Chapter 19: Beginner to Amateur

Rune slept for 3 days, waking up one time in between due to thirst and hunger, he just activated his revitalization energy loop again and went to sleep again.

‘Is that what a hangover feels like?’ He wasn’t an avid drinker, he wasn’t even a festive drinker, Rune never ended up unconscious or didn’t remember a night because he drank too much.

During those 3 days, his spirit clearly made him understand that next time, he mustn't do sphere training for 1 month straight.

‘Maybe just one or two weeks? Very intermittently?’ At least he could rejoice that there wasn’t any pain involved, so it was just a long sleep.

…

‘Close combat… Body control… The peak of absurdity if I was just an engineer, but now even the education department is talking about including body control education,’ time changed, and Rune was already a part of what prompted the time to change.

Even if he didn’t want to admit to it.

Parents already got notices that education would change as soon as possible, and as the current education period was coming to an end, there was only 1 month remaining before the ancient education disappeared.

Every school period was 10 months long and as Ether appeared when Rune decided to take a long break as his twin brother and twin sister began their school year, the timing was perfect.

It also meant that after 1 month of school and 2 months of holidays, the new education reform was going to reveal itself to the entire IGS.

‘Fortunately, I’m an adult,’ while thinking that, Rune entered the door to a gigantic and crowded building.

This place was the supreme martial dojo branch on A56, as it had access to the government help to transport new training modules and even trainers, it was established and popularized in record time, better than even a galactic buzz could have done it.

The futuristic appearance from outside but also from inside contrasted with the corporation name including “dojo” in it, only the logo showing a big “MSD” with the background of a muscular humanoid doing middle-kick training within a dojo allowed people to know it was the right place.

There were no reception desks nor people to help and guide you, only 3 different hallways, respectively named from left to right “Reinforcement”, “Close Combat” and “Body Control”.

As he already knew where he wanted to go, he entered the “Body Control” hallway and stepped on a speed walk.

Rune knew that if he wasn’t included in their database he wouldn’t even have reached here and be authorized access, so the managing AI should already know he was an adherent.

As he was wondering how it would go, he has surprisingly led automatically to a single room, with an entrance appearing in the wall of the hallway.

Not every person before him was similarly being led to a single room, but still, some of them were, so he didn’t worry too much.

Once in the room, the door closed behind him and a control screen appeared in mid-air, which asked for his specific original body stat, so Rune wrote his physical stats, 10 health, 7 health regeneration, 4 strength, and 10 cohesion, as well as one of his spiritual stat, 50 perception.

After that, the screen changed to an options window, with all body control mastery levels, beginner, amateur, competent, proficient, expert, and master.

As there was no masteries information window in the global system, the martial supreme dojo took a bit of a liberal approach and put names on different categories that they defined.

One day they’d change it to reflect reality better, but currently, they let each person judge themselves by comparing to the difficulty of a level they defined arbitrarily.

Rune chose the beginner level and immediately after, instructions started to be vocally transmitted and written on a screen that appeared to the side.

The room he was in had multiple machines, and one was currently highlighted.

Walking to it following the instructions, he put all his strength into a punch, then a kick, then another punch, then another kick.

The initial test asked multiple tries of each offensive movement for pure strength exertion.

After that, another machine was highlighted, this one measured his explosive speed, where he was asked to not use the momentum stat.

Then another machine, testing his dexterity and body coordination by making him evade things, probably adapted it to his reaction speed because a perception of 50 was not a joke, Rune could react to 10 different moves at the same time.

In the end, as he had never trained like that before, he became only a sandbag for the machine.

A comprehensive amount of tests later, the revitalization spell was the only thing that allowed him to still be standing, his body was covered in sweat and his breathing was heavy, more than when he had fight practice with his friends.

The sweat wouldn’t disappear, but the breathing difficulty would, in one minute, the time necessary for an ether entity to reset everything.

A floating screen appeared again, letting him see the result.

“68% overall body strength application, beginner level, expand detail?”

‘Sigh, why not, let me see my miserableness,’ Rune selected the expand option.

“Direct strength application: 65%

Fast strength application: 59%

Strength-ground transmission: 67%

Body dexterity index: 62%

…

Overall body strength application: 64%”

‘I’m a complete beginner, that paints a bleak picture for my talent in this field,’ the percentage expected to become an amateur was 75%, then with every 5% gained you passed to the next stage, so 95% to 100% of strength application was master level.

Meanwhile, everyone below 75% was a beginner.

“Do you want a virtual assistant to receive advice on how to start your training or join the main beginner hall and decide your own training?”

Hearing the proposition, he didn’t hesitate an instant and chose to get a virtual assistant, the start was always the easiest when it came to the progression curve, and he didn’t come to go back after knowing how miserable he was.

…

Rune was led to the beginner hall where plenty of people were using different modules, from gravity modules able to go from 0 to 10 times the average amount to similar-looking machines to the punching machine he just used.

There were also people with supreme martial dojo employee clothing, probably the instructors, here to oversee that everything was fine.

Every training machine had people on them, and with his sphere, he could see another hall on the other side of the wall, he just didn’t know if it was also a beginner hall or another level hall, it looked very similar to the beginner hall he had before his eyes.

His virtual assistant advised him a punching machine first, and a 3D virtual image of him doing a punch virtualized before his eyes, accompanying it were explanations on how to use more of his strength, how using the rest of his body was important, how to use simple positioning to have more exerted strength at the end, the correct alignment of arm, torso, and leg…

Every possible piece of advice was thrown his way, resulting in a never-ending session of him forgetting half of it as he had to associate what he was seeing with what he was hearing.

“Bro,” a passer-by seeing what he was doing came to advise him, “Just punch and kick, you don’t seem like a rululu, so just learn as your assistant corrects you, perfect your moves, and remembers as much as possible while continuing punching like an idiot, with time you will clear this training and go to the next.”

Seeing the strange look he received from Rune, the passer-by felt forced to explain, “Just alternate between 2 to 3 moves, you have tens of moves to learn to have the beginner fundamentals of body control, unless you’re a genius, be ready for weeks and months of training and grinding.”

With a faraway look, the passer-by continued his path and started punching on the machine next to Rune’s one, every time he punched he seemed to remember things and punched again, and it repeated again, and again before he turned to Rune and concluded his explanation, “just like that.”

…

‘Punch! Listen… Punch! Listen…’ So that was the answer, everything was a matter of repetition, hard work, and willpower to its purest sense.

Using every punch to better your next, using determination, determination, and even more determination to not let a single piece of advice slip by and carve into your body everything you did to not forget it.

But it was a little different for Rune…

‘Ah!’ “Your leg was misaligned from your torso and arm extension, your torso was…”

‘Ah!’ “You didn’t let your arm reach full extension, losing 20% of the strength, your breathing was disordered, control it by exhaling when punching, to maximize your pun…”

‘Ah!’ “You didn’t properly…”

‘Punching is life! Ah!’ Rune was releasing something he never knew he had in him, repressed feelings or something he didn’t care, he didn’t even feel like caring about it.

Just punching and punching again was liberating him from an invisible weight.

He only marginally included the advice given to him as, during the first few days of serious training, he learned the optimized punching form for “still punching”, and now on the third day…

He was having the time of his life.

Rune wasn’t an isolated case to something like this, with the revitalization spell, sports took a very different turn lately.

Infinite energy led to infinite exercise, always sprinting during a marathon of hundreds of kilometers wasn’t a joke or cheating, just this simple spell being used.

People starting exercise and not stopping because moving at their limit without suffering from exhaustion was addicting was not even on the news anymore, it just became normal.

After an entire day of punching like a punching addict, he changed exercises and did the explosive ground movement one, using his legs and sometimes his arms, to help, to propel at the maximum speed in the least amount of time.

Even if it was beginner training and he read from the forum that later halls have completely different kinds of exercises, those fundamentals were fundamental for a reason, they were used in every training later.

So learning to punch while not moving, and taking your time to have the best impulse to move was not useful in a fight, but god-given to then learn the follow-up and understand what was useful in fights.

As time passed by, Rune easily attained 75% and above strength used, but with tens of exercises to perfect he couldn’t be satisfied with attaining amateur on a few exercises and the virtual assistant advised him to attain 75% in every exercise and then go to the next all.

It also advised him to not try and “perfect” the beginners’ move as it wasn't necessary for what he was going to do next.

The martial supreme dojo had an optimized path, and this path wasn’t the path of simply punching and running.

2 weeks later, Rune was given access to the amateur hall after attaining 75% minimum on every exercise.

He didn’t redo the test as it was only for newcomers and the supreme dojo virtual assistant knew his progress.

He wasn’t disillusioned about his talent, it was average, so having concluded his body control talent he only continued because competent level body control was the best level to start close combat training.

Those 2 paths had to be joined at some points, punching during extreme situations, actively planning how to use your body and strength, and so on were shared applications of fighting and body control.

The entire physical path was integrated into one organization for a reason after all.

‘It gets harder and harder, so 2 weeks is good, it only took 9 months and 2 weeks for me to…’ feeling sudden lethargy, he couldn't help but stop thinking for a moment.

‘9 months and 2 weeks… How could time pass so rapidly? Normally I should’ve soon sent my employment demand to different companies, but here I am, all the studies I did being nothing more than soon to be illusions, I'd have to relearn everything or nearly everything with the Ether Law changing the entire universe.’

He smiled after thinking that, in fact, with all that happened he forgot how to use his diploma-associated knowledge after so much time thinking intently about how to be part of the new era and train in newly opened fields.

The amateur hall was, believe it or not, more crowded than the beginner hall, so either Rune was unlucky and got sent to a packed hall or the supreme dojo had more people at amateur than at beginner level.

Training at the amateur hall introduced new mechanics that were in between true application and fundamentals, the punching machine was still here but it stood on a treadmill-like surface, being motionless was for beginners, now he had to punch while running.

Same for apparently every exercise he did, evading by a hair thread? Now the ground moves under your feet.

Trying to run? Take my soaped floor.

Stay balanced on a pole? What am I saying, it’s not a pole, it’s a vibrating thread.

‘Are they taking me for a shonen protagonist or what? I can tell you the answer now if you really want it, I’m not.’

Thunderstruck by what he was doing and the difficulty added, he couldn’t help but try and see if he was the only one surprised by the absurdity of what he was doing.

[Rune: Did anyone train at amateur level in the martial supreme dojo? I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you if you didn’t]

[Gar: I think I read something about it, you coming to bother us means it really shocked you, so the fact that it’s completely stupid is probably true, thank you]

[Arik: The amateur level is famous on some obscure forum for causing a feeling of desperation, but those who passed tell the tale of even more nightmarish training in the following hall so be humble]

[Nelo: Astryde completed it one week ago and now she keeps complaining that it was easy, Utopia is also at an amateur level, but he stopped talking 2 weeks ago, probably focused on that level]

‘It didn’t help at all!’ Smiling stupidly from understanding what he embarked on, the silly thought of linear progression just got erased in his mind.

‘Maybe I’m in fact a genius in all spirit-related training and techniques?’

And so began his journey through the shonen protagonist's basic hell sponsored by the Ether Law course.

…

The IGS had a solid enough administrative system to just keep every unknown civilization call coming, there was no stopping it, it was part of their core tenets after all.

But the far-sighted IGS leader and every department’s head, with the support of all the administrative region’s head and lots of competent people, they all just never stopped anticipating what could happen.

If there was one sector fusion, there would be a second one.

The only reason they could join the newly integrated civilizations so fast was that they made them build a special device transmitting signals to infinite distances.

The problem of such a device was the chance of failure, the signal being so weak meant that only special ultra-light automated spaceships could be sent, it was the price for such a signal.

And even then it had a high failure chance, it was only an emergency solution after all.

The objective of doing this was that by exchanging multiple such cargoes, trust was built over time, and in the end, the far civilization accepted to assemble a special signal emitter to increase the correspondence.

It was the same special signal emitter that was used for intergalactic travels, making it possible to take only some hours in place of the years spent traveling through the intergalactic empty space creating a network as they advanced to link 2 galaxies together.

Everything being so complex at this scale, the IGS leader wasn’t even made aware of the progress of contacting other civilizations, he had much more important responsibilities, like securing the future of the whole IGS.

Anomaly such as an entire solar system being discovered in the Void only entered his most superficial pile of documents about unimportant but remarkable discoveries.

The result of his leadership was the current information-sharing principle, the 3 path organizations being open to anyone, the Adventurer’s Society becoming a hegemon at a frightening pace, the patrollers receiving their due reward and lowering crime rate to such an abysmal degree that true and dangerous criminal were all apprehended and put into coma permanently.

Such a leader was what proved again and again that the Rululus deserved all the investments they received when they were only toddlers on a lost planet.

As the predictions about the effects of the ether density increasing became clearer, the leader delegated more and more of his work to join the IGS Council, also called the Rululus Council, to come up with ideas to have the IGS do a smooth transition as early as possible to the Interdimensional Era.

As gravity proved itself deadly for anyone, and even those with maxed stats, without any choices, permanently livable stations using only ether technologies were already in the prototype testing phase.

Resources trading accelerated, battleship-sized and titan-sized spaceships were deployed to allow the government to gather funds and re-inject them into the surroundings of the rifts, the Void map expanded, and dangerous grounds were aVoided.

Ether adapted weapons were utter failures, physics laws, or defective law’s weapon ended more effective as just sending a bullet at 100 000 kilometers per hour seemed enough to annihilate even ether reinforced matter.

They tried to attain at least the same result with ether principles as the physics laws were fluctuating more and more as time went by, but the returns were highly pessimistic.

They kept perfecting the future education reform, the new generation was always the defining factor deciding whether civilization would perpetuate on or not, and they were going all-in on this plan.

A leader with an eidetic memory that could go on and on for a whole month without a break was just a heaven-sent opportunity for the IGS.

so many activities were going on that long-retired veterans and scholars were called back to lead missions so important they never had in their entire career.

Already rumors about the leader ascending from brain overload were circulating in the forum, but the truth was much worse…

It wasn’t only the leader, there was no break anymore anywhere when a mission or an objective was attached to it, and the more months passed, the more like an old man returning to his prime the entire IGS felt like.

That was the current era, from geniuses creating the first era breaking speel to the future tier 2, still not attained by anyone, to average citizens revealing themselves to be monsters awakened by the ether increasing around them, going on their way to destroying entire nests of monsters still considered untouchable by the majority.

It seemed that before that moment, it was only the premise to the true beginning of a golden age.