Chapter 41: Some Improvement

'Hmm…' Eric thought to himself as he stood in front of the dumbbells and slightly glancing at the bench and barbell every couple seconds, looking at them but not picking up any pair.

'The amount has been lowered quite a lot, so I think it should be possible with the 20 kg dumbbells, but I'm still not sure about the 70 kg bench press. When I tried it a few days ago it felt like something I could do at max 10 reps with. In less than a week, will I be able to force that ten to a hundred?'

Eric thought to himself as he picked up the slightly heavier dumbbells and started steadily curling them. He had plenty of time today, so there was no need to rush.

'1…2…3…' Eric started counting in his mind.

'11…12…13…'

'51…52…53…'

'91…92…93…' in less than half an hour, Eric was almost finished with the dumbbells.

'98…99…100!'

Eric was already done with the dumbbells in such a short amount of time without even feeling much of a difference in the stress on his muscles and body. He had overestimated the difficulty of this exercise by quite a bit.

This filled Eric with a little bit of extra confidence, but it wouldn't be of much use against his next opponent: the bench press.

The bench press felt like the exact opposite of the dumbbells to Eric.

While lifting the dumbbells, Eric was a bit worried if he would be able to succeed or not, which ended with him finishing the task quite his easily and his thoughts turned out to be nothing but him overthinking.

While bench pressing with the 70 kilogram barbell, Eric had more confidence than before, but after a mere 20 presses, he started feeling slight pain in his arms. By 40, the feeling of pain was no longer minor and by 50 presses, Eric's arms welled with a sharp, piercing feeling all over them.

He was only halfway there, yet he felt as if he were already nearing his limit. Eric dismissed this thought quickly and continued with the bench presses. Eric didn't think much of the pain as he could use a recovery pill right after finishing this up so he took the decision to slowly finish the rest of the 50 presses.

Even after reducing his speed so that he could take a couple seconds of a break before every rep, by 80, Eric's hands were practically shaking.

At this point, most normal people at his stage of cultivation would give up, but Eric was different: he had an advantage.

He was a cultivator of the path of the mind as well. Due to this, his will power and determination were also quite higher than that of the average individual.

With this determination, Eric was able to persevere through the last 20 reps after which he immediately took a Minor Physical Restoration Pill and laid down on the floor for about a minute to rest and contemplate about what just happened.

'I miscalculated…' Eric said to himself, sighing with a little disappointment.

He was obviously a bit bummed as he had just overestimated his strength and paid quite a heavy price for that.

This sulky feeling of his soon disappeared after he realized that the pill had healed him completely back to his peak state in almost no time.

'Well, it's better to overestimate myself and pay the price while training instead of during a real battle. The price here was only some temporary physical pain, while in a real battle it could just as well be death…'

Eric sprung up from the ground he was lying on and walked up to the puppet made of a wood like substance.

After looking at it for a couple seconds, Eric took a deep breath and started going at the puppet with a constant stream of kicks and punches of decent strength with a gap of less than a second between each hit landed.

He kept at this until he was halfway done and after a bit of panting and deep breaths, he repeated this process again without stopping until he was done with all his tasks for the day.

Once he finally stopped, Eric looked at the puppet to check for what damage he did to it. Surprisingly, he was a bit better than when he tested himself a few days ago. There were a few small dents on the puppet which gradually repaired themselves on their own due to the sand like property of the puppet's material.

The reason why Eric decided to hit the puppet like this was because he wanted to test his actual strength in a battle. Attacking fast and repeatedly would be a valid tactic in a real battle, unlike casually practicing at a slow pace without any sense of urgency.

The purpose of this training room was to train young recruits to become strong enough to survive in a real fight, therefore, Eric also decided to try his best against the dummies with the intent of a real fight.

With this, Eric had completed his daily quest once again, but this time he had a bit more time than usual left for attempting the sandbag array, so he decided to check his daily quest to see if it updated before healing himself and going into the array.

Eric opened his Scam System and looked at his quest tab to check if there was an update in the tasks.

'As expected, it hasn't increased the requirements today.' Eric said to himself as he remembered the not so pleasant memories of the day's bench pressing session from less than an hour ago.

Thinking about bench pressing was just putting Eric off from training so he decided to divert his attention to the issue at hand: the sandbag array.

Taking a deep breath, Eric dived into the storm of swinging sacks at full speed.

After a couple hours of practice, Eric was now able to get more than halfway through the array before being hit. He felt like he needed only one or two more days in order to be able to fully run through it unharmed.

This was his fifth day already and if he wanted to complete the quest of finishing the obstacle course in half a month, he had to finish all three parts in only ten more days. Since he received the quest after finishing his first day of training and the time limit was two weeks, he actually had fifteen days instead of the seemingly fourteen days in total.

Either way, Eric was still a bit tense about this matter. It would take him at the very least six days out of the fifteen in total to complete the first and easiest part of the obstacle course. With this, he would have only nine days left for the second and third parts.

Even though the situation didn't look like it was in his favor, Eric decided to ignore this matter for now and just try his best the next day while training.

With all this settled, it was time for him to leave. Eric took out a Qi Gathering Herb from his inventory and ingested it right before running all the way to his father and the carriage at the main gate of the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Corps.