Chapter 1: The Awakening of the Young Man! Thaumaturge...

  "Oh no! I'm going to be late!"

  In the early morning, Ailin, who had been sleeping like a dead pig, suddenly woke up with a start and let out a cry.

  "Today is Master Suston's personal training day, no need to attend classes." Beru, lying on the opposite bed, reminded Elin with a look of disdain while chewing on a blade of unknown grass.

  "Oh yeah, I forgot."

  Ailin fell back down again, wanting to sleep a bit more, but immediately he sat up abruptly: "Can't sleep anymore, I must practice bitterly! I want to condense the Tao Yuan particles!"

  "Didn't it hurt at all when you were beaten up like that yesterday?" Berro asked, glancing at Elin.

  "Right."

  Ailin's face froze, and suddenly his excited expression turned into a painful one.

  "It hurts so much! I'm dying of pain!"

  His two hands rubbed his body like a madman without stopping.

  "It's rare to see someone react so slowly." Berro muttered to himself, then sat up slowly and looked at Ailin, who was reacting violently and panting nonstop. He said without much sympathy, "Do you want to eat something? If not, I'll go eat by myself."

  "Eat something?"

  Ailing was stunned again.

  "I'm so hungry!" Then he seemed to react and shouted again.

  "Berro, look at my hands, they're shaking nonstop." As he shouted with hunger, he also stretched out his own two hands for Berro to see.

  Bailu speechless.

  "It seems that Mr. Houston's method is reasonable, you see I'm so hungry that my hands are shaking like this, if I can still complete the exercise and use my skills, then it will definitely be even more powerful in normal times." Ailin became somewhat excited, he felt that every tiny molecule in his body was about to release its last bit of heat, he thought this was what Mr. Houston meant by squeezing out the last bit of potential from one's body, and most importantly, because he was too hungry, the dizzy feeling from hunger now overpowered everything, and the places on his body that were hit didn't seem to hurt as much anymore.

  "Well, in that case, you can just keep on shaking." Bero stood up with no interest whatsoever and prepared to walk out.

  "Wait! I remember what I thought of yesterday. Besides the method taught by Professor Huston, there should be a way to quickly condense the Tao Yuan particles."

  "What method?" Berro's body halted at the doorway.

  "It's all about constantly challenging opponents who are stronger than us!" Elin excitedly recalled the fight last night, gesturing with shaking hands: "Yesterday that Gibbawi was so powerful, he could support his entire body on the ground with just one hand and quickly spin around, and with just a flick of his body, he could create three silhouettes. It was so fast I couldn't even see it clearly! But I found that fighting him made me improve much faster than when I practice alone, and by the end, I think I could see his movements a bit more clearly!"

  "I think I understand now. It's the living people, formidable opponents are always more intimidating than dead trees that don't move. If you don't push yourself to the limit, you'll get beaten! So keep challenging strong opponents, challenge those upperclassmen, and you'll definitely improve faster than just doing basic practice on your own." Ailin looked at Beru excitedly: "Beru, isn't that right?"

  "If you put it that way, then we're in agreement."

  Bei Luo turned around, and on his glasses flashed a white light: "Then I'll reluctantly accept you, and we can become the class tyrants duo."

  "......" Ailing was stunned: "My method seems to be similar to yours, which is to specially find high-grade class bullies to fight."

  "It doesn't matter, you've always been slow to react and realize things later."

  Bailu pushed his glasses and said, "Now that you finally understand that challenging these guys will make progress much faster, I just so happen to have a suitable candidate on hand."

  After saying this, he pulled out a card from his clothes and handed it to Ailin.

  "What's this?" Elin took Bero's card in a strange manner and was stunned at first sight: "Kris?"

  This exquisite card has a lifelike portrait of a person and some introductory text. The girl on this card is clearly Chris.

  "Oh, wrong one." Beroy calmly pulled the card back and took out another card to hand over to Ailin, "This is a character card that I paid someone to make, it's based on the portrait, absolutely won't mistake the person!"

  "You wouldn't think of hitting Chris too, would you?" Ailin looked at Berro silently for a moment before looking down at the card in his hand.

  "Fei Lin Te, have you eaten?"

  Ailin saw that the card depicted a boy with a pointed chin and black long hair.

  "Yes." Beru looked at Ailin and said, "If this guy is the strongest in his second-year class, his father was a registered magician of the Philint family, so he also has one or two unique family secret techniques. His hand-to-hand combat skills are not bad either. Overall, it's equivalent to a combination of Difei and Jibaiwei from yesterday, but in terms of magical technique, he's even more powerful than Difei."

  "Is he that strong?" Elin clenched her fist and swung it with force. "Then let's go challenge him now?"

  "Now you're just a burden, with your current level, you can't even help with the slightest bit of work, and instead, you'll only get in the way. Even if you can't hit the opponent, at least try not to be knocked out by them in one hit, and help me distract this guy's attention." Bero sneered: "However, since your opinion finally aligns with mine, I might as well think of a way to help you improve your strength a bit."

  "What can I do? What should I do?" Elington suddenly became excited.

  "If you can still run and jump, come with me to the school's gym. Berro glanced at Ailin, "Although it doesn't have some of the special facilities like those outside, it's already enough for your current state, and it's free too."

  "Yesterday you said that Jibaiwei's home is actually a fitness club." Ailin asked somewhat embarrassed: "What kind of place is a fitness club?"

  "It's a place where you can train your overall physical fitness when facing an enemy, you'll know once you've been there."

  ……

  Less than half an hour later, Bero, gnawing on a hot dog, and Ailin, who couldn't stop swallowing saliva, appeared in front of the gymnasium of Saint Dawn Academy.

  The gymnasium of Sheng Li Ming College is located just east of the Sheng Li Ming Stadium, with a very ordinary exterior, built on flat ground, like a large black iron box.

  "Your speed is less than one-third of Gilgamesh's, and you can't even dodge at that level. You'd better practice here first."

  Bailu took Ailin to a smaller venue that was empty and said casually.

  "Rebound Ball Hall?" Ailin read out the sign at the entrance of the venue.

  "After you go in, as long as I help step on the pedal, fist-sized black balls will keep popping out non-stop. The visibility inside is just barely enough to see clearly." Berro explained: "Those black balls are very bouncy, but they're also very hard and hurt a lot when hit. You can only try your best to dodge them, use your hands and feet to block the balls as much as possible, but these balls will bounce back after hitting the wall, and you have to be careful not to step on the black balls rolling on the ground or you'll easily fall over. Generally speaking, if you can last ten minutes inside, that's pretty good, I reckon even a normal attack from an opponent like Gilgamesh wouldn't be able to hit you."

  "Who would have thought there's such a venue? I'm sure other venues must be very interesting too?"

  "Don't be too ambitious, first deal with this place before talking about other things."

  "Alright, let's get started!"

  Ailin, who didn't want to waste a single minute, pushed open the closed large door and walked into the venue without hesitation.

  This is a nearly completely sealed room, with only some grid ventilation holes opened around the perimeter and top. It's about 20 meters long and wide, and as Berro said, there is only sparse light shining in from the ventilation grids, and the light is very dim.

  There is a vertical iron plate at the entrance, and there are several pedals protruding from the ground behind the iron plate.

  "It has begun!"

  After letting Ailin walk to the center of the venue, Bero didn't give Ailin any time to react and shouted out loud, then stepped heavily on several pedals.

  "Right!"

  Every time a pedal is pressed down, it's as if something heavy is lifted up and then strikes against something.

  "Huh!"

  Ailin hadn't even reacted yet when he saw a series of black shadows with whistling wind sounds rushing towards him.

  "Ah!"

  A loud cry rang out, his left eye had been severely smashed.

  His mournful cry had barely sounded when he was hit three or four more times in other parts of his body.

  The force of this rubber ball is indeed incomparable to a punch from someone like Jigoku no Gi, but it's extremely hard. Every hit on the body feels like being struck by a hammer on the bones, almost to the point of cracking them, yet somehow just short of that level of force and pain.

  "Too shoddy." Berro spoke out in disdain of Ailin's performance, but his feet didn't stop for a moment.

  "Ah!"

  It was just an instant, and Ailin felt that everything around him was a black ball, constantly bombarding him, he had completely lost his sense of the situation, and was only subconsciously dodging, then frantically punching and kicking.

  "You must hold on!"

  "Damn it, you black balls, go die!"

  Soon, he was again in the state of being hit by Gilgamesh's consecutive blows, his whole body feeling as if it wasn't his own, with a voice in his mind constantly telling him to fall down, but he just wouldn't yield.

  Ten minutes later...

  Bail stopped moving, and all the black balls slowly stopped bouncing, rolling on the ground, and then came to a stop.

  Ailin stood in the middle of a pile of black balls, her whole body trembling non-stop, and her hands holding her head slowly parted.

  A pair of hands apart below was a nose blue and swollen, tears streaming down a twisted face, I reckon even Old Kings himself came now wouldn't recognize this guy as Ailing.

  "Is it ten minutes yet?"

  "Did I win?" He had already done so, but suddenly let out a cheer.

  "You idiot, do you think this is winning?!" Berro was completely speechless. "When I said ten minutes, it meant being hit by the ball as little as possible and dodging and blocking to get through. Your ten minutes were spent taking a beating and fighting back head-on!"

  "No matter what, it's still useful." But what left him speechless was that Ailin, who had been beaten to the point where no one would recognize him, actually said with some satisfaction: "At least in these ten minutes, I was pushed to my limits. Normally swinging my arms and such, there's absolutely no way I could do it this fast."