Chapter 335 - New technique

Training indeed is difficult, but as time passed it tended to get a lot easier. Although, it does feel like his muscles have become like stone due to all the soreness, day by day the pain is reducing.

Like Eric debated it a bit earlier, 4 hours doing the same exercise is just too much for him. So just slitting the exercise in half time-wise, helped in many terms. Here we are talking about the exercise where he almost touches his toes.

To be more specific, he is supposed to touch his toes but found it very difficult. So Kazer made him start with a couple of feet away from his toes, it fairly is better. In a matter of weeks he will be able to do the exercise properly.

As for the second exercise, it doesn't have a minimum time requirement. It used too, but for now it would be pointless since he hasn't yet learned how to do it. As in, he still can't balance himself with his head.

For now, he can just focus on trying to do it right and hope it will become easier as time passes. With the couple of exercises already introduced, since Eric understood the fundamentals, the Grand Masters decided to approach with yet another exercise, thankfully it isn't physical.

"Can you do this?" Kazer spoke clearly, while holding a fist like rock on his hand and afterwards placing it above his forefinger.

Perfect balance was achieved seconds later, the Grand Master held still and so did the rock on the end of his finger. At first sight it does look amazing, but giving it a second thought he can already feel the headache.

"I definitely can not do that." Eric spoke, as he glanced upon the rock in amazement. Thinking that the Grand Masters exercise their fingers as well or something.

"Try." He answered shortly, afterwards tossing a smaller rock towards him. We can consider it that it has a size of a half fist, it is as big as half of Eric's fist that is.

Catching the rock with a bit of effort, he first gave it a quick thought of how to do this. "Throwing the rock high likely isn't the answer." He thought to himself, and started trying it out.

He used his right hand to balance it on the left one, with a lot of effort he could only keep it above his finger for about 2-3 seconds. In the middle of all these attempts, he took a peek at the Grand Master who now is sitting back to his place and asked. "What's the point of all this?" Although he had a theory already.

"Brain challenge." Kazer answered swiftly although it might not have made much sense, afterwards adding. "This pokes self control."

Although an unclear sentence, it still makes a lot of sense. Trying this move over and over, failing in the process countless times will sure mess with both of his patience and self control.

As much as we are concerned, even if Eric whispers. "Screw this shit." And tosses the stone as far as he can, it still can damage his progress big time. Imagine spending countless hours of work only to have half of your progress gone by a little burst of anger.

An hour passed, maybe even a little bit more than that. But has Eric mastered this training exercise? No, nothing good can be mastered this easily. The longest he could keep this little rock balanced above his finger, is 8 seconds.

While when he took a glance at the Grand Master, he still is keeping his rock above his finger even though he is under deep meditation. We are talking about balance over an hour here.

As for how much this exercise has tired Eric, he feels like his arms are going to fall off and the mental challenge could be ten fold worse. At this rate, even if some minor inconvenience happens he could loose his absolute shit.

"I wonder if I..." Eric gave it a quick thought and formed a rather devious smile.

Walking closer to the lava, he gave it another shot there and his little stone accidentally fell from his hand, down to the Lava. "Okay um so with the stone gone I should act like I'm looking for another one." He thought to himself as he lightly walked across the volcanic rock.

A second after, he saw Pezik walking towards him. Communication is obviously difficult since they don't speak each other's languages, so he just waved her finger in front of him with a little smile.

After it, she reached high above 17 feet high and ripped a piece of Volcanic rock from the walls of this Volcano, rather easy to do for a 15 foot tall lady. Her height is indeed record breaking!

The nice 1100 year old lady handed Eric the little rock and just got back to her place of meditation. If she could speak, she would tell Eric that he isn't that slick.

"Well ain't that nice, the rock is even heavier now." So much for his idea, he gave a little grunt and returned to his training, thinking. "At least there aren't any yelling kids around."

...

"Enough." Kazer lightly spoke around an hour after, thinking that it would be enough for a day. Two hours of the same activity appears to be the most this little Ignite can handle.

"Do you guess you close to master exercise?" He asked lightly, knowing what to expect. Mostly failure come to think of it.

"Not really, but I did manage to hold it for 10 seconds this time." Eric asked proudly but yet tired, "How do you keep it up that long?"

"I training this exercise for Centuries, simple but helps." Kazer tried to explain the importance of this exercise and this time added a bit of encouragement. "You are good, you need time."

"Alright... so what do I do now? I feel like I deserve a brake here." Eric asked with a joke, but not entirely. He wants to calm down his nerves, eat a fig or two and see Ada. He hasn't seen her this morning.

"You do, in one hour. Now you touch toe." Kazer answered boldly, unwilling to shift towards the Golden Blood's demands. They have finally formed a schedule that wouldn't destroy him, they can't dump it down lower.

"Again??" Eric asked, obviously not a fan of the exercise.

"Yes, I count. It only 3 hours now." Guessing the time is usual, but counting it? It is no wonder that he is the smartest person in this town even with the Golden Blood included.

Without much hesitation, he went back to his exercises. And of course, to make it more difficult the Grand Masters are poking at him, trying to make him loose control both physically and mentally. The fact that he is resisting to loose control, is helping him progress.

This time, another lady of the 5 wants to poke at Eric. Altacin, the lady with over a year in training at Volcano shaping. This grand master is Commander Alia's favourite because she took Alia in over 200 years ago.

Basically, she saved her life after finding her at an unfavourable position. And I'm not talking about the fact that she was beached, what happened that day shall remain hidden between these two friends.

Apart from being favoured by the elected Commander, Altacin is known for being insanely attractive. Perhaps the most attractive in this whole town, which says a lot because even the elderlies make you get goosebumps.

Here it proves another point, because Altacin is 983 years old. Yet her face, it looks so youthful and soft. She has gold and black hair, which adds more beauty to all this complexion.

Apart from everyone else here who has tried breaking him out of this exercise, she is the most normal here. What couldn't anyone withstand for long? Tickling!

She started tickling his waist and afterwards moved underneath his pits. "Hehehehehehehehehe." He giggled under his breath and tried to fight it off.

But no... Ain't nothing you can fight off here. So he thought it as a good idea to bounce himself away, to escape the tickling. So without messing up his form, he bounced once and then twice.

But of course, it isn't so hard to follow a little boy who just moved a few inches away. She took another step, reached him closer and started tickling him again, even pulling his shirt high to do it.

"Oh I'll spare you the trouble." He spoke quietly and dipped in head first in to the Lava.

This time however, he did something he doesn't do quite often. He opened his eyes while deep in lava, his lashes don't even get burned down there so what would it do to his eyes?

At first glance, he didn't see anything tremendously interesting. Just a orange like colour accompanied by black colours either slithering or blobing around.

Those facts aside, this place still looks very beautiful. But one thing started catching his eye, but he didn't want to analyse what it is nor could he do it because he was running out of breath, he can't open up his mouth while deep in Lava after all.

"Is Lava supposed to be blue?" He asked in curiosity and a bit nervous too, once popping out his head from the Lava.