Ever since that day, Gravis started training in Martial Arts. In that time, Gravis had learned a lot from William. William even considered Gravis as one of his students, but whenever William tried to close the distance between them, Gravis blocked. Gravis also had never accepted any Martial Art for free, except those he had earned himself.
Sparring for free Martial Arts was different than William just giving them to him. As long as everything went down like a reasonable trade, Heaven was fine with it, but as soon as William tried to close the distance between them, Gravis felt like he had seen Heaven’s shadow behind William. If Gravis accepted, Heaven would not spare William.
In the beginning, it was tough for Gravis to reject William. His frustration towards Heaven soared, and his bitterness ate him up inside, yet after multiple days, he started getting used to it. Now, it was not so hard anymore to decline William. He had grown used to it by now.
Jeros had also visited from time to time and wanted to spar with Gravis, yet Gravis always declined. He had to keep his Will-Aura sharp, and sparring would only dull it. If someone sparred too much, they would get ’fighting experience’ in sparring, which was an issue because spars were never fought to the death.
If Gravis sparred more, he would get too used to his enemies, and he would also get used to using non-lethal attacks. Maybe he would even start doing risky maneuvers because he knew that he was not in danger. If he got too used to this, he might make those mistakes in a real battle.
Another person also frequented the garden where Gravis was training. It was the young man who had gotten angry at him before. He was, apparently, William’s sole student. Gravis also got to know that all the other workers at the Martial Hall were just employees and didn’t take Martial Arts that seriously. They just knew some of them and how to sell them.
On the other hand, the young man had trained under William for multiple years and had soaked up nearly all of William’s knowledge. Gravis also got to know that the young man was going to attend the entrance exams as well.
When Gravis started training there, the young man was avoiding him like the plague. He still could not accept that the Martial Styles, he had learned, could be useless. Yet, even if he didn’t recognize that fact, he still stopped practicing Martial Styles and concentrated on Martial Arts.
Every time the young man wanted to practice a Martial Style, he involuntarily thought back to Gravis’ spar with his master. He also thought back to the explanation Gravis gave, and every time he thought of that, it felt like a pit was in his stomach.
By following Gravis’ explanation and logic, the young man started seeing weaknesses in his Martial Styles. This had frustrated him more, and he grew even angrier.
The young man had confronted Gravis once when he was alone. He had challenged Gravis to a fight, but Gravis declined. Gravis wanted to spar as little as possible. The young man then announced that he would attack either way and that Gravis had no choice but to fight.
The young man had slashed at Gravis, who just continued sitting, and the young man’s sword bounced off of Gravis’ skin. The young man didn’t have tempered muscles, so he had no way to penetrate Gravis’ skin. He tried a couple more times, but nothing worked.
Gravis had then said: "What’s the point of Martial Arts when your enemy outclasses you greatly with their body? What’s the point of Martial Styles, if your enemy sees through its weakness easily?"
Usually, the young man would grow angry, but in this case, he couldn’t. He had used everything he got, but couldn’t even penetrate Gravis’ skin. The young man retreated and apologized to Gravis, not sure what to think. This had been a big blow to him.
The young man appeared again after a full week, and the first thing he did was apologize to Gravis for his disrespect. He had cast away his pure faith in Martial Arts and Martial Styles and saw it for what they were.
They were tools to increase someone’s strengths at the cost of some disadvantages. Martial Arts and Styles were no longer divine things in the young man’s eyes.
He had also politely given his name to Gravis, which was Vasil. Vasil had thrown away all his preconceived notions of power and started to watch Gravis, Jeros, and William earnestly. When Jeros and William sparred, he paid extra attention. Jeros was not using any particular style, but multiple Martial Arts could be seen by the movements he made.
Surprisingly, William had also started changing the way he fought. He could not change a life full of experience, but he could start mixing his different styles. Slowly, William was becoming stronger, and Jeros started having trouble suppressing him.
In a surprising twist, Vasil had asked Jeros to teach him some things. When William had seen that, he didn’t grow jealous, but proud instead. His student was finally free from the shackles that had bound him to Martial Styles and started learning from others as well. People were able to change, even if they seemed hopeless at first glance.
At some point, Gravis had shown his Will-Aura to William, whose face had promptly whitened. William had also seen that Vasil and Jeros were impacted by the Will-Aura as well, even though they were several meters away. This gave William a crazy idea.
"What if you can concentrate your aura onto a single person?" he asked.
Gravis’ eyes had quickly widened, and he started thinking about all kinds of possibilities. Starting that day, Gravis was ingraining Martial Arts into his movements by day, and trying to control his Will-Aura by night. He had a lot to do, and for the first time in his life, Gravis was actually training.
He had only learned theoretical knowledge together with life and death fights in his homeworld. In this world, he had only fought and also never trained. Yet, what was the job of a Research Assistant? Wasn’t it to learn and collect the cultivation method of the lower worlds? Gravis was finally doing his job.
After 70 days, Gravis had learned a lot of Martial Arts who could replace specific movements of his body. He had also started making progress on his Will-Aura. He could still release it in all of his surroundings, but he also managed to stop his Will-Aura from affecting the area behind him. Like this, the remaining Will-Aura increased in density, and thus, in effectiveness.
Gravis had also taken the 13 Bone-Pills, and just as he had thought, he needed 20. At some point, Gravis walked to the local Hunting Guild but returned in frustration. Apparently, there was not a single mission.
Starting about a week before Gravis arrived in Body City, all the beasts had started vanishing. It looked like they stayed clear of Body City’s surroundings. Heaven was really motivated to stop Gravis, even if the whole of Body City was collateral.
So, sadly, Gravis was not able to temper his bones fully.
And just like that, 70 days passed and the entrance exams drew near.