‘One step at a time.’
Ren resolved as he harvested another crystal.
‘First win the wager with Professor Wei, and then.......’
His gaze turned toward the deep tunnels where the mana swirled more gloomily. In that place, where almost no one dared to go, lay the answer to his own evolution.
But for now, each small crystal in front of him mattered. Time was passing, and the veins waited for no one.
When evening came, they checked over the day's haul.
“Sixteen today!”
Min proudly emptied his bag onto the desk, and the crystals glittered like trapped stars.
“Eighteen for me.”
Taro smiled and showed off his collection, laid out in neat rows.
“I have...... three Bronze and nineteen Iron.”
Ren added his own to the pile.
Each crystal had been cut free carefully, with the least possible force, at the exact point where the flows of mana converged.
“Not bad for beginners, is it? What do you think, Senior Liu?”
Liu examined the crystals with genuine surprise. His Night Bat flew closer, its eyes shining in the darkness.
“Not bad at all....... But how on earth do you keep picking out that many Bronze crystals?”
Later, after finishing the hellish night training with Assistant Instructor Lin, Ren barely managed to drag himself to bed. The day's fatigue seeped pleasantly into every muscle.
“You know, Ren.”
Liu said quietly from his desk.
“Honestly, I think it's rather impressive. With a Beast like that...... most people would have given up long ago. But you keep pushing forward. Far more than anyone else here.”
Ren smiled in the darkness. If Liu ever learned that his Spore was not ‘that kind of Beast’ everyone believed it to be.......
***
And so the exhausting but productive days piled up, and before he knew it a month had passed.
The mornings Professor Wei had freed up were filled with hellish training under Assistant Instructor Lin, and the combat lectures with Professor Yang presented him with fresh muscle pain every day.
Through his callused palms and the feel of a hardened body, Ren sensed that his Spore's 10% amplification had come to mean something incomparable to before.
Professor Mei's lectures taught history and economics, and Professor Song's crystal lectures taught the secrets of the earth. But the real learning always happened after the lectures, when he went down into the depths of the mine with his companions.
The nights were rounded off with extra technique training under Assistant Instructor Lin. Every day brought small but certain progress. His companions' trust, too, built up slowly but solidly.
But tomorrow...... tomorrow was different. As he got ready for bed, Ren traced the necessary steps in his head.
At last it was the day to process Taro's crystal. The phase of the moon was perfect, and every effort of the past month would be put to the test.
Tomorrow would be the first day of proving that his knowledge was not mere delusion.
“Tomorrow...... are you worried?”
Taro asked carefully from his own bed.
“No.”
Ren smiled in the darkness. The mushrooms in his hair pulsed with a quiet but confident light.
“Because everything will go according to plan.”
Liu snorted softly in the darkness but said nothing.
Whether he was ready to witness the moment a ‘mad theory’ became reality or not.
***
“Finished already?”
Assistant Instructor Lin watched with surprised eyes as Ren completed the last set of the morning's exercises.
He had not collapsed to the ground gasping as he usually did. The training ground still held only the two of them, but the air today was clearly different.
“This recovery medicine seems to work far better than I expected, doesn't it?”
Lin examined her disciple's condition with professional interest.
“Your recovery...... is at an almost marvelous level.”
It was true. The exercises that had flattened him only a month ago had become manageable.
Steady training and Lin's ‘special’ pills had remade his body from the ground up.
“Hmm.”
Lin's lips curled into a smile. It was precisely the expression Ren had come to recognize as a signal of dread.
“Good. I think it's time to move on to the next stage.”
“The next...... stage?”
“That's right. I can finally teach you what ‘technique’ is.”
Lin planted herself in front of him.
“Everything until now was just the groundwork to make that carcass of yours usable. But now that you can stand without wobbling like a newborn foal.......”
She took a stance Ren had never seen before.
“Technique belongs to a different realm from strength.” she explained.
“It's how you turn your body into a weapon that moves before thought does. Watch closely.”
Her movement was like flowing water.
Ren could barely follow it with his eyes.
One moment she was in front of him, and the next she had twisted as though defying gravity and appeared behind his back.
“Your Spore only adds a mere 10% to your strength, right?” she continued.
“But the right technique can make that 10% explode like 100%.”
***
For the next hour, Lin drilled him in the basic movements.
Foot placement, weight distribution, even how to let an opponent's force slide past and turn it back against him.
“Most kids rely far too much on their Beasts.” she explained as she corrected his posture.
“They delude themselves that 30% or 50% more strength makes them invincible. But technique.......”
She moved again. More slowly this time so that Ren could observe, yet as fluid as running water.
“Technique is the key that digs into the gaps in strength. It's also the reason I can serve as an assistant instructor here even though my crane is stuck at Bronze.”
Ren tried to copy the movement, but his body creaked clumsily.
“I don't expect it overnight.”
Lin laughed as she hauled him back to his feet.
“But what matters is that you now have a body that can ‘practice’ this without wearing out.”
‘It wasn't the pills that worked the miracle. It was that boy's venomous grit.
I've never seen anyone go down like that for a whole month and still get up the next day.’
Ren smiled at his teacher's encouragement. His knowledge told him that the pills she gave him were made from expensive Bronze Grade materials.
Someday he intended to repay that debt by mending her ‘broken’ Beast.
There was no such thing as a ‘weak’ Beast. There was only wrong knowledge.
And Taro's evolution would be the first proof of it.
“That's enough for today.”
Lin declared at last.
“From tomorrow we start carving these techniques into your body. Your body is ready, so now let's see how quickly that clever head of yours can keep up.”
***
On his way to the next lecture, Ren looked back on a month of change. His muscles no longer screamed, and his endurance had improved noticeably.
And now he would begin learning how to truly ‘fight.’
If the processing of Taro's crystal succeeded tonight, everything would begin in earnest.
The combat arts lecture and the history lecture passed as usual.
When the crystal lecture finally came, Professor Song pointed at the tunnel wall.
“As you can see, productive veins in the practice zone are becoming scarcer.”
He was right. Where crystals had sparkled only a month ago, now there were nothing but faint marks left in the rock.
“Therefore,”
Professor Song continued.
“we will soon change the subject of the lecture. The mana crystal veins in the shallow zones need time to regenerate.”
Min raised a hand.
“How long does full regeneration take?”
“That is precisely what we will be studying from here on.”
Professor Song smiled.
“For the time being, while we prepare for next month's external gathering lecture, we will suspend gathering practice and move on to the theory of the various other crystal types. The dead abyss and the living abyss that divide this planet into four, the mana dragon veins that flow beneath the earth, and the patterns by which crystals form in high-density mana environments. Fire, water, earth, wind, wood. The five basic attributes, and the light attribute, the dark attribute, and the null attribute, along with a number of special attribute crystals besides. Even crystals of the same Grade can differ greatly in character and use depending on attribute and processing. We have researched them for ages, and crystals are still full of secrets the kingdom does not know...... Throughout your time at the Academy you will study the formation, processing, and properties of crystals systematically.”
Several students from wealthy families let out sighs of relief. To them, mining had been nothing but a tiresome obligation.
“However,”
Professor Song added.
“students who wish to continue gathering practice in their free time may keep using the mine. You need only report what you find. That data will be put to good use in our research.”
After the lecture most of them headed for the library, but Ren and his companions stayed in the tunnels.
“Did you notice the guards have thinned out?”
Taro whispered. It was true. The guards who had once patrolled every level were now concentrated mainly at the entrance and in the deeper zones.
“Naturally.”
Liu said as he joined them.
“Fewer students in the mine means less supervision. Most of them would rather study theory than chip away at rubble.”
Ren looked around. The only ones left were students as desperate as they were. There was no sign of Klein's or Jin's cliques.
“That works out better for us.”
Min said as he dug out a small crystal.
“This place is ours now.”
“And there's less competition.”
Taro added.
“But the upper levels are nearly exhausted. We'll have to go deeper.”
Ren murmured as he studied the mana patterns.
Liu frowned.
“The guards are still watching those zones.”
“But there are fewer of them.”
Ren pointed out.
“And their patrol routes have become predictable now.”
“You can't possibly.......”
“I'm only saying we should keep our options open.”
Ren said as he kept working the vein.
“Especially considering what we're doing tonight.”
Tonight the processing of Taro's crystal would finally begin. The phase of the moon was perfect, and all that remained was to prepare the sealing agent.
“At least we can move around now without worrying who's watching, right?”
Min looked around the nearly abandoned tunnel.
“Everyone's shut away in the library.......”
“The rich ones only have to buy materials with the money their parents send.”
Liu shook his head.
“It's bastards like us who have to dig the ground to get our own. Even so, don't forget that you still have to study if you want to get through the final examinations safely. Look at me. I came here to study and ended up doing nothing but digging, didn't I?”