The first day of Jay’s training focused on finding his limits. Passing out from using Eye of the storm wasn’t too dangerous in the training room. But it was a death sentence in a fight. He woke up early and found an empty room in the coliseum to train in.
Manipulating his neurons during Eye of the storm felt more natural than creating a thunderclap. However, unlike thunder strike, it was a sustained technique. While using it, Jay didn’t just have to forge a link. He had to maintain it. The longer he used Eye of the storm for, the tougher it was to maintain. Headaches bloomed in his head as soon as he activated the technique. At first they were fine, but they gradually became unbearable.
Initially, Jay managed to stay in the advanced perception state for almost four seconds before the headache proved too much to bear. Four seconds didn’t sound like a lot, but in the heat of battle it was an eternity. It was even longer for Jay. While using Eye of the storm, it felt like almost an hour had passed.
The headache vanished almost instantly after he released the technique.
The second time Jay used Eye of the storm, closer to three seconds passed before he had to pull out. The resulting headache also lasted longer. It was closer to half a second before he could properly focus again. The third time was worse, Jay barely managed three seconds of Eye of the storm before he had to quit. He had a headache for five seconds after he left the state though, which would leave him helpless in the fight.
It made sense when he considered essence like a muscle. He could only push to his maximum capacity a few times, and each time was harder than the next. Jay considered what would happen if he didn’t push until failure, and stopped at one second rather than whenever he couldn’t go any longer. He tested that next, not wanting to push to his maximum ability further. It was better to sub-optimally train than push too hard and risk losing another day.
Stopping after one second proved far more effective. Not only was the pain far lower, the total time he could spend using the technique was way higher. Taking short breaks between uses, he managed seven, second-long dips into eye of the storm before the resulting headache reached half a second.
Jay took a break before trying again. Unfortunately, the second time he tried the series of short activations he only got to three dips. A far worse drop off than when he’d been pushing to the limits.
That made sense to Jay too. Muscles could definitely push further when doing a high repetition, low strain activity. But the sheer volume of work tired them out much more.
By midday, anytime Jay tried to activate Eye of the storm he would be forced to quit instantly. The mental strain became too much to bear. Instead of simply resting, Jay found Akira and asked for some advice.
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“Is there any way to speed up recovery? I physically can’t train anymore, but I still have so much time.” Said Jay.
“If you’re asking for a way to cheat recovery times and train quicker, it doesn’t exist.” Akira folded a page of his book over and set it to the side. Jay caught a glimpse of the thick tome’s front cover: “A Critique of Zhou’s Four Heavenly Strata. Why it Holds No Place in the Modern Harmonisers Mind”.
Riveting.
“If you’re asking for the optimal way to recover, then I think you know the answer yourself. How would you rest a muscle after straining it?”
…
“By resting it?” Jay wasn’t sure where Akira was going with this analogy, but he waited. Surely there would be a reference to a Venn diagram soon that would explain everything.
“And what does resting mean in the context of muscles?”
“Not straining them? Keeping them in their natural position?” The cogs began to turn inside Jay’s head. “To rest my personal essence, I have to keep it in its natural state?”
“Bingo. It’s the same reason we boxed before you tried to learn thunder strike. It might tire your body, it might tire your mind. But it puts your essence at ease. Do things that are familiar to you. Go for a run, box, watch some fights… Read a book.” Akira picked up his book and shook it, a not-so-subtle hint to Jay that he was also resting.
Jay didn’t understand how poring through a book bigger than his head could ever be relaxing, but he thanked Akira for the advice and went on his way. He had already watched every fight on Lyra’s list twice over yesterday, he didn’t need to watch them again. Yet.
Instead, he ran.
When people thought about boxing training, they usually thought about sparring. They thought about punching the speed bag until it became a blur or digging hooks into the heavy bag until your fists hurt.
What they didn’t think about was the roadwork. Running did the metaphorical, and physical, legwork when it came to boxing. You want to have a great first round and get knocked out in the second? Hit the punching bag. You want to be a fighter? Run.
Jay had run every single day for the last twelve years. At first it was a chore, but he’d convinced himself into liking it. At least while it made him a better fighter.
He wouldn’t be signing up for any marathons any time soon, but since it helped him in the ring, Jay attacked every run with a smile.
Jay ran down Reveller's Avenue, the avenue he was most familiar with. He let the thoughts drift from his mind as he put one foot in front of the other, taking in the world around him.
Occasionally, when he really focused on the centre of the avenue, Jay caught glimpses of the trams. Silently gliding to and from the coliseum. These glimpses usually coincided with Jay catching his foot on something that he wasn’t paying attention to, so he focused more on his path.
Jay caught the tram back to the coliseum after finishing his run. He decided to rewatch all of Lyra's fights once more. Partly to see if he missed something, partly to familiarise himself more with the gorilla’s movement. He focused more on his future opponent than the gladiators this time.
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He didn’t gain much from this film session, other than reaffirming the conclusions he’d already made. The gorilla was fast, but its real strength was acceleration. Jay's focus should be on countering when it was completely in motion.
A tidbit that he didn’t notice before was that three quarters of the gorillas were right-handed. In every fight they initiated a grab with one hand more often, and it was usually the right. Jay didn’t know how useful this information would be, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Jay went back to the training room. Before he started to stress test Eye of the storm again, he sat down and tried to figure out how it actually worked.
There were two complimentary halves to Eye of the storm. Controlling the flow of information from his eyes to his brain and controlling the flow of information from his brain to the rest of his body. The mechanics of each half were the same, using the essence of lightning to manipulate his nervous system. But they were two distinct and opposite pathways. Part one: Information in. Part two: Information out.
Jay reminisced on his imaginary fight with Shadow Akira. When he first plunged into Eye of the storm, details vanished from the surrounding training room and blurred into nothingness. Jay had effectively pinched his optic nerve and held the information hostage from his mind. This should have saved energy. He was forcibly making his nervous system take a break after all.
But that wasn’t how his mind worked. Fighting against millions of years of evolution took its toll.
Earlier that morning, Jay reduced the time he spent in Eye of the storm, easing the load on his mind. What if he did the same thing again, but reduced the strength of the storm?
If he drip-fed his brain only the most important information, would it ease the strain on his nervous system? Could he function at a faster pace without the barrage of useless data slowing him down?
It wouldn’t be the near omniscience he’d initially felt when time stopped around him. But if he managed to use the new Eye of the storm for longer than four seconds, it might be worth it.
Power was a fair price to pay for practicality.
But that was only the first half of Eye of the storm.
Part two needed a different solution. Muscles weren’t computers, they were pistons. Jay couldn’t send them details bit by bit, the dumb things would just spasm randomly.
Jay’s instructions couldn’t be as basic as before either. His body might instinctually be able to throw a jab or slip a punch but that wouldn’t be much use against a gorilla, Jay had only ever fought people before.
An unfamiliar movement required a more complex instruction. Jay couldn’t simply say dodge backwards when what he meant was the gorilla is swinging at my chest and if I don’t step back in time, I’m dead.
But more information would slow down the signal. Jay had to find out how to do both.
His brain couldn’t pre-emptively instruct his muscles without all the information, but it could prepare them.
Since Jay's brain got a sliver of information from the new look Eye of the storm, it at least had something to work with.
Each new insight the eyes sent over added a piece to the puzzle and cut off a possible avenue of attack for his opponent. Jay couldn’t act too early based off this information, but he could definitely prepare to act. If he knew roughly the state of battle, Jay could make slight adjustments before all the necessary information came through.
Dodge window about to open: More weight on the front foot, prepare to run.
Attack window might open soon: Fists up in case it does.
Each microadjustment didn’t do much to advance Jay's position in the fight, but it increased the speed at which he could do things that did.
Focusing on this new, more endurance focused, direction. Jay activated Eye of the storm once more.
Time slowed, but not like before.
Jay’s arms dragged themselves up in slow motion. They looked almost completely smooth; Jay couldn’t even see his arm hair. All unnecessary details were discarded. When he focused, he could make out the individual muscles and see how they moved. That information helped him, he couldn’t see anything that didn’t.
Over the course of the afternoon, Jay got to grips with using Eye of the storm at a low intensity.
In the morning, Jay had found that lowering the amount of time he used the technique for lessened the burden on his mind.
Using it like this did the same thing tenfold.
Jay spend his whole afternoon dipping in and out of Eye of the storm, visualising opponents and getting to grips with the new way of controlling his body. By evening, even though he’d been practicing all day, Jay barely felt an inkling of a headache.
After a long day of practice, Jay walked into Vega’s vacant room. He fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.
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On the final day Jay had a dilemma. He felt he’d taken Eye of the storm as far as he could, and that he could make no more progress in only one day. But that left him with a decision to make.
He had two potential paths to walk down. The first was returning to thunder strike. Although he agreed with Vega that he was more suited to lightning than thunder, it was still his biggest damage dealer. Jay didn’t know if he had the skill to finish the fight with a knife throw like he’d seen Jana do, maybe he needed something with less finesse?
Yesterday he’d increased the efficiency of Eye of the storm by toning down its intensity. Could he do the same for thunder strike, or was the intensity part of its nature? He would have to walk that road to find the answer.
The other option was to develop a new technique. Lyra reckoned it should be possible to link lightning to speed and come up with something that would increase more than just his reaction time. Jay agreed. Speed was also part of his nature. It was irreplaceable in the way he fought.
But it was a whole new technique. And Jay was still scarred by the last time he learned a new technique. Being out of commission for a day was manageable five days before a fight. It was manageable two days before a fight. But the day before? It was a big risk.
But was it a risk Jay was willing to take? Probably not.
Jay put his faith in his fighting ability over his Harmony. He didn’t need to be a Swiss army knife of essence, he needed to be a gladiator. That meant showing up to his fight in good condition. Jay returned to the relative familiarity of thunder strike instead of spreading himself too thin.
He tried to look deeper into the mechanics of the attack, but he couldn’t grasp it the same way he did Eye of the storm. Perhaps because his overlap wasn’t as good?
Jay ended his first few hours of training with nothing but a headache to show for himself. He took a break, clearing his mind before going back to basics. When he returned to training, Jay didn’t bother delving into the how’s or why’s of the attack. He just copied the first thing that had worked yesterday. Testing his limits.
Even if he didn’t truly feel like a harmoniser, and didn’t fully understand thunder strike, the results spoke for themselves.
Jay warmed himself up with some shadow boxing, before unleashing a thunderclap on an unsuspecting Shadow Akira. Feeling no different, Jay restarted his shadow boxing. He didn’t place a single foot wrong, and his punches cut cleanly through the air.
The essence of thunder didn’t change, so it had to be him. His training with Eye of the storm must have been transferable. Any Harmony ought to make his personal essence more malleable, but it was nice to see a tangible benefit to his training.
He tried another, blasting another shadow Akira into black mist with a blistering left hook. This time the stirrings of fatigue crept up on Jay, but it was nothing like last time. Jay left it there, not wanting to risk the slightest chance of fatigue for fight day.
Jay walked out of the coliseum satisfied. He could have spent his next few hours rewatching the fights again, but he didn’t bother. Last minute cramming never worked. Instead, he set his sights on doing absolutely nothing until he woke up the next morning. He’d already done all he could.
All that was left now was to fight.