Chapter 8: Training Blind

Of course, it was never going to be that easy since he was studying it on his own. First thing he tried to do was find which star he was connected to, but the connection was too weak to accurately trace back.

Think of it like it was a transparent line that connected him to the stars. The more solid the line, the stronger the connection. Once he traced the line far enough back, it grew too transparent to see anymore, so he had no idea which star to connect to.

And if he learned anything from, well any power ever, a strong mental image was key in progressing his powers, so without knowing which star was his, his power would always be capped.

Eventually he gave up on that task for now, as he hadn't even reached that cap anyways. So his next step was just strengthening what connection was already there, hoping to extend that line in the process.

By focusing strongly on where the connection originated, which was his heart, he tested dozens of different ways of doing it. Establishing a two way connection didn't work, the energy only flowed one way, into him.

Special breathing didn't work, neither did any anime style charging. Which, he never really bet on those but he had to try everything. Eventually, he imagined himself drawing energy from the line into his heart which it was already connected to, and circulating it through his blood.

This immediately made him clutch his chest and double over in great pain, and he quickly cut it off. Alex panted wildly as his heart rate, which had greatly spiked, slowly returned to normal.

'AGH. AH, FUCK. Well, there's a reason I tried the embarrassing stuff first.'

He had almost sealed off that method forever, but he then felt the energy circulating through the rest of his body.

'Well hello there. Nice of you to finally drop in, powers.'

It's clear his heart itself couldn't take that much of it, but it might actually be the right method.

So if before he had lightly turned on the faucet to make a thin but constant stream, now he trickled a single drop in every couple of seconds. And surprisingly, this worked.

It was much weaker than when he beat Daniel, but he wasn't using near the full power back then anyways, so he could settle for this. And so he trained on this for several hours that night before going to bed, sadly he couldn't keep that trickle running in his sleep.

Once morning came however, great disappointment came with it. The connection was gone in the morning.

'Well that sucks, a lot. Hopefully my enemies are stuck to this same restriction, otherwise my days got a lot harder. Is it because my mental image isn't stable enough if the stars aren't out, or because I don't know my own star?'

And so he spent his first two weeks trickling energy in at night, and racking his brain for more ideas by day. Trickling the energy in didn't stockpile it in his body or anything, it was eventually removed like the blood that gets replaced in your body.

But what it did do, was improve his heart like cardio, and slowly increase that connection. And by slowly, he meant the change was barely visible each night.

By the end of week two, his rib had successfully recovered, most likely due to his energy not really going anywhere else when he brought it in as he wasn't using it for combat, and thus it just went into healing.

So after week two, he changed up his plans a little. In the days when he had time off, he did lots of running to see if strengthening his heart via traditional cardio stuff would help.

And in the nights, he'd break into the school gym and use his energy to lift, where he found an immediate difference. He'd maxed out at 250 lbs in benches before, but now he was hitting 300 easily.

And so he did a proper rotation of exercises within that week, in order to get his body used to that energy circulating through it, and increase his max strength. Squats, dead lifts, hang cleans, pull ups, planks, running, swimming, you name it he did it.

Of course much like any training, he couldn't expect any life changing effects in just a week, though he could feel that a difference was being made. But more importantly, these past three weeks he'd been having genuine fun.

Testing new abilities, racking his brain constantly on new ideas, improving something no one even knew existed (at least to the general public).

By the end of week three, he had made the decision to tell Duke about his powers, have someone else to brainstorm with and confide in.

It had crossed Alex's mind before that maybe Duke would betray him, but he squashed those thoughts flat. If he couldn't trust his best friend of over ten years on such small suspicions, he might as well just become a hermit.

Of course, Duke's initial reaction was, "Are you sure your head's fine? It did get hit pretty hard, and only got checked out by my sister. Maybe we should get an actual professional?"

But Alex had planned for this, and thus brought that revelation at night in the gym, where he immediately demonstrated by doing lifts he couldn't before.

"Dude if brain damage gave people strength like this, the antivaxxers probably wouldn't hate vaccines anymore if they thought it'd do this."

Duke could only nod in awe that his friend wasn't bullshitting him, and immediately tried the same thing. He got nothing, of course it wasn't that easy. But instead of discouraging him, Alex described every feeling and thought he had about it as accurately as he could, for Duke to use as practice later.

Who knows, maybe this was one of those things everyone could get if they just trained hard enough. He certainly wasn't gonna reject having someone else on his side with powers.

Like that, Duke had tried feeling for it every night, and made a promise to not share anything with his sister or girlfriend.

Last thing Alex wanted was for a potential enemy to know how much he's progressing. Orr how little, he had no idea how fast his progression was with no one else to compare to.

And with that, four full weeks since that fight had passed.

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In a warehouse on the opposite end of town, the two twin brothers were going all out and simultaneously attacking their unwanted teammate, only to get simultaneously grabbed by their necks and choke slammed into the ground.

"You've progressed like garbage, but it's the best we're getting out of you two. So, are you ready with the information like I asked?"

Damien nodded as he coughed and rubbed his neck, afraid to show any discontent to the man who had been beating them for training for a whole month at this point.

"He didn't have many weaknesses to exploit so we had to get a little roundabout, but we should have something to definitively draw him out."

Daniel shivered when he thought of how hard it was to get that information. Even when he was training, Alex had his senses sharpened almost 24/7, waiting for them to strike whenever.

They took this long just to get third party info because of that, because even being in his vicinity was dangerous, and it felt like he'd pounce on them at any moment.

More than once it felt like Alex had spotted specifically him, due to his limp so he had to force himself to walk normally to lower his suspicion, despite the agonizing pain it brought him.

And even then whenever that happened they backed off for the rest of the day in case it would spoil anything else they had planned.

Yes, Alex had specifically kept an eye out for any figure with a limp, because he knew the damage he dealt that night would leave a permanent effect. That's the other reason he let them live, as it was basically like attaching a cow bell to him with how obvious it was.

But finally, finally they'd get him back for this. For a month they'd suffered, both mentally and physically, and they'd be sure to pay him back in full, or die trying. After all, failure was death anyways, so it's not like they had anything to lose dying in a fight.

In the moonlight, the old man moved some pieces on his chess board, smiling at the results that lay before him. "Check."