Alex gasped for breath as he sat low on the ground. His knees were bent and drawn close to his body, his torso arched forward and his arms rested over his knees. His clothes were drenched completely in sweat, and even more of it trickled down his face and over every inch of him. The lightweight shirt clung to his skin like it had been submerged in water, and the same could be said for the shorts he wore.
He drew in long, steady breaths to calm the short, ragged gasps that kept escaping him. Unable to hold himself upright any longer, he released the sword he had been clutching and let himself fall flat to the floor. He heard a crack as every part of his body went slack, and he spread his arms and legs wide, making sure first that the sword's blade was turned away, where it could not cut his skin or worse if he grew careless.
Alex stared up at the ceiling. The timer was ticking down with every second. The clock currently read 1:25 in small black digits that Alex had to squint at, partly because of how small it was and partly because so much sweat had gathered around his eyes that keeping his eyelids open for long was a struggle.
His face was completely soaked, and despite lying still on the floor, the sweat had not slowed at all. That alone said everything about how hard he had pushed himself in the past thirty minutes. Well, not quite thirty minutes, since he had wasted some time at the very start, but the fact remained that he had spent a considerable stretch of it inside this white-walled room.
His chest kept rising and falling as he swallowed breath after breath. He could feel his heart thumping harder and harder against his ribcage, pumping blood fast and faster. He felt his veins pulsing throughout his body as they carried the blood to his whole body. His muscles ached with a deep soreness, his shoulders and arms especially, from how relentlessly he had swung the sword without rest.
He had trained physically and practiced with a sword all the time back home. But during those sessions he would take breaks in between, look out at the open sky and the surrounding nature, and allow himself to breathe. So he had never truly felt what he was feeling now. Rest was one of the more significant reasons he had been able to train for such long hours back then. Another factor was the potions he had constant access to. He had an abundance of them and had never once needed to worry about running low. That was what had allowed him to push further during those training sessions.
But he did not have that luxury now. Nor did he have the freedom to rest, because resting meant losing time, and the timer would not stop simply because he stopped training. So, to make sure every point he had spent to get access to the room was well spent, he had not stopped except for a few seconds here and there, or a couple of minutes at most, to ensure he was getting the maximum benefit out of the training room.
Alex's chest rose once more to take in a breath, and through a dull ache of pain, he shifted his body and looked around at the walls of the room. There were cracks and cuts along all four sides, formed from his practice strokes. Horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonal slashes and other haphazard marks covered the surfaces. Some had split deep into the material, while others were shallow cuts or small holes left behind by straight thrusting practice.
But that was not actually what had drawn his attention to the walls. What he was more focused on was the fact that the cracks were healing in real time, literally closing before his eyes, as though the walls were not some inanimate material but a living thing.
The first diagonal line he had carved into it had already healed completely, the wall at that spot glistening white and returned to its original state. The later lines and cracks were being restored as he watched, slowly and visibly, right before his eyes. It was like watching the wall travel backward in time, new material forming around the broken parts to cover and reclaim them. It was a marvelous sight, unlike anything he had ever seen. Not even his own home could boast something like it despite the fact that they were one of only four grand ducal houses.
Drakethorne house could have built something like this, he supposed, but Alex thought the likely reason they had not was simply because they had open training grounds and there was no need for such enclosed rooms.
If anyone among them wished to train privately, they could have guards and servants secure the perimeter and allow no one to disturb them. And they did have rooms for personal meditation, rooms where Alex himself had sat alone on many occasions. But nothing quite like this. Perhaps the constant maintenance such a room would require had made it impractical, or perhaps his house had a room like this somewhere and he had simply never known about it.
Alex shook his head. There was no point in thinking too much about it. He had already gotten what he came to the training hall for in the first place. He had wanted to properly feel his mana and to use his new skill, and he had done both. Right now he could feel his mana without having to strain his focus the way he had when he first stepped inside this room. He had learned, too, that the skill did not need much to be activated or, perhaps more precisely, to be used. All he had to do was think about the skill or speak its name in his mind or aloud, and it would activate so long as his body had mana.
That last part he had learned the bitter way. After he had finally grasped the skill fully, he had practiced the skill over and over until the skill simply stopped activating, and only then had he realized he had burned through all of his mana.
The room was filled with ambient mana that was constantly replenishing what he used, but the fact was that he had been consuming mana faster than it was being refilled, and for a frightening moment he had thought he had lost the ability to use his skill entirely. It was only later, when it worked again, that he checked his status window and thought it through and arrived at the understanding that the skill required mana to function.
Even though he had read a great number of books, there was a difference between knowing something on the page and experiencing it in your own body. He had read that skills required mana, and that some skills required such a negligible amount that it barely counted as using mana at all, while other skills required none whatsoever. That information had simply slipped away from him in the heat of the moment.
"Haah," he sighed, shaking his head, feeling a little embarrassed by the fact that he had been so caught up in his excitement back then that he had not noticed the faint drain creeping through his body, or the dizziness that had begun edging in as his mana ran dry. Part of that was because he was still unaccustomed to sensing his mana properly due to him not having any experience with mana before getting his level increase. The other part was simply that the excitement had been loud enough to drown out the warning signs. Otherwise he surely would have caught it much earlier, before the skill stopped responding entirely.
Alex pressed himself slowly up from the floor and got to his feet. He almost stumbled forward and barely caught himself before going down again. His entire body was wrecked with soreness and a bone-deep fatigue, and his body cracked multiple times as he finally stood upright. His legs shook as he took the first step toward his sword lying on the ground.
He bit his lower lip as he bent forward to pick it up. "How am I supposed to attend class today," he muttered to himself, and then straightened and stored the sword back into his dimensional space.
He lifted his head toward the timer just as it hit 00:00. The door of the room swung open on its own, catching Alex off guard.
Standing out in the hallway was Supervisor Tyson, arms folded across his chest. He walked into the room at an unhurried pace, his eyes moving immediately to take in the state of the walls. He turned his head slowly, making a full rotation to survey the damage from every angle. At last he brought his gaze around to rest on Alex.
"Looks like you squeezed every last point out of what you paid for," he remarked in his casual way, stopping a few steps in front of Alex. He added, "You must be satisfied with the results."
"Yeah," Alex said, nodding. It was only natural for him to make sure he got the full value out of something he had paid for. "I think the five thousand points were worth it."
"Indeed. You nearly destroyed the room completely. If you told me it was not worth it, I would almost slap myself." Tyson added a bit sarcastically that did not match his face and build.
Alex let out a small chuckle.
"Could you help me walk to the exit?" Alex asked hopefully after seeing the man's sarcastic words.
However, unlike Alex's assumption, Tyson narrowed his eyes and looked him over from head to toe. And instead of answering or moving to help, Tyson started tapping his foot against the floor. "Your mana is no longer leaking out the way it was before, but it still needs work," he said, nodding to himself. The words felt foreign to Alex as Tyson didn't acknowledge Alex's request and instead said something in a direction that had nothing at all to do with what Alex had asked.
Then, all at once, Tyson raised his right hand out in front of him, palm facing upward. A small glass vial appeared in it seemingly out of thin air, most likely drawn from his dimensional space. It was filled with a blue liquid, and small bubbles shimmered and popped quietly against the glass.
Alex stared at the vial.
Is he going to give the potion to me? he thought. But why?
Alex almost felt embarrassed at how quickly he had arrived at that conclusion with no solid proof. But what other reason could there be for Tyson to take out a potion right now, in front of him, in the middle of this conversation? Surely he was not doing it to taunt Alex. The only other explanation was that he intended to offer it to him, which brought Alex right back where he had assumed it was for him.
"Take the potion and drink it," Tyson said, holding the vial out toward him.
Alex looked at him carefully, unable to quite believe that a man he had only seen twice, once during the written entrance exam and once today, would simply offer him a potion. No matter how he turned the thought over, he could not make it fit. He had not known Tyson before entering the academy.
"But why?" he asked, still doubtful. "I don't think we know each other well enough for this."
Tyson did not flinch. "It is not for free," he said plainly. "You will pay me three thousand points for it." His eyes drifted briefly to the golden bracelet on Alex's wrist.
Alex wanted to facepalm himself for his wishful thoughts. He felt embarrassment creeping him from inside for thinking that the man was giving him the potion for free. He should have realized beforehand that of course the potion was not for free. And how could it even be for free in the first place.
***
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