After Jason wakes Courtney to take her watch shift, he rushes off to bed. While he doesn’t hope to have the same level of epiphany as last night, to study under such a great teacher can only be seen as a blessing. As soon as he appears in the training room he goes down into a seiza and gives a deep bow to the trainer. “Master, your student has made a breakthrough in his technique.” The trainer has a look of shock but schools her face and does a shallow bow in return. “Congratulations, please show me what you learned.”
Jason stands back and goes to the nearest dummy. He still isn’t able to use a stomp from any position and so knocks it over first. Once it is down, he takes a moment to steady himself and starts to stomp. At first the trainer is disappointed as while his technique is good it isn’t quite what she expected. However her disappointment changes to one of greed like a kid who just received some candy.
Jason had been stomping at the level he had been for the last bit of his real world training when he felt it again. Before to preserve the dummy he had been only lightly tapping it. Now though that he feels it again he puts his strength behind it. Once again his foot is like a heavenly object descending on the world and the wooden dummy is turned into sawdust. He lacks the control of the trainer so this dust spread out through the room like an explosion. As it approaches the trainer this light cloud of dust flows around her but never quite reaching her body.
She laughs and claps her hands, “wonderful! To reach this level you must have experienced many other high level martial arts. It is such a shame the System doesn’t recognize them as skills. Hardly anyone bothers to work on the basics to such a level. For showing me such things are not dead in the world I will see how much I can wring out of this training session.”
The trainer moves over to another dummy and stomps it. This move looks almost like what Jason had managed but there is a mysterious intent about it. This make his stomp like an amateur’s drawing of the move, flat and lifeless. Her foot slams into the dummy’s chest but nothing changes. The dummy just stand there. It takes a moment but Jason finally sees what has changed. Behind the dummy she had attacked every single other wooden dummy has been erased from existence. Not even sawdust marks their passing.
“With my skill whatever you fuel it with will change the effect. I can’t tell you what I used to do that. The System almost did not let me show you that in the first place as it touches on matters beyond this realm. No one else can ever manage exactly that attack with my skill because of how personal this skill is. You already formed a core so have touched on some of the deeper matters of the realm and peeked behind the curtains of existence. You should be able to cultivate your own ultimate use for the skill.”
“However!”, and she stares down at him with a fierce glint in her eyes, “Never! Never reduce this skill to just a simple ultimate attack of some sort. You have seen so much more so don’t be held back by what is what others consider powerful. The road is endless, the goal always in front of you, and there is always a taller mountain to climb. Some of my contemporaries would only look for those with great potential.”
“They would choose the archetypal hero to grant their legacy. Forever they teased me for not passing on my core teachings and yet after all these years, long after they have ascended the world has forgotten us all. Those heros they chose left their own names behind but soon enough their road ended. A hero rises out of need and once that need it fulfilled most will just stop.”
“A hero who has rescued their princess, brought peace to their kingdom, and vanquished their great foe is done. I wish them peace for that is what they truly want. What I want from you is different. You're not like them, driven by some ulterior goal. To have reach so far before your first century of life without some great goal means one thing. Your goal is the simplest one, to continually improve yourself. Where heros are pushed, you are the one who had to shove.”
“I won’t give you my legacy like the fools gave theirs to those heros. Instead I will let the System manage it. Exceed yourself or you will never hear from me again. But that is all in the future. For now there is some training to do. You learned the physical aspect but as you I showed the metaphysical part is just as if not more important. Now, many common skills will have you push your power into a limb and strike out in some manner. I guess this works well enough. It certainly makes it easier for someone who hasn’t manipulated their energy to learn.”
“I believe in a different methodology. If you start someone on such a brain dead method how can you hope for them to reach for more later? Sure, there are some interesting variations on how you push that energy around but there is a reason that magic users tend to be seen as more powerful later on. They start with front loading the complexity of manipulating mana so later on casters can focus on other aspects.”
“Luckily for you I have taken a page from their book so we need a bit of a change in scenery.” She snaps her fingers and the surrounding blurs out of focus. Next thing he knows Jason is sat at a desk in a rustic classroom. The only thing that breaks this impression is the blackboard has been replaced with some form of 3d display that shows a nondescript human body rotating slowly.
TFTC!