After Marcos informed them that there was an advanced gravity trial which he now qualified for, many of the people here wanted to watch him to see if he could get a full completion on that as well. Unfortunately, however, none of them qualified to go there and watch. So Marcos offered to train them here, so that they could get a full completion as well and qualify for it. They would need to purchase their own pills, but he advised them to buy training pills, muscle pills, organ pills, and tendon pills, as those would be the main things that were injured. He took a quick trip to the store to refill his kit and buy an additional ten muscle pills, five organ pills, and five tendon pills, then returned.
A few other people joined him in purchasing pills, including Jim, Franky, and Carol. So, for the next two hours he used his skills as a trainer to teach them how to get the most out of the testing area. “Think of it as a way to push yourself to your limits, but without having to do lots of exercise.” He told them. “Instead, all you have to do is walk. Go until you are near your limit with some body part, then do some extremely basic exercises. A few squats, a few push-ups, a few sit-ups. It will feel like you are near your max weight, but it will work out far more muscles than normal exercises. Now, my workouts are extremely balanced, so I could manage it near the maximum distance I could manage, but you might not be able to. That’s fine, though. Just do what you can, pushing yourself, and take pills for whatever system starts to wear down. The good thing about these pills is that you can recover from workout stress in a matter of minutes, and keep going. Now, you might get really hungry, because your body is using up all of the nutrients it has to recover from that stress, but you can just take a satiation pill and drink some water, and you’ll be fine. The shop sells the pills for a point each, too.”
The people didn’t seem too enthusiastic after his speech, but it did give them some valuable information. After several of them left to stock up on satiation pills and water, the first of them, Carol, started the trip down the walkway, and stopped at the forty meter mark. She laid down and tried to do a sit-up, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Come on, you can do it.” cheered Marcos, but no matter how hard she pushed she couldn’t finish the first one. “Try a push-up.” suggested Marcos, and she rolled over to her stomach and pushed herself off of the ground. “Keep your back straight.” Marcos said, and she stopped letting her middle drop, and he started cheering for her again. The others stood around watching, but most of them didn’t understand what was so hard about this. At the moment she was under five times Earth normal gravity, but until you had experienced it, that was hard to imagine properly. Franky and Jim, however, cheered her as well, as they had been through the course. Even if they hadn’t tried to work out while in there, they had spent time in the intense gravity she was now laboring under.
Marcos would love to step onto the track and help her out. Having a workout buddy often helped a lot more than having a workout coach, as you knew they were going through the same thing you were, but the trial put a barrier around the field to prevent people from stepping into the field from anywhere but the starting line. Even at the starting line, it only let one person step onto the field at a time. She could leave the field at any time by stepping off the side, though, so it didn’t trap her on it.
Eventually, with the encouragement of the others, she managed to push herself up all the way before her arms gave out and she collapsed onto the track. Marcos congratulated her and told her to take a muscle pill. She did so and then laid there for a few minutes while her core muscles and arms recovered. After two or three minutes she had mostly recovered, and tried to do another sit-up. This time she managed to finish one, then stood up. Marcos instructed her how to do squats, and after three or four, she took another muscle pill and just stood there to recover. Every time she had recovered enough she did another set of workouts, occasionally switching to a different workout. Occasionally she would need to take another pill, taking one for whatever system was stopping her from continuing, and recovering from one set of issues while developing others, like doing leg exercises until her legs were worn out, then doing sit-ups and push-ups.
She found that, once she got started, it wasn’t any worse than a normal intense workout. The pills let you recover almost as fast as you wore yourself out, and because you came back stronger each time, with your qi constantly topping itself off as you improved your level, you never completely burned out after the first few times. After thirty minutes she found that she wasn’t really feeling the effects of the gravity, so she stood up and moved to the sixty meter line, where she started feeling like she had when she started off.
Carol ended up running out of muscle pills an hour later, while working out on the eighty meter line, but she was able to finish the course soon after that. With her position as the second person on the grand completion list, she was awarded five hundred point for the feat, though none for the distance, as this was her sixth time taking the trial. This earned her the qualifications for the advanced course.
Several other people had shown up here as she was training on the course, and had watched her work out under the gravity. Several of the larger men had decided that it couldn’t be that difficult to do the course if she had managed it, and had lined up to walked the course normally. One of them managed to reach past the seventy meter line, but most barely managed the fifty meter line. It seemed that the average Gathering level cultivator could only manage to function under six or seven times Earth’s gravity.
Their failure had encouraged others to try to outdo them, and soon most of the people there had went through the course at least once. After that one of the buff guys had asked Carol how she had managed it, and she and Marcos explained to them how to use the course to train. Once most of the others had finished the course, and while the buff guys were off buying pills to try and train, Franky entered the course. He did much like Carol, only he tried to do ten sit-ups, ten push-ups, and ten squats every ten meters. Once things started to get tough, he dropped to doing so every five meters, then every three meters, then two, then every meter. Any time he would start to get worn out, he would take a pill and continue.
He appeared to be recovering much faster than Carol had, so Marcos asked him why. “Healing technique,” he said. “I have a wood root, and I found this one on a Chinese web site about a month ago. I use it after every workout. It doesn’t work as good while I’m not meditating, but it seems to work really well when combined with the pills. It’s almost as good as the technique is when I’m meditating but not on the pills.”
Marcos nodded. “I wouldn’t have thought about that. Good idea.”
Twenty minutes later, Franky reached the ninety five meter line and switched out his routine. He crouched and carefully made his way back to the starting line before turning around and sneaking back to the ninety five meter mark. Once he had finished, he went to the ninety nine meter line, did his last set of exercises, then walked over the line.
With a third person on the list and the person doing it while moving slowly but surely forward, the body builder group of four guys lined up to do the same. Marcos tried to give them a few pointers, but they acted annoyed that he would do so, as if they didn’t need his advise, so he just left the side of the field. If they didn’t want his advise, he would let them succeed or fail on their own. “I’m going to go to the beast trials.” he told Franky and Carol. “I’ll come back in a few hours and gather anyone that has a grand completion on this, so that we can go to the second level version together.” They told him that they would wait here for him, and he teleported away.
When he arrived at the beast trial Marcos realized that there were already three people lined up to use it. The man on stage swung his sword at the ice panther in front of him and sliced a chunk of meat off of the side of its head, causing the other three people to cheer for him. “Go Caleb!” one of the men shouted. Blood started to pour from the side of the panther’s head and Marcos could see the flap of skin hanging from its chin. The simulation was definitely going for realism.
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The panther blew ice cold air at the man on stage, who Marcos assumed was named Caleb. From the side of the stage Marcos could fill a chill, and Caleb dodged out of the way. While the sleeve of his jacket had frost on it, he didn’t seem to be effected. Seeing him dodge, the panther jumped at him, and Caleb stabbed, running his sword through the back of the Panther’s neck. Caleb dropped the sword and a few seconds later the panther disappeared as well as the blood that it had lost to the stage. Caleb’s sword fell to the ground and he bent over to pick it up. ‘Congratulations on completing the trial. One Hundred points rewarded.’ the floating sign said. Caleb nodded and stepped off the stage.
The others congratulated him and another man stepped onto the stage. A screen appeared and they scrolled through a variety of animals before selecting the ice panther. This man didn’t appear to have a weapon, and when the panther appeared he simply held up his hands. A qi bolt flew from each of them, hitting the panther but not killing it. The panther ran at him and he rolled out of the way before throwing two more qi bolts into the panther’s side. The attack seemed to open up small wounds on the panther, but it ran at the man again, and again he rolled out of the way and counterattacked. This repeated several times, with the panther getting slower each time, and eventually the Panther collapsed from blood loss. ‘Congratulations on completing the trial. One Hundred points rewarded.’ the sign repeated.
Marcos walked over to them. “Didn’t realize you could beat it with qi attacks.” he said.
“Yeah.” said the man as he came off the stage. “I’ve beat it three times that way. At least I didn’t get hit this time.”
One of his friends nodded. “I just wish it didn’t prevent you from flying more that two meters off the ground. Killing them would be so much easier.”
Marcos shrugged. “I actually had to face them in a field in my first trial and tried that. I got attacked by hawks, which are their natural food source. So, since it isn’t a thing that will work against them in nature, I don’t really have a problem with not being able to do it in a trial.” They nodded in agreement, then asked where Marcos had seen them. He brought up the teleport map and showed them where the Hunting Grounds were. They were starting to get bored of fighting simulations and wanted to try facing the real things. “Just make sure you are prepared to fight off large numbers of them.” Marcos warned, “They swarmed me in a pack when I killed one of them. It howled in pain and that drew in all of those in the area.”
“Sure.” said Caleb. “We’ll prepare for that.” They started discussing their ‘quest’ and Marcos realized that they all seemed to be carrying different weapons and have different styles. Other than Caleb, who had a sword, one had a bow and quiver, and one had a mace and was wearing some sort of chain mail. They were likely some sort of roleplay group that had decided to meet up and LARP in the hidden realm. From what he overheard of their conversation, though, they didn’t seem to have a bad mix of character classes, so Marcos ignored them and went to the now open stage. He also selected the panther, but bumped the difficulty up to middle Condensation. He had already beaten a peak Gathering IRL, and now that he had trained a bit more he thought that would be too easy of an opponent.
The panther appeared and ran at him, and he charged at it as well. He barely managed to dodge out of its way, but landed a kick on its ribs, which caused it to spin sideways a bit. It turned to lunge at him and he punched it in the side of the face, knocking it to the side so it couldn’t bite him. It tried biting him a few more times, but didn’t appear to be doing much damage. As a level two creature, it appeared to be too tough for a level one fighter to easily defeat it without using qi. Marcos wanted to try doing this without relying on qi, however, as that was a consumable resource and might make things too easy.
The other people gathered there appeared to be interested in the fight, but Marcos couldn’t pay attention to them. He managed to buy himself enough time to put on the knuckles he had brought with him, having taken them off while mining, but that only seemed to do a small amount of damage whenever an attack landed. He would need to try something different. Now that he had been reminded of the mining, he tried the same trick he had used there. He gathered some dirt and sand from the stage, shrunk it, then threw it into the panther’s nose. The panther stopped and wheezed a bit, but didn’t seem to be stopped by the attack. He thought of using something bigger to plug its throat as well, but he didn’t have much on him that he could use, and the stage was mostly empty. His bag only had the plant and the materials he had gotten from mining, plus the medicine he had bought, and his backpack, and his backpack only had a few changes of clothes and satiation pills. Sure, a few pairs of jeans might do the trick, but it would take a little while to pull them out. Then he realized that he had overlooked something, the hawk that he had shoved in there at the gazebo. It might be large enough.
He removed the bird, shrunk it, then, as the panther was starting to recover, sent it into the cat’s throat. Once it was as far in as he could get it, he let it expand and the panther collapsed to the ground, violently trying to cough up what was hung in its throat. Thirty seconds later it managed to wheeze as it forced a bit of air past the bird, but couldn’t fully breathe and was slowly suffocating. Marcos knew that a Condensing human could go for several minutes without breathing, and started feeling sorry for the creature. Even if it was a simulation, it seemed to be in considerable pain. Not wanting to make it suffer any more, he sat on it’s back and grabbed its head. With a sharp qi-enhanced jerk there was a loud pop, and the panther stopped moving, dying from a snapped neck. ‘Congratulations on completing the trial. Three Hundred points rewarded, including one hundred for ingenuity.’ The panther disappeared and Marcos fell to the ground. He returned the slightly damaged bird to his bag and stood up.
“You can choke them with the shrinking technique?” the man who had used qi bolts to defeat one asked before Marcos left the stage.
“Yeah, I used the technique to mine earlier and thought about using it here. Of course, I didn’t want it to suffer, so I snapped its neck, but that is a valid technique.”
The men nodded and spoke for a few seconds. “Do you think you can help us fight something stronger this time?” Caleb asked. “There was one on the list we wanted to fight, but we weren’t sure if we were strong enough.” Marcos agreed and Caleb talked him through how to set the field to ‘group battle’. This would evenly split the reward for killing the creature or creatures, but would still reward ingenuity points on an individual basis. Once Marcos had done that, the four of them came onto the stage and Caleb selected the beast.
One minute later a ten meter long winged lizard which anyone familiar with the fantasy genre would recognize appeared on the stage across from them. Thankfully the stage was thirty meters to the side or they would have had trouble fitting on the stage with it. “A dragon?” asked Marcos. “You wanted to fight a dragon?”
“Technically it’s a wyvern.” said Caleb, looking a bit apologetic. “Its front legs are part of its wings. Even the trial calls it a wyvern. We can fight an actual dragon after this if you want, though.”
Marcos sighed and prepared for an attack just as the giant lizard breathed out a mouthful of flame in their direction.
Ten minutes later the corpse of the beast disappeared, causing Marcos to fall several meters to the ground, and each of them received five hundred points. Marcos also got two hundred bonus points for ingenuity. Apparently, wrapping your legs around the beast’s neck and repeatedly punching it in the eyes with everything you had was a novel approach to wyvern hunting. Marcos stood up while panting and went over to the others. Several of them were seriously wounded in the fight, so he gave them the pills they needed to recover.
He walked over to Caleb, who only had some minor injuries, and slapped him in the back of the head. “Okay, I get wanting to fight a wyvern, but why did you have to make it peak Condensing?” he angrily asked.
“I thought it would be a fun challenge.” Caleb defended himself, and Marcos shook his head.
“It was challenging, alright. Your three friends were seriously wounded. I get that you guys are basically LARPing here, but you need to learn to not treat this like an RPG. You almost TPKed.”
Caleb nodded and sighed. “I know. I screwed up.” He got up and went to his friends, who were awake but still recovering. “I’m sorry I put us in that situation. Being able to farm the panthers went to my head and I almost got you guys killed.”
The mage nodded. “Yeah, you screwed up, but thankfully none of us died. Let’s talk about this again after we’ve recovered.” Caleb nodded and he and Marcos helped the others off the stage.
When everyone had recovered and rested, Caleb offered to pay Marcos back for the pills, but Marcos turned him down. “I should have been watching you to make sure you didn’t act stupid, so that cost’s on me. Besides, it’s only ten points.” Caleb nodded.
A few minutes later Marcos stood up and was about to teleport back to the gravity trial when Caleb stopped him. “Hey, you want to travel with us? You made a great monk in the fight. We have a Paladin, Warlock, Ranger and Fighter already, so you would fit right in.”
Marcos shook his head. “I’ve actually got a group I was going to hang out with already, and just came here to earn some points while they trained. But if we meet up later, maybe we can fight something together.”
Caleb nodded and the rest of them said goodbye as Marcos disappeared, returning to the gravity trial once more.
