I woke up feeling refreshed, the accomplishments of the day before still fresh on my mind, and then I recalled what I had to do. I immediately closed my eyes and focused, I focused on remembering what I had dreamt, and I got to keep a vague feeling of memories. As if I had seen my mother, and spent the day with her. No wonder I was feeling so well after waking up.

Either way, I couldn’t remember perfectly the dream, but it was better than the fuzzy memory of having dreamt but with zero clues as to what I had dreamt. I knew I wouldn’t be able to improve in Nightcrawler’s powers as fast as in Kinetic Control until I had control over my dreams, but I also knew that any improvement was good, so what I did after getting up, was try again the Shadow Step.

I submerged in shadows, entering the SD (Shadow Dimension) and getting out a meter farther. I focused, trying to recall everything I could, but all I could remember was darkness and fuzziness.

“Tsk. I guess it would be too lucky to improve with the first try.” – I resigned, as it was obvious this wouldn’t be easy, and tried again.

This time, though, I sat down, and focused more on my mind than on the Shadow Step, trying to prepare myself for the jump. When I felt I was ready to do the jump, I invoked the shadows and entered the SD while having my mind ready.

As I was getting out of the SD, I could remember something. It was extremely vague, but I felt as if I was… drowning? Yes, it felt exactly like that, though not a literal drown, it felt as if I was submerged in something, deep, very deep, and such something was trying to kick me out.

I tried again with the same result, and decided this was enough, even though I hadn’t done much practice, it was actually the best I could do with the little practice I had on remembering my dreams, so I got up and readied myself for some Werewolf Fury training. I had realized something, in the two powers I had unlocked, I had to actually think by myself more than just try to imitate the info on the “guidebook” to really improve, so what if it was the same on the martial arts?

I readied my stance, but when I thought it was perfect, I drew my claws and closed my eyes. Even though this stance of Equilibrium felt, well, equilibrated, I felt as if it was not perfect. I hadn’t realized until now because I assumed that the stances were perfect, but I had realized that perfection comes from oneself; if I thought something was improvable, then it was, I had just not realized how yet.

I tried thinking what the problem was, and focused on different parts of my body. The feet felt stable, as if pillars burrowed unto the ground. I tried to look towards the legs, and I felt some discomfort on my right leg, which was leaned backwards. I tried to figure what it was, and to do so I moved, changing stances. It was then that I felt it, there was some resistance in the change of stances; it was not much, a minor discomfort which probably only slowed me by a tenth of a second, but still a delay.

I went back towards the first stance, and bended a little more the knee and I felt it, some click when I forced the bending. That’s the reason, isn’t it? The two bones from the lower leg that connected with my knee had locked onto the knee and even though when I tried to unbend the leg on the stance change I was unlocking them, it still felt a resistance.

It felt exactly as when you somehow lock the arm onto your elbow bone, and if you try to keep bending the arm, it just feels unnatural and you have to unbend the arm completely and hear the click for it to feel right. As now I regenerated so fast, when I extended my leg and did not bend it, the discomfort disappeared fast, but such discomfort had already slowed me.

I readied for the third time my first stance and when I was almost there with the leg, I stopped. It felt almost exactly the same, maybe I would need some adjustments, but when I made the stance change, I didn’t feel the discomfort, and so, I won a tenth of a second. It was not much, true, but this was a minor discomfort.

Werewolves and humans are different, so it was stupid to believe their fighting combat would be perfect for me. It probably had points in which the difference between human and werewolf were more notable, and the loss on time was more acute. The Equilibrium style had more than 120 different stances, if even at the minimum, they all had only one mistake, and such mistake was only slowing me a tenth of a second, it would still be 12 seconds lost. If in a combat I could be 12 seconds faster, I could win more easily and be safe, so it was a great difference. As I realized this, I decided to focus my morning in trying to correct the Equilibrium style, and see where it took me.

***

“Ha… Ha… ha…” – I couldn’t help but breath heavily as I dropped on the ground. I had been training for 18 hours straight. It was not a heavy training at the start of it, but I decided to transform the training into an accumulative training, meaning every time I corrected a stance, and before I got to the next one, I repeated all the previous ones correcting the mistakes. If I did even one mistake on those, once I was finished and was about to go to the next stance, I went to the start and tried again.

This way I accomplished to correct 78 stances, and remember them perfectly, but it also slowed me down so I couldn’t finish. Still, it was a good result, and I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at the screen.

Werewolf Fury G mid tier Progress: 61.7 %

Preys devoured (Naming acording to knowledge):

- Iron Elk ( x11 ) : Improves agility and bone durability.

- Scorpion Panther ( x8 ) : Improves poison resistance, stealth and agility.

- Spiked Lion ( x3 ) : Improves strength and bone durability.

- Draconic Wolf ( x6 ) : Improves speed and agility, and also skin durability.

- Fiery Ape (x5) : Improves balance and coordination, small improvement in strength.

- Gryphon (x1) : Improves eyesight, hearing, balance, speed and strength. (+2% at Angel's powers)

I was right; the system mostly rewards my own discoveries, my personal training, and not blindly following the guidebook. This was a huge discovery, this way I would be able to improve faster, because I had realized the better way was not always the one on the guide. Sometimes you need to explore by yourself and try to figure out how all works.

I still had a lot to discover, there were three styles, consisting on 120 stances each, and then there was the last style, which was a fusion of the three of them. I had tried to practice it, but it seemed impossible, and now I knew why. The fourth style needed perfection control on the previous three. I had perfect control on the guidebook styles, but that’s not a real perfect control. Until I corrected my mistakes I wouldn’t be able to practice the fourth style, which consisted in 480 stances, the 120 from each of the previous styles and 120 combining stances.

I decided it was enough martial arts training for today. I needed to keep practicing my Kinetic Strings and Kinetic Control and I only had four hours before sleep. That’s right, I only slept two hours, but I woke up more refreshed than after any of the 10 hours sleep sprees I took when I was on Earth.

I sat down with a few pebbles on my hand and soaked them on the invisible mist that was my energy. I then while soaking all of them, started the cycle, getting the energy inside to go out and the energy outside to go in. After I had accomplished this for 3 pebbles, I felt I couldn’t get a fourth to do it, so I collected the energy of the rest of the pebbles and focused on the 3 I had left.

First I made one of them levitate on the air, and when it was at around 10 cm above my hand, I did the same for the second pebble. As I was making it float, I noticed a strong strain on my mind, as if it was ripping, but I bared my teeth and held on. I got it to the 10 cm mark and stopped, the fact that simply sustaining it there was making me use all my focus was disappointing, but I had just started the day before, so I had to keep trying.

I tried to make the third one levitate, but it cracked once it was at the 4 cm mark.

“Damn!” – I couldn’t help but curse, but I focused back fast enough so that the pebbles I still held didn’t fall.

I then focused on the two surviving pebbles and willed them to spin. Not around itself, as a planet, but like two planets orbiting around an invisible sun. This image made it easier to do, but also wasted too much energy, and I realized fast enough, so I stopped. I then focused on what I knew of Gambit. Whenever he held the cards on the air, he separated them from the deck of cards directly, and held them in the same position they were…

“Ah!”

I immediately tried what I had thought, and focused on the pebbles. From the energy mist surrounding each of the pebbles, I willed a strand of energy to appear and directed them towards each other. Once they got in touch, I felt the strain diminish.

“Hahahah! I did it! That’s how he did it!” – I realized that Gambit didn’t just take one card and then another, he held them all together, and I thought this could mean he didn’t hold 10 cards, but he held a group of 10 cards. It may sound the same, but imagine it like this. What is more comfortable, hold 10 cards separated on your hands, or taking those cards, putting them together and holding them as 1 card?

That’s right, the later allowed me to put my mind under less strain, allowing me on time to focus on control rather than just holding them on the air.

After realizing this, I then tried to think of more useful ways to do what I was doing, and thought of some options to try, and maybe some of them would be more efficient.

***

I lay on the ground with my arms extended on my sides, and a smile crept onto my face. I had tried 7 new ways to visualize my energy, and even though 6 of them were less efficient than the mist energy, the 7th resulted in a more efficient way to do it. What I did to control the energy was imagining it like threads of energy, interlaced between each other, forming some kind of tube, and inside the tube, I could imagine the energy to be liquid, making it more fast, and easier to soak the pebbles on it.

Once the energy reached the stone, I willed the threads into forming a layer of interlaced threads, barely having any space between it and the pebble and filled the inside with the liquid energy. Then, to connect both pebbles I just had to will a tube of interlaced threads to form between them, and the liquid energy flowed almost instinctively, easing my mind and allowing me to focus on other things.

“Ok! Onto the next step!” – I exclaimed as I got up, and picked three pebbles. This time however, I didn’t cover them as the first time, I applied the new method, but I a strange way. Normally I would have a thread of energy from my hand going into each and every pebble, but I thought that with this method I would be able to reduce the amount of threads, so I started connecting my hand to two of the pebbles, forming the threads layer and then I willed two strands of threads to appear, one from each of the pebbles, and both going towards the third pebble. Once there, I willed both strands to form a new layer around the pebble, and then fused them.

Now I had the three connected, and only needed to will the liquid energy to fill the inside of the connections. As the energy flowed I felt connected to the three pebbles, and I willed them on the air, surprised that not only adding the third pebble hadn’t increased the strain on my mind, but on the contrary, it had eased it! It seems that by dividing the energy between more pebbles, I reduced the strain on the threads layer, and as such reduced the strain on my mind.

“Nice! This is the way, this way I’ll be able to improve!”

*DING*

“Ha! I knew it; I’ve improved on the Kinetic Strings, and got a reward. This is the real way towards perfection!” – As soon as the system sound appeared, I took all the energy from the pebbles and dropped them on the floor.

“Haaaah… now to sleep” – I dropped on the ground and didn’t even bother to pick the pillow as I drifted onto the land of dreams…

***

“Lyon! What are you doing there?! Stop smoking and go back to work!” – A small but corpulent man was shouting loudly at me. I looked with disgust at him and dropped what was left of my cigarette on the floor.

[Damn bossy boss… What the hell has happened to him, someone shoved a broom stick up his ass?!] – I cursed silently as I stepped on my cigarette and made way towards the gateway, it was my turn around 10 minutes ago, but I was talking by the phone, so it delayed my smoking, and I can’t start my watch without smoking, so I was late.

I actually hated this job, I had to be on watch for 8 hours straight, and I wasn’t allowed to smoke at all… Who the hell did such stupid norms?!

I looked towards the sky and saw some really black clouds, with thunders resounding all around. [Today’s gonna be a shitty day, that’s for sure…] I ignored my thoughts as I walked towards the guard’s room. I was barely 10 meters away when a light brighter than anything I had seen appeared, and I felt the time slow down, and a lightning came from the sky, rupturing the air as it dropped towards me.

I felt my heart beat loudly and then, time resumed, and the lightning stroke…

***

“Aargh!” – I couldn’t help but exclaim as I sat up with sweat on my face. [I thought I had no troubles with that lightning, but it seems I was wrong…] – “Hey! How is it that I can remember it?!”

I knew it was more than a dream, it was a memory, but even so, it felt so vivid, so present, and not fuzzy at all.

I stood up and closed my eyes, trying to remember every detail I could, and when I felt I did, I submerged into the Shadow Dimension. I opened my eyes and couldn’t see, but strangely I knew where I was. I was in the SD, and whatever was crawling over me, where shadows, in whatever form they appeared here. I then felt it, the same feeling I felt yesterday, the drowning feeling and the pressure. It was not that I couldn’t breathe, that I couldn’t; strangely enough, I didn’t feel the need to, but that I was somewhere surrounded by something that was too dense for my lungs, and my body knew it.

I looked around, even thought I couldn’t see anything, and then I realized what it felt like. It was as if I was on the bottom of a pool, a pool so deep I was pressured to go even deeper instead of returning towards the surface, and as I looked down, I realized that down was my dimension.

I had finally dominated the feeling, and I could react towards what was pulling me down. I took all my strength, and willed the shadows to push me upwards, and upwards they pushed me. I felt as if I was propelled, and I realized. The amount of will I needed to control these shadows from my dimension was thousands of times stronger than what I needed to control them from their own dimension, so here I was much stronger, much faster. That explained why Nightcrawler could teleport so fast, it wasn’t that he literally teleported, the shadows carried him fast, very fast. That and the time difference between this dimension and my own was what made it seem as if he teleported.

I felt ecstatic as I flew upwards, until I suddenly felt I didn’t control the shadows anymore, and they pulled me down at a speed I couldn’t even try to go and much less resist. As soon as I touched the floor, I felt myself pass through the membranes of the dimension, and appear again on my dimension, only that instead of the cave…

“WHY THE FUCK AM I FALLING FROM THE SKY?!”