After getting knocked out by a rubber ball for four days, Annabeth awoke in a brightly lit room. Given her past experience with such rooms, her first thought was that she had died and been reborn.
"Damnit! Seriously?" was the first thing to escape Annabeth's lips.
The mere thought of starting all over again after a rebirth caused her overwhelming stress.
"Wait… I can talk!" Annabeth exclaimed. At least this would prove she had not been reborn… Newly born babies don't talk.
"Indeed you can Ms. Annabeth," Menzine, Lord Canning's blonde-haired and bearded butler said from somewhere within the room. At the time, he was the only other person in the room.
Annabeth almost jumped out of the bed but immediately buried herself in her beddings from her feeling of embarrassment.
Menzine was for a moment surprised by her actions, but Lord Canning had told him before leaving that Ms. Annabeth was a little weird.
"Four days," he finally said.
Menzine could see a little of her protruding redhead.
"What?" came a muffled response from underneath the beddings. Annabeth had no idea what he was talking about.
"You were knocked out by a rubber ball for four days Ms. Annabeth," he smiled and said.
At this point, the level of embarrassment she felt went through the roof. Not a shred of pride could be found in her. Her stomach growling at this point was just adding salt to the injury.
"Wheat porridge?" He asked.
Too embarrassed to say anything, she took out a hand from underneath the beddings and showed a thumbs-up sign.
"I will tell the maids to prepare your meal immediately then," he said, walking to the door after paying a small bow to the still covered Annabeth.
When he reached the door he stopped, turned around to look at Annabeth and smiled.
"Please, try to be careful Ms. Annabeth. You still have 86 more days to train. Even though we cannot help you with your training, Master Canning would beat us to near-death-points if we let you die while he is away," Menzine said, almost chuckling at how complicated his master was.
He walked out and soon after, a maid walked in with Annabeth's porridge.
***
56 days after she had woken up from the knockout, Annabeth's control over her magic had grown to levels she never thought Tier 2 magic could take her to through daily training with the rubber ball and elastic rope.
Her magic's range of effectiveness had increased from a mere 5 meters to 20 meters. She was able to endure the pulling force of the elastic rubber rope as her leg muscles had also improved. She had started to develop thick strong legs from the constant resisting of the ropes pulling force and her very own separate physical training.
In the first few days, it was incredibly difficult to stay on the line. Her legs were too weak and the pulling force from the stretched elastic rope was hard to resist. At times she would lose control of her magic and the rubber ball would hit her stomach. The pain was incredible but she would not get knocked out, her stomach had gotten a tiny bit tougher.
To solve these issues, she added excessive running, sit-ups and leg exercises to physically improve her body.
She realized that a lot of mages, once they discovered they were gifted in various magic arts, rarely performed any physical exercises. The most muscular mages were usually the ones who were or had once been in the military, while others probably had magical abilities that required physical confrontations. In her previous lives, she rarely needed to engage in close battles so heavy physical exercises were not her thing.
This time around, however, she planned to get as much physical training as she could without affecting her other training negatively.
She was motivated to continue her daily physical exercises when she noticed that her resistance towards the pull of the rope had increased. She would only need to focus on pushing the ball towards her target to get the results she wanted, she thought.
Her current progress was at 20 meters after training non-stop for 56 days. By her calculations, based on the rate she was going, she would need another 37 days of continuous training before she could reach the blackboard.
However, she only had 30 days left and didn't know how to compensate for that extra week.
Annabeth was completely lost in her thoughts when she lost control of the ball again. This time, however, she had prepared a fail-safe spell in case something like this happened, a Tier 2 Wind Shield spell. She had already tested its effectiveness and knew how much her shield could withstand.
Her control over wind magic had gotten stronger and her defense was becoming better.
The ball blasted into a shield she had conjured, bounced off its surface and pushed Annabeth's body backward.
She just smiled, got back on the line and continued her training.
***
It was the last day of Canning's wind magic control training and Annabeth was only an hour away from the monitoring servant announcing the end of the exercise, probably also announcing Annabeth's failure to complete Lord Canning's task. After 30 days, she had managed to reach a distance of 28 meters and only 2 meters remained to reach the target.
If she was given an extra week to practice, she would definitely reach her mark. However, Canning had returned a few hours ago and was patiently watching an hourglass, waiting for the sands to shift.
Annabeth was slightly panicking as her magic had already reached past its effective range and her control was a little wobbly. She tried so hard to cover up the 2 meters but the task was almost impossible, her whole body was aching. Although the capacity of magic she could store had increased slightly due to her continuous practicing and exercise, she could still feel a rapid drain whenever she pushed past her effective range.
She knew she had little time remaining, either her magic would run out first or the training's time would. She needed something to cover up for those two meters. But what? Tier 3 spells?
Memories of the time she got knocked out by the rubber ball flooded her mind. It was a gamble she did not really want to take.
"5 minutes left," the monitoring servant announced, pointing to the hourglass which had almost finished its sand transfer.
Yup, that was all the motivation Annabeth needed.
She set up her windshield to have a hole in the middle which could allow the rope to pass through the shield but would keep the ball on the other side of the shield. She pushed her shield up to a distance of 25 meters which was still within her magic's new effectiveness range.
Annabeth conjured a Tier 3 Whirlwind spell and forced it to lie horizontally along the elastic rope connecting her to the ball. This was simply an improved version of the first trick she tried to use to reach the blackboard.
Annabeth directed the Whirlwind to move along the rope by violently gesturing her right hand forward while using the left to control how much more the hole in the shield open to allow her Tier 3 spell to pass through and not the ball.
The whirlwind passed through the hole and hit the ball with a smacking sound, spinning the ball forward in a straight line.
The spell pushed the ball only for 3 meters as Annabeth had canceled her Whirlwind spell so that her loss of control over her magic could not affect the trajectory of the ball… she also needed all the little energy she could muster in order to prepare for what was to follow.
The ball hit a bullseye into the blackboard with a powerful force, bouncing back, while the elastic rope was recoiling back to her.
The ball hit the shield this time and stopped in its tracks. Annabeth would have liked to bring the magic shield back to her slowly so that the tension in the elastic rope would reduce, but her magic force run out.
Whoooosh!
The ball cut through the air as it moved towards Annabeth; her stomach its destination.
Although she had trained her body physically, she was too tired and she was not sure it wouldn't knock her out again… probably even kill her.
She braced for impact by placing her already weakened arms in front of her stomach. She would probably have broken arms from the impact but it would be a lot better than dying.
As the ball was about to hit Annabeth, she closed her eyes and turned her head.
Buuuuuuuuuuf!
Annabeth slowly opened her eyes with a bit of a confused look since she didn't feel any pain. All she saw was a hand holding the ball with ease while the rope attached to her vibrated.
She followed the hand until she could see the face of who it belonged to. It was Canning… and he was smiling at her.
"Congratulations. You pass."