22 Loosen Up

As expected, a familiar wisp floated out and matched Alfred's general frame. The featureless wisp then allowed itself to be aligned with Alfred.

As the exercise started up, he activated HSM. The wisp moved into a position he saw previously in the overview videos with its arms raised loosely at the front and his legs in a position using ideas from the Isolation footwork, giving it a slight bounce not unlike Bruce Lee. Alfred executed his footwork perfectly, but he received a few shocks around his back and elbows.

'Not bent enough… not loose enough…'

It held that position for another few seconds before shooting forward to engage in a shadow-boxing match.

The wisp ducked a few punches before quickly picking up the offensive. It pressured with copious amounts of light, risk free punches and leg kicks to poke and prod at the imaginary adversary's defense, eventually leading up to a combo. It led with a straight punch to the jaw, slid forward using the Isolation footwork, sent a full force uppercut to the gut, and kneed the rapidly approaching imaginary chin.

The wisp didn't stop, though. As the imaginary adversary hit the ground, the wisp soccer kicked its jaw and stomped on its windpipe.

None of the punches he threw were stuff he couldn't intuitively do, so in that moment he wondered how the 3rd Division techniques would differ.

The wisp didn't wait for him to think, as it began with a new shadow-boxing match. The imaginary adversary threw punches and pressured too hard, forcing the wisp into a wide defensive stance. Said stance changed the required position of lots of body parts marginally, causing Alfred to experience a couple of shocks before picking back up.

One jab was thrown at the wisp's nose, which it responded to by pulling back its head just enough to dodge it. A low kick aimed at its knees came, causing it to pull back its leg before pulling forward and down to slip a sweeping cross. The imaginary adversary then threw a swift and sharp combo at the wisp. It swatted, ducked, slipped, and dodged attacks over and over, forcing many mistakes on Alfred despite him still having HSM up.

The wisp, seemingly finding/imagining an opening occurring during the combo let one punch barely graze its cheek before moving to a powerful front-kick that switched to a side-kick to the imaginary adversary's temple.

The wisp executed it correctly, but Alfred didn't, barely managing to keep a fraction of his leg in line with the wisp's, resulting in a meaty shock.

At that point, it sent a few more kicks to make sure the imaginary adversary was down before resetting to the first position. Alfred took a few seconds to recompose himself, which the wisp thankfully allowed.

Then, it was back to shadow-boxing.

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Alfred continued that for another 45 minutes, but his body became so fatigued due to the constant employment of harder to copy kicks.

The feedback he felt was… that he simply wasn't flexible enough. 'Damn!' he thought to himself while slapping his forehead. "Why didn't I start stretching too? Äura taking care of that as well would be too good to be true.'

In between his first "short" session and the next, Alfred made sure to spend ten minutes to stretch as well as he knew how alongside refining to recover.

Once he finished 30 minutes later, he started up the exercise where he left off.

Another shadow-boxing match ensued, resulting in a few more shocks. Next, though, the wisp surprised Alfred.

It started off with a shadow boxing match, but it then proceeded to slow everything down to a crawl. Alfred had trouble for an instant before he snapped back and regained his posture. The wisp threw difficult kicks and twisted dodges against the imaginary adversary to force Alfred into extremely awkward situations due to having to keep his balance.

More shocks were administered, but he managed to stay on his feet.

'Hah~ this thing really wants me dead… I guess I'll have to keep HSM up for longer than normal' he inwardly remarked.

In fact, throughout a 4 hour period, Alfred kept up the maximum tier 1 HSM in 40 to 50 minute intervals. He felt as if he had grown greatly in his knowledge and slightly in his resistance to level 1 HSM, but his completion rate couldn't have been above 65%.

If you purely compare it numerically to his progress on his first day with the Isolation footwork, you would think it was almost as fast. However, probably 50% of the proper executions were achieved through footwork, which he had already mastered. Cysandoth said earlier that they all cumulatively would take longer than the Isolation footwork, so they each had to take at least over two days to complete. At this rate, if the progress doesn't speed up greatly near the end, Joku might take four.

However, to get in the rest of his daily refinement hours, he had to spend the rest of his time before bed doing just that.

Alfred got into position and began his process of circulating äura. 70% of the focused energy was spent in the three "places" his master talked about evenly (the eyes, leg muscles, and joints), while leaving 23% for his bones and muscles in general, 5% of the focus for his heart, and 2% for another use.

That other use was for general endurance in any of the places that were affected by continuous HSM use. Alfred made this decision on his own knowing that his master doesn't, and couldn't know about this ability, and he determined that over time the 2% alongside the residual enhancements should be a decent amount for him.

However, he knew these calculations wouldn't be perfect. 'Is 2% too little? Too much?' was all he could ask himself. 'Oh well, if I can use this technique after I…'

His thoughts paused. After a moment, he shook his head and got back to refining. It went without saying that Alfred would try to perfect this process in future reincarnations, so he didn't bother with such pessimistic thoughts. 'I'll see this through for this reincarnation, even if it is my last.'

Soon after this promise to himself implying survival, his mind grew quiet. Doing so much at once required a great deal of true multitasking. In this process, Alfred found it much easier to direct the flow of äura through visualizing his anatomy. He couldn't know exactly what his body held, but the detailed diagrams of an "average" human were still in his mind. As far as he could tell, he was the same type of human as he was on his original earth, so said diagrams should still hold up.

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Alfred passed out after he finished his refinements at 2am. Now, last week's schedule returned without a hitch.

He woke up and finished the second exercise's first hour. When moving to the canteen, his (now) natural walking cycle was only slightly altered. During this walk, he felt something odd. After a moment's deliberation, he finally understood one of the more important sounding notes that had been written down on the technique's page.

Said note read: 'It seems my master, the creator of Junanbi, accidentally created another technique within Joku. As you might notice the movements the second exercise will result in a small… orb… forming at your center of gravity. "Orb" is just a figure of speech, as there is nothing really there. But even at the first level, you should feel this "orb" all the same.

'With that, the orb will be connected to, somehow, Joku's original stance. As you learn more stances and techniques, you should feel even more connections form. It turns out that this technique within a technique will make switching to and moving from a vast number of techniques more systematic and natural.

'Without me saying this, you would already be able to utilize this boon, but I still wrote it to let you, future Junanbi disciple, know that your feeling is not something strange or wrong.'

Alfred soon sat down with his food. 'Now that I think about it, I do feel an… orb… at my center of gravity' he thought. 'Thank you, ancestor, for saving my time.'

Alfred closed his eyes and did a faint bow to his food before devouring it to pay respects.

After Friday's events, other slaves in the canteen were paying lots more attention towards Alfred, particularly the children as they had personally experienced how hard it was to get a hit in on Heinlich. A few of them seemed to want to talk with him, but Alfred's expression and general feeling was unapproachable.

His physical appearance was generally "pretty" after a shower. His/her hair, oval face, and upturned eyes would have given him a clear and confident look, but the glare and near expressionlessness turned his demeanor to more of an irritated hawk, ready to bite your finger off if you got too close.

Alfred knew of this attention. He trusted nobody in the entire colosseum despite the promise he heard from the guard at the beginning that "killing is not allowed" and that "Any and all slaves are monitored, and killing another slave will be considered destroying the empire's property", so his head was always on a swivel when not refining.

Alfred soon left that odd atmosphere quickly and made his way back to the courtyard where he saw his master again doing something with äura with his eyes closed.

As if he were expecting it, Cysandoth opened his eyes, stood up, and appeared in front of Alfred.

Although slightly surprised, Alfred didn't jump, and instead gave a slight bow. "Would now be a good time to get weapons, sir?"

Cysandoth nodded, and motioned Alfred to follow him. Alfred walked close behind him for a few minutes before they arrived at a place, aptly named: "Armory".

Everything except for the bathrooms and the SE were almost completely open, and this included the armory. An arch similar to the Exchange's separated the hallway and the front desk. An older clerk with a beard sat behind the desk currently reading a book.

Up until they arrived at the desk, he didn't hear the two. Not because of his age, but because of how quiet Alfred, and specifically Cysandoth walked. When he did, he seemed slightly surprised, but snapped back and asked "Do you want to browse or put in a request for a custom?"

Alfred was about to look up at Cysandoth for help, but he was already answering.

"We'll browse," he said.

The man nodded and handed Cysandoth a new tablet. Cysandoth then turned to Alfred and seemed to take mental note of his height, and picked him up by the armpits to weigh him.

Alfred was visually uncomfortable with this action, but Cysandoth ignored the resulting glare and got back to the tablet.

"... The claymore will have to be slightly downsized, but you can deal with a normal sized sword and shield similar to the ones the children are given. The daggers will be normal sized as well," he said. "Here, I've selected the ones best suited for you. I cannot pay for them if you are to own them."

Alfred nodded in understanding. 'Makes sense. Any big shot could swindle weaker slaves out of their boons for equipment if that was how it worked.'

The daggers cost the least at 20 boons, the sword and shield were 40, and the claymore was 50, putting him down to 894 boons.

They obviously weren't of godly quality or anything, but they were better than what the colosseum provided by default, which weren't even that bad either.

"2820, a locker in the room next to the medical wing with your number on it will hold the weapons. You must log every time you take them out. The lockers are secured with your äura signature, and will only be accessed by guards to bring them in and out of the colosseum's walkways for you to select before an event."

Alfred did a short bow before walking after his master, who had begun to leave after the man finished his talk.

'Sometimes, Master is a bit cheeky. Other times, like today, he's more like me,' Alfred thought. 'I wonder which is the real him…'