Savage Awakening 593. The Final Training Montage (IV)

A/N: Quick note on the System Store! 

Added in a note to previous chapters clarifying that System Store items can only be used by the purchaser—there’s an icon denoting that it’s a System Store item. The System wants to enforce a meritocratic use of the store; same reason why Store Credits are generally not transferrable.

// 

Zane was off to the races after that.

That night he started loading in what he’d gained in Pure Size during the day. He found the Sage’s advice pretty useful, which was actually a bit of a surprise. Loading in Law did feel like he was doing a reverse crusher. He had an impression of the Law in his mind, and all he needed to do was to ‘crush’ that into the Foundation Stone. It was a soul thing, he felt, rather than a physical one.

He also found it wasn’t a process he could easily rush. There seemed to be a loading speed that the stone liked; it took impressions in ‘layers,’ and each layer would take a bit to solidify before he could crush it deeper. Throwing all his soul weight behind the crush didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

He found that keeping constant pressure over hours was the best way to go about it.

Like that, bit by bit, he loaded in the Pure Size he’d gleaned.

He went to sleep not long after he finished up—the giant clock read 1:48 A.M. These days, sleep usually wasn’t necessary, and he could go quite a while without it if he had to. But whenever he needed deeper levels of physical or soul recovery, such as the kind of thrashing he’d put himself through today, it helped quite noticeably.

He still felt a little sore the next morning, to his surprise, though it was much better than he’d felt last night. He wondered if it was just because he was hitting his body with this much new stimulus this fast. He didn’t regret it at all, though. He was actually quite eager to check out his gains.

The very next morning, at 6 o’clock sharp, he headed out with the Barbarian Sage to the Wrecking Bag, where he recorded his first Pure Size-boosted punch.

He’d done this yesterday just before he’d left the station—just threw a normal punch. The Sage had recommended it as a benchmark. He’d left an imprint exactly the size of his fist, though it extended about fifty feet into the steel. He’d quite enjoyed how this Wrecking Bag molded to his fist; it just felt good to lay into.

This time, one punch—BOOM!—and a fresh imprint lay four yards wide. It ran slightly deeper than yesterday’s, even.

Off to the side, the Sage gave him a nod. “Keep it up, lad—you just keep punching! Get your body used to it.”

Zane did. He just kept battering it with punch after punch. He soon found he could adjust the size of his fist quite easily—going from one yard to four, then back to normal-sized, however he wished. He briefly wondered why he’d ever want to go back down, before realizing that once you started packing the really big sizes—a few miles, for instance—it probably just felt impractical. Unless you were fighting truly giant Monsters.

Even when you scaled down the surface area, the extra heft Size granted stayed. It was a bit unreliable to use punch depth as a measure since he hadn’t gone max-effort on yesterday’s test. But today’s punches were all slightly deeper, clocking in at fifty to fifty-five feet.

Neat.

At first the width kind of surprised him. He’d been used to throwing punch-sized punches his whole life, so four yards felt pretty massive. Then he realized Pure Size was meant to go up to hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles at its peak… so one day’s worth of effort, for this big of an impact, actually did make sense.

It also felt quite fascinating when he cranked it up, just physically. He could see the ‘mech-suit’ of Pure Size around his fist in the Astral Plane, magnifying its presence. He also felt the sensations of his fist making contact with the steel even when he wasn’t actually physically making contact—just doing it with that ‘mech-suit.’

It was every bit as satisfying—actually more satisfying—to punch with. That THWACK definitely felt meatier.

He still didn’t have the inertia to shake the wrecking bag as a whole… he actually didn’t feel any difference there. Though he supposed that was because he’d only gotten one day’s worth of Size loaded in—really just a few hours’ worth.

Next up he got in a morning lift, with the Sage acting as his spotter.

He warmed up with a 500-mile deadlift, then went straight into 800, 900—maxing out at just a hair under 1000 miles, with the Sage cheering him on with all the heart you could ask for. Just having the Sage there, yelling “You take it to ‘em!” spittle flying, helped him make those last few lifts.

He topped that lifting session off with an 800-mile dead haul.

After that, he was pretty destroyed physically and sweating his ass off. He toweled off and sat down for a quick lunch break. Two hours loading in food and Spirit Water passed pretty quickly.

Something he found quite rewarding with physical training was how fast he saw the gains. There were bigger jumps around body level-ups, of course, but every bit of new strength, new muscle showed its worth pretty much instantly, level-up or not.

Sometimes that wasn’t true for Law. His Nuclear Fusion, for instance, was mostly epiphany-based—a few big jumps. Even Starfire, which was a more incremental Law, relied on some breakthroughs at times—for instance, the fact that it moved best linearly had taken a little while to get down.

With physical training, you just stacked muscle and lifted.

Pure Size as a Concept definitely felt pretty incremental too, now that he thought about it… though it felt as much like physical training as it was Law Training.

As he munched, he reminded himself that these were still newbie gains yet. He tried not to get too excited over them—there was still a long road ahead. Though with the Sage at his side, it was hard not to get at least a little hyped up.

That afternoon they went for a Crusher session, and the Sage spotted him there too. A few shouts of encouragement—“Light weight, lad!” “Those friends you’ve got, that lady o’ yours—they’re right there with you, lad! You fight for ‘em with all you’ve got!”—could be heard echoing through Boot Camp for the next few hours, each time Zane was on the verge of failure.

They mostly kept their sets just under ‘#7’—the same setting that’d ended up crushing Zane last time. There were a total of twenty-five settings, apparently, which felt kind of insane to Zane, given how much he was struggling now. Then the Sage told him the more Pure Size you had, the less effect external Pure Size had on you.

“By the time you get Pure Size all loaded in, that #25 will feel… well—still not easy, mind you,” said the Sage, scratching his head. “But it’ll feel damned doable, that’s for sure.”

That session also reinforced how much further he had to go. He could only feel a slight difference in his ability to resist Pure Size compared to yesterday. Though again, he’d only been here a single day. He wasn’t at all discouraged.

No Kaijuu-punching that day—there was just no time for it. They’d save it for tomorrow.

That night, he loaded in the day’s work yet again. It just took time and patience. Law loading was also less intensive than Crusher sessions, which was nice; it gave him some time to recover. He definitely couldn’t do Law crushing 24/7. He wasn’t sure which would give out first if he tried that—his body or his soul.

…Probably his body. But it’d definitely be pretty taxing on his soul too. Crusher sessions were a great deal more intense than his Starfire comprehension sessions had been, which did make sense.

While he worked on his nighttime loading, the Sage headed off to his sub-zero moon to do his rehab ice baths. That night, inspired by Zane, the Sage actually headed out to his own black hole for some lifts—though when he came back, he shook his head. He still seemed in good spirits, though. “It’s not my time just yet…. We’ll get there, though! Just you wait, lad, we’ll get there.”

***

His days passed like this, and before he knew it, his first week was in the bag.

They made some slight adjustments after his first few days. One change was that his physical and soul fatigue started to build up day by day, just a little every time.

Zane was actually kind of surprised to see it. It’d been ages since he’d felt real accumulated fatigue, what with his Prime Blood and body and all.

The Sage wasn’t surprised, though.

“Figured this might happen, even with you, lad,” said the Sage, frowning, after Zane got smashed into the deadlifting platform one day on a max-effort pull. “Back when I was going hard at it, I could only do dead hauls every 3 or 4 days. That’s just how it is, building strength at this level. Right—let’s change up the programming a bit.”

They ended up splitting his time between Law-focused and body-focused days. Day A would be Kaijuu punching and crushing—more intensive than he’d done on his first day. Day B would be all manner of lifting—including dead hauls and deadlifts, which were his primary trainers, with timed gravity track racing, machines, and other minor stations thrown in.

Every single day, Law or body, the Sage almost had to carry him back to the Monster Skull. Which was by design—it was his objective to eviscerate himself in body and soul as much as he possibly could.

The rewards quickly began to show.

After just that first week, he felt his Foundation Stone’s loading reach just over the 1% mark—that was, the depth the impression had made reached 1% of its maximum.

Progress wasn’t a linear thing, he knew. Otherwise, he’d be done with this Law in something like two years. But still, he felt pretty pleased about it. Yard by yard, his fist size kept ticking up.

Even at just 1% Size loaded in, he was getting noticeably better at punching Kaijuus. Having dozens of yards of fist size to work with really made a difference. Plus he just liked seeing the impressions of his knuckles lifting their chins in uppercuts—still tiny compared to the size of the Kaijuu, of course. But he was getting there.

1% pure size also wasn’t enough to stop him from getting blasted out of the black hole by one of those Hammerhead tail swipes… he was getting there too.

That first week, he fought two hammerheads and something called a ‘shellster’—this Kaijuu with a giant shell on its back, a shell that ended in curved, ram-like horns. It liked making gravity whirlpools and had a deceptively fast shell charge. It could also ride gravity currents like ocean currents. He found it harder than the hammerhead to take down, but not too much harder.

Those two hammerheads weren’t the one he’d fought on his first day, which made him wonder just how many Kaijuu were really down there. The black hole had to be bigger on the inside than the outside, he was nearly certain of it; otherwise it’d only fit like four Kaijuu. And the Sage had hinted that these were only the first ‘Tier’ of the Kaijuu down there.

***

He finished up his twelfth day dripping with sweat, as usual. He felt sore all over. He also felt really good, deep down; just this familiar satisfaction.

The only sign time had passed was that giant clock over the Monster skull. Often at night, he’d think about his friends and the Monsters he’d soon have to fight… the Sage wasn’t usually one to bring them up. But he’d realized reminding Zane what he was fighting for was quite effective as a form of encouragement.

He liked how simple his task was and how bounded his days were. He felt he was at his most effective when he could make clear parameters for himself and just go to work. So far, he had no complaints.

The grind continued.