"Again!"
It was now a month after the park incident, and he was somewhat over it by now. The more he thought about it, the more he understood her point of view. She was an S rank and he was an F rank, polar opposites in every way possible.
"Again!"
He contacted the guild the morning after and said that he was willing to join, the only reason he hesitated was because he and Elizabeth were supposed to go hunting together if they needed to. He wasn't sure what the plan was going to be, but now that he wanted nothing to do with her there was nothing stopping him from joining.
"Again!"
Now he spent his days being trained by the guild to prepare him to enter the new world. It is an extremely dangerous place with death lurking around every corner so he needed to be the strongest that he could be. And being an F rank, he needed to train extra hard.
"Again!"
The only interaction he had with the guild master since the first day of his training was when she beat him black and blue and left, as if to assert her dominance. She hadn't even asked him about his method since the day he first met her. They probably thought that they had him in the bag and didn't need to rush things, and they would be right. With his rank he wouldn't be able to enter any other guild and he was far too weak to enter the new world on his own.
"Again!"
So now he was subject to gruesome training to improve his skill and survivability. While a painful experience, it was definitely showing results. His previously skinny body was replaced with a muscular, chiseled one that looked like he was training every day since he was born. His brown skin gave off this metallic like sheen and, with the constant beatings, his sense of combat was growing.
"Again!"
He wasn't allowed to use most skills, as he was told to not build an excessive reliance on them, but he was permitted to use his empowered [regeneration]. Not only did it decrease his down time, it allowed him to build strength much, much faster than a normal awakened. Paired with one of the effects of his talent, limitless growth, all of his efforts directly lead to results. His level hadn't increased but he had learned that level is a representation of his mastery over his talent. A separate machine was necessary to determine it, unlike his analysis, but he just chucked it up to his special method.
"Again!"
And right now he was going through his daily hell like training, today being hand to hand sparring. Every other day for the past month he was being trained to use various weapons to their fullest: swords, spears, knives, glaives, staves, bow and arrow and many more, but one thing that was consistent was his hand to hand training.
"Weapons break and mana runs out, but your fists are always there." Is what they told him and he generally agreed.
His partner was a new world veteran that was temporarily in the old world. Ray might have thought himself a good fighter before meeting this man, but reality hit him like a train. No one he fought before was anywhere near this level, those who choose to live comfortably in the old world could never compare to the monsters that willingly go to the new world.
"Alright that's enough for today, you've ever so slightly gotten better." After getting his ass beat for 5 straight hours, he was as tired as one could get, but his instructor didn't even break a sweat. Yet another difference between old world and new world, S rank and F. Such 'light' sparring shouldn't be enough to tire him out or he would have died a long time ago.
"I still don't know how you call this training, you're just beating me up over and over again." his skill regeneration activated almost instinctively as it was a habit at this point. His injuries were healing at a rapid pace that was visible to the naked eye. His training suit that was rated to even stop high caliber bullets had multiple tears and holes in it; he was given a new one every day so those were from this training alone.
His sparring instructor was a man named John Lotus and he was a beast of a man, most literally. His talent was S rank beastification, which allowed him the strength of the mythic blood bear, an S rank beast in its own right. He towered over Ray and he was so muscular it made his extremely toned body look like a walking pile of sticks. He was very hairy with long unkempt hair and a scruffy short cut beard.
While he was holding back, all of his stats were at least 100X Ray's, even after his explosive growth.
After a month of strict training, his stats rose to an impressive 30.3, with the extra .3 being a part of his talent. Because of his talent all his stats grew equally, including soul power. Even if he didn't train them, the effort was just spread amongst them. This made him grow slower but more stable. While 30.3 was impressive, John's lowest stat, speed, was at 3,100!
It should be known that an average mundane human 500 years ago with no form of training or combat skills had stats that ranged from 1 to 3, with a top athlete being around 5 to 6. Even now a healthy adult male could have stats that ranged from 4-5 with no training.
His previous 15.15 from before is even more impressive in context, but with his line of work such stats were basically mandatory. With food and medicine being much better than before along with the existence of mana, people were much stronger than before, and after the great culling only 500 years prior, only the fittest survived. Almost everyone could trace their ancestry back to a powerful awakened that somehow managed to survive back then.
John even had a combat rating of 4, which may seem low since there are 9 levels, but even CR 1 means that no mundane human weapons, save for high powered explosives, could harm him. Ray fighting a CR 4 awakened was not only futile, but because of John's high health any damage he could have possibly dealt was quickly regenerated.
"If you have any complaints then you can just leave, I'm not expecting anything from an F rank anyway." John looked at him indifferently. "And the Guild Master wants to speak with you before you leave." Not saying anything more, John left the room with a flash and Ray couldn't even see his shadow.
"How can someone so huge move so quickly? His talent doesn't even boost his speed." Ray looked around the room for a while before walking to the door in the far corner. "I couldn't even see the door open, can't he just leave like a normal person. Is he flexing on me?"
As he limped to the elevator he looked around him to observe his surroundings. Except for the large room he just came from, everything else here was normal, a few mop pails, some cleaning equipment, tools for maintenance; if someone told him that this was the handyman storage floor, he wouldn't be surprised.
"Maybe it actually is, it's like they are ashamed to even be training me. Guess that makes sense, it would be incredibly embarrassing if it was found out that such a major guild was training an F rank." He was secretly thanking himself for not being content with just inefficiently using mana the normal way, if he hadn't then he couldn't have possibly dreamed of getting personal training form so many high ranked awakened.
His training often happened in the afternoon, lasting until night and in one of the deeper basements. He would often go home at 3 am, wake up at 3pm and make his way back to the guild for training. He had no off days and for the last month, the only time he had to himself was on the way to and back from the guild and the 12 hours he was sleeping.
"Guess I'll practice." 30 orbs of light of various sizes appeared around him and started orbiting him at various speeds, one couldn't see but they were both growing and shrinking while spinning at incredible speeds, like a weird form of vibration. He looked like an atom with the orbs of light being his electrons.
Even if he only had an hour or two between training and sleeping, he didn't slack off on practicing with mana, not because of dedication, but because he found the activity fun. Because his body naturally absorbed crazy amounts of it as long as he was somewhat calm, he only had to focus on control.
After a month of semi-dedicated training, the number of orbs that he could control without making his veins act up had grown exponentially, even the 30 that he was doing now was only a warm up. The number slowly grew to 70 then 80 the 90 but before it could reach one hundred, his skin started to glow a faint blue.
"Damn, failed again." While he could easily control upwards of 300 orbs of light if he didn't care about how much he was using, 99 of the orbs was his limit without agitating his mana. No matter how much he tried, the amount needed would always push past the threshold.
The number dropped to 60 as with this much he could do it with his eyes closed but before he could slowly increase, the elevator door opened up.