Breakthrough

When enough time passed for the enormous white sun in the sky to have moved a noticeable distance compared to when Ace first arrived on the planet he opened his eyes, exiting the trance after his body had finished processing the mysterious energies and treating his injuries completely.

As he stood up several popping sounds could be heard, even more so when he stretched.

Normally after sitting completely still for so long he should have been stiff and aching but instead he felt refreshed and in peak condition. The ache in his skeleton was long gone and his arm was healed with no soreness whatsoever.

Looking around Ace noticed that his fire was almost burned out and hurriedly put a bit of bark on it hoping it would die, since he didn't have any proper starter wood if it did. With that done he remembered he put on quite a bit of firewood before sitting down to rest.

"Dishwasher, how long was I sitting down?" Ace asked with slight trepidation.

[Recorded statistics show host was in a sitting position for approximately 35 hours]

"..."

'That was lot longer than I thought'

After thinking about it for a bit he realized that it does not matter, he feels fine and has no injuries. Since the mystery can not be solved, let it remain unsolved.

Ace continued moving around, sprinting, squatting, jumping, any random movement he could think of just to make sure he was completely healed.

Although his fracture was the most severe injury he had gotten to date, just like the cuts and scrapes it healed a lot faster than it usually would and there did not seem to be any misalignments either. But maybe it wasn't a bad enough injury to heal wrongly.

While moving around earlier he also took a look at the dinosaur wannabe. It was still in the same place only further down into the sand, due to it's excessive wiggling. Even now it continued moving around to try and flip itself back without realizing it was only shifting away the sund under it make a deeper hole. And, while only slightly, it seemed to move with less energy. Which both surprised and didn't surprise Ace. Struggling non stop for more than thirty hours would exhaust most living beings Ace was familiar with and even those who wouldn't be completely exhausted would still show clear signs of fatigue.

At the same time, considering how crazy this planet was, maybe this lizard was pretty weak to show fatigue after not even a tenth of a day had passed, assuming the animals lived in a day-night cycle. In addition to it's stupidity in not understanding it's predicament Ace was slowly losing his feelings of pride for kind of defeating a native creature.

Since he still could not do anything to the lizard Ace trudged back to his camp to continue getting stronger, with the immediate goal of being strong enough to kill the lizard before it died of hunger or thirst.

He also asked his chip to analyze possible weaknesses of the lizard after making a thorough scan. As thorough as possible at least since it seemed the energy inside the lizards body interfered with the chip's scanners, in a similar way to how his escape pod couldn't scan the planet.

Ace assumed it was because of the concentration of unknown energy was too high. The chip could still scan him because he had a comparatively low amount and because the chip was technically located inside him.

Although it was all only speculations that might or might not get proven or disproven in the future.

Since the amount of butchered fish he had available Ace decided to fish and prepare a bunch of it before focusing on his training. With his improved strength and how used to it he was by now it didn't take long for Ace to stack up an amount that should sustain him for a few cycles of training and resting while he focuses on strengthening himself.

With food and a greater motivation Ace focused wholeheartedly on his stances.

Compared to before his trance, when he felt a clear blockage stopping him from improving, now it was because of weakness he couldn't progress. However that was exactly why he trained.

Moving from one stance to another with slow and perfectly controlled movements, cycling through all eight in the first level before resting and eating fresh fish to store up energy and let his muscles recover before repeating the process over and over again.

With an iron will dead set on training the progress was remarkable, to the degree where Ace's bones, that had previously not been strengthened at all, also began to develop, thanks to the repeated circulation of energy through his body. Although it was less effective than breaking and healing repeatedly it was instead gentler and provided energy throughout the entire skeleton, not only the broken parts. And unlike the muscles that grew denser and more compact the bones and their structure hardened and grew sturdier without any significant size change.

Every sequence of moves improved his strength by a margin and it was inevitable but eventually it finally happened. Ace reached the next level.

After completing the eighth move an electrifying thrill ran down his spine and throughout his entire body before surging back into his brain, leaving his limbs trembling and Ace spread-eagle on the ground with a dazed expression.

With a jolt Ace sat up with a sparkle in his eyes. Before quickly closing his eyes and covering them with his hands, and then instantly moving his hands away. He involuntarily let out a yelp before doing the same thing with his hands again but this time on his ears.

After the surge of electricity in his body fizzled out it felt like every sensation and experience was dialed to the max without any semblance of control. Having his eyes open felt like staring straight at the sun with binoculars. His fingers could feel the unevenness of his skin and his skin could feel the wind brushing against him, his tattered and dirty shirt rustling against the hair on his body, leaving a feeling of insects crawling all over him. His ears could hear things that were usually toned down or subconsciously ignored like the rushing blood, the blowing air passing right by his ears, the crashing of the waves against the beach. All at once, the cacophony of overwhelmed Ace, leaving him unable to do anything for a while as he focused on calming down and controlling both himself and his senses.

After some time he managed to sort through all the noise and focus on one thing at a time, to try and learn how to control his improved senses and actually use them instead of receiving impressions of every little detail of everything happening around him.

Too afraid to walk around or grab something to eat, since his vision shifted focus randomly and his tongue seemed to want to remember the feeling of every piece of fish he had eaten.

Eventually, a bit after Ace started getting real hungry, his overstimulated senses calmed down and let themselves be controlled by him. Regaining control over himself Ace ate the remaining fish before laying down to rest with a satisfied smile on his face.