***
"Pheww...Extension abilities have quite the strain on stamina," said Josh as he dropped to the ground. "Who would have thought that an exchange of merely a few seconds would be so dangerous and exhausting?"
Bernard looked at him as he gritted his teeth. He was trying not to implode or explode after all. The power of the Sundering Rings was too immense for him to use casually.
Slowly, he suppressed the energy. It was a simple matter of choosing not to use this ability and let the five minutes he had with it, go to waste.
"Ah. I still need more training. Gah! Physical training is more important to me than I thought. I need to become like the hulk to handle all this power," he said with an exasperated expression.
"Hehe.. I wonder what your extension abilities will be. Your Rings are powerful enough to tank a Lonesome Fist from me," said Josh.
'Lonesome Fist?' thought Bernard with a strange internal expression.
"I don't think that's it. I just reduced the area of the shield. If it had been any bigger I'm sure your attack would have gone through," said Bernard. "And I don't think I have Extension abilities. All these abilities within my categories are probably the extensions."
"Perhaps. We still have many hours to go. Don't slack on me now," Josh said as he stood up again.
"Bro, do you gave infinite stamina??! At least give me 10 minutes until the cool down. Rolling over and over is scary you know."
"Of course it is. But you have to do it anyways. To get stronger," Josh said as he extended his hand. "We can't idly wait around for your Gamble. We can still spar lightly. No extras."
"You don't mean that. I see the grin on your face. By the way, I thought I saw you with a saber? Is it important to your combat style? If it is why don't you use it?"
Josh smiled menacingly and answered.
"Do you want me to accidentally decapitate you during our spars?"
"No thanks."
***
Ana was in the Ranged Offense course field.
The room was obviously large with a number of obstacle courses, numerous Invigorated being tutored and assisted in different locations.
Where she stood, holding two pistols while aiming at the moving targets near the wall, there was a line to demarcate the firing distance.
She stood at the farthest. She intended to see how well she could do against the moving targets.
There were contraptions on the walls that held humanoid dolls made of a tough material different from the one that those in the Hand to Hand combat field had. It was less tough but difficult to penetrate still.
The dolls were a moving types, of course, however their limbs could move also, simulating human moves. They were actually capable of blocking or catching the bullets if the shooter turned out to be a standard, text book gunner.
They could move in all directions at speeds stipulated by the type of exercise that one would be doing.
Ana focused with her marble grey eyes. There were sixteen targets. Their dark grey colour and slightly beefy design made them look a bit menacing.
The exercise began.
The dolls started darting around the wall at an incredible speed. At different speeds, actually. The slowest would move at approximately 50km/hrs while the fastest would move at around 150km/hr.
The setup to make sure that they didn't knock against each other was rather interesting as they seamlessly darted to and fro. There were barely an repetitive patterns. Or rather they were, but with the number of targets it would be hard to tell which is going where.
Ana took a deep breath. She suddenly fired her with her first pistol and dropped low to fire another shot with her second.
The first bullet zigzagged as it shot with an incredible speed, towards a flashing doll.
The second shot did the same but headed towards the first bullet and...
TZAP!
With a light spark, it knocked the first bullet when it was 4 meter from the dolls, changing its trajectory!
The first bullet hit the doll with a sharp sound of collision, the doll immediately standing still.
The technique wasn't as shocking as it appeared. Or rather, it was... but it wasn't exactly how it looked to the eye.
Ana had been practicing homing. To guide her bullets while she locked her eyes on a specific target. Her innate ability, Guidance, could control only two targets at the same time.
The zigzagging that happened with the bullets was not her using Guidance manually. She only had to focus on her target and the bullet would follow the targets movements as it approached.
However, there was a problem. On top of the extreme burden to her mind of following high speed targets, there was a large chance for her bullet to actually miss the target in end.
It was possible with sentient enemies who could either dodge or catch bullets, which is why this exercise was set up in the first place.
Therefore she was making up for that by using the second shot to make sure that the first bullet hit it its mark should the target respond accordingly.
It wasn't a perfect technique. She had only recently started trying it and she didn't actually like using it. She intended to master being able to use it on any speedy target with one shot.
For now, however, that was out of reach.
She rolled on the ground and fired another two shots.
They zigzagged heading for another target, the second bullet hitting the first.
As the bullet headed towards the doll, the doll moved its hand in a flash, its rough hand knocking away the bullet!
'Shit!' Ana cursed but did not relent, she fired one shot at the same dummy and then two more that zigzagged as they sped towards the dummy.
The first bullet was knocked away by the doll, while Ana immediately used Guidance to knock the third bullet into the second, hitting doll's head successfully.
She took a deep breath, and kept firing and reloading.
Ana was still confused about Guidance. She had imagined that it would be an ability that would gravitate towards influencing humans as a support ability.
However, while it was a support ability, it could do much more than she thought. Being able to guide objects with her mind towards a target was definitely not what she expected when she first used it.
She could use it on humans, but only to a limited degree like how she had helped Nicholas become a good shot back at Safe Zone 4.
She believed that one of her Extension abilities would allow her to actually influence people's emotions. Her dream to help people hadn't died with the apocalypse. She believed that in this hopeless situation is where kind gestures could help the most. She could help with relieving trauma. With her understanding of the human mind she could make the most of Guidance.
As she finished off the last doll, she sighed and sat down, feeling her head start to ache. She took in deep breaths as she revised this exercise for a few minutes.
'I've definitely improved, but .... I need more,' she thought.
She grunted as she stood up only to find a young lady standing beside her with a smile.
It was Sandra.
"Your innate ability is pretty cool. You can do more with it than you realise. You were already good with shooting before you even mastered your innate ability right?" she asked.
"Yea, I think so," Ana replied.
"Well. You seem to be good with mid to long range. I heard you used a tank's shell to snipe a Grade A straggler from afar," said Sandra.
Ana coughed in embarrassment.
"You could say that. I didn't know if it would work though," she said.
"But it did work," said as she pulled out two glocks. "You're good at long ranged shooting with your innate ability. How about we make you great at short range shooting too?"
Ana was puzzled.
"Short range? With a gun?" she asked.
"Yep. The main focus will be short range but if you would like to learn, there's a fighting style that uses all ranges with gun fire at its centre and martial arts as its complement. Multi-range Gun fighting."