Alex's shoulders, which had been tense with worry and anticipation over how the room he had spent five thousand points on would turn out, sagged down with relief as he took in the interior of the room he would be spending his next thirty minutes in.
The room contained nothing other than its four walls, ceiling and floor, all of which shone a glistening white, and it was filled with bright white light pouring from every top corner of the walls, so intensely that Alex had to fight the urge to squint.
"Your time has already begun and I would advise you not to idle at the door," Supervisor Tyson warned him.
"How will I know when the time ends?" Alex asked, which was the most important question on his mind. If not for it, he would have already dashed inside.
Tyson looked Alex up and down with an expression that Alex could not quite read, then Tyson raised a finger toward the top centre of the room's ceiling.
Alex followed the direction and found a timer displayed in small black digits, almost negligible to the eye, reading 29:41 and ticking down with every passing second.
Why is it so small? Alex nearly had to squint to make sense of the tiny numbers. But he held the question back. He had already formed a theory: the reason was likely that the room did not want to be a source of distraction for the student inside. Since it was a personal training room devoid of all interference, it would only be sensible for the timer to avoid obstructing a student's attention and stoking anxiety. Watching the time dwindle while knowing one had spent a good number of points on the room could create worry that would only harm training. He nodded his head as he became satisfied with his own reasoning.
Turning back to Supervisor Tyson, Alex asked, "What if I want to leave earlier?"
Tyson raised his right brow. "If you leave earlier, the time inside the room will not stop. To exit, you simply turn the door handle from the inside," he answered, and even went so far as to demonstrate by rotating the handle of the door, which could normally only be accessed from the inside of the room, though since both of them were still standing outside and the door had been pulled aside, Tyson was able to show him clearly enough.
Alex nodded. "Thank you," he said, and stepped through the doorway.
"The room is sturdy. Do not worry about breaking it," Tyson added, and closed the door shut behind him.
Alex had already learned that the room was pretty strong from observing its solid construction and the potent mana radiating within it. Even so, he appreciated that Tyson had said it anyway, even though it was not strictly necessary. One must be grateful when others show kindness. It was something his mother had always preached to him, and it was something he had long since taken to heart and made his own.
As Alex reached the centre of the room, he shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind. Rather than dwelling any longer, he began looking around the room once more, making himself comfortable and building a clearer understanding of his environment. He was scanning his surroundings, and though there was nothing more to them than four walls, a ceiling, a floor and a timer of inconceivable smallness, he swept his gaze over all of it deliberately and without hurry.
It was a habit he had been taught to develop, the practice of reading a space before engaging in combat. Understanding the terrain was one of the very important parts of combat as it would tell what the area would allow or deny him when it came to movement and attack. It was not needed here, of course, but there was no harm in taking a thorough look around.
And that scanning rewarded him, because he quickly discovered that the room was far larger than it had appeared from the outside. It was genuinely spacious and enormous, the kind of room that could comfortably hold three or four of the dormitory rooms he had been assigned at the academy, and still have space remaining.
He also noticed that despite there being no windows, ventilators, or anything of a similar kind, he did not feel the least bit suffocated. On top of that, the room was thick with potent mana, so rich and full that it made him want to sprint in circles without stopping. The mana inside was at least three or four times more concentrated than it was in the outside world.
How much more potent would the mana be in the more expensive rooms? Alex could not help but feel a pull of curiosity, a desire to try the other rooms and understand the difference by himself.
All of a sudden, Alex clapped both palms firmly against his cheeks. "Focus, Alex. Be grateful for this room," he reminded himself aloud. Wanting bigger and better things was not wrong in itself, but failing to appreciate what he already had was, and that kind of thinking would only get in the way of his training.
He looked up and narrowed his eyes at the small black digits of the timer. It already read 27:20, which meant only twenty-seven minutes and twenty seconds remained. Now nineteen seconds.
Alex shook his head and drew the sword he had purchased from the treasury hall out from his dimensional space, where he had stored it previously.
The blade gleamed under the white light of the room, its sharp edge shining brighter than he had seen before. Alex tightened his grip on the hilt and took a long, slow breath in, filling his lungs to their full capacity, then released it steadily through his mouth.
The anxiety and tension slipped away from him as he took one more long breath.
Alex closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the hilt once more. He focused on the power residing within him, on the mana inside his body that he had only come to acquire after his level had increased.
Previously, when he had been stuck at level one, he had possessed no mana at all. Feeling it was still foreign to him. Though he had practiced before, in the hope of increasing his level, none of it had ever borne any real fruit. So he could only rely on what he had managed to learn so far, drawn from the books he had read on the subject of mana and how to sense it.
He began drawing in his breaths slowly, the way a turtle moves through a long stretch of open road, unhurried and steady.
He focused on the rhythm of air entering his body through his nose, travelling down through the back of his throat and into his lungs. He focused on the rise of his chest. He focused on releasing the air back out through his nose.
Then he felt the rhythm of his blood, his heart thumping steadily within his ribcage, its beating slow and even, almost like a quiet piece of music playing.
He felt the sensation of blood moving through his veins, and then, gradually, he felt his skin and his body as a whole. He became one with himself.
He could feel things he had never truly felt before. Mana. He felt mana for the first time, truly felt it. The mana was spread all throughout his body, in his organs, in his skin, in his bones, in his veins, and in his blood. It was not packed densely inside him but rather sparse and scattered, a faint web of energy spread across every part of him, leaking gently outward from his body. It had no solid shape, no form, nothing but a quiet flow of energy that encompassed him entirely.
He willed that mana toward his palm. It obeyed, shifting through him, moving toward his hand and then pooling at his palm. He focused on the grip of his fingers around the hilt of the sword, then guided the mana forward into the hilt itself, and felt the same sensation he had experienced back at the treasury hall, when the sword's blade had burned with a dark glow. He held that memory clearly in his mind, and murmured, "Minor Death Sword Aura," speaking the name of the skill, he immersed himself entirely in the image of his blade radiating that same black light.
Alex stepped his left leg back and placed his right leg slightly forward, adjusting his body into a diagonal stance with one foot leading and the other anchoring behind him. He raised the sword up, lifting his arm high above his head. Then he drew one final long breath in, held himself completely in the present moment, and as he released the breath through his nose, he brought the blade diagonally downward in a single, deliberate cut.
He opened his azure eyes.
A clean diagonal line had been carved into the wall ahead of him, a sharp and unmistakable mark left behind by the edge of his sword.
A smile bloomed slowly across Alex's face as a trickle of sweat crept down from his forehead.
***
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