章 37: Sliding
Everything was vague in Khan's vision. The darkness of the night fused with the dim lights of the streetlamps to create a strange spectacle that dried his eyes.
Khan tried to keep his eyes open, but a burning sensation forced them to close them every time he failed to control his body. His skin also hurt as the friction with the air scarred the flesh that his uniform didn't cover.
The faint image of a building suddenly appeared in Khan's vision. It disappeared in the next second since his eyes closed, but he still planted his feet on the ground to stop his incredible momentum.
The same burning sensation that afflicted his skin began to spread on his feet. Khan gritted his teeth, but he lost his balance and fell to the ground.
Khan kept his eyes closed as his body slowed down. His back began to hurt, but that sensation vanished once he stopped sliding on the ground.
His eyes opened and struggled to focus on his surroundings. Khan blinked many times to regain his vision, and the world slowly lost its blurriness.
The fence that encircled the dormitory soon became clear. Khan even noticed two soldiers standing on the sides of the gate and shooting confused stares toward him.
A satisfied smile appeared on Khan's face when he glanced at the clock hanging on the side of the gate. The curfew would still take three minutes to arrive. He had reached his destination on time.
"Do we need to call the medical bay?" One of the soldiers asked when Khan pointed his hands on the ground and struggled to stand up.
Khan's condition was far from ideal. His face, neck, and hands featured multiple scarred patches of skin. The sole of his shoes had also vanished during the abrupt stop, and the ground had torn his uniform.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Khan promptly said while wearing a fake smile and limping through the gate.
His feet hurt whenever they touched the ground, but he only cared about returning to his flat. Khan had stored a few lotions during those three months, so he wouldn't have to skip his usual training to visit a doctor.
The two soldiers followed Khan with their eyes before disregarding the matter. The clock soon marked ten pm, and the gate closed on its own. The easiest part of their job had finally arrived.
'I'm still far away from a complete mastery of this technique,' Khan complained in his mind as he entered his flat and crouched to take a few lotions from under his bed. 'Still, this move is great. I can't wait to learn how to deploy it in battle.'
His mind played the images of the fight against the four bullies while he applied the lotion on his scarred skin. Khan could see how inexperienced he was in that type of battle. His moves were good, but they had yet to become natural. Moreover, he often mixed them with random attacks.
The images then reached his last technique. Khan could finally understand what Dean Ulluw meant during his explanation of the Lightning-demon style. Expressing more power wasn't an issue. The problem was that the human body wasn't always able to endure it.
His scarred flesh proved how dangerous mana could be if deployed incorrectly. Khan had only performed the simplest sprint of the Lightning-demon style to reach the dormitory, but he didn't calculate how much mana he had to use.
It was clear that his body still couldn't endure that speed. Also, the execution of the technique wasn't completely perfect, especially during its end.
'Mana is so dangerous,' Khan sighed in his mind as he put the lotion under his bed, 'But it's so damn cool. How fast did I even go? Those bullies couldn't even do anything against me. I could break their bones with a few blows!'
Khan was excited about the path ahead, but he suppressed that emotion when he recalled his schedule. He still had his mental training and the usual meditation to complete.
'Fifth lesson here I come,' Khan shouted in his mind as he crossed his legs on the bed and focused his attention on the insides of his brain.
His brain contained a few azure specks of light, and Khan focused on the largest. His mind went blank as a few simple thoughts filled him and forced the mana to transform.
The small azure sphere split. It divided itself into two dots before repeating the process and creating four identical specks. Then, Khan imagined a series of invisible hands pinching their edges and giving them a different shape.
The spheres slowly stretched to transform into dimmer hexagons. Thin lines grew inside their edges until they reached the opposite sides. Then, more branches grew and tried to give birth to an intricate figure.
The theory behind the mental exercises of the training program for his element was rather simple. Khan had to manipulate the mana inside his brain to shape it in the form of intricate diagrams.
The execution of those exercises was far harder. The training program forced Khan to increase the number of diagrams every time he stepped on the next lessons.
The first lesson only saw one diagram, but the third already wanted two of them. The fifth required four, and the seventh would need six of them.
Everything had to culminate in the eleventh lesson, where Khan had to create ten diagrams. The process also had to happen at the same time. He couldn't handle the different figures separately.
Learning how to manage different diagrams at the same time was a hellish process, but the training program didn't end there. Every even lesson forced Khan to repeat the previous exercise without involving emotions, which was far more difficult than it sounded.
Khan shaped the diagrams as described by the training program and kept them in that state for a few seconds before doing the backward process. He dismantled those figures and returned them to their original form of a single speck of azure light.
'Again,' Khan faintly thought before repeating the exercise.
The training program required Khan to repeat the exercise five times in a row without mistakes to claim complete mastery. He could proceed on the next lesson only after meeting those standards, and he planned to succeed that night.
Khan started to reshape the mana again, and his second execution succeeded. The third also went well, but his speed diminished when he approached the fourth.
His mind began to feel tired and sloppy, but Khan pressed on. He didn't want to find justifications that night. The pain that filled his body couldn't reach him in that state. He had to succeed because he was dying to reach the Wave spell.
Khan completed the fourth execution before moving to the fifth. He felt on the verge of falling asleep, but his control didn't waver. Growing each line on the diagrams took far more time, but that wasn't a good reason to stop.
It took an entire hour to complete the fifth execution, but Khan didn't lose control for even an instant. He built the diagrams before dismantling them one last time and opening his eyes. His back inevitably landed on his bed when the process was over, and an intense sense of weakness filled his body and mind.
However, excitement raged in his mind. He could finally move to the sixth lesson. He had reached the halfway point before the Wave spell.
'It's already one am,' Khan thought when he glanced at his phone. 'Doing one hour of meditation will only make me more tired tomorrow morning. I should let my body recover tonight.'
The fifth lesson of the chaos element's training had taken far longer than Khan had predicted, so he set the alarm and closed his eyes. He didn't even glance at the empty top bunk on the other side of the room. He knew his roommate wouldn't come home that night.
The nightmare arrived as usual. Khan went back in time and relived the Second Impact. His mental training had allowed him to develop a unique coldness toward those images, but the long scene annoyed him anyway.
Yet, a sudden noise interrupted the nightmare and awakened Khan. His eyes immediately went on his phone, and a confused expression appeared on his face when he noticed that it was still four am.
The noise then resounded again. It spread through the entire flat and made some of the walls tremble. Khan inspected the event from his bed, but he eventually heard a few knocks on his door.
'Did I get into some trouble?' Khan wondered as he stood up and opened the door.
The two soldiers that patrolled the dormitory were standing in front of their flat. The duo wore severe expressions as they waved their phones and confirmed Khan's identity.
"Why didn't you answer your doorbell?" One of the soldiers asked.
"I didn't even know this flat had a doorbell," Khan honestly replied.
"Where were you tonight?" The second soldier asked.
"I went to the prisons of the camp to train with Lieutenant Dyester," Khan explained. "Then you saw me sliding on my back when I returned to the dormitory."
"We indeed saw you," The first soldier continued. "Only mana can create that acceleration. Do you know that it's forbidden to deploy mana outside of training rooms or without supervision?"
"I'm sorry, sir," Khan scratched his head. "I must correct you. The regulations of the Global Army forbid the use of mana to attack other recruits, but it doesn't say anything about training in the open, especially in isolated spots."
Both soldiers remained speechless, and one of them even browsed through the menus of his phone to find the regulations.
"The technique didn't even have offensive purposes," Khan continued. "It was an enhanced sprint meant to make me reach the dormitory on time. I was only trying to be a good recruit, sir."
Khan didn't share his father's stubbornness. He could continue to pretend even when the soldiers had clearly missed the mark.
The soldier found the regulations and showed them to his companion. Khan was right. He didn't break the rules with his last sprint.
"What can you tell me about this?" The second man asked while activating a few holograms on his phone.
Khan saw the battle against the bullies. He didn't feel surprised that the robots around the camps had recorded it, but he still didn't see anything wrong with it.
"They ambushed me," Khan explained while studying the battle. "It was self-defense."
"The tape is currently under investigation," The first soldier said. "You have been involved in two fights in only three months. I hope you don't mind if we pay more attention to you from now on."
"Not at all, sir," Khan continued with his act, but his eyes remained glued to the holograms. "You are just doing your work. I'm happy to comply to improve the situation in the camp. By the way, can I have this tape?"
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