Chapter 52: Body Conditioning (Part 2)

The sound was loud. I had heard loud sounds before. A [Fireball] was loud. [The Ending Sky] had been louder still, loud enough to make even the greatest of Dragons crash back down to the ground. This man’s voice was quieter, but only just.

The door opened into light, and heat. It spilled out, washed over me and the entire hallway where we stood. The inside did not look like any other part of the academy. There was brown as far as the eye could see.

I stepped inside before either Ash or Edda. Each step brought with it a small scrape. This was sand then. And this place was…a desert. Not only that, but the mana here was dense. Far denser than it had been outside. Perhaps slightly more dense than the resonance chamber we had been in that day.

I turned to Edda. “How?”

Edda looked only momentarily confused. “I forgot, you haven’t taken classes. This is,” she made an encompassing gesture, “this is what most of the other resonance chambers are like. They’re usually more than just rooms. Though, this is the best chamber we Lines get.”

“I wonder how they made such a thing,” Ash murmured under her breath. I shared her curiosity. Back in my time, there had existed [Domain] spells, ones which could change an entire battlefield for one purpose or another. Was some principle like that at play here?

Now that I looked, I did see other students a few dozen feet in the distance. All of them were running in a line. All of them had a large black rectangular box strapped to their chests. All of them looked seconds away from collapsing.

It was then that I noticed an Inker pacing towards us. Or at least, I assumed it was an Inker. He was a tall and balding man, who wore a frown for a face. The man did not wear the threaded robes I had seen on the rest of his ilk. Instead, he wore a grey tunic, with ornate silver threading. The tunic showed off his muscled frame. Though perhaps ‘struggled to contain’ was more accurate. His left arm bore a Crest, one in a pink spiralling shape I could not recognize. He jogged towards us, stopping a few feet away. He eyed Edda first, Ash second, and then me last. His eyes did not drift to my horns, not even for a moment.

“You’re late newbloods!” He shouted. There was no reason for him to shout. We could have heard him perfectly from where we stood. His gaze settled on Edda. “Thirty minutes!” He reached around behind him, and pulled out a sash. I did not know from where.

He threw it at Edda, who only barely caught it before it fell to the sand. She grabbed it, hastily bound it around her waist, clasping it at her back. I felt Essence from her. Something that gave me the impression of waiting? A black box appeared at her front, where the sash met her uniform. It grew in size, until it was as large as what the other students carried. Edda staggered forward. She almost fell, before she righted herself at the right moment.

“Get to it!” The Inker barked. “Or do you wanna run for an hour instead!”

Edda bowed, or perhaps she barely kept herself from falling. She started to run towards the line of students off in the distance. To call it running would be rather generous.

The Inker looked at Ash and I. “You’re the new Consecrated, yes? If either of you expect special treatment, you can turn around and leave right now!”

Why was the man yelling? I had thought Ren’s normal volume too high. This man made her seem as quiet as a Hellrat.

Ash answered before I could. “We do not expect special treatment,” As she said this, she looked to me for confirmation. What, did she expect me to argue? Ash turned back to the man. “We only came here for instruction. Though, neither of us know just what kind of instruction this is.”

The Inker eyed her. Then he reached behind himself. This time, he pulled out two of those black sashes. He did not throw them. He stepped forward. Ash took one from him. He extended the other towards me. I took it. “Fine then. We’ll see if you really mean it! Listen up, cos I’m going to say this once, and only once!” His gaze drifted to our Lines. “Anyone can get a lucky mark or two from the Ink. I’ve seen plenty of spoiled brats get fancy marks before. If getting a fancy mark was all it took, the world would be a different place.”

“This class is called Body Conditioning. I trust you both know that much, at least?!” He yelled again. For seemingly no reason, again. Ash and I both nodded, though I did not want to. “Your body is as important as what you can do with Essence. The body is the vessel.” At this, his voice took on the intonations of a priest. “A Line can advance to a Sigil without a strong body, but that is foolish. It’s best to build the habit while you still can. Because the Conditioning required later on only ever gets harder.”

He turned from us, towards the students. “You are both going to run laps with them. It’s only your first day. So let’s say you both manage for…twenty minutes. If you make it even that far, I’ll be damned surprised.”

It was a rather arbitrary and simple training method. Some [Monks] in the old world had done something similar. It had been foolish then. Things like strength and stamina were governed by stats. If this was still that world, I would have turned around and left, and dragged Ash with me. In this world, one without a [System], there might yet be some merit to this after all. I would not dismiss this out of hand.

“Twenty minutes? You should double it, at the very least. You would still be surprised.” I said, arms folded.

He stared at me, then gestured at the sash. “Wrap it around yourself and channel Essence.” He waited.

Ash staggered forward next to me. I looked to her, and saw the same strange square pressed below her chest. I hadn’t seen her put the strange sash on. Very well then. It took only a moment to get the sash secured against myself. I channeled Essence into it, the barest fraction from the Ember Core. I would not so much as fli-

I staggered forward. My spine bowed before I could stop it, and for one second the sand rushed up at me. Instinct caught what dignity could not. I righted myself. The weight sat below my ribs like a second body had been bolted to my chest. My legs were shaking.

I reached for Essence. The Ember Core hummed beneath my ribs, as it always did, as it always would. Nothing came. The power sat inside me and would not move, as though the weight had locked every door between the core and my limbs. I had not felt this helpless since- No, I had never felt this helpless.

“What manner of contraption is this?” The words came out thinner than I permitted.

“That is an Essence Weight.” Inker Martial said, arms folded. “You will run with these for as long as you can. While wearing them, you cannot use Essence.”

“This is an infantile training method.” I meant the words to cut. They came out between my teeth instead, each one costing breath I did not have to spare.

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“Does that make you an infant, then?” The man did not smile. I think he simply did not care.

I glared at him. A thousand years ago, that glare would have ended not just the conversation, but also the man. I looked toward Ash. She stood steady. The weight sat on her far better than it did me. Hers was a body built for carrying weight. I had often made others carry mine.

The Inker tilted his head, reached behind himself again. He produced another sash, this time tying it around his own waist. The front of the sash warped, and now he had his own strange box. He had not so much as twitched. “Infantile. Was that the word you used?” The man frowned, and jumped.

I called it a jump. In truth, it was closer to a leap. He sailed straight up, two dozen feet in the air. For a moment, I almost thought he’d used [Flight]. His ascent stopped. He came back down again, landing limbly on the sand. “Any Crest can manage this much easily. I barely even feel this weight.” He turned, and gestured back towards the running students.

I noticed now that they’d been running in a circle, their footprints carving a track across the sand. “Like I said, twenty minutes. Try to manage at least half that.”

My left eye twitched. I had not bid it to. I turned toward the track. Twenty paces, perhaps twenty-five between us and the students already running, their feet carving a wide oval into the sand. Twenty-five paces was nothing. I had once crossed the breadth of the Dwarven capital in a single bound. I had once flown above clouds that would never see the ground.