Chương 54: Chapter Fifty-Four: Training Montage????

FIFTY-FOUR He finally relented and bought the ring of holding. The hit of five-thousand credits hurt, but trying to balance all the small, fragile, potions in his hands along with his weapon finally pushed him into doing it. He still had Lester's ring he had to crack somehow, but that was a problem for later. His new spatial ring was one of the bonded ones and sat on his pinky, with only a cube foot of space it still held all of the potions with ease.

The loss of five extra hours of training time in the spatial chamber hurt, but after his spending spree he knew he would have to do another run out into the forest to collect more bounties. Everything he needed to buy for the body tempering to begin had set him back another ten-thousand credits. Luckily most of it had been bulk purchases that had enough ingredients for all ten sessions he needed to unlock the skill.

"Could have just bought the skill. Unless the skill also requires all these ingredients. It'd have to need the ingredients, right?" Roan talked to himself as he got back to the temporal chambers. His heart dropped as he saw multiple of the houses had mobs guarding the front stoops rather than being off to the side like they had been earlier. People had already beat him into the rooms, but he still had time to use it. He ran toward the closest empty room and leapt up the three stone steps and through the door.

Behind him the mob walked calmly up the steps and pivoted on its heel to stand guard as the door swung shut with a final click. Roan looked around his space as he slowly set his gear down and started to prep. WELCOME TO TEMPORAL CHAMBERS TIME WITHIN THIS SPACE HAS BEEN COMPRESSED EVERY TEN MINUTES IN THIS CHAMBER IS ONE ON THE OUTSIDE COST: 1, 000 CREDITS/HOUR EXPERIENCED Roan pursed his lips as he looked over his rapidly depleting bank account.

He couldn't really imagine that anyone else could match his wallet, especially if they were buying full price skills. Not unless they had fought just as much as he had without buying anything, in which case they wouldn't need these chambers anyway. There were less than five days until they had to ascend to the next level and he needed every edge he could get if he wanted to survive. A fire had ignited inside of him, one that burned away the suffocating weight of grief which had driven him for so long.

There was a chance he wasn't alone.

"Alright, if I'm doing this, I'm doing it. Let's start at ten-thousand credits," Roan said outloud. A timer appeared in his line of sight and immediately began ticking downward. Ten hours of compressed time would only be one hour of time outside, which wouldn't be enough time for too many people to launch after the bounties and strip the region. Roan opened up the manuals he was going to work on. The body tempering was a thick text, filled with pages of details that his eyes skimmed.

All of the information stuck in his mind as he read the intro to the body cleansing steps. When he'd bought it the market said it was an eight tier potential skill, which lined up with the eight sections he was staring at. The smallest was the body cleansing he had spent a fortune on. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Then there were the two manuals that Taoya had loaned him. Passive recovery and mental resistance.

Passive recovery had to do with moving internal mana reserves through the body to speed up natural healing. Mental resistance was more about meditation and clearing the mind, at least for the first step.

"Doesn't say anywhere that these aren't compatible. In fact, they look very compatible," Roan said as he stripped off his already stained clothes and threw them to the side. If what he was reading on the body tempering manual was right, he wanted to preserve his clothes as much as possible. Roan sat slowly to the ground and reviewed the intro chapter he needed to read before putting the manuals off to the side. Getting them stained with his purging of toxins wouldn't endear him to anyone.

"First, sink into the meditative state as directed by the mental resistance manual," Roan muttered. It was harder than it appeared, fighting to calm his mind while repeating the breathing exercises the manual instructed. Contracting his diaphragm in time with every third heartbeat required him to slow his heartbeat. Which was tough considering he was running on adrenaline, spite, and anxiety. Roan didn't look at the timer dwindling down.

He lost track of time as he slowly relaxed every muscle in his body starting with eyebrows and working his way down. Everytime he took a breath he worked it through his body, imagining it flowing through him. The mental exercise was supposed to help one become conscious of the dormant mana in the body. Slowly his heart rate slowed. Each beat a thundering boom that sent blood racing through his veins. Roan felt the power of his heart, the pressure each beat applied through his body.

Each breath was a whirlwind, drawing forth fresh air that purged his body. Each exhalation a gale that swept outward. Roan could feel it. The mana in his body. It lay in small pools, clustered at his joints, his core, heart, brain, eyes, fingertips, all of it dormant and still. Time continued to pass as Roan began to hold the breathing pattern naturally. His mind cleared as he focused on the pools of mana in his body, trying to push or move them.

When they didn't move he grew frustrated and the precarious balance he'd found began to waver, forcing him to focus on his breathing exercises again.

"Nothing. To. It." Roan said each word on an exhalation and felt a spike of satisfaction as the clarity of his mental state didn't waver, his breathing still held and he didn't lose the feel for the pools of mana in his body. He reached out and mentally selected the first of the potions he'd bought from the alchemist. It appeared in his hand instantly from the ring. With slow deliberation he brought the thimble of potion to his lips and sipped on it.

Icy fire burned his lips, numbing them instantly as the mint taste coated his mouth and tongue. A creeping numbness advanced down his throat, past his chest, and hit his stomach. Roan shivered and coughed, breaking apart his mental state as pain hit him hard enough he doubled over." Regain the mental state. You're almost there." Roan commanded his body to straight, to ride out the pain, as he struggled to breathe properly again.

He finally managed to find the proper mental state again as his breathing stabilized, his torso straightening as his inner sense war reestablished.

"Interesting," Roan couldn't but help say as he felt the power of the potion rage through his body. From his core it laced through him like a blade, slicing apart those stagnant pools of mana, breaking their inertia." Now. Strike now." Roan took a breath in and with that visualized the gust of air flowing through his body, cleansing his veins and gathering up the slow moving mana. His heart beat again, giving more energy for Roan to harness as he finally grasped his mana for the first time.