Chapter 245: Training

“So…” Pyri paced along in front of the others slowly, hands held behind her back. Aegis, Darkshot, Rakkan, Lina, Sapphire and Herilon all stood with their hands at their sides, back straight, staring forward attentively. In the distance, across the training grounds behind Pyri, the sound of the new guards of Rene training on the target dummies could be heard as they repeatedly swung their wooden weapons for practice.

“You all want to know the secret to high APM, and impressive spell control? It isn’t easy. It takes a very specific mindset, in combination with a lot of discipline and focus. And even then, not everyone can pull it off.” Pyri explained as she reached the end of the lined up players, stopped, spun on her heel and then began pacing back. Eventually she stopped in the center and turned to face them.

“First thing is first, you need to understand something about your brains. The human brain…” She tapped her forehead. “Is inherently terrible at multitasking. In fact, it can’t really multitask at all. At least, not on its own. If I told you to tap your head with one hand, and rub your belly with the other…” She began to demonstrate this simple combination of actions. “You might think you are multitasking, but in actuality, you are rapidly swapping between two tasks. At no point are you really able to actively focus on two tasks at once. The human brain is incapable of focusing on two things simultaneously. So with that in mind, you must be wondering, how on earth can you manipulate 7 weapons, or 15 cinderbolts, all at the same time, separately?” Pyri paused dramatically, as all eyes were focused on her with a hint of eager anticipation behind them.

“There are two methods to do it. The first method, you are actually utilizing right now.” She pointed at Darkshot’s feet. “When you are born, you don’t know how to walk. You have to actively learn the skill, and engrain it into your memory. Eventually, though, it becomes muscle memory, your body knows how to do it so well, that you can do it without any focus at all. The same thing with breathing. When you drive or ride a bike, your body knows how to do certain tasks on its own without you needing to focus on them. You guys already have a lot of this muscle memory for many of your weapon skills and attacks… for example, if I try to send a cinderbolt at you from behind…” She eyed Aegis and waved one of her hands, creating a flash of fire. Aegis very quickly equipped his shield and swung it backwards to block the attack, while the others turned to watch it happen.

“You just completed all of the actions necessary through muscle memory to block that strike, you didn’t need to focus on it at all. This is the most important thing when it comes to executing high APM attacks and defenses in an MMORPG. You need to learn all of your primary, basic movements to muscle memory so that you can execute them with little to no active focus. Everyone understands so far?” Pyri asked.

“How do we do that, though?” Darkshot asked curiously.

“Practice. Lots and lots of practice and repetition. The more you train the same set of actions with your muscles - be it fingers or body parts - the more easily your body will be able to call on them at will, with little to no focus from yourself.” Pyri explained, and Darkshot nodded back.

“What’s the second method?” Herilon asked curiously.

“Good question. Muscle memory really is only the starting point, it works for defensive abilities very well, or very simple or basic attack combinations. But if you only rely on that, your opponent will pick up on your habits and fighting style very quickly, and be able to anticipate how you will move to dodge or attack. So that is why you’ll need to make use of the second to help you be more reactive, and versatile. The second method is combination actions.” Pyri paused dramatically once more, then began pacing again in front of them.

“When you need to focus on an action, a combination action is when you associate multiple actions together into one, allowing you to focus on a single thing but actually do multiple things at once. For example, If I need to split a cinderbolt into 15 fragments, that would take 15 focused actions…” Pyri waved her hands and formed a large cinderbolt above her head, then individually wiggled her fingers 15 times to split the bolt into smaller burning spheres that levitated in the air around them. She did it slow enough that everyone watching could individually see each finger wiggle she did for each split, until all 15 bolts were formed.

“It’s a bit slow if I haven’t developed a combination action, basically associating a set of muscle memory actions with a single decision. But, let’s say, if I think in my mind a method to quickly think ‘Split this bolt 15 times,’ and my muscles have already been trained to execute all the actions needed to complete this task, I can very quickly execute it from muscle memory and immediately shift my focus towards where I need to send each bolt, allowing me to be more reactive. Like this…” She cast a second cinderbolt, split it into 15 spheres nearly instantaneously, then formed the smaller spheres into a star symbol floating in the air above the group.

“It might seem incredibly impressive, like I’m moving and doing stupidly high amounts of things at once, but it’s really no different than what you all do. I’ve only just trained my thoughts and muscles to group up certain actions together so that they take less active focus to execute. Once you can master these two methods, you will free up your mind in combat to focus on reacting to what your opponent is doing more openly, so that you can mix and match for combination actions reactively. That is the trick to having a high APM.” Pyri ended with a shrug, canceling her floating cinderbolt spell.

“That’s really it?” Rakkan asked with a shocked expression on his face.

“I get the feeling that explaining it is a lot easier than actually doing it.” Aegis crossed his arms.

“It takes a lot of practice to develop your own method of training this type of muscle memory. And a lot of repetition. Some people can develop it within a few hours, others take months. In all cases though, repetition is the key.” Pyri added. With these words, each and every one of the players standing before her were visibly going deep into thought. Lina looked up to the sky, Aegis looked at his shield, whilst Darkshot began staring at his longbow, and Rakkan his feet. Herilon and Sapphire, on the other hand, were staring curiously at each other.

“So. Let’s not waste any more time. Start practicing.” She waved at them with her hand sideways.

“How should we practice exactly?” Aegis raised an eyebrow at her, while others gave her similarly curious looks. Pyri, however, looked back at Aegis as if the answer was obvious. Once she saw that none of them had any idea where to start, though, she rolled her eyes and sighed.

“From what I saw of your recent adventure, even if Tullan and Yuki manage to craft a shield using that essence, it’ll only work if you can block every single attack from Seraxus’ sword with that shield, right? Anything that gets through it will still kill you instantly…” Pyri asked, and Aegis nodded back hesitantly. “Then it’s pretty obvious, you need to develop your muscle memory to block every single attack, from all angles, at all times, regardless of the type. And it just so happens, you’ve got a great variety of attackers around you, ready and eager to train and practice their own attack methods.” Pyri motioned to Lina, Darkshot, Rakkan and Herilon. “Heck, you even have a backup healer, so that you don’t need to take any breaks.” Pyri smiled at Sapphire, who grumpily bit into a carrot and sighed.

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“What about you? What are you going to do?” Aegis asked her, stopping her from turning away a second before she did.

“I’m going to be training my own class skills. Magelord is a bit complicated…”

“Are you going to tell us what your class can do?” Aegis asked.

“Yeah. Last time we held back stuff from each other, it ended badly.” Darkshot chimed in, with Darkwing cooing excitedly from his shoulder. This gave Pyri pause as her eyes moved from the pigeon, to Darkshot’s eyes, to Aegis’. She then raised one of her arms and wiggled her fingers towards Aegis’ livestreaming icon floating above his head.

“Oh. Right…” Aegis nodded back quickly, muting his stream. Once Pyri was sure it was muted, she began speaking.

“Magelord can mix and match spells together, altering the element and properties of them. Not all combinations work, so I need to figure out the limits of each spell. So far, I’ve only managed a couple. For example, the freezing ring spell…” Pyri stomped her foot down and released a wave of ice that crept over the floor of the training grounds. “I’ve managed to combine lightning with it,” She stomped again, sending out this time a ring of ice that gave off electrified sparks. “And change it completely to fire…” She repeated the stomp, and this time sent out a blast of red flames that quickly melted the ice and scorched the ground.

“Once I’ve developed more useful combinations, I’ll let you know what I’m capable of.” Pyri smiled.

“Okay… got it.” Aegis pondered for a moment before nodding. “Good luck.”

“You too.” She winked before turning to walk away from the training grounds, in the direction of the mountains north of Rene. Once she was gone, Aegis unmuted his stream and turned to his companions.

“So we have to just attack you, over and over again?” Lina asked with a hesitant look in her eyes.

“Yeah. I need to make sure I can block every single attack from all of you, no matter what. So don’t hold back. I’ll be practicing my wing control as often as my cooldown allows as well.”

“Alright.” Herilon smirked. “No holding back.” He tightly gripped the hilt of his mithral greatsword. “Ready?” He asked, as the others backed away and watched for a moment. Aegis made sure to tighten the straps of his mithral shield to his left arm, then draw out the claws on his right gloves, and bend his knees in anticipation.

“Don’t forget, you still need to earn enough gladiator points to qualify for the tournament.” Sapphire commented.

“No problem, we’ll figure out this APM stuff in no time.” Aegis replied, causing Sapphire to roll her eyes at him.

“Sure you will.” She mumbled under her breath sarcastically.

“Let’s do it.” Herilon roared, charging towards Aegis and swinging his sword down on him. Aegis blocked the strike at an angle to let the sword roll off the side, then swiped out at Herilon to force him into dodging rather than allowing him to strike again. They repeated this exchange several times before Aegis jumped back to get some distance.

“C’mon. It’s gonna be a five on five, right? If the entire enemy party focuses on me, I need to be ready.” Aegis called out to his companions. They were still hesitant - Lina, Darkshot and Rakkan exchanged looks with one another, until finally Darkshot pulled an arrow back and released it, aiming at Aegis’ head.

Aegis easily leaned back and dodged it, allowing it to soar beyond him and land in the floor of the training grounds a few meters away.

“C’mon, really? That’s all you’ve got?” Aegis shouted mockingly at Darkshot, glancing at him briefly with a big grin on his face before going back to exchanging blows with Herilon.

“Heh. Hell no it aint, but I’m just worried if I don’t hold back, you might end up looking like a cactus.” Darkshot replied.

“With that aim? No chance.”

“Tch.” Darkshot sucked his teeth in annoyance. “Alright, you asked for it. Let me show you what Darkshot is all about. I shoot…”

“From the darkness…” Lina smiled before throwing a smoke bomb at Aegis, blinding him from incoming attacks just moments before Darkshot fired his arrows. Aegis was forced to jump backwards quickly to get out of the smoke, where Darkshot was anticipating he’d jump and had fired a multishot barrage of arrows to hit him. Aegis turned with his shield and held it carefully in front of his body to block the arrows that would’ve hit him, allowing others to pass around his body. He took some damage, but was able to activate his new aura of healing spell to begin recovery.

He wasn’t given a chance to cast any actual spells, though, as Lina suddenly appeared from out of the black smoke behind him, swinging her mithral daggers at him while simultaneously shooting five daggers made of shadows out of the smoke. Aegis quickly formed two guards to block both the shadow daggers, and Lina’s daggers, and following this he was forced to roll to the side and avoid a downward swing from Herilon’s greatsword as he charged through the smoke after Aegis.

“No matter how many attacks are coming at you, you can’t let that sword hit you no matter what.” Rakkan yelled as he charged in as well, forming his three echoes of himself and arming them.

“That’s more like it.” Aegis grinned, awaiting the onslaught attacks coming at him from all sides.

“I get the feeling this is going to take a lot of mana.” Sapphire commented as she drew out her scepter and prepared to start healing Aegis.

In a distant training grounds, on the island of Savringuard, another group of players were training intensely as well for the upcoming PvP tournament. Synopse, alongside four other members of the Sages of Destiny guild, were battling a group of 15 high level players. The training ground was vast, with much more advanced training devices spread out around the outskirts of the open grounds.

Synopse was wielding a magnificent blue staff, with an orb of lighting at its head that repeatedly gave off sparks of lightning. At his side stood a heavily armored cleric, a berserker class player, a druid class player, and a guardian class player wielding a halberd. Synopse was giving out orders to his party, forming strategies to utilize against the 15 players coming at them, and was doing so with great success.

Seated nearby, watching the training unfold, was Makaroth and several other high level members of the sages of Destiny guild. Currently, Makaroth’s livestream was off, and he was fidgeting around with his interface.

“Looks like they’re seriously going to try to enter the tournament…” Makaroth’s wife, Liyla, commented as her eyes glazed over from her livestream viewer - she was watching Aegis’ live stream as he began training with his party.

“I’m more worried about Synopse…” Calikgos, another high level member of the guild said as he motioned to the training taking place in front of him. “Even though we found that artifact lightning staff, I’m not sure it’s going to be able to match up against Seraxus’ sword.”

“Synopse is our best PvP player.” Makaroth spoke proudly as he closed out of his interface. “With that staff, Seraxus won’t stand a chance.”

“What if he doesn’t get put up against Seraxus?” Lilya asked curiously, closing out of her livestream viewer. “What if he gets matched against Feng’s group first? Or Aegis?”

“I’m not worried about either of them. Feng’s guild is made up primarily of fighter class players. That’s what that staff specializes in dealing with.” Makaroth shrugged.

“And Aegis?” Calikgos asked him curiously.

“Aegis won't be attending.” Makaroth leaned back in his chair and took in the view of Synopse as he and his party finished off the last few members of the 15-man strong attacking party.

“What do you mean?” Calikgos looked at him with raised brows.

“Let’s just say he’s going to have a very hard time earning gladiator points to qualify for the tournament.” A devilish grin grew across Makaroth’s face.