Chapter 229: Never Passing Up Free Food

It wasn’t that bad. Not as intense as he had been expecting at least.

However, Reinera might have heavily disagreed on that. Rebecca made them strain their bodies until Reinera was gasping for air, crawling along the ground on her knees. Julius on the other hand faired way better, much to Rebecca’s surprise.

She shouldn’t be though and neither should he. Julius had always pushed his physical training to the limit, which meant that he was in much better shape than Reinera and most people.

The only people who have kept up with him were monsters like Edgar. With that being said, his ability to use all of his newfound strength was difficult. Using it efficiently was even more so.

They only sparred for a little bit. And it was a stretch to call it sparring. It was more like Rebecca was trying to get a gauge of their current physical abilities. Afterward, they moved on to more practical and simple training.

Rebecca showed them many exercises that helped with their transition. Many of them weren’t actually focusing on strength. Almost all of them had to do with balance.

She would make him do various calisthenic exercises or force him to run across a small course she set up to test his agility and balance.

Those were surprisingly difficult. Perhaps, before he advanced he would have been able to easily breeze through the course. However, now that he had more strength, he found himself jumping a bit too far or not enough.

He had the improved power, but not the finesse yet.

It was weird, there was so much more power in his muscles but he didn’t really gain much mass. He might have gained a little bit of height, but that was it.

There was also the issue that he was able to channel so much more kinetic energy through his body with [Kinetic Augmentation].

It wasn’t quite double, but it was pretty close. However, he also ran into another issue with that.

He would have expected that since he was able to channel almost twice as much mana and kinetic energy, it would mean he would be almost twice as strong.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work that way.

For one, his efficiency was quite far from perfect. Secondly, there was some sort of diminishing returns to how much mana he pumped his body with and how much strength his body got.

At least that was what Rebecca explained to him. She said that he would eventually need to learn how to infuse his Concepts into each movement. That would be the first step of advancing to Tier 4, along with a lot of other stuff.

Julius got pulled away from his thoughts as he watched Reinera get about a third of the way through the course before she finally slipped and smacked her head into a wooden pole. Falling like a sack of flour and hitting the dirt with a thump.

He winced but assured himself that she would be okay. She had a pretty good physical enhancement skill of her own. He was more worried about her pride. She was getting kind of frustrated with the whole thing.

Which was understandable. She must have fallen and smashed her head into the ground at least a couple dozen times by this point. No matter how strong their bodies were at this point, it didn’t feel good.

He would know, he had done the exact same thing just minutes ago. It was embarrassing.

She at least made some good improvements. She had gotten so much further than her first attempt.

He got up when he saw Rebecca give him a look, letting him know it was his turn again.

“Remember, trust in your mana’s newfound responsiveness. As long as you realize it in time, your mana and intent will help you do the rest,” Rebecca advised him.

He nodded with a smile before getting up. On his way, he passed by a muttering Reinera who was giving the entire training course a very dangerous look.

If the thing was burned down tomorrow morning, he would know who to blame.

He went over to the beginning of the course and readied himself. Once he was good, he set off like a rocket.

The first section of the course was easy. It was a simple task about trying to get to the other end as fast as he could while also striking the occasional obstacles marked in red. They needed to inject a set amount of mana each time in order to successfully trigger the target.

That wasn’t a difficult challenge for either of them. They both had really good control of their mana. The problem came after.

Once he reached the other side, he needed to stop on a dime and land exactly on a skinny pole that would shift around in erratic patterns. Fortunately, his kinetic energy helped him a lot with this maneuver. He was able to siphon all of his momentum with a thought and with more ease than when he was Tier 2.

With a series of confident jumps that had only come after falling dozens of times already, he hopped from one pole to another. It didn’t matter too much if the poles were shifty little things, he had gotten used to the irregular movements of the poles already.

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Kinetic energy for the win.

After a brief moment, he was able to complete it. He didn’t check to see but would bet that Reinera was scowling at him as he finished what she had been having so much trouble with.

The next obstacle was much more challenging. It introduced an element he would need to actively dodge. He looked at the wildly swingling threads of thin wire in front of him with a smile. Even with [Spatial Perception], it was hard to keep track of all of the wires in front of him.

The goal was to get across to the next area while not getting touched a single time. It was so difficult because even if he got grazed by a wire, the course would know and automatically fail him.

It tested his balance, perception, and knowing where each part of his body was at all times.

The key he realized after many failed attempts was to plan ahead. It was probably a way to train newly advanced Tier 3s to leverage their upgraded mind just as much as they did with their bodies.