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Volume 6

Chapter 266: Martial Arts?

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Rex was in a state of meditation for an entire 12 hours. When he entered the house, there was the clock saying [1934] and it was more than 12hrs since he had ran out of the house to ‘disperse’ the uncomfortable heat that was coming from his body.

“This meditation thing really is time-consuming.”

Before, when the doctors are around him, every time he enters this state of meditation, he would always at least last four to six hours of meditation.

But now, he was down for 12hrs.

“I’m hungry.” A grumbling sound rung from his stomach as he went to the kitchen, noting a note written atop the table.

[Food’s in the fridge.]

Rex went to check for rice and saw the full-bowl on the 6-man serving rice cooker. He then went to check the fridge and saw a 10-man serving-full tupperware Ulam. (ulam = something tasty you pair with rice. Japanese, Italians, Spanish, and some countries that eat rice on meals cook them)

After eating, he remained seated for a while as he thought, gravely alarmed, about what happened while he was having his meal..… and then after it.

Rex was unusually quiet. Normally, after eating, he would go straight back upstairs to rest or sleep but right now, he was staring intently on the empty plate of food on the table.

“I ate all of it…” even now, he still couldn’t believe that he only devoured everything and did not even try to think until there were no more food in the table.

“No matter how much I eat, my belly just won’t get large… and I feel a weird heat coming from my stomach that uncomfortably fills my body as if I was in a sauna. Water can’t even cool it down!”

When he was eating, he was paying attention to his own body and he could feel that the heat was there on his stomach and the more he eats, the more heat he could feel the heat increasing.

He also noticed that when that heat has reached a certain level, steam would come out of his body and it would fill the house with heat that could even cancel out the active AC.

“My metabolism is weirdly and monstrously strong enough to generate visible steam in my body and affect the house. That’s why Manang Fe was like he was in a sauna and fanning herself to cool down earlier.”

He recalled the details this morning. Everything that had happened… as soon as he woke up and until now has been weirdly a fast ride in a Ferrari.

“I need time to think and organize these bizarre happenings to me… damn it. I can’t even call anyone for advices. Not even Uncle Faust.”

From the weird unfamiliar memories, to the game world, to his missing memories and connection to the game’s creation, to this weird mess in the house and his enhanced metabolism to this heat that consumes his entire being… he had to find time to consolidate the whole thing and properly digest these matters.

“It’s all happening too fast for me. I can’t keep up like this or I will collapse.”

After he ate and washed the dishes, Rex went upstairs and saw the tools and the Nano-Device connected to the NeuroNet port.

“Shit. I almost forgot. I have to fix this first.”

While he was fixing the splitter-like device back to how he found it, he was organizing his own thoughts.

His first subject of reorganization were the events that happened in Alexandria.

“Siva was me… I should be him but as these bits of unfamiliar memories become more and more familiar, the visions I kept on remembering were all connected to a time different from the current time line of Terroa.”

In his mind, there was a vision of a starry sky and he was floating in that starry sky without wearing a flight gear or anything.

…he wasn’t even in any ship and was just floating there in the blackness of space as if there was an actual ground to stand in there.

“Terroa is just a game…” as he murmured, he also thought about Terra and that other person. “But… just who is Janus? Why do I have another set of memories about him? The Brahma… Vishnu… and then The Destroyer… I am him but at the same time… he only belongs in the world that Terroa belongs to.”

He stopped moving for a moment and he frowned as he tried to breathe to calm himself. He could feel his pulse rising, his world starting to swirl with him being at the center.

“Is it going to attack again?”

Rex never had a case of Vertigo before and the only time that he experienced an attack was with that one time when he was in Anazon Forest.

The McCullers twin always said that the mind can control the body with enough training. Right now, he was very afraid of the vertigo attack and so he imagined himself calming to control it.

And as if a miracle, not even a moment more that he started thinking about it, his world that threatened to go out of control and snatch him away to oblivion stopped spinning and he also gained clarity n his surroundings.

“Saaaahhhh…” he heaved a long sigh as he went back to what he was doing. He was so relieved that he also forgot how to feel surprised with the fact that it really happened.

“Does it mean it actually works?” he was curious for moment and then accepted it as luck.

He looked at the NanoTech in his hand and then a thought entered his mind.

Just now… he thought that he was really alone…

“Mom… dad… I will save Baron. I promise.” As he thought of this promise, he went back to fixing the NanoTech device in his hand.

Back in the cellar dungeons, he was sure Terra was a younger version of his mom and that other person who went to pick her up was definitely a younger version of his father.

“If I remember correctly, mom called him Neth and Uncle Faust called dad ‘Neth’ from time to time when we were visiting the hospital… so I am sure that he’s definitely dad but… according to what the weird memories tells me, Terra should be a Goddess and that Neth is but a mortal… perhaps from Earth…”

At this point, Rex recalled what Augustus said a month ago in Fort Magsaysay:

“Your mother went inside to get you…”

Along with these words, Rex also recalled the still lingering impression of Terra in his heart.

In the cellar dungeons, he didn’t doubt one bit that Terra wasn’t his mother. He knew that she was his mother… one way or another.

That’s why he called her “mom” at which Terra even smiled as if to acknowledge it.

“…even dad… at the time…”

Although blurry, his memory of everything that had happened in the Cellar Dungeons were all in his heart like a sticky gum.

He can’t recall the exact details but there were the lingering impressions in his heart telling him that it was an important memory.

It was a nagging thought and his instincts were screaming that if he dared to forget about it and dismiss that memory in the cellar dungeon as if it was an illusion, then he will regret it and go crazy.

“More importantly, everything that the memory is telling me was that all these impressions of events all happened inside the game… on a different timeline than the current. Was it during BETA? I can understand that they are part of the creator team of the game but to be there inside it and have an alternate life is just bizarrely awkward.”

“I mean… is a game even capable of that?”

He was fixing the last screw on and finished it with a quick check. He was careful that there were no scratches on the device to elicit doubt if checked but he feared that since this is a NanoTech Device from the World Government, there ought to be some sensors he’d already triggered.

Still, since he can’t do anything about it, he could only prepare for the worst to come.

“From the time I logged inside the game, I’ve always felt this sense of familiarity and freedom but alongside that is also the sense of unfamiliarity and the feeling of being choked in the neck.”

When he was inside Terroa, there was a feeling of being on his own backyard and also was the feeling of sovereignty.

Siva was his own man and his goal was to play the game, uncover secrets, and give it to AG.

He never cared much for the game to begin with so it was easy for him to give away those secrets since his only goal was to make sure Baron is safe.

And yet, because of Baron’s circumstance and the fact that Rex just can’t put Baron on a coma in that critical a condition for an entire year that he had to risk and hasten his cure in Terroa.

“But of all the places he had to land to…”

The North was just too big and too far a place. It was not a place where new players can choose as a starting place.

“It was just too dangerous in The North and he just had to be pinned down on that attack…”

The more he remembers the timing of the attack of The Legion, the more his hate to them grows exponentially.

“Of all the places they had to attack… they just had to attack Alexandria. And what more, they also kidnapped Amanda… and of what Alice had told me about what Amanda found out about their goals, it all also points down to my so called connection to the Grand Quest of this game…”

As he thought about this part, all the more he got confused about this so called “connection” and to what everyone saw but unable to record in a vision.

“Volt and Thorn told me that there was Terra and me, on her lap, unconscious. Then there was a [Siva] with the same face as me but had a different aura... and that’s what’s making me feel frightened of this game.”

He was still skeptical about it…

An NPC… a computer program, stealing a player’s avatar and locking the player in a sleep condition that he can’t recall anything that happened in the event of the stealing.

“A concept like that… is very frightening. Is this the very goal of Pegasus? Is this that so called [Mefisto Extraction Experiment] that I was involved in four years ago?”

CLICK!

Rex placed back the last crew and heard the click of everything in the device being in place.

He heaved a sigh and then carefully fixed the table as to how he last recalled them.

“Hm? Wait a minute… is this..?”

As he moved his fingers and looked at his work, he was shocked to discover something.

“How do I remember everything this clearly?!”

Eidetic Memory

Yes, Rex Kingsley was a world renowned prodigy before his life went downhill but he was just any normal so called “prodigy” unlike the real geniuses of the world that attends the so called [Conclave] every year.

One clear identification of such a genius is a rare and very distinct trait of having Eidetic Memory.

Rex was surprised that he was able to recall and even replicate the table’s position, arrangement, angle, and even the placing of the devices atop of it exactly how it was before he touched it.

“Something really happened to me…”

He backed off and observed his work. He was both happy and shocked. The image in his mind and how he went from disassembling it earlier this morning and how it ended back up this time… is making his heartrate increase dramatically.

“First is my metabolism, then my memory… and now…”

CLING…

As Rex took a step back, his left foot stepped on a tool that made a tiny clinging sound. He looked down on his foot and his gaze locked on his knee and the whole leg down to his foot.

His eyes widened, he clearly recall how this leg of his always brought forth pain and agony to him.

Yes, he did removed the metal support out of pure ego and also because he believed the twins’ instructions that since the muscles and bones are already healed, the pain and the weakness of his leg was just the result of his psychological barrier still unable to cope up with the healing.

He was already healing faster than the average teen and with the help of their “therapy”, he could hasten this healing process and even go back to the athletic him before the accident.

But the twins gave him a time frame back then…

Two months. Tops. Three months, normally…

And that conversation happened not two weeks ago. But now…

“How is this possible?! What’s happening to me!?”

Yes he could feel that the leg is totally healed as if it never had an injury but that’s what’s making him more frightened.

If he was a normal boy, his healing speed wouldn’t be this fast!

But right now, his left leg was really supporting his weight… all of it… without as much of a pain.

“Something happened to me….” Rex gasped.

After he fixed the table and the devices, and also made sure that the NLD console was connected, he hurriedly left the room and went into the bench in the garden.

Along the way, he stopped by the [email protected] projector, thinking of calling AG, but he dismissed the thought and decided that if there’s something that happened to him, then it could only be those two doctors… or perhaps Graham… under AG’s very orders himself.

“There’s no point in doubting it. He’s the only one who will do it to me.”

He murmured the words and went to the bench, sitting still and closing his eyes to try and practice the twin’s [Triple Flower Meditation] technique.

“The mind is the leader and the body is my team. I control everything with my thoughts…”

It was this core principle in the art of meditation. A technique that is easy to say and even easier to laugh at by normal people, but when Martial Artists talk about it, they could only say that it was a hard concept to follow… but is a really true art in itself.

The twins were real martial artists, he saw it once before with their demonstration.

Their hands and legs moved in mysterious funny manners but they have synergy in them and they were also able to leave impressions after seeing that mock battle between the twins that one time.

Rex truly believed them to be a rare and very true martial artists of the modern era.

Just how many in billions of people have the patience and talent to even be martial artists? The people often seen in TV wearing black belts and chopping wood and trying to walk on knives and swords…

They’re just clowns, using the excuse of having trained a little bit of martial arts to entertain plebeians than an actual martial artist who walks the true path of martial way with their fists.

As such, Rex believed the benefits spoken about in the Triple Flower Meditation technique by the McCullers twins.

“I was a fool to believe before that the world is run with just money. The world is run by the actual strength one possesses in his fists.”

Using that principle, he will try to [imagine] his body and look at it like an external unit to study and examine.

Hank once said; “Knowing oneself thoroughly like a fully laid map is a strength on its own. Knowing your limits and understanding when and where to retreat or advance will preserve your life better than just merely being able to run away. That way, you can plan for your next step and then train to be stronger or at least strong enough so that you can defeat the people who made you run away.”

If you know yourself well, you will know what you are capable and not capable of. That way, you can strengthen and improve your strengths and then erase or at least cover up your weaknesses and avoid careless damages.

Or at least… when talking about it conceptually.

Rex’s circumstances was a bit unique but it has a close enough reason for Rex to attempt to fully ‘study’ himself thoroughly this time…

“At least the second stage… I hope I can attain at least the second stage so that I can study these odd memories more thoroughly.”

Sitting there on the bench, he put his mind into picturing his body as an object he can control.

Meditation is a process and a technique which is easier said than done.

Why is it that only one in every million(s) of people could practice martial arts on earth? It’s because; one, not everyone has the patience to believe and imagine him/herself doing the bullshit of doing those silly and outrageous poses called “arts” and be laughed at.

Two, and the biggest reason, not everyone has the talent to absorb the “arts” itself and integrate it into one’s life and make it part of their daily living.

For normal people of the modern society, Martial Arts are but comedic stunts of people who have lost their minds.

Only those desperate sick people who had been diagnosed with incurable sickness will be willing to abandon their dignity and practice those silly ‘arts’ to find a way to cure themselves… or the ones that, with the help of LUCK and FATE, became martial artists of the true path because of talent…

…nothing more.

“Something happened to me and I have to know what it is. I will know it if I successfully create that ‘image’ the twins talked about.”

Rex was neither one of those spoken above.

Because if there was a third or a fourth kind of classification to the people who wanted to practice martial arts, then he’d be the fourth, disregarding the third (people who just wanted to have fun).

Rex Kingsley, seriously is practicing martial arts right now, is not to be strong, or just to have some fun, or any other reason…

He just wanted to know the truth behind all this.

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The human body is a wonderland…

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