I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

After class in the afternoon, Richard followed Warren through the hallway behind the gymnasium.

A handmade poster was taped to the door. "Greenwood Fighting Club" was written in thick black marker, with a clenched fist drawn beside it.

The fist wasn’t drawn very well. The five fingers were uneven in thickness, looking something like a string of sausages.

Warren pushed the door open, and a mixed smell of sweat and leather washed over them.

The activity room wasn’t large, about the size of two classrooms combined.

Two punching bags hung against the wall, and a few sets of dumbbells and barbells were piled in a corner.

The barbell plates were of varying sizes; some were even homemade from concrete.

There were five or six people in the room.

Two were hitting the punching bags, one was doing push-ups in a corner, and another three were sitting around on a mat, chatting.

Of the two hitting the bags, one was exceptionally sturdy, with shoulders as broad as a door panel.

Every time he smashed his fist into the canvas bag, it would let out a dull THUD.

"Fraser!" Warren shouted at the sturdy guy.

The man with the door-panel shoulders stopped his punches and turned around.

Fraser wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his bandaged hand, sizing Richard up.

"Who’s this?"

"My classmate, Williams," Warren introduced. "The one who took second place in the Cicero Cup."

Fraser’s eyebrows twitched.

"The Latin one?"

"Yep."

Fraser scanned Richard from top to bottom, his gaze lingering on his arms and shoulders for two seconds.

"What are you doing at the Fighting Club? Want to learn how to fight?"

"I want to borrow your equipment to train my Strength," Richard said honestly.

Fraser’s expression shifted from scrutiny to confusion.

"Train your Strength?" He looked at Richard’s physique. "With your foundation..."

"I know my foundation is poor," Richard didn’t shy away. "That’s why I’m here to borrow equipment."

Fraser shrugged.

"Fine, use whatever you want."

He jabbed a thumb toward the pile of dumbbells in the corner.

"The dumbbells and barbells are free to use. Take turns with the punching bags. No eating on the mats."

"There’s no club fee, but you have to pay five pence a month for equipment maintenance. It’s for buying bandages and repairing the bags."

"No problem."

"One more thing," Fraser added.

"If you get injured here, you’re responsible for yourself. Don’t go crying to the headmaster that we beat you up."

"Understood."

Fraser nodded and turned back to the punching bag.

Richard walked to the corner and picked out the lightest pair of dumbbells from the pile.

He sat on the edge of the mat and began doing dumbbell curls.

His movements were slow. He deliberately controlled the speed and range of motion of each curl.

His breathing rhythm was locked in with his movements: inhaling as he lowered the weight, exhaling as he lifted it.

The first set of ten left his arms slightly sore.

The second set of eight, and his biceps began to burn.

The third set of six. He had to grit his teeth and force his way through the last two reps.

He put the dumbbells back on the floor and shook out his arms.

The guy doing push-ups nearby lifted his head and glanced at him.

"Seven-pounders?"

"Yeah."

The man didn’t say anything else, just lowered his head and continued his push-ups.

But his mouth twitched, as if he were trying to hold back a laugh.

What class did seven-pound dumbbells fall into at the Fighting Club?

It was probably like a kindergartener walking onto a construction site with a plastic shovel.

Richard didn’t care.

’Everyone has a starting point. Mine is lower than others, but my recovery speed is faster.’

After finishing three sets of curls, he did two sets of dumbbell presses and one set of dumbbell rows.

He used the seven-pounders for all of them, going to failure on every set.

By the end of the whole routine, his upper body was trembling from his shoulders to his fingertips.

He sat on the mat gasping for a while as a warm current of Healing began to flow into his arms.

Fraser finished with the punching bag and walked over, taking a big swig from his water bottle.

He looked down at Richard sitting on the floor.

"Your breathing rhythm is pretty steady."

"What?"

"When you were doing the dumbbells, your breathing rhythm never broke."

Fraser wiped his neck with a towel. "Most beginners hold their breath when they push to failure. You didn’t."

Richard didn’t explain why.

"A steady breathing rhythm means your core control isn’t bad."

Fraser slung the towel over his shoulder. "Strength can be trained, but core control is innate."

He thought for a moment, then added:

"If you’re interested, we’re having one last sparring session before the Christmas break. You can come and watch."

"Okay."

After Fraser left, Warren came over.

"How was it?"

"The equipment is good enough."

Warren had also tried out the equipment and was now shaking his sore arms.

"Last time, there was a new guy who wanted to use the punching bag on his first day."

"Fraser knocked him onto the mat with one punch and said, ’Do fifty push-ups before you even think about touching the bag.’"

"What happened to that student?"

"He never came back."

Richard let out a laugh.

He returned the dumbbells to their place and stood up from the mat.

His arms were still trembling, but the Healing had already begun its work.

By tomorrow morning, these micro-tears would be repaired, and his muscle fibers would be slightly thicker and stronger than they were today.

When he came back the day after tomorrow, using the same weight for the same number of sets, his time to failure would be a few seconds longer.

A few seconds, then a few more, and a few more after that. Every little bit added up.

He jogged all the way home. His [Walking] Skill was just a step away from Level 2, and [Breathing] and [Eating] had also improved.

The three Skills created a synergistic effect during these exercises.

Exercise consumed stamina -> Eating replenished nutrients -> Breathing optimized oxygen supply and repaired damage -> Physical condition improved -> The upper limit for the next workout was raised.

The beginnings of a positive feedback loop were already in motion.

His physical training was on the right track, but his practice with the Stone Armor had recently hit a bottleneck.

Mr. Hutton’s standard for him had been to stably cover his entire arm for over thirty seconds without dissipation, and to perform the Inference without touching the Gargoyle. Only then would he have truly mastered the Technique.

He could just barely manage the Inference without the Gargoyle by observing and imitating the Gargoyle’s Ether Layer after unlocking [Perception], but he could never gather enough to cover his entire arm.

Only after unlocking the [Healing] trait at Breathing Level 3 did he finally find a breakthrough.

That night, Richard was in his bedroom practicing the Covering Armor.

He first performed three complete breathing cycles to stabilize the circulation of his Ether.

After the three cycles of breathing, he relaxed his hands, turning them over so the palms faced up.

The Inference began.

It condensed on his palms, forming a thin, glazed surface.

He tried to extend the Ether further, toward his wrists and forearms.

Just like before, the Ether began to dissipate midway up his forearms.

This time, Richard didn’t immediately withdraw it and start over.

He maintained the Inference, slowly sinking his focus into his inner forearm to carefully "see" where the dissipation was occurring.

There was an old injury there, from a childhood fall where he had caught himself with his elbow.

According to the Ether theory Richard now understood, physical imperfections and lesions would affect Ether conductivity.

’If a Hunter suffered a severed limb, would their combat ability be completely crippled from then on?’ he even wondered.

It wasn’t that Richard hadn’t thought of repairing old injuries before.

But this world’s medical technology was limited, and he had no access to the special medical treatments of the Mysterious Side.

But now, he had the combination of [Healing] and [Perception].

Richard dismissed the Covering Armor, letting his right arm hang naturally.

He used [Perception] to precisely lock onto the location of the old injury and let [Healing] begin its work.

He could feel the Ether Flow repeatedly "brushing" over that section of tissue as it passed through his forearm.

Richard maintained the Ether Cycle for a while before stopping.

The next day, Richard attempted the full-arm Inference again.

The Ether started from his palm, passed his wrist, and slid along his inner forearm.

When it reached the section with the old injury, Richard held his breath and felt it carefully.

The Ether Flow passed through.

Forearm, elbow joint, upper arm... the Covering Armor condensed layer by layer, spreading from his fingertips all the way to his shoulder.

He tapped the armor layer on his upper right arm with the fingernail of his left hand.

TING! The crisp sound of porcelain.

Richard stared at his fully armored right arm and counted silently in his head.

When he reached thirty, the Covering Armor was still there.

When he reached forty-five, slight signs of dissipation began to appear.

He didn’t force it, actively retracting the Ether.

The Covering Armor receded layer by layer, fading from his fingertips toward his shoulder.

Richard sat on his chair and let out a long breath.

Mr. Hutton’s standard had been to "stably cover the entire arm and maintain it for over thirty seconds without dissipation."

’Forty-five seconds. That’s a good bit longer than the standard.’

This was just the beginning. It wasn’t his only old injury.

He’d also injured his knee once; there was slight calcification around the patella.

There was a scar on the bridge of his nose near his brow bone, from bumping into a handrail.

There was a small patch of hardened scalp tissue on the back of his head from something that happened so long ago he couldn’t even remember how he got it.

Each old injury corresponded to an Ether pathway with low conductivity.

Each one could be slowly smoothed out.

Richard gathered the Ether, retracting it from his full arm into his palm and knuckles, forming a "Stone Fist".

He tapped the surface of his right fist with his left fingernail. The sound was now close to that of metal.

At the end of Waste Rock Lane, in a dead-end alley, stood an old lamppost made of mixed iron.

The post had been abandoned for years. The lamp head had been removed, but the body was still solid.

On his way home from school that afternoon, Richard took a familiar turn into Nail Lane.

The winter wind howled through the alley’s entrance, and the white puff of his breath drifted up past his scarf.

The alley was empty.

He walked up to the iron pillar and first touched its body with his left hand.

The hardness of the metal beneath the layer of rust was significantly greater than that of a typical brick wall.

He began the Inference, concentrating it on the surface of his fist.

He took half a step back and adjusted his breathing.

He didn’t dare use his full strength on the first punch.

The Covering Armor could provide a buffer, but it couldn’t completely negate the reactive force.

His fist landed on the pillar.

CLANG!

A dull, metallic impact.

The iron pillar trembled slightly, shaking loose a patch of thin rust. The surface of his fist was completely undamaged.

He moved to the other side of the pillar, adjusted his angle, and began to put more force into it.

CLANG!

This time, the Mixed Iron Pillar was directly dented.

Richard looked at his unscathed fist, somewhat surprised.

’This is mixed iron, far harder than human bone.’

’If I hit a person with the Armored Fist Surface using the same amount of force, I’d have to worry about fracturing their bones with a single punch.’

Richard retracted the Ether, and the layers of Covering Armor faded away.

’As a defensive measure, the Full Arm Armor can handle conventional melee weapons like swords and clubs.’

’As an offensive measure, concentrating the Covering Armor on my fist provides decent destructive power in a single punch.’

’Then again, I’m a Scholar, not a Hunter. Will there ever really be a situation where I need to swing my fists?’