Before Sam could say a word to the man, Gordanus had grabbed him by the arm, and they were then streaking along the ground, moving many times the speed of sound. A minute later, Gordanus stopped, letting Sam fall roughly to the ground. They were standing in front of a small entrance in the side of a towering mountain, and Gordanus took a step towards it without looking back at Sam.

Sam looked around himself,but only saw the same icy plain that covered the rest of the planet. Sighing, he followed his mentor into the cave. The place was pitch dark, and if not for his enhanced senses, he would have been unable to see anything. As it was, he could vaguely make out the outline of a far larger cavern at the end of the cave, filled with what looked to be various training devices, similar to what he had seen in the Interweb while taking his entrance exam for the Adventurers' Guild.

Sam followed Gordanus, who was now moving at a normal pace, to the back of the room, where he was able to see the cavern fully. It started about fifty feet below the end of the cave, and extended outwards for hundreds of feet in every direction. Various weights and weapons were strewn across the ground, and a large tank of something was in the corner. Judging by the smell that pervaded the atmosphere, it was the same foul brew that Gordanus had been drinking earlier. Gordanus jumped off the edge, and Sam quickly followed suit, landing by the man on the cave floor.

“Alright. First lesson; trust nobody.”

Before Sam could say anything in response to this strange proclamation, the ground underneath him exploded, tossing him up into the air. Gordanus laughed as this happened, and watched as Sam slammed into the floor a few dozen feet away. Sam grunted, and went to his feet, a bit shaken, but none the worse for wear. As he started back towards Gordanus, a bit annoyed, he stepped on another invisible mine, and the ground beneath him erupted once again. However he was prepared this time, and he leaped to the side, narrowly avoiding the blast. Gordanus smiled at Sam, and clapped his hands.

“That was better than I had expected. You seem to have picked up a few things from being with me,” Gordanus said, smiling. “However, what about the second one?”

“Second one-” Sam was tossed up into the air a moment later by a second blast, coming from the same place. He landed again, this time on his feet.

“Did you wire this whole goddamn place up with explosives?” Sam shouted at Gordanus. The other man merely smiled, and then shrugged.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“That’s for you to find out, and for me to laugh at,” Goranus said. “However, I will deactivate the remaining ones for now. They are not useful for what we are going to do. We only have thirty days after all, and we need to get as much out of this as we can. As amusing as watching you getting tossed into the air is, we have better things to do.”

“I would never have guessed,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“I would never have guessed, Master,” Gordanus corrected, not even looking at Sam as he said it. “E Ranker, remember?” Sam had a feeling that the other man would be saying that a lot over the coming month.

True to his word, Gordanus started immediately, setting Sam off on an intensive exercise course. Sam had initially been skeptical, as he had already transcended human strength long ago, but Gordanus had assured him that exercising with enough resistance would improve the strength of any cultivator, no matter their level.

As a result, Sam was doing pushups with thousands of pounds of weight on his back, which made the exercise difficult again, a strange feeling indeed. He would have almost thought that he was back in his old body, if not for the dozens of plates stacked onto his back. His arms were burning, a sensation that he had almost forgotten, and he could not say that he wanted to feel it again. However, he could feel that he was getting a lot more out of this than he ever would have before, with his rapid healing rate.

As a result, he could work himself to the bone, and then heal his muscles almost immediately, allowing himself to gain as much as he could out of the exercises. Over the last few hours, he had progressed from ten pushups to almost fifteen, which was quite impressive. However, this was not a sign that he had magically increased his strength by almost one half, but rather that his body was getting used to using its strength. He was basically training his ability to leverage his fullest power, not actually increasing it by all that much.

Sam completed his set, and he rested for a few minutes, getting his power back from before. Gordanus was regarding him in silence from the side of the cavern and he walked over to Sam as he finished up, proffering an ever larger weight.

“You are doing well so far, but I would not be doing my job as long as you still have power left.”

Sam nodded at the man, and grabbed the weight, almost dropping it. This one was even heavier than the last ones, and he knew what he was expected to do with it. It was about five hundred pounds and he was expected to curl the thing.

Sam stood back, and started to pump the weight up and down, breathing heavily as he did so. Normally, the weight would have been negligible, but he was already tired from his other exercises, and he worked out every last bit of benefit that he could from the exercise. It burned like he was pumping acid into his arm, which he supposed was true, given how exercising built up lactic acid within the body, but he powered through the pain. This was nothing compared to what would happen if he was not strong enough when he returned.