He turned in a direction clear of any obstacles, cleared his thoughts, and started running. Serkel felt more than saw Jean running slightly behind him.

Out of his neighbourhood he ran, past the store that sold godlike ramen, over the only bridge connecting the two parts of the city that would have otherwise been completely cut off from one another by the river, slightly swerving into the shopping district to catch a whiff of all the smells. And finally, out of the city, into the surrounding forests towards the clearing where the both of them often trained.

He was almost successfully meditating at this point, all while running, so why had he thought it was so hard again? Hey, this actually didn't take as much getting used to as everyone else said. Or so he thought. That was the point where he tripped over a log, his face once again making its acquaintance with the ground. Serkel stood up and spat out some grass. It tasted bad, but at least it softened the impact a bit.

He went into the part of the clearing that was still protected from the sun by the surrounding trees and entered a stance. Feet wide apart, knees bent, arms held aloft perpendicular from his own body. Then, slowly, he started up a punch that took approximately a full minute to fully extend.

Jean crouched beneath the arm, examining it. “Perfect.” He nodded approvingly. “It's almost as if you've been doing it your whole life. Now just keep practising and try to get it to this level while maintaining a normal speed.” That was all he had to say before he wandered off to the other side of the clearing to go through his own routine.

It had been like this since the beginning. Jean would demonstrate, Serkel would completely master the slow motion version in a few hours, and then Jean would just give up and tell him to try to get whatever they were working on to normal speed.

Serkel had seen a bit of disapproval in his brother’s eyes at the start, once when they'd attempted a spar and he'd failed completely to even manage an attack. He'd been lashed out pretty harshly for it, verbally that was. But the disapproval had disappeared after Serkel showed the ability to not merely learn, but to master something to perfection. Which in the end was worth more, no matter how long it took.

There was a reason for his preferred method, of course. People generally thought about martial arts as something completely physical. While it was that, at its core, there was still a mental aspect to it. Through the routine of slowly doing any technique, the body and mind would prepare themselves ahead of time.

The slowness of the movement made you less likely to build in the shortcuts subconsciously put into the technique so the body could move onto other things faster instead of just standing there punching air. It also made it more likely for you to notice the small jerks and twitches in the movement. Errors, in other words.

Serkel had noted that when you slowed down, you noticed other things too. Everything appeared to be just a tad more loud, a tad less distracting, and you were more prone to notice other things pertaining to the technique as well: excessive force, tension, weakness, and muscular imbalances.

All things he'd tried to convince Jean with, only for the man to stay stubborn.

Tradition is the corpse of wisdom.

Maybe it had been necessary in the past to teach people moves, so they could then immediately go and use them on the battlefield. Times were different now. But humans were content with ignoring new solutions as long as the old, flawed ones were still working. However, change wasn't something that could be forced and Serkel was content with improving the impartation and learning of techniques one person at a time, starting with himself of course.

He idly blew a brown strand out of his eyes as his punching speed progressed to the point where it actually started affecting his hair. He would have to cut it soon. Serkel had enjoyed the luxury of long hair in his last life, but here, long hair was seen as more of a taunt. Look at me, I'm so strong, I can leave a handhold on myself and still beat your ass like I beat my meat, it said. Suffice to say, long hair was a symbol of power and/or wealth.

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Serkel distracted himself with other such thoughts and short bouts of meditation as he worked, continuing to a point where it would have been unwise to do so. He sat down and went back to pure meditation while waiting for Jean to complete his training as well.

Soon he felt the winds gather into an obnoxiously strong storm, signalling that Jean was throwing out his strongest attack, as was his habit for ending training sessions.

“Vacuum.”

Serkel opened his eyes just in time to see Jean expel all the air away from a small sphere above his hand, held stable by the fact it was still in proximity to its creator. The thing was then thrown up and exploded loudly in the sky with a pop. Air rushed into the space, ripping small branches from trees despite the distance between them.

The attack seemed stronger than usual today.

“Seems stronger than usual today!” Serkel screamed over at Jean, his ears still ringing and eyes watering from the winds.

“It does, doesn't it!” he heard back from the blur that was Jean.

The blast caused the death of several animals. Not feeling like eating poultry today, Serkel ignored all the birds that had fallen out of the sky and picked up three rabbits that had left this life convulsing with blood flowing out of their ears and eyes. Rad.

He didn’t see any reason to dawdle on the slow way back, so Serkel started squeezing the little bastards, pushing the thing's insides to its lower half. He spun the thing by the ears a few times, and with a squeeze the organs of the rabbit popped right out of its butt.

They had made it back to the outskirts of the city by now, so he gained some odd looks from the people around him. Some laughs as well.

Ripping apart the last connection the organs had with the inside, he tossed the guts to a pack of sad-looking dogs, who immediately started wagging their tails and falling over the treat. After getting some appreciative barks, Serkel repeated the process with the other two rabbits he had.

Taking out a small knife he made a long incision along its stomach, just enough to get his thumbs in there and start tearing the pelt from the flesh. Careful to only pull the thing in the direction of the legs and the head, he managed to procure three perfect brown pelts that he then tossed to Jean, who at that point left to sell the things.

Usually they were worth more if dry and cleaned from the blood, but the leatherworker had said he would pay double this week for anything brought to him. The festival was approaching, and the quantity mattered more than the quality for anyone trying to make coin of the event.

He arrived home, the three skinned corpses hanging from his grip. He got out the chipped butcher’s knife they owned and chopped off the feet and head.

He set these aside in a bowl to be distributed to the street dogs outside and got back to work. First he chopped off the hind legs, muscular things that you needed to add into the pot earlier than the rest if you wanted consistently tender meat in your soup. He did the same for the front legs and set them aside for now, to be added later.

He cut off the saddle meat along the rabbits’ spines and gently pried the strip of sinew off of it, throwing the disgusting part into the bowl with the rest of the trash. Once he was done with all three rabbits, he put the six strips of perfect meat into the cooling box and threw in the rest of the spine and front legs into the already-boiling pot.

That was the point where Jean came back with the money he'd gotten from selling the pelts and the rest of the animals he'd killed. He was also carrying some vegetables. “No milk today?” Serkel asked him, chopping up the vegetables and throwing them into the pot.

“No, once every two days is enough.”

“I need it Jean. You do as well,” Serkel insisted to his stubborn caretaker.

“You're still a child. You might get laughed at for drinking milk, but if I, an adult would do it, I would never be able to show my face agai-” Jean spasmed, his next few words coming out as gibberish, right arm twitching. The man grimaced.

“Go lay down,” Serkel said harshly, which Jean did somewhat reluctantly. “I'll explain to you again why milk and a balanced diet are important the next time you're lucid.”

Jean didn't possess the necessary muscle mastery to reply back, but the roll of his eyes told Serkel all he needed to know about the man's opinion. Honestly. Telling a grown ass man to eat his veggies and drink his milk. Serkel would have been more exasperated if the scene hadn't been so common.

Serkel was able to convince Jean of almost all of his ideas. They'd been living much more prosperously because of them. But occasionally he would convince Jean of something, only for him to forget it again the next day.

The average intelligence of the people inhabiting this world seemed to be much lower than the society he'd previously enjoyed. Well, didn't only seem, it was lower. How else would you explain that they didn't have any particularly impressive philosophers, religions, or even technology? The year cycle was the same, but the world had only advanced to a level of the middle ages in over ten millennia of having a calendar. Almost exactly eleven thousand actually, since they'd started counting the years. Only twelve more years to hit the mark.

This didn't mean that everyone was stupid. No, intelligence once again showed itself as a bell curve. There were frighteningly smart people at work, it was just that these frighteningly smart people paled in comparison to what was considered a genius on Serkel's last world. Thankfully, intelligence was almost in direct correlation with the ability to cultivate, so in the future when Serkel joined the ranks of the would-be-demigods, he would once again move in a social sphere of semi-not-stupid people.

Not that he fraternised with idiots at the moment, either. It was overall very hard to build friendships with inferiors, therefore all the people he'd managed to enjoy the presence of over a longer period of time were quite smart.

It was also why he had only one friend.