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1317 Words
Despite taking time to work out Aster’s extra challenges, the whole group finished in just over a half-hour with nobody stumbling into the sludge once. Matt wondered what the point was.
Luna sent them through the obstacle course twice more. With each pass, their speed increased. Even though the armor made the dexterity focused parts of the course unwieldy to navigate, it mattered less each iteration. After their third repetition, Luna told them to strip into their under-armor clothes.
Then, she tossed them each a wrist band and told them to put them on.
When Matt did, it felt like his cultivation vanished in an instant. His cores slowed their rotation until he felt like a mortal before his awakening.
Matt activated [Mage’s Retreat] to alleviate his weakness, but looked up to find Luna’s piercing, slitted eyes staring into his chest.
She met his eyes and warned, “No cheating.”
“I’m not cheating…”
All he got for his protests was another zap from her finger.
“I should have expected it, but I didn’t plan for the restriction bands not working on your mana.” Luna paused for a moment. “Hmm. It must be because your mana core has nothing to do with your mana generation. It makes sense. No one else can use their mana, and it would defeat the purpose if you could. No skills or anything. Not even AI. Don’t even think about using that blasted thing. You know I’ll see it.”
Matt reluctantly dropped the skill and felt the weakness take back over.
Luna gestured once again, and a track rose from the sand.
“This is physical training. You’ll get more out of this if you don’t have any cultivation”—she glared at Matt—“or skills to lean on. Split into pairs.”
Luna nodded to the track. “That track is a one-mile circle. One person will be running a lap while the other will stay here doing burpees. When the runner arrives back here, the partners switch. As soon as any pair completes twenty laps, they’re done and can rest until the final group is done. The last group to finish will get only a five-minute break.”
Matt looked down to Aster, who had refused to leave his side, and after finishing a count, he pointed out, “We have an extra person.”
Luna seemed unbothered. “That’s fine. You three can just have two run together.”
Matt regretted opening his mouth. Instead, he moved over to the side of the track and stretched a bit. Burpees sucked, but the running was only ten miles per person. That was practically nothing.
While they stood around, Luna asked, “Do I need to start zapping you to get you running?”
Everyone started moving as Matt dropped down. He extended one leg before the other and started to do a push-up when he was zapped. Again.
As he spasmed, Luna’s voice sounded in his ear, “Both legs need to extend and retract at the same time, Matt. Don’t make me tell you again.”
Matt didn’t miss Kyle, Tara, and Mathew spasming also.
Matt twisted until he was back in a push-up position and went to do a push-up, only to be zapped again. “The start of a burpee is the standing position. Return there to begin.”
With a growl he stood, then dropped. He flexed and did as perfect a push-up as he could manage, before bringing both his legs into his chest with one motion and jumping.
In mid-air, another shock hit him, and he crumpled to the ground while Luna said, “You need to explode out of the push-up position as high as you can. Less than your full effort will not be accepted. That doesn’t just apply to burpees.”
With great concentration, he did two perfect burpees before he glanced to the left to check on his teammates. Finding them only a few hundred feet away, he wanted to curse.
How were they so slow?
Matt was wheezing hard as he finished the thirtieth burpee. A quick glance confirmed Liz and Aster were only around the quarter-way mark. His turned attention earned him a zap, which redirected his focus.
With heavy breaths, Matt focused on his form until he heard Tara ask, “How are we supposed to do this with our cultivation gone?”
The complaint wasn’t what caught Matt’s attention, it was Luna’s reply.
“Your cultivation is approximately 99.8% sealed. That is only a seal. With practice and the right technique, you can force your cores to spin and break through the restrictions. If you can manage that, I won’t stop you at all.”
They all earned a zap as they pondered that and went back to their burpees.
It felt like a year later when Liz and Aster returned. They panted heavily, but Liz’s damp shirt was nothing to Matt’s sweat-soaked one.
The desert heat was brutal, but the night’s chill hadn’t completely vanished, even though the air was increasing in temperature by the second.
Matt stood from his place and panted, “Can break restrictions. Something with…spinning core to…return cultivation.”
Liz panted back, “She told us as well. The faster you run, the more the restrictions slow you.”
Noticing Luna’s gaze turning to him, Matt took off on the track. As Liz said, the faster he tried to run, the more the resistance increased. It was like running into a strong wind, but without the cooling effect it would have had. Running flat out was still faster than jogging, but not by much.
He then understood the method behind this exercise. The slower you went, the longer your break from the burpees and Luna’s zaps, but you left your teammate to suffer longer. All the while, if you tried to run faster, you were resisted and your break was no break at all.
What an evil combination.
Unwilling to let his friends suffer, Matt put his head down and pumped his legs with everything he had.
He was panting heavily as he rounded the final corner and saw a water station set up at the end of the track.
Another break for him to make his friends suffer more. Not stopping, Matt reached Liz and Aster and saw them in different spots of the burpee. Under other circumstances, it would have been funny to see a fox doing a push-up and jumping as high as she could, but Matt was too tired to laugh.
They switched off, and Matt started to do his burpees.
By the third lap, Matt was jogging more than running. By the seventh lap, he was tasting blood in his mouth and was forced to stop at the water station to get a mouthful of the refreshing liquid.
Their team was the second to finish, with Vinnie and Kyle finishing their lap only moments before them. The five of them were directed to a second water station under the shadow of the flying house. The shade was an enormous relief.
About ten minutes later, the final four finished up in near unison.
Luna followed behind, and as the last four got and drank water with shaking hands, she addressed them, “Five minutes. Then, we go back to the obstacle course.”
Matt was actually thankful. The course was far easier than what they had been through.
Everyone sat quietly, sipping at a small amount of water until Luna called for them to get moving.
Matt really didn’t want to get up. He hurt in ways that normally never happened, except in the few battles he had fought in that lasted all day. His arms trembled from the experience, and he was looking forward to getting his cultivation back, so his Regeneration portion could combat this fatigue.
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