Over the next two months, Leo struggled a lot with the Blade Switch technique, finding the transition from the VR world to reality far more grueling than he had initially expected.
Unlike in Terra Nova Online, where his stamina and mana could be replenished with potions, the real world had no such conveniences.
Every mistake drained his energy, and every session of training took a real toll on his body, forcing him to finally acknowledge the rigid limitations of human endurance.
At his peak, Leo could only train rigorously for about two hours before exhaustion set in, and pushing beyond that only led to diminishing returns.
For the first ti, he experienced the true burdens of training in a real-world setting—burning muscles, aching joints, and the frustratingly slow process of recovery that no elixir or super recovery food could accelerate.
Each morning, he would wake up sore from the previous day's exertions, and no matter how much he willed himself to move faster, his body demanded its due rest.
He quickly realized that without proper recovery, he wasn't going to make any aningful progress.
Thus, Leo had to adapt.
He adjusted his schedule, ensuring he ate high-protein als to aid muscle recovery and maintained strict rest cycles.
And although he had always taken care of his body, this was the first ti he had to do so with such a thodical approach—tracking his calorie intake, his mana expenditure, and the optimal rest needed between training sessions.
If he didn't do this, his energy levels would be drained too fast, and his training would suffer.
However, even with all these adjustnts, progress ca painfully slow.
The first phase—creating the hyper-elastic mana rope—was deceptively simple in theory but incredibly difficult to execute.
Despite possessing knowledge on how to create mana threads from nothing, Leo struggled to add an elastic nature to them.
At first, his attempts would snap apart as soon as any force was applied, his mana dissipating like a brittle thread under tension.
Other tis, he would overcompensate, making the thread too rigid, which resulted in it failing to contract properly, leaving the dagger hovering awkwardly midair instead of pulling him towards it.
For weeks, Leo tried different techniques, experinting with various mana compositions, adjusting his flow, and reinforcing the structure of the rope.
But no matter what he tried, sothing always felt off.
He knew he was close—so damn close—but the difference between 'almost right' and 'perfect execution' was like trying to cross an ocean with a single step.
And every failure only tested his patience further.
There were nights he laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying his mistakes in his head, trying to find the one missing piece that kept him from success.
Then, one afternoon, in the middle of his hundredth attempt that day, sothing clicked.
He wasn't thinking about the process anymore. His hands just moved, his mana flowed effortlessly, and in that instant, he felt the connection stabilize.
The mana rope, for the first ti, held firm, and even tugged at him like he wanted to, pulling him towards the dagger, albeit at a considerably slow speed.
'What happened? What did I do right?' Leo wondered, trying to introspect as to why he succeeded on this very attempt, and after trying for a couple more tis, he finally understood the secret sauce.
The secret, Leo realized, lay in harmonization—the perfect synchronization of his mana flow with the elasticity of the rope.
Before, he had been trying to brute-force the technique, molding the mana thread into a hyper-elastic rope purely through structure alone.
But the key wasn't just in the construction; it was in the way mana pulsed through it.
Mana was never ant to be static—it was energy, constantly in motion.
And by allowing it to ebb and flow naturally, instead of trying to force it into an artificial rigidity, the rope could contract and expand dynamically, maintaining the perfect balance of flexibility and strength.
'It's not about controlling it perfectly… it's about guiding it,' Leo thought, realization washing over him, as with renewed determination, he repeated the process, this ti focusing on breathing with the mana, syncing its pulse with his own heartbeat.
As he did so, the thread ford more easily, stretching taut but never breaking, flexing under the strain yet never losing its tension.
On his next attempt, he threw the dagger forward, and when he willed the rope to pull, it reacted far smoother than before.
There was still resistance—his body was sluggish compared to what the finished technique demanded—but it was no longer a failure.
It was a stepping stone.
Day by day, attempt after attempt, he fine-tuned the process.
He experinted with different levels of mana flow, adjusting the density of the rope, tweaking its elasticity ever so slightly.
So days, he found success, the rope pulling him forward in a controlled motion.
Other days, the thread snapped midway, sending him stumbling face-first into the dirt.
But progress, no matter how slow, was still progress.
Within the first week, he had managed to create a mana rope that could consistently pull him toward the dagger at a controlled speed—far slower than the actual technique's final form, but stable.
By the end of the first month, he had doubled the speed, feeling the sharp tug of acceleration, though nowhere near the supersonic pull required to execute Blade Switch at its full potential.
It was around this ti that his body started to adjust to the demands of the technique.
His mana reserves, once rapidly depleting from inefficient execution, started to last longer.
His muscles, initially stiff from the unnatural force exerted on them, slowly adapted to the abrupt pulls and movents.
By the sixth week, Leo could successfully execute the pull at nearly twice the speed of sound—still not the full effect of Blade Switch, but enough to feel the sheer force of movent rattling his bones.
And with that ca the next hurdle: his body wasn't ready for it.
The whiplash was brutal.
Each ti he successfully increased the speed, the sudden acceleration sent shockwaves through his spine and limbs, leaving him battered and sore.
His vision blurred from the sheer montum, and more than once, he ended up crashing into a tree or rolling across the training ground like a ragdoll.
'If I don't reinforce my body properly, I'll break before I ever master this,' Leo realized grimly.
And so, as he finally perfected the first stage, he knew it was ti to move on to the second.
Reviews
All reviews (0)