I skip an entire week of school.
I start my day early. Before the sun rises, I run around my neighborhood to train my [Run] skill. Once the sun is up, I go to the park and throw Flash Gordon around. I also throw him up hard and try to hit myself. This is both training [Throw] and my [Blunt] resistance. Around breakfast time, I run back home and eat a snack before waking my tamed beasts.
Luckily [Master’s Whip] has a passive ability that increases the speed of my tamed beasts' training. I plan the day for each of my tamed beasts.
From tomorrow on, Duchess is joining me for my morning runs. She will be using her wings and start training her [Fly] skill. Then just like today, she will spend her time constructing spells and watching over my other beasts.
Since Rob doesn’t need to sleep, he will be training 24 hours a day. The first thing I did with him was checked his progress. Rob doesn’t have an active imagination, so crafting spells is hard for him. I have to tell him what to aim for before he starts to do that. I make him practice his magic until mana runs out, which is quite often. Then he practices with his shovel.
He has the freedom to dig up the entire backyard. He just has to fix the holes afterward. Teaching Rob weapon techniques might be a fruitless venture. It seems that he instinctually knows how to get better with a shovel. He is a [Shovel Skeleton], after all.
Khan is the hardest one. He doesn’t have any skills that can level and has a pretty low cognitive function. I start teaching him the basic mechanics of language. He doesn’t need to read but understands what I am saying. Duchess can use her [Telepathy] to help out. I feed him some [Lightning Crystals] I got from the fracture. He seems to love eating them. I should look up if there is a [Cloud Crystal] for sale anywhere.
Flash Gordon does not need training. He is always at peak power. I instead delegate him as my emotional support.
My training is more complicated than my beasts. To train my martial arts, I need to be damaged. The manual doesn’t have a mana circulation or a meditation technique that I can use… it just says to do those two things…
When I study techniques from the manual, I have to use the arcade machine I bought as a reference. For the system to recognize the skill and put it on the [Status], I must thoroughly understand the basic principles and the philosophy behind the technique. [Broken Blood] was the most straightforward technique since the idea was to ‘break down’ my blood and extract the mana inside.
Master Wang's character in the game has a voice line when I use the ability. In the game, the combo sacrifices health to fill the combo bar, then he shouts out, “Mana is in all things.” The voice acting is 8-bit, so I can’t tell if it's actually Master Wang.
While studying the techniques, I constantly cast [Empower] whenever it's off cooldown. Flash Gordon is always my target. It takes 50 mana and recharges after 10 minutes, which means it takes only over an hour to run out of mana.
Then I start implementing what I learned from my study time into my body. It’s handy to refresh my mana using health, then use that mana to heal me up, and still have 2/3s of it left. I should look into other healing skills/spells and see how my [Heal Anything] is different from the rest.
I train until it's dinner time. I prepare a lot of calorie-dense food for myself and anyone else that needs to eat today. I speed up digestion with a spar against each tamed beast. They usually practice their skills and attacks on a live target for over an hour until it's time to rest.
Before bed, I double-check any messages sent to me during the day. Duchess casts [Deprogram] on me, then I go to bed.
I repeated this cycle for the entire week.
~
[Run E lv3 > Dash D lv1]
Dash D lv1
The user’s passive speed and stamina have been increased. User can boost their speed further using mana. The speed boost lasts from one minute, and the cooldown is one hour.
Speed & Stamina: +25%
New Boost: +50%
Mana Cost: 50
[Throw E lv4 > Hurl D lv2]
Hurl D lv2
Thrown attacks are stronger.
Damage: + 20%
Velocity: + 20%
[Empower C lv1 > Empower C lv3]
Empower C lv3
You can empower a single-tamed beast for 1 minute. Cooldown: 10 minutes.
Mana cost: 50
Buff: 20% to all stats
[Master’s Whip B lv1 > Master’s Whip B lv2]
[Multiple Resistances Have Increased!]
Slashing
59 > 67
Frost
32
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Piercing
46 > 61
Acid
60
Blunt
150 > 195
Poison
70
Fire
70
Lightning
80
Mental
89 > 99
Radiant
25 > 57
V@#%
1
Force
89 > 95
My skills and resistance grew pretty well after a week of training. However, the main thing is my martial arts. I could only learn one technique at this time, but I have almost completed implementing a new powerful skill. The ‘fighting’ techniques are still too strange for me to figure out… I will probably need guidance from Maser Wang and a new arm.
[Path of the Broken Body C lv1 > lv2]
Unarmed Damage: +20%
Maximum Health: +20%
-Broken Blood
You may convert Health to Mana. It may cause fatigue and heart failure if used excessively.
Cooldown: 1-hour
Conversion: 1 - 1.5]
-Martyr
You are a martyr of the people. May your sacrifice be remembered. The user can siphon any amount of damage taken by another target.
Range: 5 feet
Damage Taken: 2x
[Martyr] is a valuable skill if I want to take my beasts into dangerous lands with me. I’m not altruistic, and sacrificing myself for someone I do not know sounds stupid, but it gives me peace of mind that the low-leveled, tamed beasts can come with me into battle. Before [Broken Body] leveled up, [Martyr]’s range was only touched targets…
I remember that the following fracture I wanted to go to was undead-based. That might cause an issue with Khan. His fighting style doesn't work on skeletons, and any zombies would give him a disease since he instinctually swallows anything he rips open with his teeth. Rain hasn’t messaged me about my arm yet, so I decided to go and meet up with her.
~
I am sitting in Rain’s workshop without a shirt on. The walls are covered by tools and gadgets that are way too complicated for me to understand their uses… except maybe that hammer-shaped one. I start using [Scientific Insight+] on random instruments.
I focus on the hammer. [Hammer]
“...”
I randomly pick something. It looks like a hamster wheel wired to a car battery, [Gerbil powered generator]. Alright, that's what I expected. Either Rain keeps the good stuff under wraps, or I don’t know about artificer to identify this stuff.
Rain is rummaging around for a box.
She pulls out a dusty crate and rips it open with her bare hands. Inside is a metal arm that does not look custom-made. The limb is sleek and does not have any indications that it is enchanted. The dust also proves that this has been sitting in this workshop for a long time.
“Is that the arm you made me?”
“Hahaha, no. If you want an arm that mimics your exact body, it will take more than a week for me to make it. Plus, I’m not going to drop everything just to make it… if I had someone to experiment with, I think I could spare more time."
“Sigh, let's get this over with.”
“First, let's attach this bad boy.”
She grabs the arm from the box and strolls over to me. My prosthetic had already been removed when I entered. She lines up the arm and holds up five fingers with her hand.
She countdowns silently, putting one finger down after another. When only two fingers remained, she pulled a fast one on me. I wasn’t prepared when she jammed the new arm into my shoulder.
“AH FUCK. Why did that hurt so bad?”
“It's connected to your nervous system, dummy. Of course, it's going to hurt. Now clench your teeth. My next experiment is also going to hurt.”
“So, what's on the menu for today?”
“I want to try out my new cream. It’s supposed to remove scars and blemished skin.”
“Oh, that's not that bad.” I expected way worse.
“Do you have any scars?”
Magical healing typically leaves no scars. Scarring is just collagen fibers that the body uses to mend the wound. It’s not the same material as skin, so the difference is noticeable. Healing magic seems to mend wounds using the base material from where the damage is. I wonder if it has something to do with DNA or stem cells…
Wait, my [Heal Anything] can heal inanimate objects. They don't have DNA or anything similar. I should really investigate this skill.
“I have a few, but nothing noticeable.”
“Then I’ll add some manually.”
?
She reaches into her bag and pulls out an angle grinder. I don’t like where this is going.
~
After an hour of “testing,” I am finally released back into the wild. She had me swallow a pill that boosted my natural regeneration to the extreme. After she made her cuts, they healed in front of my eyes. There was negligible scaring, so she had to keep cutting until they were big enough for her.
[Resistance: Slashing 59 > 67]
The cream, unfortunately, worked. I thought the intended purpose was to make scaring disappear for beauty purposes. What the cream did to me was melt off the layers of skin that were scarred. It was an extremely potent acid. Luckily it only went a few layers deep. Rain was disappointed that it also removed small amounts of unscarred flesh.
[Resistance: Acid 60 > 70]
She sent me off with a potion to heal my wounds completely. I was going to ask her for some of those pills, but she quoted a price I could not afford.
My new arm is absolutely incredible! It moves when I want it to and like it's real. I no longer have to waste copious amounts of mana anymore. More importantly, I can finally go to another fracture. I have a week left, and I don't plan on wasting time.
I have been keeping up with the people in my contacts. My parents are worried about why I am staying away from home. I told them I was undergoing some training, and I caught up with my classes.
The FIB wouldn't fund a new arm because I wasn't strong enough to facilitate spending resources. My class technically not being a combat class doesn’t help me either. Nelson told me all that when I asked him. But he did say that if he was in charge, he would’ve done something to help me.
He may not be the leader of the FIB, but I can use his authority to help me get into a fracture.