Welcome

"Just what are you, Kane?" Layna stared at his blindfolded face closely.

"What do you mean?"

"You're Rank-3 already, the earliest time you could've possibly gotten the first dose was less than 3 weeks ago. That's absurd," She frowned.

Rick grumbled, "Tell me about it."

Kane gave a haughty laugh, "Power scaling doesn't apply to me because I'm the main character!"

"Did you just call yourself the main character of life?"

"The ego on this f*cker."

Kane's face turned to that of worry, "No, guys, I'm not being serious. Really Rick? I thought you'd at least understand I was joking?"

Rick yawned, "I did, but I'm too pissed at you to care."

"He's scared of becoming a permanent participation trophy," Layna chuckled.

"I didn't know you had a sense of humor," Kane grinned.

Rick hung his head, "Every joke I've heard her make involves me sucking in some way."

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They arrived at the bunk and went to their separate rooms, they were exhausted from the mission... Layna and Rick anyways, Kane went back to the training area.

Rank 3 and above could use the facilities unsupervised, Kane planned to train here as much as possible, he needed to surpass even the strongest of mages if he wanted to break free safely.

He could possibly defect to Treychla and bring his father with him, but there's no way they don't have assassins hiding out there.

Not to mention manalites will probably be an imminent threat to the world in just a few years, and the 'Great Lanyard Republic' held a complete monopoly.

Kane arrived at the training site and immediately went over to the massive piston room, putting it at its highest setting.

The room scanned Kane as he entered and locked in the piston so it wouldn't go lower than his head, this was to prevent it from crushing people who get cocky.

As expected, Kane couldn't even make it budge, he reduced it to half of its maximum weight and found he could barely lift it. 80 tons seemed to be his absolute limit.

Using mana to constantly repair his body, he felt himself gradually getting stronger while holding the piston up.

Kane decided he'd have to grit his teeth and keep pushing forward.

Minutes turned into hours, as Kane's strength had reached 110 tons, he set the machine back to 80 and began freezing mana on top of lifting the weight.

Having a decent strain on him while also freezing his mana pushed his body to its absolute limits. A few more hours of this passed until his total strength had achieved 147 tons, almost double what it had been.

He could now reach 70 tons without even using mana.

Kane went to a strange black-gel punching bag hooked up to a monitor.

This was actually in place specifically to help manalites control their strength.

He had an even harder time doing this than the weight lifting, Kane was thankful he loved working out and practicing stuff.

It took two hours, but Kane could finally consistently land punches and mana attacks that would only knock someone unconscious.

During that time it fully dawned on him just how ridiculous he was.

Kane's ears perked as he heard the ever-so-slight tapping of boots behind him.

Kane turned around, "Can I help you?"

A middle-aged man let off a look of surprise, "That's just scary dude, I used to be in stealth ops you know... anywho, I've been assigned as your personal trainer! Mark, Rank-6 Shadow attribute, I specialize in melee, ranged weaponry, and espionage."

He put his hand out, being met with Kane's, "Kane, Rank-3 Space attribute, I specialize in being blind, and could probably pull off espionage rather well."

"You reaching Rank-3 so soon was why I decided you're worth the time, though that's not to say you beating the disk chamber wasn't impressive. Follow me, it's time I start doing my job."

Kane's excitement grew larger as they inched over to an arena.

"Hit me with your best bullet, I can take the impact!"

A mana bullet was swiftly formed at Kane's fingertip, being launched out and hitting the man's stomach, winding him as he staggered.

"Christ man!? They only told me you reached Rank-3, what the hell're you already doin' at the peak of it?"

"I apologize for being so great." Kane bowed.

"Let's see how you handle this then," the man smiled scarily.

In an instant, Mark cleared the floor, Kane just barely managed to teleport a few feet off to his left.

Mark laughed as Kane staggered to the ground.

"Not bad! Most people at your rank wouldn't even detect me moving, much less dodge. But if falling on your ass is the best you can pull off, then you still aren't ready for Rank-4."

Kane clicked his tongue and smiled while getting up, "Again!"

"That's the spirit!"

They spent the entire morning going over fighting techniques, dodges, stealth, and how to discreetly use mana.

By matching your output with the density of mana floating in the air, your spells become almost impossible to detect.

Mark was both shocked and unsurprised by how well the man could fight, though whenever he picked up the heat and started using more official moves, the kid didn't stand a chance.

Kane finally managed to land a single hit on Mark after several hours of this, Mark was still only at 1/3rd of his speed, however.

"I'm actually surprised, well done. From what I can tell, there are 3 things you need to work on."

Kane was nodding along enthusiastically, he'd needed a more professional look into his training.

He couldn't just keep hoping whatever random things he focused his attention on were what actually needed work.

"So first off, obviously, practice the movements and mindset I've taught you regularly. Outside of that, the main things you need to work on are your aim with mana projectiles, and your reaction time. That little thing you do with your brain is certainly smart, but you can't let yourself be useless against strong opponents without it.

Kane let out a sigh, "Thanks, I needed a second opinion on this stuff."

"No problem man, just doing my job, and I'm excited to see how far you'll go. Your physical strength is absolutely brutal for your rank by the way."

"Ah, yeah, did some training for that this morning."

Mark narrowed his eyes, "Only some huh, pretty impressive then."

Mark immediately realized Kane knew the mana-freezing trick, but that was normal for Rank-3, which Kane was in. And between the two, the fact Kane was in Rank-3 was weirder.

After waving goodbye, Mark went back to his dorm somewhere in the lab, and Kane made his way over to the disk chamber.

"Please go easy on me," he chuckled.

He had the area set to its highest difficulty, what Kane planned to do was slow his perception down like last time, then gradually decrease the amount of mana he was using to slow it.

He'd work his way up until he was avoiding everything without mana.

The room became surrounded by whirring noises, as dozens of disks launched out all at once.

Kane slowed his perception and began meticulously avoiding them, even throwing in some teleports and bullets, though the poorly-aimed bullets helped far less than teleporting.

After a minute of perfectly dodging every attack, Kane started pulling some of the mana away from his brain.

The disks got noticeably faster, a few grazing Kane the moment he let up.

He focused even more than before, forcing his senses to become even sharper. He emplored his body to move faster, eventually finding himself avoiding without thinking.

Instantaneous and unconscious reaction was what Kane was going for right now, but having to spend several minutes working his way into it wasn't good enough.

He pulled out even more mana, the disks growing dangerously overwhelming.

Kane needed to use everything he had to differentiate the small differences in sound and rapid-moving ripples in space.

He was moving too quickly to even think about what he was doing, he had to move without thinking, or else he was already too late to dodge.

He pulled away even more mana, it was too much for him.

He could barely tell the sounds apart, all of it completely overwhelmed him. Only 20-seconds after doing this, he got pummeled by a total of 5 disks.

"Looks like I can handle this with half the mana I needed last time, I sure do love progress... when it benefits me," Kane wiped some sweat from his brow and smiled.