at him for a moment, “Why do you want this, beyond just to stop getting bigger as you get stronger? Does it have to do with the twins or that you’ve always been a prodigy but now that the school is a hero academy and the gamer system lets others become ‘prodigy’ as well you feel threatened.” he asked.
Marcus frowned, “I still want to be a hero, I've never once changed that but I also don’t want to keep getting stomped on by Robin. Compared to the camping trip, the last time we spared, he was even able to stop my kick and throw my entire mass. He’s unlocked all three of his energy and I was taking a break when I saw both him and his stupid sister smash the rocks with a normal punch because they were training their energies properly. What about me? What the fuck can I do? I just grow into a giant ape and just punch things. Martial arts are only so good when other giant things are just brute fighting.” He said.
Double began to laugh, “It really doesn’t change for giants does it. In the end, the reason there are so few giant crime fighters is because they get sick of brawling. Just falling over causes tens of thousands in property damage, you might accidentally kill people you don’t notice when moving full sized and you can only fight causing damage.” Double said.
“Double!” Chasm Might said.
“Why do my parents even want to make a fucking movie monster anyway?! I've watched every movie back to the first one but unlike Godzilla, the monkey is only more intelligent and uses tools to fight. What is the point in ruining my life for that!” He said.
“Exactly.” Double said, “It’s called pride, one of the capital sins. The other is greed. Clans that want to call themselves Hero clans are people who gather because they want to benefit from the name of a single blood relative of great power to push their weight around.”
Chasm Might didn’t like how he was so open but it just irritated Marcus even more but not towards the elder but towards his family.
“Please help me make Ki and maybe cause my transformation to bloom!” he said.
Chasm Might looked at him while Double was smiling but looked the other way. He sighed, “Fine, chi pills are cheap anyway.” he said and took out a jar out of the sight of others.
“Don’t worry about the cost, use a few and store it. You will need a few weeks to adapt and your body is likely to start to quickly grow in response. I'll teach you how to adapt your body by saturating your acupoints once you’ve properly stored chi.” He said.
Marcus smiled and took the pill his teacher gave him and for the rest of class he just sat there following his instructions to gather that wild energy running rampant in his body until he finally pierced the barrier and was able to suck up the exploding energy after eating 5 pills.
It made sense why his body didn’t produce it when he needed the pressure of 5 pills, not consecutively but after a certain amount leaked and it accumulated over time until he finally stored it and the energy filled his lower dantian and flowed through his body.
When Chasm Might noticed, he smiled and told him how to start controlling the energy at the center and what to picture when doing it and gathered the energy before letting it flow out while spinning just like most of the internal energy teachers had said was the best way to adapt and stabilize.
He went through all his acupoints making spinning vortexes with the thin energy and Mr Might kept getting him to eat pills to increase the quantity to support the saturation.
He ate three more until the energy fully returned and he released the spinning energy for the new one and let it slowly run and wash over this body forming a thin saturation by the end of class.
“Don’t worry about totally saturating your body's system. This comes with time and training. The system is likely to keep watch on your body's growth from now on. System, inform Marcus when his body is producing controllable levels of Life force. Don’t allow it to condense into life essence.” Chasm Might said.
Notice
Presence of strong Life force already present in Marcus Kong. The naturally powerful vitality of his body has already begun to condense life force beyond what is natural in his body. Energy is currently concentrating within his blood at a rate of 0.5% every hour. Rough estimate until his body naturally produces Life essence…
25 days. Adding vitality will accelerate the process as the system will attempt to balance life force to vitality value.
Controllable quantity will be achievable in roughly 2 hours.
Quantity required to surpass the barrier around the heart dantian will be achieved after 3 days.
The three looked at the screen and looked at one another. “As expected, the system ‘wants’ people to train internal forces but is incapable of producing the initial trigger to surpass their bodies resistance level. Maybe in the future, it might even gain the power to allow people to literally buy these energy sources.” Double said.
“That’s true, if we had this when we were young, we might have finished clearing out the villains by now.” Chasm Might said.
Ding! Dong!
The school bells rang for the next class.
“Alright, it seems it’s PE time, Marcus, 3 days is a Saturday but come to school for us to help you out. I'll be here and we can work on breaking the barrier and then start trying to produce Ki for you. It is also better so that you don’t have to do this at home where your family likely ‘controls’ your actions.” He said.
“Yes sir. I'll tell them that I got you to give me some private tutoring.” He said.
With a nod, the large boy ran off to PE while Chasm Might fell into thought.
“What?” Double asked after the last student left and he gathered his clones.
“Remember the girl I told you about, the one in the civilian classes from the club?” he asked.
“Sure, nothing really special about her except her effort bore fruit when she achieved your True Qi, a wonder with her talent.” he said.
“Right, well yesterday, she asked the main club members if they could help with the money portion of getting the perfect human meridian system and got it. She explained her experiment of storing True Qi in her heart and head dantians. She succeeded in giving both basic saturation but I've been noticing that the energy she excludes from those two places have been changing. She is currently having PE in the civilian class so since the Heroics are quite well off, I wonder if you can just stand in for me for a little bit. I need to check on the girl because I feel what she did might be more serious than I thought.” He said.
Double frowned and nodded, “Alright, I'll just tell your students to do their daily routine until you come back then.” Double said.
With a nod Chasm Might flew off towards the civilian division.
At the track and field, the area was built like an army track and the students were getting ready to train when he came flying in.
“Attention!” The teacher, a drill sergeant, shouted.
Everyone stood straight like bamboo and it was totally silent.
Chasm Might landed and looked at the perfect ranks and nodded, “Impressive that you got the students to be quiet and orderly.” he said.
“Students are nothing compared to the 18 year old idiots that regularly join. What do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” he asked.
“I need to borrow Yuri Wong for a little while.” He said.
“Cadet wong! Front and center!” The sergeant said and Yuri quickly walked out of rank to the front, “Go with Mr Might but once you’re done come back instantly.” He said.
“Sir, yes sir!” She said.
Chasm Might smiled as he walked off with the girl to the bleachers and he sat down. “I came because of your stored powers in your head and heart. I've been watching you most of yesterday during what classes I had you near and this morning as well. Have you noticed any change?” he asked.
“What kind, sir?” She asked.
“Just asking, are you adapting your entire body properly?” He asked.
“Yes sir, I spent the afternoon after getting home in my heart and after dinner I did the same for the one in my head and nerves. It is a really strange and amazing feeling to actually sense my blood vessels and nerves so intimately. It is totally different from my meridians which feel like it isolates my True qi until the end points where it finally gets out.” she said.
He smiled slightly when he heard that. No countable number of chi and qi users have said the same thing.
“Can you channel a drop of either energy over your hands?” he asked.
“It’s a little hard.” She replied
“No problem, channel your normal True qi on your right hand and let’s start with the one in the heart. I just want to see it visually.” he said.
She closed her eyes and focused. After a while, the True qi on her right formed an orb. It had a hint of blue that True Qi normally did but the left hand was slow to form and when it fully formed, he found that it had a red hue instead.
After a bit both energies were reabsorbed and she huffed.
“It’s alright, just take a moment of rest and let me see the one in your head, you won’t have to parallel channel it.” he said.
She huffed a bit and with both hands she channeled the energy with her eyes closed and what formed was an orb with yellow hue.
When he saw that he thought a moment before just carefully running his own true qi along the outside and instantly he noticed the presence of mental energy heavily diluted into the energy.
She soon absorbed it back, tired from the exercise.
“Is that enough sir?” she asked.
“Perfect.” He said.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked.
He was silent in thought and looked at her before sighing, “It’s nothing bad but I think you stumbled onto something even I wasn’t aware of. It seems that your True qi you stored has begun to blend with your Life force and your Mental energy. It’s starting to become something like a fusion but the energy is clearly just true qi with a raw energy. This kind of fusion has almost always ended in failure but to think it was like this.” He said.
“Is it bad?” She asked.
“No. I am unsure of the effect on your body directly but it is unlikely that it will be a weak or negative effect. Just keep properly training and adapting in these untrained locations. You're not training to be a hero anyways. Strengthening the police and army is a good ambition that not many have thought of, you don’t have to be like those in the heroics, who bear a larger burden to protect against serious threats.” he said and patted her head. “Alright, that’s all, I'll be checking early in the morning every day to make sure there aren't any side effects.” he said.
“Thank you Mr Might.” she said smiling.
“Alright, go on.” He said and she nodded and ran back to class.
As for him, he grew serious as he flew off back to class and let Double go on his way. That said, while he watched his students on the field, he channeled a part of his true qi into his heart. The barrier couldn’t even put up a defense against the density and quality of his power. He felt his body shutter a moment before he did the same to the one in his head.
After a moment he finally opened the traits and got the complete human system and leveled up 5 times, since he hadn’t leveled up in a long time, before adapting the trait.
He felt the intense pain as his body's primary systems changed until it finally ended. “God damn it, every large change from this system hurts like a punch from Time Tempest.” he groaned before channeling his true qi to calm his body pain down.
When he had some self control, he finally started to channel the energy in his heart to adapt his true qi to his heart and after he let the energy flow out.
After lunch he worked on the head when he had the chance and once classes ended, he took a rare day off and headed to a place to train where he could completely focus.
He fed his heart with extra true qi when he needed and for the entire afternoon, evening and through the entire night he just adapted his body while feeding an absurd amount of his True Qi to his heart and at the last hour he stopped and began to gather the energy he had remaining and just channel it through his heart and most of his transformed blood vessels and after half an hour, he gathered that energy and formed an energy orb.
The energy wasn’t white with red hue, it was actually fully red.
He pulled it back inside and went to a punching machine designed especially for him and he gave a controlled punch which went up instantly to 500,000 points without any power.
He channeled his True qi and with the same force the points peaked at 700k.
He gripped his hand and channeled the new energy through his blood and with the control he had trained himself to have, he gave the same force punch. The new energy was already feeling different and flowed a little differently.
When the number peaked, it was over 1 million but the number was extremely broken. The exact number was 1,034,789.
He frowned at this and looked at the faint aura of red over his fist.
“This power is just like True Qi but it’s absorbed and blended with a massive amount of my life force now. An energy that was impossible for me to tap into but it blended with it now and I don't think this is the end.” He said.
It was obvious because he had only trained a single half day.
Then he thought of Robin and Ruth who had attacked while doing parallel channeling and thought of these three energies that were all from the same kind of energy primarily. If he fully developed it until they no longer changed and then learned control of all these, would his power break the barrier it had been stuck at? Would he be able to deal with much more dangerous beings he had faced.
Time Tempest’s face appeared in his mind and knew he likely went to hide under ‘him’ to heal the wounds he had gotten but he also knew that ‘he’ funded a great number of genetic experiments with powers. If Tempest was experimented on then he would likely come out of it much stronger. He needed to step up his strength with the new changes he was given.
“Would Esper also feel this?” He suddenly thought and his eyes widened.
He thought about all the NPC ranked humans and the possibility of them activating all three with a single type of energy. If the effect was great he could actually usher a means for normal people to actually grow with the help of the gamer space.
“Wait… the normal people have been activating their energies naturally one by one as long as they train and boost their stats over time. Instead, if this was used on those who only had energy control powers, it would definitely cover their core weaknesses.” he thought and thought of what the upper storage energy would do. “I need to clearly figure out the advantages of these before I present anything. I also need to see how this affects normal people. The girl, she’s likely to require a lot of time to fix this up but it is a perfect benchmark for normal people with control type powers only. If this can awaken potential in NPC ranked people than an empowered army and police force might not be just a dream.” he muttered and smiled
He went to the bathroom to wash up and headed to school since the sun was already rising and while there he just recovered his energy he had used extensively during the night to prepare himself to do the same thing the following afternoon.