Raviel sat on the bench for some time, his breathing came in uneven shallow breaths as he tried to calm himself down after the adrenaline wore-off of him,
The battered remains of training dummies with some charred ones remained collapsed on the floor with a tinge of red on their yellow surface where the punches left their bloody impressions.
He frowned, raising his hands infront of his face he stared at the bruised conditions of his hand with some soot near the fingertips, and the faint smell of burning came into his nose as he pulled his hands closer to inspect...
He closed his eyes replaying the moment when he first activated the skill, and the sudden wight he felt in his palms after the black void-like flames manifested with lightning fusing with its outer covering and coating it with deadly precision.
"Well this type of brokenness shouldn’t even be possible for someone with a low potential and what the hell were those damn flames...."
He knew that much that the thing he had done subconsciously was damn—hard even for "Awakened" with an S-rank potential with tons of experience.
"Heck! even the protagonist and his companions learnt to fuse elements in their second year, and this damned body did it with 2 days of sightseeing "
He then muttered status....
Seeing his stats, he face-palmed himself in frustration as things didn’t add-up, about the thing he had just pulled off—
Gathering his thoughts aside he stood up from the bench with renewed determination,
"Memory, that must be it, this should be this body
He leaned against a wall, cracking his knuckles,
He needed to test it,
The rest of the day then blurred into repetition where he recreated the drills and training regimes of the protagonist’s family.
Punches, kicks, weight-trainings, with mana flickering out of his hands sometimes, he did those again and again to feel even the tiniest spark to grasp his power which he had felt earlier, his muscles were strained and were on the verge of tearing just to relax themselves from this brutal practice,
Once, twice and by the twentieth time his arms trembled and legs wobbled,
He growled furiously under his breath, "Come on, can’t it happen just once again, fuck this....."
His frustration was reaching its peak and in that desperateness he tried again, activating "Mindlock",
The world drained of colours until— a sharp burning pain stabbing and ripping through each of his nerves,
His ears bled,
"...ah..hhhh" he stumbled on the cold floor clutching his temples until a notification came from his status screen,
[MINDLOCK DEACTIVATED]
As soon as it disabled, he fell dropping to his knees, panting. Blood dripped from his jawline- splattering into droplets before falling on the floor.
He didn’t move for several minutes trying to find his balance, breathing through the burning pain, until the dizziness started to fade off and he regained his footing.
But giving up? That wasn’t in him, even before transmigrating he was behind everyone in everything.... be it academics, sports, gaming but never did he gave up, because giving up wasn’t just his fuckin damn thing....
Even as the night fell and the training room’s florescent light with tinge of brown flickered to life, Raviel kept on going, even when the staff passed by him during cleaning, he never lost his focus as he practiced alone— he stripped down the moments of those A-ranked individuals replaying every frame until his brain started memorizing their movement and breathing, he applied his new discovery in real time, molding their’s to his own rhythm.
His food delivery— a heavy fruit salad with yogurt, chocolate and cream dripping on it, with few energy bars along with mana hydration drinks to fuel himself up for a nighter.....
Hours slipped by, midnight came and went, the silence in the gym was now filled by the thuds of his strikes and kicks along with some mana circulation he had discovered in his sleep deprived-state at late ....midnight.
When dawn crept by the windows and the lights flickered off, Raviel stood there, his compression shirt now drenched in buckets of sweat even in the air-conditioned room, his eyes were bloodshot and had eyebags underneath, with sleepless motivation in them, the kind that you only get at mid-nights.....
By the time the sun fully came up, he relented. The world outside was now tinted with bright yellow and orange-streaks in the perfect blue sky with cotton like clouds in it.
Staggering he walked towards the entrance door to leave,
But just as he was going to leave he saw a big-ass looking vending machine that could fit two gorillas in it,
And seeing the contents through the glass-panel Raviel’s stomach grumbled,
"grrrr—" as he had barely eaten anything other than muching on those bars and energy drinks the whole night.
And the best thing was that, all things were free for it’s members so he was going to get his money’s worth for all that effort’s—
As he selected on the Japanese cuisine panel which showed various options but raviel’s eyes settled on the "tempura" coupled with some fruit beer with 0% alcohol as he was underage—
Without any hesitation he placed his order on the holographic panel and within 5-minutes a sizzling hot package came out from the dispenser with chilled fruit beer that looked like it had got hypothermia of its own,
"Damn this is..... life "
As he picked his package and with some limping movements he reached his extravagant entrance doors of his house,
And once he got inside, without bathing or washing himself up he digged and surrendered himself completely to the heavenly delicacy of Tempura,
Raviel jabbed his fork like a possessed food critique, and stuffed three shrimps in his mouth as he muttered halfway while chewing,
"Mmmph forget mana and those— thish....ish peak of —culinary"
As he gobbled down the last piece of the shrimp and the rest and drank the whole two cans of fruit beer before burping and slumping down on his bed like a person on the verge of dying from fullness and food-coma....