Sonica's mouth was wide open as the apparitions became clearer and clearer. Aside from being irritated because she had failed completely in her mission, her heart was consumed with envy as well.
Back when she was training, it even took her some time to make her apparition appear, or what was usually called the 'Path-finding Stage.'
When mastering a Combat Technique, you must learn to make a path or a road for where you are headed. It's like making a business plan; first, you will need to know what you will want to become in the future, your vision as a powerful human.
It's actually a very tricky stage as not everyone is sure of what they want to become, but right now, something incredible happened. Almost everyone in the class today was able to make such a path.
But it was no easy feat as well. For the last hour, the students' minds had been fighting over how to focus and how to remember the meditation techniques that had been taught to them by the Combat Techniques Tutorials.
Because of the loud disturbance earlier, most of the students were already about to give up, but when they heard that peaceful music that sounded like tranquil nature, their minds were filled with epiphanies.
In the Path-finding stage, there are 4 steps involved. The first one is to find the inner peace inside yourself. It's a very hard part as not everyone has a peaceful mind. Countless thoughts will distract you, bad memories will always try to consume you, and guilt will try to remind you.
But with the help of that music, like magic, their minds became clear and became goal-oriented.
The second step was energy allocation. If you consume the Primal and Evolved Origins in your body, it doesn't just stay there and improve your body automatically. The feeling of being reinvigorated and the feeling of getting stronger are actually just an illusion. Those energies inside your body are still not in order; it's like a storm inside your body. Failure to organize those energies would lead to the destruction of the body.
As the students entered a relaxed state, it became much easier for them to align those energies in their body. When they did so, the energies felt alive and caused their body to glow.
The third step of the Path-finding stage is imagining yourself doing the combat technique at a master level. The first video of the tutorials was a video of the complete and mastered versions being done by an avatar. The third step was to imagine that they were that avatar, doing the technique.
As they imagined, energies flowed around their body like they were following a path. It streamed around their bodies and circulated. After that, the light on their bodies became much stronger and formed on top of their heads. These energies then became the apparitions.
The fourth step is the trickiest of all. It's the combination of the energies inside of them and the True Origin Ability.
This time... a lot of the students failed.
In the tutorial, once you consolidate an apparition, you are halfway done with the Path-finding. The fourth step is pairing those energies with your special ability.
Some students who were truly gifted managed to do so.
One student in the midst was an Asian-looking girl with a tight bun on her head.
An apparition of an icy blue bow formed on top of her head. As she finished forming her apparition, ice started to form under her. She opened her eyes and went to an empty corner. She moved and tried a few kicks and punches. Each strike delivered a frosty energy with it. Her fists and kicks became cold and deadly as well. She was the first student who mastered the first part of a combat technique, Path of the Icy Bow.
Sonica saw this and her eyes were filled with burning envy. She couldn't believe it; in just a span of an hour or so, this girl had mastered the Path-finding.
Even she couldn't do it that early!
"That's impossible! How?!" She couldn't believe it herself, her eyes were red but still kept her composure as she was an instructor here.
'Tsk! You're just a lucky bunch. I can still pull you down!' She thought as different mischievous plans drowned her mind.
She smiled wickedly and pushed the control button, the music changed and the volume was turned to almost the maximum.
"Haha! Congrats to that girl over there! You have mastered the Path-finding." Because of what Sonica had done, the concentration of the students broke as they covered their ears in pain. They felt like the sound waves would break their eardrums inside.
The strong ones in the crowd only winced but the others wailed in pain. The apparitions on their head disappeared.
This amused Sonica so much. 'That's it! Stop growing! I will not let you become even stronger than me! I'm the strongest!'
Her smile became maniacal as she tried to speak a few words.
"Oh? What happened? Don't tell me you can't focus now? Haha! Don't cover your ears and meditate!" She purposely shouted and the sonic waves became more powerful.
Now, the students dropped on the ground while wincing in pain. The sound waves were too powerful that they felt the vibrations inside their body. They felt like they were going to burst!
Sonica looked at the helpless students. She wanted to laugh at them. She despised every person who aimed to be stronger. Kind of hypocritical when she was the one teaching and leading the students to that path.
The speech she gave earlier, it was only an insincere piece. She was never trying to ignite a fire, she was just trying to act as a match but she was the wind that blows away the burning desire of the students.
As she enjoyed the suffering of her students, she noticed one person who just sat there, rooted in place.
She felt like vomiting blood when she saw the scene.
No matter how loud her sound waves were, Raia was like a stone, locked still.
Her eyes turned red in rage, looking at her target unperturbed by the disturbance she was making.
'You are still a jerk, Jeraiah Mont Blanc! You should die! Die!'
Her irises turned pink and the sound waves coming out from the amplifier moved directly towards Raia. It was focusing on him now!
The students felt relieved when the deafening echoes finally toned down. What they didn't know was that the sound that they should be hearing was being directed to Raia.
Thankfully, just as the destructive sonic pulses touched Raia's skin, they disappeared in a blink.
The students were staggering as they tried to catch their composure after what just happened. They looked around and found broken amplifiers everywhere. The venue became filled with bewildered faces and comments as they tried looking for their instructor. When they did see her, they were as confused as ever.
They found her sleeping in a corner with a chair!
"Was that it?" A student asked, unable to fathom what just happened.
"I think so?" Another one replied but was unsure.
"Well... Should we wake her up?" A girl, with pink-red hair, asked.
When she did, the students looked at each other while discussing their final verdict on the situation.
"Let it be. If we wake her up, she'll just torture us again." A brawny guy spoke up and the students agreed with him and concluded that they'd leave their instructor like that until the class ended.
After that, some students chatted while the others tried to show off their new prowess with their body. After finishing the third step, their body became a lot stronger. Their body became something that could compete with the best of the best in the human world when Origins weren't really a thing yet.
And some... used the opportunity to continue meditating.
After more than two hours, half of the students in the venue finally completed the Path-finding. Some showcased their new profound strength and even did some sparring together.
Arman, in the same way, managed to complete his Path-finding as well.
When he finally controlled the energies inside him, he proceeded to copy the Combat Technique and did it in his mind. Even though the combat technique was common, there was something actually that connected with his power. As he was trying to do so, he found himself floating in his mind. What he didn't know was that the apparition on top of his head was getting brighter and brighter.
It then formed into a man, holding two orbs; on the left was a red orb while on the right was a blue one.
The students saw this and their faces were filled with awe.
As much as they felt, Arman was feeling much more. Arman just gained an understanding of his power!
He opened his eyes and the apparition on his head disappeared. He stood up confidently and opened the status window in his Wristband. A hologram appeared and showed the number of Credit points he had left.
Once again, Arman closed his eyes and commanded or imagined himself wanting to help Raia.
The True Credit points in his Wristband began to glitch and distort. After a few seconds, it stopped. What shocked Arman was that 300 True Credit points were gone just like that!
"What the..." Before he could react to how much money he had lost, he noticed his right hand glowing with blue light, just like before.
Arman looked at his friend at his side, meditating peacefully.
Because of this new understanding of his power, he fixed himself to help Raia with his meditation, and once he did, he patted his palm onto Raia's head.
The blue energy went inside Raia's body.
Raia's face tensed from time to time but when Arman shared a buff with him, he felt much better. His faint squirming stopped as healthy breathing followed, which made Arman smile in relief.
He then sat down and watched the tutorial of his Combat Technique to learn more.
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As Raia meditated, his mind was transferred inside of him.
He heard the ruckus around him but honestly, he could just brush such disturbance off easily. He was actually just so caught up in just mastering the meditation technique of Twilight Dart.
Just like last time, he whispered the words of the meditation while trying to control the energies inside his body.
He had already achieved the first part of the Path-finding stage; he was now in the process of controlling the energies, Energy Allocation. He had actually done this in the past but this time it's different. In the past few days, he had only been allocating portions of energies, but the true challenge of the second part is to find the certain energies that would stay and flux over certain parts of his body and then flow in a pattern or path that would result in the third step.
There's one big problem though.
The Twilight Dart Technique doesn't allow such a thing to happen. It wants Raia to have multiple paths of energies to allow him to change the current of his energies at once.
Just like Dusk and Dawn, it changes to different colors as the sun rises or the sun sets.
Raia kept controlling his energy that way yet he remained static. Because of this, his face constantly contorted showing discomfort and fatigue. This even almost made him lose his mindfulness over his meditation.
'Argh! Stupid energies! Just heed my need, already!'
Fortunately, a calming sensation flowed inside his brain. Because of that, his mind became clearer.
Like a fog just lifted, everything just made sense to him!
"I... I think... I know how to do this..." Raia mumbled those words.
Suddenly, the energies inside him became wild and chaotic. It felt like a wild crowd trying to get out from Raia's body. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as pain started to form because of such torment inside him.
'Arghhhh! T-this is nothing...' Raia tried to keep his cool and didn't let the pain win him over.
'If you don't want me to distribute the energies inside to my whole body... Then--- I shall consolidate them into a whole!' When his mind was fixed, the energies flowed in a circular motion.
Like a vortex forming, the energies gathered in the center of Raia's body, somewhere in the stomach area.
All of the energies were sucked inside that black hole.
Even the energies that were already consolidated and attached to Raia's body were being stripped off.
'F*CK! Did I just do something stupid?!' Raia realized his body was getting weaker and panicked. Because of what he did, he might have just spelled his name on a grave.
'What did you do?!' Inner Self instantly reacted when it felt something going on in Raia's body.
Raia heard his annoyed remarks but he couldn't answer him as the hungry vortex inside him stopped sucking every energy he had left. In an instant, it emitted a very bright light.
'What now?!' Raia exclaimed in his mind.
The light surrounded his body and even radiated. His body beamed with bright, different-colored lights that caught the attention of the students inside the venue.
Because of this, it emitted an aura that made Sonica, their instructor, wake up from her unconsciousness.
"Argh... My head..." As she was reeling from her headache, her eyes caught the blinding light coming from one of her students.
Once again, her envy was triggered.
"What the hell is happening now?" She muttered, vexed.
In just 15 seconds tops, the light toned down and showed the core of such a tapestry of light.
When Sonica saw who it was, the veins on her forehead couldn't help but bulge. She walked closer to Raia with a serious, dead face.
As she was getting closer, she could sense something but not literally that there was. It's just... She couldn't feel any presence of Origins in Raia's body!
Though this made her confused, what won her over is the thought of Raia being powerless. She could feel that everyone had already progressed to the third step and fourth step of the Path-finding Stage, yet Raia couldn't even progress to the second step.
'HAHAHA! Pathetic! Did I just get stressed over by such a measly boy? This mission will be too easy.'
She reached Raia's side and her voice rang throughout the venue.
"Everyone! You all have passed my first trial and will be rewarded handsomely with points in this class... Except this one here. H-008, you have just failed." Sonica then gave him a smug look while looking down with excitement etched on her face.