Wilder looked down at the stage below him. There stood all the year 2 cadets amongst them were Anya, Liam, Lola, Noland, and a few others; they were people he liked and people that he hated, and all of them were staring at him with attention.
His eyes then trailed to where instructor James was seated previously, but he was long gone, and Wilder couldn't help but shake his head.
The instructor was not really a bad guy; it was just that the previous owner of the body was a bit of an ass when it came to dealing with people and was particularly disrespectful to the instructor James. They held a grudge, so it was normal that he was acted that way.
But that didn't mean Wilder would take it lying down; life is often cruel to people, so one had to learn to adapt.
After taking in several faces, Wilder secluded himself and closed his eyes.
He directed his mind into his body as he observed his internal structure.
According to what he had learned from Liam's mother, the exhaustion phase was the most optimal time for the processes of stepping into the enhanced human stage to begin. The body's external was slowing down, but the internal was working at super speed, trying to compensate for energy loss.
"System display pathways," Wilder muttered.
Not long after a coporal sort of diagram appeared in front of Wilder, it was the diagram of his internal body in real time.
According to Liam's mother, he needed precise control of each individual muscle in the body so he could direct his blood to where it needed to be.
Wilder found that he couldn't circumvent this method of using the blood to enhance the body, so he had the system plot out the safest way to do this without causing him to lose his life. The method Liam's mother provided was just too risky with a mere 30% success rate.
With the system directives, he was able to formulate one that would give him around 90% success rate, which was triple what Liam's mother provided. Even though the system was a pain in the ass, it helped him stay alive for the most part.
But if only Wilder knew that the technique Liam's mother provided was one of the best in the whole city and people would kill to get it, he would die with laughter.
"boom"
"boom"
As his heart beat continuously, Wilder controlled his veins and arteries with the help of small, precise muscle movements.
After a few minutes, his blood started dripping from a certain artery and started congealing into a ball-like structure in a space below his chest and above his abdomen.
As the blood dripped out of his veins and arteries, Wilder's complexion slowly turned from a bright red glow to a very pale white.
But his eyes were still closed as he focused on his internal body. This process was called blood enhancing, and it was originally given to him by Liam's mother, but after the system configuration, it became completely different.
Although it seemed slower, it would guarantee a higher success rate, but only Wilder knew this.
Back on the main chair where Liam's mother was standing, everyone there had a worried expression; this stage of congealing the blood into the ball was taking too long.
"This isn't right.." Liam's mother thought, even though the movements he performed and the way he sat told her that he was using the method she had provided, the time was just too much.
"Do we have amplifiers on the 13th floor?" Liam's mother suddenly asked the head instructor, who in turn looked up at one of the senior instructors.
"The 13th step is not meant for breakthroughs; we don't have any amplifiers there," the senior instructor paused for a while before saying.
"Incompetent!!" Liam's mother spat out as she turned to look back at the stage with an expression filled with more worry than before.
She understood that no one would expect Wilder to breakthrough in the 13th step, and she had accounted for it by providing the suitable technique, but now that it seemed that Wilder was lacking, she didn't know what to do.
Disturbing him in such a state would do more harm than good.
But as time passed slowly, Wilder did not fall; on the contrary, he sat there steadily through the whole process.
Inside his body, a tennis ball-shaped blood clot could be seen hanging from the empty space between his lower chest area and above his abdomen.
"Refine," Wilder muttered.
This was the next stage, and as he said that, his body started to scribble up, as a mystifying type of energy started moving through his body to the blood clot and surrounding it.
"Pheww, he made it to the source refinement stage," the head instructor exclaimed with relief.
Though he seemed less tense when he said that his eyes were still glued on Wilder like a wolf,
He really wished that there was equipment on the 13th stage, at least he would be able to view what was happening in Wilder's internal body; this was the optimal time to do so because after this period of time he wouldn't be able to.
But he just couldn't afford to disturb Wilder and cause him to fail.
"If I had known earlier," the head instructor couldn't help but lament.
But Wilder was just focused on breaking through.
The dark red blood cloths were slowly turning bright red with the help of the source energy that was slowly refining them; it seemed more healthy, but soon that bright red also morphed into crimson red.
Seeing this wilder smile
They had explained the whole concept to him before this.
This was the most important stage of this process. In this stage, one's potential would really shine. This ball of blood would change color the more it was refined, and the color it ended up at would determine the potential of the fighter.
"Pumping more," Wilder muttered as more source energy was pumped into the now bright red, tennis ball-shaped blood.
The grades were
Dark red: low talent; this might even cause the person to fail to breakthrough, and those who did with this level of talent would never go anywhere; in some cases, it even made one extremely sick; the special grade class rarely accepts this type of talent.
Bright red: average talent; this was enough to allow you to enter the special grades class, but it wasn't enough to make you important; most people in the special grades class were at this level.
Crimson red: high grade talent; this was for the elites like Anya and Sapphire, though Sapphire might be of a higher grade, no one knew because no one was present when she broke through.
But Wilder wasn't aiming for any of these grades, the grade Wilder was aiming for was black.
It seemed absurd for the blood to turn black, but that was the marking of a supreme-grade talent here; it marked that one was to be specially taken care of by the academy. Wilder needed this kind of talent to know any secrets, or at least find the elusive Arthur.
And so it went on for a while.
Wilders blood slowly turned from bright red to crimson red, and after a while,
It turned black.
If the higher-ups and instructors could see this now, they would go absolutely bonkers.
But it didn't stop there.