He had never done something like this before. High Elves might have digressed a bit into physical fitness but they never tried this. They were just innately agile. He was learning more about life and its workings of it the more he examined his body. He had based his former concept on the law of life but got to know more about life in this endeavor. Life is different for different races and doesn’t always mean flesh and vitality.
Transcendents don’t have a fleshy body, and neither do elementals but they are alive just as much as a creature with flesh and blood. His law of life had been focused on the conversion of energy into whatever a creature needed to maintain its life. It was holistic but now he is learning about the specifics of vitality.
Still, he focused on his task and he smoothed out the technique after his initial success by walking on the test surface over and over again. He became increasingly proficient at it until after a hundred tries when he was no longer making progress. It had been 2 weeks of fulfilling hardwork.
Soverick sighed. “That was unique.” He said.
Habits are the most difficult things to change about ourselves because they are ingrained patterns. To change his habit of walking, he will have to manually activate the procedure for walking right until his body accepts it as the new muscle memory. The surface became weaker and the difficulty of walking on it without leaving footprints increased but it couldn’t stump him anymore. He already got the hang of it so he improved by leaps and bounds.
“On to the next challenge then.” He said with enthusiasm. The training was challenging enough and also rewarding so he was eager to face the next obstacle.
The next challenge is running on mud. After mastering walking without footprints, the next step is achieving it very quickly. To run on mud, the process of spreading out the force must be done quickly and the two feet must perform them in sync. So walking without footprints is a precursor to running on mud.
Walking on mud will be difficult because the surface will not provide enough opposition for stable footing, in fact, one is prone to sink. But running on the surface of mud is achievable. To achieve it, the inertial and viscosity of the mud will have to be taken advantage of to create sufficient resistance against the feet. The force that is dispersed by the feet must be equal to the flimsy resistance of the mud. If the force is dispersed in an area wide enough, the pressure will drop enough to match the resistance.
That’s the theory. But Soverick achieved the practical in 3 weeks. He just had to speed up the process of walking properly. The experience he had in learning to walk without footprints was transferrable. He would spread the force evenly across the surface of the mud in quick bursts. The mud will resist the force at the brief instant that the force acts on it, an action will beget an equal and opposite reaction. So the amount of pushback he gets must not be lesser than the amount of force he projects.
It was tiring and cumbersome but he achieved it. By the time he was done with the second challenge, the need for synchronized burst action had made the proper techniques of walking his new muscle memory.
The third challenge was proper balance. Some wooden poles replaced the mud as his new enemy. They had varying heights, so he has to use the shorter ones to reach the tallest one and stand on top of the wooden pole with a single leg for a single day without falling down. He is allowed to switch which foot he uses but it has to be done quickly, both feet can’t touch the pole stand at the same time. This small allowance allowed him to rest the tired muscles of his legs but it didn’t do anything for the main problem. The main problem is not the time he has to spend on the pole, it is that surface of the pole is not enough to allow an entire sole to rest on it. He can stand on the ground for a day if he is asked to do it, even with one leg. But why can’t he do that on a single pole? It’s the problem of balance, the center of gravity, and weight distribution.
So the weight of the body has to be shifted and balanced on certain muscles instead of all of them. The pole was also tall enough to make him injure himself each time he falls. So he has to land safely even when he fails or risks breaking his neck.
As difficult as it may be, Soverick achieved it in 2 weeks. It was getting easier and easier for him to overcome the challenges as his body got rid of previous misconceptions.
But then the difficulty increased. He has to learn how to run with just the surface of the poles as the only footing. He started slowly by just using the poles as the only footing. Even that was difficult because the poles didn’t have the same height. He had to adjust his balance and judge the distance difference every time he wanted to take a single step. The challenge made simple walking a chore for the mind. He couldn’t place his foot just anywhere without thinking. Still, he got the hang of it and can jog on the even poles.
The reward was an increase in difficulty. To finish the challenge he will have to cover a distance of 100m in less than 30 seconds using only the wooden poles as foot stands. If it were on a flat even surface he will be able to run the distance in less time but now he had to watch the road carefully and coordinate the grip of his legs on the poles without losing his balance which will cause him to fall.
Unlike standing on a pole, if he was attentive, he would be able to fall gracefully. But now, a slip of his foot while running will lead to a disastrous fall. He had to learn how to time the impact created by his feet when he touches a surface to avoid injuring himself during the run.
Most time when we run or walk, our brain assumes that our feet will surely catch support and that’s wrong. That’s why we stumble. We should assume nothing until we have verified where we are actually going to put our foot, only then do we exact force to move.
It is a simple thing to watch where you step. You just have to be conscious of it. It is a very difficult thing to achieve while trying to run. You have to make a split-second environmental examination, position analysis, and perception verification. If the mental effort needed for it while walking is significant, the effort needed for doing it while running can be debilitating. Most will stumble most of the time. It is the exact thing that they are trying to eliminate but the need to watch your step creates uncertainty in your footing if you’re not able to do it quick enough when it is needed. Mind power and perception are something that Soverick has in spades. So he aced the challenge easily.
Then a strong wind was added to oppose him throughout the race. The delicate eyes and leg calculation necessary for the determination of the perfect timing will be disrupted by the wind. That didn’t work on him because he didn’t need his eyes, he relied more on his divine sense.
It is true that awakening the soul will grant you a divine sense. But most people use it as an afterthought. They are already used to using their ears, eyes, and other senses before the divine sense came along. The dirt in the wind will disrupt these two senses so that the trainee will actively use the divine sense instead.
Still, the wind made things difficult for him because the wind drag made it very easy for him to lose his balance. He had to take the path of least resistance from the wind and step lightly against the pole to achieve the same time for the 100m sprint. This time it took him longer to complete the challenge. It took him a total of 4 weeks to be able to make the time under constant opposition and harassment from the strong wind.
The next challenge is walking without making a sound, a completely new experience. His enemy became a simple flat surface on the ground, a very welcomed change. To walk silently, the process by which the feet impact the ground and the subsequent dispersal of force needs to be made as silent as possible.
But of course, things weren’t so simple, the difficulty increased from walking to running. To complete the challenge with sufficient proficiency, he had to sprint a 100m race in 20 seconds completely silent. There is a machine that watched for noise and it would blade up anytime he failed to be silent. It was ironic in a way.