by Sarah Lin
Rick started with an experimental punch and H simply slipped aside, footwork cautious and movements smooth. He tried again, aiming directly for his opponent's core, this time forcing some blocks. As Rick felt out his opponent, sensing no particular style, he sped up until he finished with a burst of speed and slammed his elbow into his opponent's chest.
Or tried. Rick realized his elbow had been caught and tried to pull back, only for a wave of aura to send him heels over head to the ground.
The rubbery floor was surprisingly soft, likely painless even without his defensive core, but being so easily blocked stung a bit. Rick pulled himself up and saw H simply waiting, so he raised his fists and tried again.
Again they made contact several times, but now Rick was familiar enough with his opponent to notice something odd: H was exactly as fast as he was. Normally with lucrim flowing through two fighters, one of them would have a slight edge, allowing for or requiring different techniques. It couldn't be accidental, yet Rick still failed to break through.
Using his Bunyan's Step core wouldn't be effective, but his basic offensive Lucore could help his speed a little. Rick focused on it, striking at a greater speed... only to find that H matched him exactly. He was keeping them even, forcing the fight to be about pure hand-to-hand skill.
And once again, when Rick attempted to get in close, he failed. H caught his knee, turned aside his elbow, and knocked him to the ground with another wave of force.
This time Rick managed to catch himself as he tumbled over the floor, but there was no getting around the fact that he was being soundly beaten. No, not beaten, he was being outfought. Grimacing, Rick set his feet, then burst forward in a Bunyan's Step that propelled him forward as quickly as he could manage.
He had a split second to see his opponent's arm, then he slammed back against the floor.
"That's what I mean." H lowered his arm and stared down at him. "Many lucrim fighters are actually terrible at melee combat, but they have enough speed and strength to overwhelm their opponents. You... aren't as abysmal as that, but you have some bad habits. For example, you're overly reliant on elbow strikes. They might work with superior speed, but against an equal opponent, your range is simply too limited."
"But usually I have a speed edge, or I'm not trying to out-speed my opponent at all."
"That's no excuse for sloppiness. Why exactly did you choose this style?"
Though the question came scornfully, Rick realized after a moment that it was actually sincere. He slowly got to his feet, deciding to be honest. "Throwing punches is too risky. When I was younger I saw a man punch a defensive core and shatter a bunch of bones in his hand. I thought elbows and knees were better supported, so I started training muay thai."
"Avoiding catastrophic injury is a reasonable decision." Instead of more invective, H simply nodded to him. "But it's holding you back now. I'm not suggesting that you completely change what you know. But as you increase the strength of your Lucores, we also need to improve your combat instincts."
"Seems fair." Rick rubbed his neck where it had been struck. "But that won't keep me from running straight into opponents."
"Yes, that's a weakness. That Lucore will either need to be dissolved, or we'll adapt. Let's review your portfolio." H waved a hand and a screen manifested in the air, listing his familiar cores.
[Name: Rick Hunter
Ether Tier: 12th
Ether Score: 442
Lucrim Generation: 87,100
Current Lucrim: 23,750]
[Rick Hunter's Lucrima Portfolio
Foundation: 3700 (Lv VI)
Dark Blood Kettle: 17,100 (Lv IV)
Offensive Lucore: 13,400 (Lv VII)
Defensive Lucore: 37,000 (Lv IX)
Bunyan's Step: 15,150 (Lv VIII)
Graham's Stake: 23,950 (Lv IV)
Demonic Bond (Bftgage & Ythsil): 750 (Stage I)
Demon Mass: 500 (N/A)
Total Lucrim: 111,050]
"This Bunyan's Step core is actually surprisingly advanced," H said after observing briefly. "I wouldn't have expected you to have the materials for it, but it seems you've scrounged up a few. So we'll keep it and train you in footwork designed for supersonic speeds. You aren't completely brain dead, so combined with improved sensory capabilities, it should be adequate."
The advancement of the Lucore must have been at least in part due to Tom and Damian, so Rick silently thanked the two. He liked the idea of learning more advanced footwork, since he could understand how conventional martial arts fell behind eventually. But as H continued to speak, he liked the sound of the plan much less.
"This Dark Blood Kettle is... adequate. It will do for a secondary foundation, at least for now. But your base foundation is dull beyond belief, and this Offensive Lucore is frankly pathetic. We're going to melt both down and form something called the Midas Foundation. That will serve as a real base for power that can hold the other remaining Lucores."
"Wait, you want me to entirely transform my foundation?" Rick didn't want to cause problems on his first day, but to completely change his portfolio like that... "Just what is this Midas Foundation?"
"It's a proprietary foundation type that is best suited for you. Don't worry, you won't lose any overall generation rate. Some things about your base skills will change, but it will put you on the right path."
"You said you wanted me ready in a month. Completely transforming a foundation and getting me back into fighting shape would take longer than that."
H waved vaguely. "Sometimes there are more important things than short term strength."
"No. That... if you really want me to use this Midas Foundation, I need it explained to me a lot better than that."
"It's a bit beyond your current level of understanding."
"Then I don't think I'm qualified to use it. There has to be another solution."
Though H glared at him, when Rick didn't back down, the man let out an irritated growl. "I suppose a clumsier solution would be giving you a new Lucore that will cover your deficiencies. A new foundation would be the superior choice, but I'll give you a chance. If you can meet every single mark I set for your base skills, I'll let you try the Lucore solution. If not, you remake your foundation."
Rick hesitated, but knew that he didn't have much leverage. "Deal. I'm willing to look into the new foundation if you can convince me, I just want to know what I'm getting into."
"Most of it will be familiar. Take a break while I assemble some materials, then I'll show you what you'll be working with to start."
Finally Rick was allowed to enter one of the other doors, which was thankfully not as blank as the training chamber. Unfortunately, it was a rather spare room with nothing but a cot, a shelf, a table, and a chair. Was this where he would be training for the next month? Not much worse than his cabin, he supposed, and probably better than his old apartment.
Alone for a while, Rick took his luggage from the other room and set it on the bed. He investigated the shelf more carefully, but it only had a few books on lucrim that had nothing to do with him and some metal containers. Those containers proved to have ration packs that struck him as military, yet not in a way he could specifically pinpoint. The contents proved to be sandpapery nutrient bars, but they were at least filling.
Accepting that this was where he would pursue his next goal, Rick sat down on the bed and began his usual exercises. He was only partway done when H entered the room again, carrying what looked like a mechanic's tool case. It opened to reveal a sizzling rainbow of vials and pills.
"We won't start you on high end philosopher's elixir yet, but we'll begin with the more difficult supplements," H said as he removed select items. "There's no sense wasting money on you if you're going to prove to be an idiot. But just enduring these should be enough to prepare you for whichever step comes next."
When he closed the case, H had removed a glowing thermos, two pills, and six vials... and three rubber balls. Rick looked at them, trying to figure
out if they were containers for something, or god forbid giant pills, but they appeared to be completely normal rubber. "What are these for?"
H regarded him flatly. "If you're going to ignore the Midas Foundation like a clown, you need to learn how to juggle."
Chapter 11: Juggling Training
The juggling thing was not a joke: when Rick was exhausted from all his physical and lucrim training, he picked up the rubber balls and learned how to juggle. Most of his routine was completely coherent, but not that.
Every morning he took a number of pills along with breakfast, which proved challenging on their own - he could feel them burning through his system. Most of the morning was spent on fundamental lucrim exercises, trimming the fat and gathering free lucrim for a new Lucore. Or a foundation, if his performance proved inadequate.
In the afternoons H trained him mercilessly with sparring sessions that ended with a burst of aura the instant he fell into old habits. It would take a long time to retrain old habits, so whenever H became too frustrated, they switched to training his new footwork. That captured Rick's attention easily, helping him move more freely with the Bunyan's Step and smoothly use it in multiple directions.
By the evening he was exhausted and battered, risking overtraining. Though he technically had the evenings free, he was given reading to complete and he wanted to do some training of his own. He couldn't risk pushing himself past the breaking point, but he could draw up the Dark Blood Kettle to absorb what he'd experienced in the day.
After all of that, he collapsed exhausted every night. Fortunately their rooms were nearly completely sound-proof, and he controlled the lights, so there was nothing to keep him from getting great nights of sleep. Which meant he could rise early to begin the next day.
There seemed to be absolutely nothing stopping him from leaving, so Rick didn't mind his seclusion. He had internet access and had done enough research to find out that they were staying at a perfectly normal, if expensive, training center. They had half the top floor entirely to themselves, forming a series of bedrooms and supply closets alongside the main training room.
Occasionally through an open door he heard staff in the hallway, but they never disturbed him. It was actually possible to order room service, though Rick decided that was unnecessary extravagance. He kept eating the awful nutrient bars and whatever else he was given to balance his diet. If he was here to train, he was going to train.
H himself came and went, aside from their core afternoon training sessions. Though he had set up in one of the other bedrooms, and it was the only room that was locked, when Rick got a look inside it was completely empty. Most of his mentor's time was spent away from the training center, monitoring the developing Showdown events and looking for other talent. It made Rick wonder if H had been training anyone else while in Branton, but H refused to answer irrelevant questions by simply ignoring them.
Overall, Rick was reasonably comfortable, both with his situation and his decision. The one fly in the ointment was the Midas Foundation, which bothered him in a way he couldn't quite pin down. Research online turned up absolutely nothing, so either it really was extremely proprietary or it was going by another name. Either way, Rick was more comfortable strengthening what he already knew than abandoning it for something else.
Though his life was mostly training, it was satisfying enough. He could still video chat with Melissa from time to time and there were no longer any major distracting concerns about his life. So long as he kept up with the brutal training regimen, he was getting paid to train and padding his investment Lucores. It didn't get much better than that.
Juggling proved a little obnoxious, since it seemed irrelevant, but Rick set himself to it. After a few video tutorials and some practice, he managed to get the basics. Since he only had three balls, it wasn't overly difficult. A week into their schedule, when H arrived for their sparring session, Rick was waiting for him and juggling three balls.
"Congratulations on your basic hand-eye coordination." H reached out and snatched all three balls from him. "I'll have a heavier set of them for you tomorrow."
"Obviously there's no Showdown juggling event." Rick was never sure how far he could push H, but he decided that after a week of being obedient, he had some slack. "I assume you're doing this as some sort of classic indirect training, as opposed to just busywork."
"If that's so, then why question the wisdom of my training?"
"You're just going to give me slightly heavier versions? That's too easy. If you want me to grow, you should challenge me. Show me your endgame here."
For several long seconds H glared at him, and then, to Rick's shock, a tortured sort of smile passed across his face. "Maybe you're right. Fine, take them back and we'll do this in a different order. Start juggling again."
Blinking, Rick caught the balls as they were tossed to him and began his usual pattern. It went fine until H tried to punch him in the face.
On instinct Rick dodged away, but that meant that the rubber balls fell to the ground. H merely grunted "Again" and kicked the balls at him.
The second time, Rick managed to shift just his head to avoid the first punch, but the second was a body blow. Somehow he managed to jerk his elbow down to deflect the strike in between throwing one ball and catching another. Yet the next moment H kicked him directly in the chest, sending him falling backwards and obviously losing his juggling pattern.
"You'll be ready when you can keep juggling through all of that." H ignored him and walked over to his room, dragging out his case of tools. Rick stared at him a while, and when no further explanation was forthcoming, decided to object again.
"Do you mean that my defenses need to be so good that I can stay completely in place? Maybe I could do it with enough defense or speed, but even if I could, wouldn't that be forming weird habits?"
"I may not be a hand-to-hand specialist, but you're not going to become strong enough to stop me that way. No, you need to keep juggling through taking hits."
Rick narrowed his eyes. "That's not possible. The physics of it don't make any sense if you're knocking me around, not unless you mean anticipate what will happen so far ahead..."
"No, you're going to juggle with pure aura. Like this." H found what he wanted and rose, holding three silver spheres in one hand. He started to juggle them one-handed... until they began to spin on their own. While H kept his hand flat and approached him, the spheres spun in a circle above his hand. "The problem with this technique is that it requires you to be able to multitask far better than most warriors can. So we started with normal juggling to get you used to it."
"But these weren't the spheres you wanted me to use?" Rick reached out to snatch one of them, his hand easily breaking the aura sending the spheres circling. When it touched his palm, however, a shiver passed through his entire body.
Gasping, Rick dropped down to one knee, struggling to hold up the silver sphere. It buzzed and vibrated strangely, but the worst part was the ripples it sent through his lucrima soul. As if it had been designed to disrupt the normal smooth flow of his lucrim and his aura... and that was probably exactly what they had been designed to do.
"Now you're seeing it. Try all three." H dropped the other two spheres into his hands.
Though Rick made a couple abortive attempts to juggle, he soon realized he'd just humiliate himself. Simply holding his balance and maintaining his aura was difficult while holding the disruptive spheres. Just gaining the ability to do that would be training of a sort, though he suspected there was a deeper meaning still coming.
Instead of pushing further, Rick decided to focus fully on advancing. He was eager for the challenge for its own sake, plus he'd actually impressed H a little. Best to not waste any of that. Rick stopped trying to juggle and just rotated the spheres in one hand, struggling against their effect.
"I obviously need more time to adjust to these," Rick said. "So the final goal is to be able to juggle these with my aura while engaging in real combat?"
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br /> "That will be the sign that you're ready, but it's not the goal." H glanced toward his case of supplies, his face again sour. "I don't have them on hand, since I still think this is an inferior path for you, but in the end you'll create tools in place of the spheres. Instead of fighting you, they'll assist you. But if you try to use them without sufficient presence of mind, you'll just hurt yourself worse than you usually do."
"Got it. Knowing what I'm going for makes this a lot more interesting." But the spheres were starting to make his entire arm numb, so Rick had to set them down. "You're right that those are a bit much for me, so maybe it would be better t-"
"No, I was softballing you. Let's take this up a notch." H flicked a finger and the rubber balls flew to his hand. "I have two more exercises for you: maintaining normal juggling while releasing fully powered strikes, and juggling using aura. Try to master the disruptive effect in your own time."
"And then we fuse all three together?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself. See if you can kick me without falling over."
H shifted into a defensive stance and urged him to strike, so Rick began with the new exercise. It felt bizarre to be juggling while trying to kick at an opponent, but now that he understood the true purpose of the task, he was far more motivated. Keeping proper form with his kicks while simultaneously juggling felt impossible at first, then simply a bizarre contortion, but he could feel the mental workout.
After he had the basics down, H showed him the basic technique for juggling using aura. Rick had expected it to be the simple application of concentrating aura into "hands" that could manipulate matter, a common trick to those who could afford it. Instead, it proved to be something much more fascinating.
Instead of his aura flowing with his breaths, H taught him how to develop a swirling pattern. His aura surrounded the spheres and caught them up in it, so they rotated completely naturally. At least that was the idea. Rick couldn't crack such an unusual technique in their first session and H only pressed him until it was clear that he truly understood the underlying premise.
