’My Job just got worse.’ SQUARESKULL complained to himself.
His worst fears came to pass and he didn’t dare to show a negative reaction to them. He didn’t dare to be jealous or be resentful. He schooled his expression as Soverick mastered the techniques with increasing ease. Soverick would watch him show the moves, then he will try it out, and soon he will get the hang of it. Then he will improve on it, assimilate it and then fuse it with what he already has. He witnessed this happen in real-time and he still couldn’t believe it.
Soverick spent 4 hours mastering thrusting. 3 hours on sweeping. 2 hours on cutting. 1 hour on deflecting and 30 minutes on bashing. He was spending less and less time mastering the techniques. Soverick wasn’t learning them, he was mastering them. That is, he was fusing them with his previous understanding. Yet, he was doing them in hours, not days or weeks.
SQUARESKULL had seen enough to confirm that Soverick had an intuitive aptitude and enhanced learning capabilities. To be specific he had a mind capable of dissecting and analyzing whatever he saw, then putting them back together in his mind, learning them along the way. This ability could either be for the spear, then Soverick will be a spear genius. Or it can be for everything he saw, which would make Soverick an impossible genius. Now he would like to see how far his ability could assist him.
“Let’s move on.” SQUARESKULL shut down the machine and beckoned to Soverick.
He began to explain their next exercise. “Now that you have mastered the basic spear techniques and you have apparently fused it into your spear form, we can move on to the next step. The next instinct to cultivate is the killing instinct. It is the ability of your body to sense killing intent and automatically react to it. You will be placed in a sensory deprivation chamber and beasts emitting a vague amount of killing intent will attack you. Any questions?”
“Isn’t that intuition?” Soverick asked.
“It isn’t intuition. Intuition is the advanced version of killing instincts. Killing instincts is a reaction of the body while intuition is a reaction of the soul. Killing instinct is subpar because it will not be able to sense those that don’t emit killing intent, such as lifeless objects and people that have mastered the release of their aura. Intuition can sense any threat, seen or unseen, alive or otherwise that constitutes a threat to the person.”
Soverick was confused. “Then why bother with killing instinct? Why not learn intuition instead since it is better?
His teacher explained carefully, “Intuition is more difficult to acquire and much more difficult to teach. But it will become easier to learn if the killing instinct has already been mastered.”
Soverick nodded in understanding before asking, “Do we have to work on killing instincts if I already have intuition?”
“You already have intuition? When did you acquire it?” SQUARESKULL asked with a calm voice.
He suspected as much. That Soverick possessed intuition did not come as a surprise to him. But he refuses to believe it is a low-level one. In truth, he wasn’t supposed to jump to this stage yet. There were still some steps to show Soverick but he skipped them. He had been training Soverick for less than 5 days and yet, they’ve already covered weeks of struggles for other students.
Soverick is clearly not a normal student. So he won’t waste time on normal things. He planned to cover them in the future by taking advantage of Soverick’s prodigious ability to learn. He would show Soverick how spear-wielders fight and let him practice what he sees. But for now, he wants to determine the limit of such a learning ability. It might be unusual to teach a student what he is about to do but is anything about Soverick usual?
“I acquired it during the forest stage of the Obstacle course,” Soverick answered.
Intuition isn’t something he just acquired but he can’t very well say that he acquired it in his past life when he went hunting in the demon realm. The constant brush with death and unrelenting pursuit by demons honed his senses enough to acquire intuition. No, he would rather say something mundane and plausible.
SQUARESKULL did not look like he believed Soverick. Soverick had already shown the ability to learn quickly before the obstacle course. He was able to adapt quickly and overcome other challenges but no one suspected him of having intuitive aptitude. If they did, then no one told him. What really clued him in is Soverick’s ability to imitate skills as long as he has gotten a good look at them. SQUARESKULL suspects that the boy might have acquired intuition longer than the stated time but it doesn’t make much difference considering Soverick’s age. 2 years is still a very short time to have acquired it.
“Is that so? You won’t mind if we test it out?” SQUARESKULL asked.
Soverick shrugged and answered. “Sure. Let’s test it out.”
“Then follow me.”
SQUARESKULL formed a platform that soverick stepped on and they sped out of the training world. Then they returned to the first hall where they performed the introduction session. They found someone waiting there. It was the second senior, SLEEP DEPRIVED DEMON, the arrogant young mistress.
She shouted immediately after she saw him. “You dishonorable and despicable person. You have defiled the honor of the royal bloodline of eternal battle. With my spear, I shall recover that honor and with my influence, I shall stomp on your progress. You are playing with forces beyond your capabilities.”
SQUARESKULL and Soverick ignored her and went through another door in the hall. SLEEP DEPRIVED DEMON stomped her foot on the ground. She was very angry at the outcome of things. She was hoping that her behavior would make soverick angry at her but he was bent on ignoring her. That had to change. She did not want an apathetic junior brother, what she wanted is a rival.