22. Training time.

The morning was basically just exercises like previously only more severe. Followed by a good lunch filled with Sitrus and Oran Berries to promote healing. Then after lunch martial arts training where Rook brought us to the Gym and started to teach us boxing. Followed by sparring where she kicked our asses and pointed out or flaws and tried to help us fix them.

"Sparring is great for experiencing real combat, this way you won't freeze in battle and I can point out where you need improvements in your martial arts." Rook explained as I tried to block a punch to the kidney and barely got it in time only to eat a harsh uppercut making me see stars.

Been a while since I was hit like that. Must have been highschool or junior high.

Luckily she didn't pummel me while I was dazed. However i would still be nursing quite a few bruises, so would Amber. I wonder if this counts as spousal abuse?

Next we moved to the reinforced training area to practice elemental moves until exhaustion then we would head over to the meditation chamber for recovery.

I had finally given Amber the necklace I had bought and slapped in one of the head sized fire element crystal's.

The change was drastic.

The room sealed itself and suddenly heated up, closing my eyes and entering meditation I could see a veritable storm of energy flowing around in the air and started to absorb it into my body.

To compare it to the outside it was like being in a light sprinkle to a full blown downpour of energy particles bombarding my body. They didn't have anywhere else to go either as they were trapped in the chamber just bouncing around.

Kind of reminded me of playing hungry hungry hippos as I drew in as much energy as I could.

Fire energy filled my body making me incredibly toasty.

Swear I got more energy absorbed in a single hour than all of last week combined together including eating fire type berries.

"Resources and equipment really make all the difference." I feel like I had wasted the last week but then again I had improved in some places.

We sat in the chamber for the next couple of hours just absorbing all the energy until there wasn't any left. The red and orange fire crystal in the center was completely clear. However we had gotten way over 4 weeks of meditation done in these past few hours.

"Those crystal's cost over a million dollars for a high intensity meditation session. Let's go and check the results." I could feel that I had increased in fire energy by almost 10 times what I previously was at.

Amber instead of being able to use fireball 1 time had increased to a full 6 times moving from low to mid D-rank in a single session.

I had moved from mid rank to high rank being able to use ember easily 10 times. Sadly I didnt have fireball practiced. Was it worth the million or so the crystal cost? Possible, if need be I could probably trade the other crystal's for fire crystals. However this also came with it's own set of problems which is control.

Took me a few tries to get my ember correct and trying to leaf balancing exercise I lit my leaf on fire on my face and burned myself slightly.

So quick gains at the cost of loads of money and control. Seems about right.

"Going to have to increase the control exercises. Also we only have about 10 fire crystal's. So this kind of progress won't last long." 10 fire crystal's meant 10 meditation sessions and I had already managed to burn myself and ruin my control with 1 crystal. "We won't use another crystal until we can control our moves, don't want us hurting ourselves."

I also don't know if like medicines you can build up an immunity to the fire crystal energy so I didn't want that to happen.

"Yes master."

I looked it up later and it turns out you can indeed harm yourself by absorbing too much energy at once. A crystal B rank and above is only to be used once a month or you could blow yourself up or cause irreparable damage to your body.

Examples are seen with fire energy literally burning out someone's insides and immolating themselves. Not a pretty picture.

Seems others had tried to get strong with money only and had faced the consequences. I wonder if that old man really was trying to kill off his grandson or if this was probably common knowledge I didn't have so I asked Rook.

"Of course, its called elemental overload. The energy goes wild I'm the body most times becoming fatal." She explains. "Everybody knows that."

"I didn't know about that." I admit.

I then had to explain that I knew pretty much nothing about trainers or becoming one, luckily I had decided to look the information up before going for another session tomorrow or something or I would have burned myself alive from the inside out.

"Anyway Stella how is leech life going?" I ask my little ghost.

She flips through some handsigns I didn't know and her fingers glow an ominous purple.

"It is going good, I need something to practice on though I can't tell if it works." she says with a frown.

"Well, I guess we are going to need to get some cages and head to the dungeon to capture a horned rabbit or two. We should be safe since it's a starter dungeon. I would rather you not practice life stealing techniques on our comrades." I admit. "Break off their horns and use them for move practice. Sound cruel but you gotta do what you gotta do."

The next morning I grabbed my case and me and the girls headed off to find some cages to put rabbits in. I might also put some into a new area to grow my own rabbits, they only need grass and water after all and we have more than enough berries to plant some for them to grow.