He peeled himself off the floor with a tired groan. He subconsciously activated his healing skill out of pure instinct. But let out a sigh when the restrictive item prevented it from working.

It had been over a week since he arrived, and he had already made some progress. His kinetic energy control has slowly transformed during this short period. It helped that the other students pushed him to improve.

It was amazing how much motivation he got when Bilbo was beating his ass into the ground every day for the past week. The little prick might have been an ass, but he could back up his talk. Julius couldn’t help but admit that Bilbo's skill with kinetic energy was far beyond that of Julius.

It was both humbling and motivating.

He was even offered a skill for his efforts. One that he had expected long ago, but for some reason never had the chance to acquire it.

Would you like to learn [Kinetic Energy Control]?

He hadn’t chosen it yet, despite Cain advising him that he should. He still wanted to grab that [Spirit Fortification] skill that he had been offered. That was the skill that Savath mentioned was quite powerful.

On the other hand, Cain insisted that having mastery of kinetic energy would help him a lot. He made some valid points as well. Julius already had other skills that implemented his affinities. He had a healing skill for his life mana. He had his construct creation skill for his fire mana, as well as other skills.

But other than his body enhancement skill, he didn’t have a dedicated kinetic skill. Furthermore, [Pyrokinetic Embodiment of Ruin] was a skill that combined several different aspects into one. Thus, it wasn’t exactly a bad idea if Julius got a skill that focused on one of his more commonly used affinities.

Speaking of his body skill, while he hadn’t gained a level since he arrived, he had felt some changes in his skill. The way the kinetic energy flowed through the skill was much more fluid.

It was less jerky and was more graceful. This actually helped him in several ways. One of the more apparent benefits was how much easier it was to control his kinetic energy over prolonged periods. By being calmer and graceful, he was able to handle his kinetic energy with a bit more deftness.

It has shown in his fighting as well. With that being said, he was still getting pounded into the mat, but nobody could deny that he was improving. Even Bilbo had stopped mocking him as frequently.

During their first matches, Bilbo had tossed him around and made a point to mock Julius as much as possible. However, he wasn’t able to do that as easily. Now, the other boy had to put in some effort to take Julius down. If he didn’t, he was at risk of losing himself.

Julius was surprised at the quality of students under Cain and Freya. From what he had seen so far, each one of them was talented. Bilbo and his buddies, despite their questionable personalities, were all strong kinetic fighters.

Bilbo was generally considered one of the best fighters in the class and had only recently advanced to Tier 3. There was no doubt that he would be transferring to the more advanced group pretty soon.

As he was heading back to the line to receive feedback from one of the instructors, he heard the annoying brat call out to him.

“You should really stop using that Sharpness Concept for your kinetic abilities.”

Julius shot a dark look back at the arrogant brat but held his tongue. It was mainly because, unlike his usual mocking, this sounded like genuine advice. Thus, Julius entertained the dumb boy for a brief moment.

“What do you mean by that?” He asked as patiently as he could muster.

Bilbo rolled his eyes. “I mean that you are clearly overrelying on it to do a lot of the work. It makes your movements and kinetic energy sharper, yes. But it also means you aren’t manually controlling your kinetic energy to make it sharp. It’s impossible to always infuse your kinetic energy all the time, and I can tell when you aren’t infusing it. When you aren’t there is a massive difference, which is why I am still beating you so easily,” the other boy explained quite extensively.

Julius tried not to get offended and took the criticism to heart. Once he thought about it and pushed aside his feelings about Bilbo, he realized that it was true. He had been relying so much on his new Sharpness Concept to help his kinetic energy that he didn’t focus on being as sharp and sudden.

He looked up at him and nodded gratefully. “Thanks, Bilbo.”

The boy looked at Julius, both confused and insulted. “Bilbo? My name is not Bilbo,” he said pointedly.

Julius nodded and walked in the other direction without responding or acknowledging him.

He heard Bilbo stutter out something, but Julius had already tuned him out. He had just gotten some good advice from an unlikely person and was going to test it out.

***

He was bashed into the wall for the hundredth time and grunted in frustration. The only good thing about getting his teeth kicked in like this was that he was finally free of the restrictions. The end of the day was one of the few occasions he could use his kinetic energy and healing skill unfettered.

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“You’ve improved,” Cain said happily.

“Oh, you think so? Because it certainly doesn’t feel like it,” Julius groaned out sarcastically

“Absolutely, I am glad that you are listening to Barath’s advice. Your overreliance on your Sharpness Concept is holding you back.”

“If you knew, why didn’t you say something earlier?” Julius asked accusingly.

“Sometimes it is better for you to find your own answers and solutions,” Cain said easily.

Julius couldn’t deny the man’s logic. There was some truth that solutions found on his own internalized better.

“Do you really think I should grab that skill?” Julius asked Cain as they went through another step of exercises.

Cain pressed forward and gently punished Julius’s open guard. He said gently, but to someone like Cain, that just meant he wasn’t splattered on the ground. The force of the blow had him gasping from a crater-sized hole. “How many open skill slots do you have left?” He asked as Julius peeled himself from the floor once again.

“I have two more,” he told him.

“I would definitely grab it then. You said you got offered [Kinetic Energy Control]?”

Julius nodded and ducked underneath the jab of Cain, siphoning some of the force from the man’s momentum to fuel his counter.

“Yes, is it a good skill?”

“It’s pretty good. It’s only an uncommon rank skill, but it has many open paths for evolving it later down the road. What it will do is help you get a handle on the techniques with time. That other skill you have to immobilize your opponents is very good as well. I would say with high confidence that skill is a really advanced, rare rank skill. But if you are just choosing one of them, I would go with the more general skill, it will help in all kinetic applications,” Cain explained as he grabbed hold of Julius’s arm and ripped away the kinetic energy he had accumulated with ease.

He did it slowly on purpose so Julius could sense his actions. The technique had some similarities to mana manipulation and how Julius used a vortex to accumulate more mana. He suspected that was a big reason he had been making as many improvements over the past week or so.

His previous abilities translated over pretty well.

“Plus, if you don’t like it, you can always remove it from your status,” Cain added.

Julius froze for a moment when he heard this, which led to him getting whacked across the chest and flying across the room. “I thought it was bad to do that?”

“Oh, it absolutely is, but you have a phoenix healing skill. That should mitigate most of the damage, especially for an uncommon skill. Also, Freya will be able to help you if it gets complicated. She is really good at that type of healing,” Cain said with a massive smile, clearly proud of his wife.

Julius pursed his lips and eventually nodded. He liked that idea and, honestly, would have tested more skills in the past if others hadn’t explicitly told him not to delete his skills. Thus, he held up his palm, motioning for a break.

Cain’s fist, which had been about to rock his skull, paused just inches away from his forehead.

Would you like to learn [Kinetic Energy Control]?

He mentally selected yes.

Congratulations, you have learned [Kinetic Energy Control] (Uncommon).

He felt a small influx of energy as the skill integrated with his soul. However, since it was only an uncommon skill, the power was quite low. He immediately placed his attention on the skill and noticed that it was already activated without any prompting of his own.

“You got it?” Cain asked with a grin.

“Yep, do you think it will take much time to get used to it?” He asked curiously.

Cain rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? You will likely cap the skill pretty soon. It is one of the benefits of a low-ranked skill, and you have been using kinetic energy without the skill's assistance. But don’t worry, I will make sure that you get to test the skill thoroughly before we leave here tonight,” Cain said ominously.

Julius didn’t know if he liked the sound of that. He had quickly learned that when Cain got excited, it often led to him being beaten to hell and crawling on the ground with missing limbs.

However, he also wanted to see just how many levels he could pack into the skill in a short period. So before Cain could get the jump on him, he flooded his entire body with kinetic energy, not using a smidge of his Sharpness Concept to aid his movements.

He was able to tell the difference immediately with this new skill. He couldn’t believe how much more smoothly his kinetic energy flowed now. He had been so used to manually controlling it that he hadn’t known any better.

He embraced this feeling and dashed toward Cain, who was patiently waiting for him. He stepped right in front of Cain and unleashed a devastating blast of kinetic energy.

Since he wasn’t limited by the amount he could use, the blow was quite powerful. If he had hit one of the other students in his classes with this, they might have died before they were able to absorb any of its force.

This didn’t matter to Cain, though, and the man used a small amount of kinetic energy to change the angle of his body. He then used this shift to aid him in diverting the power of the blow into the air above his head.

Julius was already prepared for this and had quickly shifted the energy before it was wasted. He forcibly pulled it back and sent it down to his legs, which whipped up and slammed into Cain’s side. The speed at which it responded was lightning quick.

He had already been fast at controlling his kinetic energy, but this was on another level. The skill had already done most of the work before he even placed his focus on it.

He knew that Cain could have easily dodged it, but the man took the kick to his side. Julius then fought to gather any of the leftover energy from the blow and used it to get some distance.

Cain didn’t come after him; he stood there and gave him a smirk. “See how easy it is now?” The man said knowingly.

Julius rolled his eyes but nodded anyway.

He also checked on the notifications he got from that single exchange and was astonished at what he saw.

[Kinetic Energy Control lvl 1 - lvl 3]

He barked out a short laugh and looked at Cain with a little tilt of his head. He was no longer seeing his instructor, but as a perfect training dummy he could use to level up his skills.

As for Cain, the man’s smirk slid off his face when he saw the change in Julius’s expression. It was like the man knew something was off and looked at Julius a little warily.

Julius didn’t care, though. He was already dashing in for another round. This time, he was going to push himself to the very limits and see how much he could get out of it.