Change of Pace

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Waking up early and departing quickly after having had breakfast with Alvin, Yune was the first one to arrive at the lecture hall this time and sat down in one of the seats in the front row.

Yune had arrived extremely early in comparison to yesterday, but he just didn't want to risk not being able to follow the lecture.

However, now he had to wait for class to begin. Luckily, Yune had come prepared as he didn't want to waste precious time and had grabbed a blank notebook from the library.

With quite a bit of time to kill, Yune started writing down everything he knew so far, organizing each topic in a separate part of the notebook. Information about marks, mana, specific information about his own mark, and on the very last page, Yune also started a sort of diary to keep track of his progress.

Just in time Yune finished all his notes as he heard the footsteps of his teacher on the podium in front of him. As the teacher began his lecture like normal, a smile formed on Yune's face.

Not only was he happy to learn more about everything related to marks, but he was also just happy that he could hear the teacher. Even though there seemed to be less students than yesterday, the lecture hall was still as loud as ever, but now that Yune sat in the front row, he could hear everything clearly.

In today's lecture, Gerald Moyer once again only talked about the basics. Although Yune had only read a few books in the last three days, even he knew about the topics that were talked about, so he kind of understood why the other students might have been displeased by the lecture.

But Yune enjoyed the lecture nonetheless and the time flew by quickly, it now already having become time for the practical class.

Arriving back on the field, Yune noticed that, just like at the theoretical class, there seemed to be fewer people.

"Okay students, today again is stamina training. Start running!" Noah Cain said, not seeming to be bothered seeing less students having come to his lecture.

Hearing this, the students were disappointed, thinking today was going to be different than just running around.

However, unlike last time, all students started running immediately despite showing displeasure, which came to a surprise to Noah Cain. But by the time most students had finished their first lap, he could see that a good chunk of people had sneakily left after pretending to run.

'Well, that figures. Your loss.' Noah Cain said, while shifting his focus back on the remaining students.

Only around 1500 people were now left running around the field, but as time went on, and people started to realize that they really were only going to run the entire four hours of the class, more and more people left.

And when the practical class eventually ended, on the second day of practical class, only around a thousand students remained.

As Noah Cain dismissed the class, he could see that Yune was also leaving unlike last time. "Yune aren't you going to keep running?" Noah Cain asked, a little surprised.

"I am going to eat dinner with my friend real quick and then come back to run some more!" Yune replied with a smile on his face as he ran off to the cafeteria.

And just as he had said, Yune came back around half an hour later after eating dinner, this time accompanied by Alvin, and they both started running till late at night.

This exact routine, Yune kept up for the entire week. In this short period of time, a lot of things changed. The theoretical class, that started with 2000 people, now only had around a thousand students left and for the practical class it was even worse, with only around five hundred students still attending.

And a lot changed about Yune's body too. His frail constitution had transformed into the level of an athlete's by human standards.

His overall physique had made quite the improvement just by eating healthy and running, a lot of running, but the strength in his legs had especially increased, improving his conditioning along with it and making him lighter on his feet, more agile.

Such a big change Yune hadn't even foreseen himself, having underestimated how much Noah Cain's healing, the mana inside his body and his own dedication would accelerate his growth.

Today marking the eighth day of classes, Yune went to the practical classes, and along with the remaining five hundred students, he immediately started running just like normal.

At that moment, they could hear the laugh of Noah Cain.

"Yes, well done. I like to see you guys this motivated to run, but today we are going to do something different." Noah Cain said, which the students were positively surprised hearing.

All students immediately ran back, most people hoping and thinking they would finally be taught mana usage, how to better use their powers or something else related to combat.

"I am content with your guys' stamina, and I applaud you for not quitting like most students. So, we will move onto the next subject, strength training." Noah Cain said, a sincere smile on his face.

Without Noah Cain even having to explain what he meant by strength training, everyone got the gist of it, their expression changing for the worse.

They immediately knew that they weren't going to get taught anything related to mana, marks or even combat yet, instead they would be training their muscles.

Noah Cain could see by the students' expressions that they roughly knew what he was implying, so he didn't bother explaining much. "You guessed right, we will be training our muscles next to gain more strength." Noah Cain said, taking a short pause after hearing some disappointed grunts from the students.

"I think you guys are not really excited about strength training, but don't worry, I came prepared!" Noah Cain said as he took out a big dice from his bag and rolled it on the floor. "Oh, it landed on burpees! How exciting. Yes, let's start with that. One lap of burpees around the field!"

Almost all students, except a few including Yune, looked at Noah Cain with bewildered expressions on their faces.

"Burpees around the whole track? Why do we have to do this? When are you going to teach us something useful like mana control, how to use our powers or even anything related to combat at all?" One of the students asked angrily, speaking for everyone still standing there.

Unlike last time, when Noah Cain screamed at the students who didn't start running, he simply shrugged his shoulders in reply.

And just like that, another bunch of students left, never returning to practical class again.

At the same time these students were leaving, the rest slowly made their way around the track, moving forward with the jump of each burpee. This time, Yune was one of the frontrunners.

Yune had a hard time as his upper body strength still wasn't the best, but managed to power through it using other means, stabilizing his breathing and heartbeat as best as he could whilst using his mana to decrease his weight, which he could now continually decrease by 7%.

In this week, Yune had kept track on how much he could decrease his weight by in Alvin's training room to write down his progress in his notebook, and whilst doing this Yune had found out a few interesting things.

First, Yune had noticed that his weight decrease wasn't linear to the amount of mana he used. It worked more exponentially. The amount of mana he needed to decrease his weight by only one percent was comparatively less than the amount of mana he needed to decrease his weight from six to seven percent, and it would only become more costly the higher the weight reduction was.

The second thing Yune thought to have found out was that he would now always require the tiniest bit more mana to decrease his weight. After thinking about this for some time, Yune had come to the conclusion it had to do something with him having gained weight or his body having become fuller, but he wasn't a hundred percent about this yet.

But what he did know is that he had improved a lot, which he was thankful for at this moment as the burpees were even straining for him now, let alone if he couldn't decrease his weight at all.

With one lap done, most students looked exhausted, but unfortunately for them, this was only the beginning. As they had reached the finish line, each student would have to roll the dice again, deciding their own fates for the next lap.

Sometimes they were lucky to get a free lap where they just had to run without anything special, but this wasn't the case most of the time.

The five other options they could get were, the burpees, army crawl, weighted run, lunges walk, and lastly high-knees. Additionally to that, there was one other option for not rolling the dice, which was doing thirty pull-ups to get ten minutes of rest.

This way of exercising, for four hours straight, might have looked like an abomination to the students, it certainly felt like it, but these exercises were carefully chosen by Noah Cain. And every day a student managed to continue the classes, they were getting stronger, and at a fast rate at that.

---

And eventually, after a strenuous two weeks of physical training, a tight group of fifty students remained in the practical class, standing proudly before Noah Cain at the beginning of class.

"Today marks the last day of your second week. Do you know what that means?" Noah Cain asked the students.

"More strength training?" One of the students said, getting a laugh out of everyone.

"Good guess, but no." Noah Cain said, adding a dramatic pause as he began smiling at the students. "It is finally time for combat training."

The remaining students couldn't be happier after hearing this. Now after two weeks, one week of stamina training and one week of strength training, they were finally going to be taught what they all wanted from the beginning, combat training.