Talent

It has been a day since I formed my core and this morning had somehow been just as eventful as the previous one. I woke up early as always and went through the motions of my normal daily routine, meditating in order to improve my mind palace, and sensing my ki.

I diverged from my normal routine at this point and began practicing controlling my ki. I released part of my ki from my core and slowly moved it to various parts around my body. It had no effect at the beginning, however when I commanded the ki to empower that specific area, rather than simply go there, I began to feel the effects of my ki. It strengthened my muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones and all. I could sense the changes that my ki caused, it provided an odd sensation, like I was manually correcting everything wrong in my body. Does that mean ki can improve a person's healing factor? Hm.

I thoerized and theorized, practiced and practiced until I ran low on ki and woke up Grey and Nico. Grey still seemed sad, but whatever Headmaster Wilbeck had told him must've cheered him up.

We ate breakfast and went to the study room, Grey and I planned to spar using our ki to test it out, while Nico planned to read.

As our sparring began, I started out without using anything other than plain martial arts, before moving on to using combat meditation to enter a state of pure focus. Despite beginning my training before him, Grey matched me in skill while I was using my combat meditation, and beat me when I didn't use it.

After sparring for a while, I decided to start using my ki to strengthen myself. I enforced my whole body equally with ki and quickly took Grey down, much to his chagrin.

Grey immediately questioned "How did you do that?"

I replied "I used ki in order to strengthen my body, just command the ki to empower your body and you should be able to do it as well."

Grey nodded, closed his eyes and immediately threw a right hook at me. I slipped to the side of his punch and retaliated with a quick jab, unpowered by ki. Even with the fact that I had an above average ki pool, I couldn't empower myself for that long. I needed to use my ki in bursts to properly pace myself.

I sent ki to my legs and used the distraction that the jab gave to create distance. As soon as I had distance I yelled out "Use your ki in bursts or you'll run out fast!"

Grey nodded and went on the offence. He ran up to me and threw a-

What?

How'd I get on the ground?

The next thing I knew Grey ran up to me and asked in a worried tone "Are you okay? I didn't think that would have such a big effect!"

"I'm fine Grey."

It wasn't a lie, I took a hit to the face but when I sent my ki to my face, it began healing the bruise. I stopped my ki before it fully healed the wound, I had used a third of my ki to mostly heal that bruise. It only used about five percent of my ki in that spar, so this usage rate is astonishing. My ki and only two thirds recovered after spending so much this morning, so I knew I needed time to recover before sparring again. I glanced at the clock that said 1200pm and knew we should eat.

With that in mind, I stated "Let's go eat lunch."

Without waiting for a response, I left and the other two followed. While eating lunch, I thought about what had happened in that spar. How did Grey win? I'll ask him.

"Hey Grey, how'd you do that?"

Grey thought for a moment before saying "It was simple, you said to use ki in bursts, so I put as much ki as I could in one burst-"

I sighed when I heard that, he hadn't done anything to in-

"I knew you'd dodge it if that was all I did, so I needed to trick you. I started my punch with only a bit of ki, and then overloaded it half way through the punch to catch you off guard."

Nevermind. How did he plan all that so quickly? He never paused to think in the fight, I suppose he's just got a lot of combat talent. I nodded my head at Grey to show that I understood. We ate, recovered our ki, and returned to the study room, but when we entered, we found someone unexpected.

Standing there was Headmaster Wilbeck with a stern expression. She saw us and simply said "Grey, Alio, attack me with all you have. Now!"

Me and Grey both exclaimed "What?!"

We only got a glare in return, so we quickly adopted a fighting stance. I glanced at Grey and saw that he had already got tunnel vision, he didn't even remember I was here, focused only on Headmaster Wilbeck. With him like that I knew he wouldn't be a good teammate. That means I'll just use his attacks to find openings, when Grey attacks I'll attack from a different angle to put pressure on the Headmaster.

I saw Grey run towards her and planned out my next moves but I never got the chance because the Headmaster moved faster than I could see and knocked Grey out cold.

What?

Why?

She glanced in my direction and I saw a demon superimposed over her figure. A chill ran down my spine and my knees began to tremble, is this killing intent? When that thought entered my mind I entered combat meditation and quickly got rid of the fear that I felt. Suddenly I saw everything clearly again, and began thinking rationally.

To win this fight I needed to pull off something new, my current abilities weren't enough. My mind flickered through my options before deciding to attempt to slow down time via combat meditation on the fly.

I knew I could pull it off, because, just like Grey, I was talented in my own right.

I backed away from the Headmaster and started trying to slow down time, I needed part of my mind to enter my mindscape and part of it to continue controlling my body.

Wait.

Why did it need to be part of my mind? If part of 'me' could enter my mindscape then I would be affected by the time dilation. I immediately sent my ki towards my head and used my expertise in entering the mindscape to allow the ki itself to enter the imaginary space of my mind.

Time immediately slowed down, my mind began processing information on a new level. However, this was quickly using up my ki reserves, I didn't have much time. To my luck, Headmaster Wilbeck got tired of waiting and charged at me.

I could see her, catch a glimpse of the speed I couldn't see before. When she threw a lazy punch at me, I reacted and pumped as much of my ki throughout my whole body as possible. Even with that, I could barely dodge her lousy punch.

Is this the difference in our raw strength? I saw Headmaster Wilbeck's eyes widen at me and then everything went dark for the second time in the past two day.

I had completely emptied my core.