The trial session finished, and, in the real world, he kept up his usual routine. The trio had developed an obsession with the obstacle course. Briana continued to use the safety features, while he and Kang were recklessly indifferent to injury. All of them were way ahead of anyone else in their age groups in this aspect of physical development. They were getting times and completing courses that the kids two years older than them struggled with.
Briana, despite her more careful approach, was included in that out-performance. Her talent for gymnastics was as pronounced her knack for water magic. Kang, who didn’t have the benefit of the suppression ring, kept pace with her, occasionally getting ahead to spur her to greater heights, then slowing to let her beat him. Tom could clearly see that he was holding back.
Meanwhile, with the help with the ring, he himself went as fast as he could, but he couldn’t get close to matching their outputs. The electricity and gravity impairments were kept permanently active when training at twenty-five and thirty percent, respectively. It meant that his coordination was iffy, and his ability to leap reduced by about a third and those restrictions showed in his results. No matter how he pushed, he couldn’t match the other two.
After his latest run, the one that he had gotten ninety percent of the way through before falling, Tom sat on the ground, watching his friends. He was breathing hard and subtly manipulating his healing to ease some of the aches that had started to form.
As always, Kang was reckless in his approach. Briana was dainty when navigating the obstacles, while the reincarnator was more bull-like. The contrast was amusing. One succeeded through balance, the other by extracting every bit of power out of their body that they could get away with. And the script was flipped, if compared to the natural order of things. Kang, with his experience, should have been the one relying on accuracy. The fact he resorted to power showed the cost of bad habits that the tutorial and its isolation could have caused.
Kang was traversing some rings, kind of like monkey bars, but more difficult, because they were suspended from the ceiling on ropes. He was throwing caution to the wind the way he usually did, trying to skip each alternate ring and having to go airborne to do so. His fingers reached out, and the fingertips just brushed the ring he was aiming for.
Suddenly, he was plunging toward the ground.
Tom leapt to his feet with a curse. The monkey bars had been on the second-highest level, and there was equipment under where he was falling - wooden tilting boards, and these were far more dangerous to land on than the standard mats.
Kang was cartwheeling through the air, out of control, but somehow he twisted and somewhat stabilised himself. He hit a tilt board and curled to deflect the force. He rolled instead of sticking, then bounced and skipped across the floor like an irregularly-shaped ball. It did not look safe.
Tom was running over, hoping no damage had been done. He seemed to have successfully mitigated the irregular landing spot and redirected his momentum into a sideways motion, even if the subsequent rolling across the floor had been awkward. Based on what Tom had seen, he should have been safe, but you could never tell, and it had happened too fast for Tom’s perception to follow easily.
His friend didn’t get up.
Unlike the usual, he was just lying there.
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“Shit,” Tom cursed and leapt over the wooden tilt boards to reach him.
The fall had looked innocuous, but alarm ran through Tom at the lack of movement. Already, he was planning out what to do. He would use his various diagnosis spells, including the half-working brain ones, and then triage whatever was critical to buy time to get to the healing crystal. Briana was dropping down from her obstacle course, and, between the two of them, they should be able to move him to the crystal.
He slid in on his knees, his hands coming down to make physical contact in order to cast the spell, when he noticed the happy smile on the boy’s face. Annoyance flared through Tom. “Kang, don’t scare us like that.”
“Is he okay?” Briana yelled.
“I think so.” Tom forced himself to pause, his heartbeat racing, and examined Kang critically.
The other reincarnator lay there with a goofy grin and gave Tom a big thumbs up. “I can’t believe I took so long to follow your lead. That fall… That was epic. I think the judges would give that at least a two.” He chuckled weakly. “I knew GODs and trials could deliver notifications directly but I didn’t know the system could.”
That last comment told Tom that Kang had gotten an Earned Skill, and it had apparently displayed itself without needing the ritual screen. Possibly the deviation from normal was because the restrictions had to be communicated immediately. Reading between the lines. He had been awarded a tier-two falling skill and Tom wanted to whistle to express his admiration. That might even be better than the one he had gotten in his previous Existentia life. Probably not if it didn’t have the fate generation component, though, because Tom had shown what a modest base with the help of evolution potions could be turned into. Still, if it was a tier-two Earned Skill, then who knew what juicy bonuses it might have built into it.
“Collision mitigation,” Kang muttered like he was reading Tom’s mind. “Works with any collision. If I wanted to Tank...” He shook his head. “Damn, it would be amazing then. Still, it’s great even for a general use. I don’t have to worry as much about falls or incidental contact. If get I kicked or hit by a hammer, that’d be treated the same as falling. Does nothing for blades, though, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
Kang lay there; then, apparently realising what he had said, he flushed, getting a red tint to his cheeks. Refusing to make eye contact, he carefully pulled himself to his feet and stumbled over to get healed. Tom got the sense it was more for show and to avoid embarrassment than for anything else.
They went back to work.
Internally, Tom found himself cursing the vagaries of chance. It sucked that Kang had beaten him to an earned skill, given that he had put weeks of effort into it before the other man had joined in. Then again, he was going for a more complicated version than the one that just mitigated collision damage, even if Kang’s did sound awesome. Every time he fell, he carefully released a single point of fate, and it was rarely used to keep him safe. Occasionally, Tom directed it to reduce the impact of his fall, but usually it was aimed for a less defined outcome. Sometimes, it was sent to turn eyes away from him, other times to help him recover faster, or regain mana, to protect against a future unknown threat, or develop Instant Strike, and even to speed up his perfect casting of the Minor Earth Tremor spell. Basically, Tom selected whatever semi beneficial outcome he could think of while keeping it all random.
The Earned Skill he wanted was the one where movement equalled fate generation and, from his past life, he knew it was possible. During the day, whenever he made a significant movement, he spent his fate randomly. Usually, it happened when he did a big dodge or suffered a big fall, but he was consistent as he could be with his attempts. Then, just before he fell asleep, he invested any spare fate he had left that concept of an Earned Skill that he envisaged. Intellectually, he understood that he was gambling, but it was an educated bet, and, given the size of the deficit in ranking points that he had to close, it was a wager he felt compelled to accept.
It was going to take time, but the potential reward was worth the risk.
At the end of the session, with all of them more than a little sore from their exertions despite the healing, they went to dinner.