"… Come on, genius. Is this all you can do," one of the disciples shouted in glee as he kicked me again, while I stayed as a ball, my earlier attempts to 'fight back' had been easily deflected. Was being repeatedly kicked annoying, certainly, but I let it happen.

The reason was simple. The one that was kicking me was not actually an Everdawn student, but an expert of Tiger Fist who was just going through the motions. He could have easily hit hard enough to threaten my life if he wished.

I didn't know if he was a measure against the spies, some kind of intentional hazing to increase the bonding of the recruits, or just an incentive to work harder, but the gaze of the disciples confirmed that I wasn't the only one suffering the same thing.

Nor my bully was the only spy in the barracks. Still, despite the pain, I was glad to be beaten. It gave me an excuse to pull my tricks.

Only after my bully walked away, one of the other disciples walked toward me to help. "Don't worry about it. We all experienced it. Just get strong, and show them."

"Thanks," I said as I followed him. "But, I don't know if I can. They say that I'm talented, but I wasn't even able to follow the master's lesson. What if they kick me out," I said, not going too much into detail.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Once you reach Skin Refinement, they won't dare to touch you." With that, he led me to a small group.

"Can you help me," I asked, still looking anxious. In a way, I was. While I had received a lesson on the basics of the Everdawn Fist, it was not enough for me to start comparing it to the Everdawn Saber. And, I couldn't be sure that there were some intentional traps buried in the System.

"Sure," he said. "This is the first stance…" With that, I received a lesson that lasted almost an hour, and I had some progress that I hoped to be believable. The lesson only stopped when I started showing signs of exhaustion, which was a sign of essence depletion. I used my medical talent to make my stomach growl.

There was no System reward. I hid a frown. It surprised me. I had been sure that the guy had been pitying me, particularly with my slow progress, and I had played in my bruised state quite well.

"Here, take some food. I swept it from the mess hall," he said as he passed me an apple. It was mortal grade, but it was dense enough to carry some essence.

I grabbed it, not expecting anything.

[Pity Bonus - 10 (Capped)]

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

[10x Return - Apple, Mortal Peak-Grade]

That made me frown even harder. The System reward suggested that I hadn't misread his pity. But, that left the question. Why there had been no reward from the System for the lesson.

A mystery that I needed to solve, so once I finished the apple, I made sure to get some lessons from the others. When it was finally time to sleep, I was looking at a list of new rewards.

[50x Return - Lute Lesson, Minor Familiarity, Major Accomplishment]

[50x Return - Tiger Fist Lesson, Major Immersion]

[10x Return - Bread, Mortal Peak-Grade]

…

[10x Return - Needle, Mortal Medium-Grade]

As I chatted with various disciples, I received a lot of small gifts as I managed to successfully trigger their pity many times — and on two occasions, managing to get insulted — but no matter how much I tried, there had been no reward of a martial technique.

Or, more accurately, there was no reward for Everdawn Fist. I did manage to trick one of the spies so they had given me a very brief lesson on Tiger Fist, and it triggered the reward.

As if that technique didn't exist.

That realization was enough to tell me that I was in the right place. I didn't exactly know what the System truly was, but something not triggering it was either extremely good news, or extremely bad news. Either way, it was not something to stay away from.

Then, there was the fact that the scale of the System Reward. No one that had been cultivating the Everdawn Fist triggered the cultivation reward for me … even the ones that were at Connate Realm. It had implications.

"Enough talking. Everyone to the beds. You have a huge day of training ahead of you. For the honor of Everdawn Nation!"

"For Everdawn Nation!" everyone responded loudly, showing indoctrination in the process. I lay down, faking sleep while processing everything I had learned.

The unresponsive System was clearly the biggest thing, but I ignored it for the moment. I didn't know what the System was, meaning it wasn't exactly actionable.

The lack of a Cultivation Bonus was something else. It was very important, and not because it cost me some replaceable rewards. No, it mattered, because it made me question whether it would work in reverse. Would I still receive rewards if I used Everdawn Arts to reach the Connate realm?

Tempting, but not tempting enough to make me experiment recklessly before I solved the mysteries of the essence.

So, I focused on what I learned about the Everdawn Essence. Its weakness was obvious, but with more samples, I determined with high certainty that it was entirely about the weakness of its spiritual pillar. Which, of course, had reinforced one of my earlier assumptions. That martial arts had some kind of interaction with the universe, one that I couldn't detect.

Of course, with that realization, came a lot of unsolved questions.

When all those facts combined, solving the mystery of martial arts suddenly escalated several times. Potentially getting stronger without breaking the System was game-changing, enough to take the risk of sneaking around during the night.

Some exploration was in order. Luckily, there weren't a lot of guards. Why should it be, when they had a giant formation to track the movement of everyone inside.

It wasn't like a true master of formations would sneak and block its detection. My first destination was the library at the outer ring, where they kept the martial manuals. Stealing everything was tempting, but I had to limit myself to reading one of the copies.

There weren't enough books for one of them to go missing safely.

I started reading.