[STT] Chapter 98: Ray of Sunshine (Patreon)

"The new one can speak for himself, surely?" Ray said with a smile. "I did not mean to put you on the spot, Lady Alice."

A few of the people training nearby had stopped to look over and whisper among themselves, and Alice seemed to have started to feel a bit uncomfortable.

"Are you deaf?" Alice said, voice rising.

"I was about to say, I don't mind," Ben interjected, giving her a reassuring nod when she looked over to him.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Fine."

The man chuckled. "Wonderful!" He clapped. "Then what do you say about keeping it simple?"

"Elaborate."

"We each get three punches. We can punch the back, try to do our best, and the best one among the three punches counts, and whoever has the highest score wins. I'll go first so you can see how it's done. And don't worry, there's no wager or anything on this thing, haha. It's just for fun. Nobody expects much on the first day, right? Especially someone like you. No offense intended. You're a commoner, right?"

Ben understood why Alice disliked this guy.

He's really condescending. Okay then.

"Okay, I will start." Ray rolled his shoulder, setting his feet in a stable position, and punched.

The bag swung, and the number lit up: 933

"Nine hundred?!" someone exclaimed. "He's getting close to breaking a thousand!"

"Quiet down, or you'll distract him," another said, hushing his friend.

"Ah, that was not my best. My muscles are sore from yesterday." Ray said with a light laugh.

Ben was pretty sure that was a lie. Ray swung again, and the number lighting up a little higher: 983.

Ben watched the man. He had to be using mana in the attack, right? But he saw no signs of it, and [Mana Sonar] told him there was some, but not as much as Ben expected. He hadn't expected to actually learn something from this, but if he could, then why not?

Ben observed closer as Ray prepared his third punch, and he noticed a shift in the man's legs, a gathering of mana on his feet. And when the man punched, that mana moved up through his body, like a rubber band, and into his fist.

Interesting.

The bag shot forward and the number 1024 lit up.

A small cheer went up among the onlookers.

"Holy shit! Over a thousand! That's his highest right? I've never seen him hit that number before."

"Me neither. What a performance!"

Ray turned to him, smiling. "Alright, a thousand, give or take. Your turn."

The first punch Ben had thrown without the use of mana had been around a hundred, and people had probably seen, which was why some of them were snickering right now. Sometimes he wondered what was so fun about enjoying someone else's failure, but he chalked it up to human nature.

It was a good thing, in his opinion, to have a healthy dose of competition and failure, and he was not one to shy away from it, but what these people were doing was just looking down on him without knowing what he was capable of. They hadn't even seen his best yet.

With that in mind, he set his feet in a similar way Ray had, making the boy smile. "Ah, I see you've took some notes! I am proud, in fact, I'm happy to—"

Ben punched, mana snapping in his fist, and the bag shot back, the number lighting up: 419.

Goddangint.

[Focus] refrained a wince as the rubber band he'd try to emulate had snapping a bit wrong, backfiring, and hurting his wrist a little. The punch had been decent but not great. He could have done better, but he could tell Ray was also a bit stunned.

"Four hundred? That's... not bad." Ray said.

The whispers from the crowd were a lot less kind.

"Four hundred? Heh."

"He thought he could imitate Ray, but it backfired."

"He's not even close."

Alice was fuming, but she said nothing, which was for the best.

"That's a hard skill to master," Ray said, sounding as if he meant it. "It took me months of practice, so don't be discouraged. You'll get it. It will just take some time—"

Ben ignored him, readying his second punch. He'd made a mistake, but he'd learn from it. He focused, and the mana gathered in his arm, coiling around his bones, and he punched again.

The bag shot back, and the number lit up: 788.

The place went silent.

Even Ray had no words.

Huh, that was better than I thought. The skill really does help with this.

Ben looked at his fist. He'd never felt so strong before. He'd always been a bit frail, and relied on skills and mana to do the heavy lifting for him, but now...

"Did you see that? Is he cheating? How can he jump that high up?"

"He's gotta be cheating!"

"Shut up, how do you cheat in a test of strength?"

"Well I don't know, how did he go from four hundred to eight hundred?!"

Ben prepared to punch the last time. This time, though, he made some changes to the technique this guy had supposedly developed. It was a good way to do it, but he felt as though something was lacking. To put it in terms that were easier to understand, it was a bit rigid.

So he thought about what he could do to improve on it. Making a pseudo construct in his body was easy for him now, he'd already tried something similar when he'd made a gun barrel like construct inside him for [Mana Cannon]. This was similar, but it was more a pathway or mechanism for mana to travel through the body.

With that in mind, he made the construct in a way that would make it more fluid, and a lot easier to compress the mana at the same time. He then punched.

There was an audible explosive whip of air that followed as the bag flew, its chains rattling violently. The number took a moment to settle, and when it did, people gawked.

1284.

Nobody moved, nobody spoke. 

Hm... Not bad at all.

Ben turned to Ray, who was staring at the number, mouth slightly open.

"You said the best of three, right? I believe I won."

Ray looked at Ben, and then back at the number, and then at Ben again, his mouth opening and closing a few times.

"And as you said, there was no wager, so I guess this was all for fun. Thank you for the lesson. We should put up a wager next time, I do like those quite a bit."

He turned to Alice and motioned for her to go, because he knew being there at the moment would just attract more attention than he wanted.

"What? You're leaving? We should get something to drink! Maybe something to eat, what do you say?" Ray finally found his voice, his composure returning.

Ben turned back to him. "I appreciate it, but I have to go. Maybe next time." He wasn't interested in talking to a guy who kept looking down on him.

"Uh, well, okay." Ray said, looking a bit lost.

Ben could care less about Ray, he was excited about another thing.

[Mana Compression Lvl 1 > Lvl 2]

Hehe.

To think he hadn't even tried the main thing this skill supposedly did. He could only imagine what else he could do, and how much stronger he could get. He felt like a kid who just found out he could fly.

"Alice, I'm gonna head to my room and work a bit more on this skill. Do get those things I asked you to get for me, please! I will pay with those essence shards I won."

"Are you sure about those things?" Alice said, a bit hesitatingly.

"Yes."

Ben had asked her to buy him a few things he wanted to use to test [Adaptive Regeneration]. There were several things he needed, but it would take a little bit of time for Alice to procure them for him so for the time being he had to focus on [Mana Compression] in the meantime as he worked on tempering his body with the tempering pills.

All in all, things were looking good.

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