Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 71 The Test For Better Training Gear

While Elizabeth cleaned up the kitchen to leave back to the dojo, Sun got to try his hand at meditation and unsurprisingly, he wasn't too good at it. His life for the past couple of years had been nothing but training, training, and even more training. If not for Atid threatening to cut off access to the dojo's training equipment should he not be on track to earn a High School Degree, it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to a.s.sume Sun would spend 15 or more hours a day training.

Elizabeth being familiar with what meditation should look like instantly noticed how Sun's restless personality hindered his spiritual progression. She sighed as she walked over to his side and said, "I'll help you enter meditation one time so you get a feel for it. Just remember to not try doing what I'm about to do or you could hurt yourself pretty badly..."

She waited for Sun to express he was ready after explaining, "Now, don't freak out and just focus on the meditation method. I'll induce a state of selflessness in your body."

When Sun was ready however, she didn't utilize her needles. Instead, with gentle neutral Inner Strength condensing into index finger's fingertip, she gave the acupoint hidden below his glabella — between the eyes — a bit of stimulation and the clarity in Sun's eyes instantly dulled over as he didn't put up any defense.

For the next couple minutes, Sun stayed seated in the lotus position immersing himself in the feelings of emptiness as Elizabeth started taking the items she planned on bringing back with her to the car. When she finished loading up the clothes she'd left behind, she thought back to any other things she should probably be taking with her and unsurprisingly, the idea to take her personal computer, monitor, and peripherals highly tempted her.

In the end, she reasoned that it would be beneficial for Sun if she wasted a bit more time carrying her electronics so as to give him more time meditating. But deep down, she was mostly looking to satisfy any boredom that might pop up after getting tired of training. There was also the thing of her using the computer to better her education. After all, it would be a shame if her ability to memorize absurd quant.i.ties of information wasn't exploited to oblivion.

Upon finis.h.i.+ng everything else she needed to do before leaving, Elizabeth walked over to Sun and brought him out of the induced meditation safely by poking several other acupoints around his head. She knew there probably wouldn't be much of change in the short span of time she'd left him to figure out the feeling of meditation, but given her obsession over the stats of her game-like world, she checked his Status anyways. Funny thing is… it seems her induced meditation was pretty advanced stuff. That or Sun was even more G.o.dly than she gave him credit for as his Intelligence Stat shot right up to the lower twenties after just a couple minutes.

Elizabeth didn't say anything as it would probably be best to keep him striving to improve to the best of his abilities and she felt there was a chance he might slack off after knowing how abnormally fast his spiritually increased. She just took this experience as a fluke caused because of her induced meditation, his Qi as a Martial Pract.i.tioner, his latent talent for improving his spirit, or a combination of all three.

Sun drove Elizabeth back to the dojo, his Serious Sun Mode whilst driving left Elizabeth with no choice but to handle the car's sound system to make the car ride less boring. This being the first time in days where she could "relax" by listening to some music, Elizabeth plugged in the AUX to her phone and looked up "Dangerous Days." It amused Elizabeth when Sun still drove without the music affecting him as she intentionally cranked the volume up to max.

After the drive to the dojo, Sun offered to help by carrying some of the things Elizabeth brought back from her house. Elizabeth accepted his help and quickly got her things sorted out. She didn't plan on returning to the Shadow Realm until she sorted out some things on Earth, the first matter she felt should be taken care of being her ascension to Level 10.

She'd discovered some rather "extreme" methods for refining her body within Gabriel's Book of Ice and Fire, and with her Darkyin Cultivation Method, improving her spirituality would eclipse any other method she had for meditation. She was already pretty close to having the stats of someone Level 10 anyways, so it wouldn't take long at all.

Thus, after putting away the clothes and electronics she brought from her home, Elizabeth followed Sun downstairs and began training at last. To her, it seemed like an eternity had pa.s.sed since the last time she'd actually punched a sandbag or lifted weights as the escalation of events in these past couple days were bit disorienting; especially when considering that there had been several times where she'd spent time in spirit that could technically be considered eternities to a normal mortal.

Still, even if it felt like forever since the last time she trained normally, she hadn't at all forgotten what Sun had taught her, so her reintroduction to formal conditioning was swift and clean. Only… because of her recent abnormal increases to strength, none of the training equipment she used to work with placed much pressure on her body now.

It got her thinking of how Sun, Jane, and people even stronger trained with equipment for regular people when with their strength, it would be a piece of cake to directly shatter and eviscerate the equipment. With her thoughts drifting in contemplation to this obvious problem in the system, she subconsciously recalled some of the Neutral Enchantments she'd learned about; specifically, the Neutral Resistance Enchantment.

However, with the quality of magical items, she'd seen thus far — namely Luca's bullets and Storage Enchantments — she found it hard to believe that Atid's dojo could possess even the worst quality Neutral Resistance Enchantments as they were several times harder to create than Storage Enchantments.

Elizabeth thought to herself, 'Perhaps, there's an array formation or something else I don't really know much about that resolves this issue, so I better just ask...' She walked over to Atid, who she thus far had never seen leave the little drinking table he had set up on the corner of the training s.p.a.ce during operating hours, and called attention to her problem.

Atid did a double take as he struggled to comprehend the speed Elizabeth gained power. The reason primarily lied in him not probing her at every encounter as she hadn't really spent the kind of time needed to develop much as a martial artist. Alas, now when he tried to measure her Inner Strength levels to approximate the level of her physical strength, a permanent undercoat of energy consequent of her Seamless Magic Connection utterly blocked any and all probing attempts. The only people who could bypa.s.s this barrier and judge her cultivation were people with similarly perfect Qi or Magic Connections or people at the Spiritual Realm; anyone else would either be too weak or unskillful to get accurate results.

Atid being several times stronger than Elizabeth naturally carved a path through the protection Elizabeth's foundation set up, but because his own foundation lacked the required stability to resonate with perfection, the results of his probe made no comprehensible sense; one moment Elizabeth returned Inner Strength levels neared non-existent levels and in the next it looked like she had strength comparable to his.

His probe was extremely quick, so in truth, even after a.n.a.lyzing and coming to his own thoughts on Elizabeth's ever-mysterious ways, he sounded calm and collected as he explained, "We have equipment for exactly this kind of problem." He gestured to the hallway entrance which lead to the elevator and exit, and Luca could be seen entering the room. Upon drawing Elizabeth's attention to Luca, Atid said, "He's responsible for sending that kind of equipment my way."

Atid faced Elizabeth once more as he continued to explain, "Usually, most of the dojo members are just regular people so most of the equipment around us is geared for them. That's the same as the equipment you've been using up until now. However, as you noticed, people from the Martial Society, especially those of higher ranks, need more powerful and resistant gear to challenge our already powerful bodys' strength. Unfortunately, I can't seem to tell what level of strength your body possess so I don't know exactly what gear suits your power at the moment."

Elizabeth greeted Luca, it wasn't anything special as she no longer felt like there was much to be gained from interacting with him, just a head nod. After Luca sat back down to drink with Atid, he returned the greeting thinking of ways of coaxing information about enchantments out of Elizabeth, as she continued with her conversation with Atid, saying, "If you only take into account our physical strength, Sun is approximately 33% stronger than me at the moment."

"Oh… in that case, you can just ask him to show you where he keeps the equipment he uses. If you're at around that level, you should be able to handle his equipment. But… I want to test your strength out myself. Don't take it personally, it's just hard to believe that you're already that strong and I'd rather not risk any potentially avoidable harm coming your way."

Atid stood up and held out his hand saying, "Punch my hand as hard as you can."

"Um… ok?" This was probably the crudest method to judge another's strength, but Elizabeth didn't mind. She knew there wasn't a chance that her strength could accidentally harm Atid, so without much consideration, she punched a right jab right onto Atid's open palm. Yet even without any Inner Strength augmenting her strength or speed, there was still an attention-grabbing result.

With a harsh Bang! Nearly everyone that was working out stopped to face Elizabeth as that punch was pretty absurd coming from a delicate looking girl such as herself. Some people thought they were hallucinating as they could swear they saw smoke draw from Atid's palm after receiving the attack, and others wondered if they just imagined the slight tremor that quaked the earth.

In the end however, through some witchcraft of the Martial Society — probably those wicked Enchantments and Array Formations Elizabeth had recently learned about — the regular patrons of the dojo no longer bothered with the supernatural strength Elizabeth so casually displayed and even those Pract.i.tioners mixed into the crowd went off to draw their own conclusions after returning to training.

Atid's eyes squinted as Elizabeth's judgment of her own strength and Sun's was right on the nose and now that she had proven herself, he gave her the go-ahead to bother his foster son for his training gear. 'How in G.o.d's name does she know what Sun's full strength even looks like? And what kind of training did she do to get so strong so quick?! At this rate, she'll probably surpa.s.s my strength in a dozen or so years!' As he imagined a mature Elizabeth of 30-40 years old running around with a King's Strength, actual fear and trepidation shuttled down his spine, before he sobered out of his own self-induced nightmare and started drinking with Luca again.