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At eight o'clock the next morning, the students of Class Four straggled into the Sunstone Martial Arts Gym. From the oppressive, gloomy atmosphere that hung heavy in the air, one could feel that the collective resentment was thick enough to sustain ten despair-wraiths.
Regarding this, Ethan, Marcus, and Seraphina could only offer a silent, slightly guilty apology in their hearts. Sorry, fellow students. This was kind of our idea.
Before long, Mr. Gordon also arrived. Looking at the straggling, listless crowd before him, Mr. Gordon spoke in a stern, commanding tone, "Why does none of you have any spirit? Didn't I sacrifice my own valuable rest time to come here and personally train you? Your mission, your entire purpose as psionicists in this era, is to fight monstrous beasts and reclaim our lost territories. If you're like this now, so defeated and lethargic, when you eventually see a real, slavering monster, it's estimated it could just eat you, turn your bones into fertilizer, and you wouldn't even have time to react! Sweat more now, so you can bleed less later!"
But it was obvious that the world's most unified and time-honored teacher-speech had absolutely no effect on them. The students remained as listless as ever, their faces full of a quiet, stubborn reluctance. It had to be said, this generation of students, daring to so openly express their true feelings of discontent in front of their teacher, was actually pretty gutsy in its own way.
Mr. Gordon, looking at the spiritless students before him, simply smiled. He slowly lifted the secure case in his hand, a confident, almost cunning expression on his face. He opened the case, revealing three vials of psionic potion, each emitting a soft, silvery-white glow, lying quietly nestled in the foam padding.
"These," he announced, his voice carrying through the suddenly quiet gym, "are all beginner-grade psionic potions. As I said, this supplementary training will last for half a month. On the final day, I will conduct a comprehensive assessment tournament. The top three performers in that tournament will receive these potions as their reward. Of course," he added with a pointed look, "only those students who participate for the full half-month are eligible to take part in the final assessment."
As soon as these words were spoken, the entire atmosphere in the gym shifted. The students instantly became energized, their earlier gloom evaporating like mist in the morning sun.
"Ah, my battle spirit is surging! I feel it!"
"Those potions are mine! No one's stealing them from me!"
"Isn't it just a full half-month of training? The class starts at two in the afternoon, right? I'll go for a conditioning run right after I get back home today!"
The vast majority of students in this class were from ordinary, middle-class families. How could they possibly afford such expensive psionic potions on their own? Most of them had only ever had the chance to drink one or two vials at most, usually provided by the school before major exams, and a large portion had never even had a single precious drop. They could only rely on their own slow, routine Aura channeling. Now that there was a chance to get one for free, simply by training hard, how could they not go absolutely crazy with motivation?
You have to know, a single vial of potion represented their hope for breaking through a rank bottleneck, a chance to leap ahead! Ethan, on the other hand, didn't feel much of a personal thrill; after all, he was still sitting on a small hoard of advanced potions and two powerful Aura Cores. The prize was nice, but not life-changing for him.
Seeing that everyone's emotions had been successfully mobilized, Mr. Gordon began to get down to business. "This half-month of training is mainly to temper your practical combat ability. Your basic physical quality—your strength, your speed, your resilience—will naturally increase with your psionic rank. But if you persist in focused physical training, you can also continue to become stronger beyond those passive gains. However, that requires constant, years-long perseverance. Just training for half a month, no matter how hard you push, you won't get far in terms of raw physical enhancement. So, for this training, we'll skip the boring basic exercises and go straight to learning advanced combat techniques."
Hearing Mr. Gordon's words, the students below became very happy, their enthusiasm growing even more.
"That's great! I honestly thought this supplementary training was just going to be about making us run laps, do push-ups, and train our bodies until we dropped. I didn't expect it to be practical, cool stuff right from the start!"
"Yeah, when I used to watch old pre-Resurgence action movies, those people always had to practice basic skills and physical fitness for years and years before they could learn any real martial arts. At the time, I always thought it looked so troublesome. I didn't expect that we actually don't have to do all that."
A more thoughtful student chimed in, "It's not that we don't have to; it's just that the order is reversed for us psionicists. Our power comes first. Right now, he's teaching us the advanced application techniques first, and we'll only learn the more foundational theories and conditioning skills after the new school year officially starts."
"That's still great! When other students in other schools can only be methodical and rigid in a fight, throwing basic punches and kicks, we'll already be able to fight with proper, advanced form. This is a huge advantage!"
At this point, the students' collective excitement had reached its peak. They were ready and eager to learn.
Mr. Gordon nodded, satisfied. "Alright, then I declare that this training session officially begins!" Just as he was about to start, a girl in the front row raised her hand.
"Do you have a question?" Mr. Gordon asked.
The student stood. "Teacher, I'm a support-type psionicist. Do I also need to learn these close-combat things?"
Mr. Gordon's expression turned serious. "That's a very good, and a very important, question. Everyone, remember this: in a real battle, the enemy will not go easy on you just because you are a support-type. On the contrary, you will almost always become their first target. This is because as long as you are dealt with, your teammates will lose their buffs, their healing, their protection, and the battle will become much easier for the enemy to resolve. Therefore, even support-types, including those of you who have awakened powerful elemental abilities, absolutely must learn how to protect yourselves at close range. This way, when an enemy inevitably gets close to you, you will at least have the fundamental ability to fight back, to create an opportunity to escape. Understood?"
"Understood!" the class roared in unison.
"Very good! With your current abilities, you are all still far from being able to handle a truly powerful monstrous beast in single combat. But you will definitely encounter some human deviants in your lives. I believe everyone here has heard about those evil cults that plague our society. They are all anti-human traitors, and they are ruthless. Not to mention evil cults, even in our daily lives, it's inevitable that we will encounter some vicious and desperate criminals. So, for this training, I will first teach everyone how to effectively fight against people. If you encounter such trouble in the future, you will all have the ability to resist, to defend yourselves and others. So give me your full attention, learn well, and if you don't understand something, you come and ask me immediately."
"Understood!"
Mr. Gordon then began to demonstrate a set of highly efficient, fluid close-quarters combat techniques for everyone. "This combat system has been continuously improved over hundreds of years since the Aura Resurgence, based on thousands of years of pre-Resurgence martial arts from across the globe. It's a modern, close-quarters combat technique developed from extensive research and real-world application by psionic soldiers. This single set of combat techniques covers boxing techniques, various kicking techniques, and crucial body movement and footwork techniques. When you fight against other people using this set of combat techniques, you will hold a great advantage. This is something that is normally only taught in detail when you get to a top-tier university."
A student piped up, "Then what if two people who both know it fight each other?"
Mr. Gordon smirked. "Then the winner will certainly be the one with the better physical quality, the faster reaction time, and who is more proficient and creative in applying the combat techniques."
"You, your punch speed is too slow! Put your hip into it!"
"You, your evasive body movement is too wide! You're leaving your entire flank exposed!"
"You, your kick doesn't need to be that high! You're sacrificing stability for a flashy move that will get you killed!"
Mr. Gordon immediately transformed into a demon instructor, tirelessly moving through the crowd of students, pointing out their incorrect movements with sharp, precise critiques. Among them, Marcus and Seraphina performed the best. After all, they had been exposed to this kind of formal training before and had practiced it themselves in their family training halls. Although Ethan had never practiced formal combat techniques like this, his psionic rank was high, and his physical endurance was stronger than most others, so his performance was still quite decent, allowing him to pick up the movements quickly.
Just like that, from two in the afternoon until six in the evening, for four full, grueling hours, Ethan basically didn't rest. He had a bit more energy than the others, so he pushed himself to his absolute physical limits with each repetition. He would only stop for a short, gasping while when he was completely and utterly exhausted, his training clothes drenched in sweat, and panting heavily. The difficulty of the combat techniques was higher than he had imagined. With his current Rank One, Level Six physique, just performing a few of the more complex moves would make him feel tired. After going through a complete set, he was already sweating profusely. Four consecutive hours of this high-intensity exercise made his body feel a bit overwhelmed, his muscles screaming in protest.
This continued for a full week. Every single day for that week, he would practice relentlessly with his classmates. When others were taking a break, he would still be training, pushing his own physical stamina to the absolute limit each and every session. He pushed himself so hard because he knew, deep down, that although he had technically beaten Marcus in their sparring session, it was all because he had the overwhelming advantage of multiple, versatile alien forms. Furthermore, Marcus, at his core, still liked to fight primarily with brute force, which gave Ethan's more tactical forms an advantage. If Ethan were to fight him using only Four Arms, and Marcus truly utilized these advanced combat techniques he was learning so quickly, then Ethan knew he would be no match for him at all in a pure contest of skill.
He was very clear in his heart that he was not yet as strong as he had imagined, and there was still a noticeable gap in pure fighting skill between him and his two closest friends. He had to close that gap.
Shiny stones motivates me to throw CHAPTERS so throw them on these fic