Chapter 14

Zale finished his daily demonstration of kata and techniques for Malchi. When they had first started it had only taken a half hour at most for Zale to go through everything. Now it took at least an hour and a half to go through everything he had learned. That was a testament to how much he had learned over the last month under Malchi’s tutelage. Today was luckily one of the days where Malchi didn’t correct anything Zale did. Zale thought it would be a perfect time to ask him about sparring with Devon Brekk.

Malchi threw the training vest to Zale as he chugged water. After morning technique demonstration was always running. It had become natural to Zale. He slipped the vest on and the weight made his shoulders sink and the floorboards under him groan. He stretched out his arms and back as he got ready to begin his run.

“Master, Devon Brekk approached me and asked for a sparring session.”

Malchi frowned. “Do you think you are ready to fight with him? His abilities are all A rank. While you have indeed progressed in martial arts it won’t be even close to a fair fight when he uses his abilities.”

“We don’t have to use abilities. It could just be a martial arts sparring session. That way it will be equal footing.”

“Humph. And will your enemies in the future be so nice as to not use their abilities? Better yet, will the contestants in the school competition be so lenient and bring themselves down to equal footing?” Malchi spat with disdain.

Zale was speechless. He knew he wasn’t a match to anyone at the moment when abilities were involved. He was just tired of watching as everyone went off to train their abilities during the afternoon while he continued physical conditioning. The epic battle he had witnessed between Devon Brekk and his master Commander Cipher was over a month ago. How much more had Devon progressed since then? He certainly wasn’t sitting idle the last month waiting for Zale to catch up. Zale wasn’t questioning his teacher’s methods; he just was frustrated.

“They would not give me that luxury,” Zale said as he hung his head low.

“Sparring has a place in training. It can be a godsend to better grasping the flow of combat and one’s strengths and weaknesses. However, at your current level it would be a waste of time. When you are able to survive true lightning I will allow you to spar.”

When he survived lightning. He was getting tired of thinking about that let alone hearing it. When could he stop hiding underground and face it head on? It was unbearable. He had always been taught to face his problems head on. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew he stood no chance without a plan. But strengthening his body could only bring him so far. He just needed a glimmer of hope. He needed a finish line in the distance he could run towards.

“What level of bodily strength do I have to reach before I can test myself against the lightning? I have already passed all my peers when it comes to physical conditioning.”

Malchi sat down and tossed the words around in his head. He motioned for Zale to begin running. One lap around the compound took Zale around twenty minutes. The circuit Malchi had designed wasn’t just a lap around the perimeter. Zale had to snake through every hallway, corridor, and common area on all floors. The monks and students had all got used to seeing Zale run through wearing the bulky training vest. Only after five circuits was he allowed to stop. This time however Malchi was standing in his way as he closed in on finishing his first circuit. Zale came to a stop in front of his mentor.

“While your body isn’t strong enough yet to take the lightning it is ready for the next step. We will start tonight after dinner.”

Zale was almost too excited to respond. “What will we be doing?”

“Keep running and don’t be so excited. If I told you now you may run away. You will just have to wait and see.”

Zale finished his four circuits of cardio as fast as he could. When he came back around on his last lap Malchi waved for him to continue for a sixth lap mumbling something about having too much energy. Lunch was devoured. Malchi made him sit patiently as he ate his rice one tiny bit at a time. It felt to Zale that he was purposely dragging it on as much as possible. The bar exercise was tough as usual. Zale could only really do one full rotation of the exercise and then reach six or seven pegs high when trying to complete his second go through. There were fifteen peg rows all together. After his first go through, a majority of his energy was spent making his subsequent tries less and less successful until he couldn’t even move up one peg. When he reached this point of exhaustion his arms were numb with pain while his abdominals burned and cramped as he sat down. He had come to enjoy the sensation though. It meant he had pushed his body beyond its limits. Every day he was getting stronger. When his muscles failed, his willpower would push through. That was Zale’s mentality. There were somethings that a stubborn will could conquer that nothing else could.

Dinner was as quick as Zale could make it. After his evening meal Zale and Malchi would normally separate going their separate ways. However, tonight Malchi followed Zale back to his room to watch his training. Zale would spend the night learning new martial techniques on his own. There was just as much reading involved as there was actual physical practice. For Zale, theory was just as important as implementation. Records stated that masters could see a technique once and imitate it perfectly on their first try. Saints could not only mimic techniques perfectly on their first try, but also incorporate them flawlessly into their own style immediately with no negative side effects. That was how high their level of comprehension was. Zale was far from this level but yearned for it.

It was impossible for Zale to focus on developing his martial skills with Malchi just sitting there watching him. He wanted to know what training Malchi had in store for him that night. He wanted to begin the next step. The book on Judo that he was studying might as well have been in another language because none of its contents were leaving impressions. Malchi must have realized how anxious his student was to begin the next step in training because he stood up and motioned for Zale to follow him out of the room.

“I guess it was unfair of me to expect you to contemplate new techniques right now. I just know that after we do this tonight you won’t be able to do anymore training today.”

The last words weren’t very comforting to hear, but Zale was happy that he wasn’t forced to try and study. It would be like if a child had a present wrapped and waiting on the table but was forced to do chores before they opened it. All the chores would be done half-assed. Nothing in the world should be done half-assed. Zale’s father would always lecture him saying if a man were to do something it should be done right so that it doesn’t need to be done again.

Zale was surprised that they didn’t take the stairs up to the main floor of the Spirit Hall. Instead, they took the underground hallway further and further. It only took a minute to be out of the area Zale was familiar. The underground section did extend under not just the Spirit Hall but the City Hall as well. Some of it Zale was told he couldn’t enter so he never really explored it. Eventually, Malchi brought them to a halt in front of a door with a single guard in front of it. The guard looked solemnly at Zale as he opened the door and ushered them both in.

The room was not what Zale was expecting at all. He thought he was going to start a new physical exercise on top of his daily routine. He thought the room would have the materials needed for a new work out, something similar to the set up required for the bar exercise he did every afternoon only bigger. Instead he was faced with a large aquarium. This aquarium though was different than any Zale had heard of before. It wasn’t filled with different fish living harmoniously together. This one was filled exclusively with eels.

“Are those what I think they are?”

Electricity arched from one eel to another as Zale spoke.

“They are extremely rare. They can only be found on the southern coast. The people there call them Lightning Naga. A single one can produce enough electricity to be fatal to a normal human. It isn’t guaranteed to kill though because the amount of electricity they discharge is right on the line of being just painful or lethal.”

Zale had a bad feeling about what was going to happen when he saw a tub big enough to rest one’s feet in next to a chair with restraining straps for the arms and legs.

“In rare instances, people with lightning abilities use the eel to train their affinity with lightning. It is almost unheard of in today’s day and age because there are safer measures. However, we don’t have the luxury of using those measures. They are all much too gentle. Our goal is to prepare your body for true lightning, one of nature’s most savage displays of power.”

Malchi motioned for Zale to sit in the chair without explaining why. He didn’t need to. Zale could tell perfectly what was about to happen and he felt like a fool for rushing to get here. Purposely electrocuting one’s self was truly madness. Despite logic though, he sat in the chair without complaint. He knew he needed to train more than just martial arts and his body strength to survive lightning. He always had known deep down that if he truly wanted to survive Lightning Rod he would have to bear through conditions others would rather die than go through. Sometimes a man had to go through hell to reach paradise. He laughed. Maybe that should be one of Yale’s rules of man.

Malchi strapped Zale’s arms and legs to the chair so he couldn’t hurt himself when the electrocution started. The cool water of the tub felt good on his feet as he mentally prepared himself for what was to come. Malchi took out a wooden stick the size of his palm and gave it to Zale to bite down on.

“Focus as much as possible on the currents of electricity as they enter your body. Your passive Impulse Control should be able to help you get through this, and don't forget to bite down on that thing hard, you don’t want to bite your tongue.”

With a look of sympathy Malchi used a net to scoop an eel from the large tank. It writhed and shook in a violent fit spurting electricity out as much as it could. The net however was made specially to diffuse the electricity in order to keep the person using it safe. Zale did his best to try to attune to his passive as much as possible as Malchi dropped the eel into the small tub. It only took a couple seconds for the eel to slither out of the net and become aware to its new surroundings. It didn’t like Zale’s feet and legs very much.

Burning. Burning pain like Zale had never felt before. His feet felt like they were burning from the inside out. A warm feeling coursed through his whole body that made him feel tingly all over. It wasn’t a nice tingly sensation though; it was like the hands of the reaper himself were scraping up against him. Up and down his spine he felt the electricity travel. The smell of burnt hair assaulted his nose. He wasn’t sure why his hair would be burning but the smell was almost as unbearable as the pain. And his mouth became impossibly dry. As fast as the pain came it disappeared. The eel had left his end of the tub and circled to the other side. However, it was a small tub. The second discharge was just as intense.

He tried his best to feel the electricity. His damn passive was supposed to let him control the stuff. The pain made his mind a white canvas. He could barely focus on anything. It just entered his feet and branched out like an ever-growing tree invading every part of his body. He tried to make it come together and to his surprise it did. The electricity in his back moved toward his center while the currents running through his chest and arms moved following suit. Moving it didn’t do any good though. In fact, it made it worse because moving the electricity wreaked havoc on everything in its way. On top of that, the current still had to escape once it reached his middle so it wasn’t done traveling. Zale convulsed as the focused electricity made its way out of his body through his spine and out his head. If the chair wasn’t bolted to the ground and his body wasn’t strapped to the chair he could have killed himself by simply falling backwards.

When it finally ended he was panting. Tears streaked his face and blood was coming out of his nose. This was simply torture. Torture he needed to go through to survive the true threat. He stared daggers at the eel. It was just a step. A step in his training to face lightning from the heavens themselves. This dumb eel was nothing compared to that. He gritted his teeth and bit down as hard as he could on the wood. The eel was coming back for a third time. He didn’t want the electricity to converge in his body like it did before. That had just caused more harm than good. He needed to get it out as efficiently as possible. He thought back to when he pulled weeds as a child and pulled from the base so he got the roots. Maybe his problem was that he wasn't starting at the base.

The third discharge came and Zale was ready. He collected all of it right in his two feet. He then circled the two currents entering into each foot throughout his body. It was extremely difficult to maintain his concentration through the pain but he pushed through by thinking of the consequences he would face if he gave up. The two electrical currents he had corralled met in his shoulders and passed each other, circulating back towards his feet. He didn’t want the electricity exiting his head like it had before. The last time he had almost fainted and he felt that if it happened again he wouldn’t be able to stay conscious, or worse yet stay alive. As the two currents moved back toward his feet his mental energy was draining incredibly fast. It took all of his willpower to stay awake and alive during the first two discharges and it was a miracle he had the awareness to manipulate the third. As the electricity left his feet and reentered the tub, his brain was drained of all energy. Willpower is a powerful thing, but when someone relies solely on it for a long time they are almost guaranteed to crash down hard.

Ding! Level Up!

His vision turned black and everything left him.      

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