Tom slipped back into his body as his mind was mulling over what had happened, his mood thoughtful. Access to this trial changed everything. With all the new things being introduced, his life had gone from a tedious plod to being jam-packed with activities.
To his shock, he realised he was deliriously happy.
The minutiae of the way he was going to be spending his time had shifted dramatically. The only shade being cast on his mood was the question of whether the training done in the trial counted the same as that done in the real world. If it did, he was going to be over the moon. Was there a penalty to skill gain, or could he spend every waking moment there? It didn’t matter - no matter which way that calculation went, Tom was better off.
What he mentally called the bad hours, the time where life was a real chore, could now be avoided. Activities like the two hours a day spent learning primary school stuff, and the quite literal child’s play with Briana, could and would be skipped. Instead of that time being, for all intents and purposes completely wasted, he would spend it in the Divine Champions’ trial around adults, and hopefully learning real life important facts about Existentia. Not to mention, of course, crafting to earn enough to get his pick of the special rewards.
The boon of being able of being able to do both of those was not lost on Tom. The items on the curated list spoke for themselves, and the individuals in the open section represented an unparalleled pool of knowledge. They could educate him in a way that humanity, due to its collective ignorance, couldn’t manage to do. If spell work performed there counted the same as it did in the trial and Existentia proper, it was possible for Tom to live there pretty much permanently, and only emerge in the real world for April’s trial, resistance training, and fighting in the lairs.
Even if there was a penalty, all was not lost. The dodge and obstacle course sessions remained both useful and fun. The irregular sessions he spent being taught the hammer did not enthuse him the same way, but he was going to continue to willingly participate in them because he acknowledged that learning any skills on offer was important. Likewise, his regular nightly activities weren’t going to change. The exploration of the lairs to help enhance his combat abilities and his resistance training would continue at their current pace. It was like the perfect outcome. All the chaff had been cut out of his life, and replaced with stimulating activity.
He had timed everything for when the morning lessons had just finished, and they had an hour before lunch.
The three of them ran to the room to practice their dodging skills, immediately selecting the relative difficulty best suited to stretch themselves. Kang was two ahead of Briana, who was three ahead of him. Tom didn’t mind his apparent slow progress, as he was fighting through significant handicaps.
He touched the ring on his finger and channelled mana into it. Taking things easy was not an option, so he increased both the debilitating electrical pulses and the degree to which Dampen Senses acted upon him. Then he threw himself into training. His muscles were spasming constantly because of the electricity coursing through them. It made him an uncoordinated mess, and with his eyesight reduced to that of an old man with cataracts, everything rested on Danger Sense and the pseudo-Spark sensing domain that he was maintaining.
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The second ability let him track the combat dummy as it entered the ring. As it circled him, he rotated to face it despite being blind. Anyone watching would have assumed that he could see it perfectly.
It attacked him, and he was able to adjust and avoid it easily, but it was only an opening feint. From experience, this particular pit took a while to get going, so he remained on guard, knowing that things were about to get more serious.
Danger Sense suddenly screamed at him and his Spark sensing cloud tagged the attack coming at him. The combat dummy appeared to be going after him with a double-handed overhead swing. He ordered his legs to jump backwards, but the left one spasmed instead. Instead of a graceful leap backwards, only one of his legs managed to push off the ground, which unbalanced him completely. If he had been able to plan for the moment, he could have compensated, but, with his feet positioning, he had needed movement from both legs to control his motion. Without that, his jump turned into a stumble backward and to the side. It was enough to avoid the blow, but, with a leg continuing to cramp, there was no way from him to regain his balance.
A fall was inevitable.
The combat dummy maintained its momentum. Its programming sensed the easy kill, and swung a roundhouse blow with its wooden club to punt his airborne body out of the ring and finish the bout. Unbalanced, his limbs not responding perfectly, there was nothing for Tom to do but accept the coming failure.
Clinically, he spent a point of fate with the image of future good fortune. It was a wasteful use of the special resource because of the lack of specificity, but randomness was the strategy he was going for. The club the combat dummy was using crashed into his side. It lifted him and knocked him out of the ring. He groaned.
There was no ding. Hopefully, the sacrifice of fate would let him gain his earned skill, eventually at least, but it didn’t look like it was happening today.
“Are you okay?” Briana was next to him instantly.
He smiled up at her:
“It didn’t hurt. I’m fine.” He responded happily, that there was no need to lie. Here, out of a combat situation, he wasn’t as stingy with his mana as he would have been otherwise, and his healing magic had already completely deadened the pain.
“That sounded really, really bad.” She told him earnestly. “I was watching, and I heard the thud.”
“It wasn’t...” he sprang to his feet. He was internally wincing at the extra damage the movement had done, but keeping up appearances was important. “It wasn’t bad at all.”
As he stood up, his magic went about fixing the two broken ribs and the more general material bruising over the collision area, along with a number of damaged organs. Experimentally, he tapped the spot where he had been hit. “See, there’s no reason to worry. I’m healthy”
She didn’t look convinced, but he was making no move to go to the healing crystal, so she couldn’t exactly dispute his arguments.
“Be more careful.” She ordered. “You’re supposed to dodge them, not get hit by them.” Her piece said, she went back to her pit, and then, thirty seconds later, once his healing was completed, Tom rechallenged his own.
Once the session was over, they went to their normal isolation rooms, and Tom bantered with the two the entire time and pretended to be as reluctant as they were. However, the moment the room dinged to confirm his privacy, he rubbed his hands together in glee.
This was it. He had a purpose to guide his spell growth. Carefully he swept the room to ensure there were no hidden intruders, and then he ran over to the wire frame spell resources folders. Immediately, he plucked out the lightning domain pack and went to work.