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CH 94: Proper Form
🕑 Added 2025-02-19 15:00:03 +0000 UTCLycra was 'familiar' with Reid's propensity to improve himself by being catatonic for days, but Win was not - at least, not yet. Calming her down had taken nearly twenty minutes, and included the promise to her - and to Nyx - that Reid would take some time immediately to simply rest and relax and recover. He drank, and ate, and bathed, and slept.
While he wasn't supposed to test things out, Reid still probed within himself. He could feel his mana pool slowly fill itself as he rested and ate and relaxed. He thought back to how much difficulty he'd had when making weapons, and how spent he'd been after most of his crafting work. He subtly tried to make bone daggers to see how different the impact was - but that was quickly stopped by Nyx. Reid wasn't nearly subtle enough to get his work past the entity stuck inside of him. Alright, maybe it was a bit of a dumb idea - but he was excited. He could feel the difference from his first metaphysical breakthrough - and in lieu of something else to work on, Reid couldn't help himself from wanting to take his new capacity for a test drive. He promised himself that he could try it out later by Recalling Requiem.
Win and Lycra had continued their own practice in the three days it took Reid to make his beach. Lycra's workspace was filled with small but growing piles of successful and failed attempts at crystal carving. Some lights worked, others didn't. Some warming crystals were hot enough to boil water, and others were too weak to be hand warmers. But the failures didn't disappoint Lycra - instead they seemed to invigorate him. Every outcome was something he could use, and he was singularly focused in making more.
Win's tree started to have proper roots, and while Reid 'rested', Nyx gave her far more additional instruction than she offered Lycra. She practically shouted that he was a smart oyster and just needed to follow the notes he already had, and that things would come to him if he tried.
After a full day without doing much of anything but being a speaker for Nyx's voice, Reid was ready and eager to get back to working on himself. Nyx's final echoed instruction to Win - to not heal Reid under any circumstances until he was done with the next activity, or when he collapsed - only gave him minor pause. He stood next to a pile of tools Nyx had him gather, and waited.
"Alright, the next bits we do are going to be tougher than power because you're less familiar with them, but don't let that discourage you. Dexterity is your worst so it'll take the most work. You've been close to a breakthrough on the physical side a few times - but in each instance, you've either gotten frustrated, or let yourself slip into compensating with raw strength instead of doing what you needed to do. So for this one, I want you to swing a pickaxe, softly, against that shadowy, dark section of cavern wall. Just keep doing it without stopping. You think about how your body is moving, and I'll give you notes where you need them."
Dexterity: 2
A reflection of an individual's overall coordination. Dexterity impacts reflexes and acrobatics. Coordination is recommended for all individuals engaged in fine arts that require fine motor skills, including smithing and enchanting. Reflexes are recommended for rogues and fighters. Acrobatics are recommended for explorers and thrill-seekers. May those of high dexterity wield their bodies with the truest precision.
Reid grabbed the tool and began to hit the wall. At first, he did put effort and force into the swing - it just felt natural. Slowly, he pulled the force back until he wasn't really carving into the rock anymore. Once he properly relaxed and began to hit the wall a bit more softly, Nyx spoke up again.
"Good - now without changing what you're doing, focus on how your body is moving. Full motion, and the muscles themselves."
He let the pickaxe rise and fall, clanging off the wall with each cycle. The light strain pulled at as his body as it contracted with the motions - through his core, his arms, and even his legs. He kept up the rhythmic motion longer, and tried to focus in more on what he was actually doing to swing the axe. His body tensed and released in different areas, but followed the same sequence of actions each time. Just like he had with Requiem's Recall, Reid worked to catalogue the 'path' and sequence. But it wasn't a smooth process by any means.
Seeing inside yourself while you were moving and taking action was a completely different beast from doing it while lying down. Reid struggled and failed so often that he nearly got frustrated into quitting - but he forced himself onward. He continued until his muscles started to sore, and the pain helped him realize he'd been missing pieces of the equation. He tensed his neck when on a downswing. Pushed his hands into each other just a little with every strike of the pickaxe. When he had no more small movements left to catalogue, Nyx spoke again.
"Good, next step - make small changes. See what happens when you don't tense your neck. Experience what it would be like to keep the rest of your body doing only what it is right now, but then have your arms strike at full force. Experiment, and understand."
Reid tried it all. Not tensing his neck made his head practically ring as the shock more easily traveled up his body. Putting more power into his arms unbalanced him entirely - but he actually found himself with more stable swings when he put a bit more effort into his legs. Bit by bit, combination by combination, Reid tested, and either left things alone or made small changes. As he improved his form, the pickaxe stopped clanging off the wall completely - and started biting into rock. That change made small differences in how shock traveled up Reid's arms and how his follow-through actually needed to work, so Reid took a step back in the process, found every muscle he was using on the more successful strikes, and experimented with the muscles on that, too.
The work was surprisingly... easy.
Reid couldn't be certain if he'd made progress, or how much, but the only things working against him were the soreness and fatigue creeping through him. He muscles burned like they were on fire, and ached like he'd been beaten all over his body with baseball bats - but those were feelings he'd experienced regularly. Plus, the pain here felt good in the way that workout-soreness always did. Maybe it was his imagination that things were different or less painful - but he was enjoying himself.
"Reid, stay focused. Don't stop swinging - increase the overall effort you're using, without breaking out of the form you've made. Small increases, and stop once you get to the point where you can't increase things any more without unbalancing the swing."
He pushed a bit more power into the downswing, and threw the entire form off completely by putting too much of the additional force in his left arm over his right. On his next swing, Reid balanced the rest of his muscles against both of his arms. He continued with a system of increase-falter-adjust for what felt like ages before he got the hang of moving himself up in effort as a whole. Swings and motion and energy and pain blended together as his effort rose. His entire body was a bruise, but it still did what he told it to. His muscles wanted him to quit, but Reid was the motion of the swing and the bite of the metal against stone. His entire body was a purpose-built tool made for breaking rock. It was a sublime feeling, and Reid knew he had reached the peak of possibility for the swing. He repeated the pinnacle swing a dozen more times, etching each twitch and pull of his body deep into his memory before he let himself still.
Nyx's voice came - full of pride and admiration.
"You're a damn good student, Reid."
The pickaxe fell away from his hands, and pulled against the blisters that had formed. Skin that had pressed itself hard into the handle ripped and tore. Reid's legs shook just to keep him upright. He slumped sideways against the wall, and his arm did little to stop him from crumpling to the floor. His effort had made a small, person-sized tunnel into the rock wall of the cavern - and his long-stagnant stat was finally out of the single digits.
Dexterity: 2 -> 32
He panted into the dirt without raising his head, so he didn't see Win sprinting over to heal him - he just heard her footfalls. She swore and cursed Nyx's name as healing energy swept itself over and into Reid's overworked form. Going from exhausted pain to relief made Reid slip towards sleep. He tried to keep himself awake, to feel and experience everything happening to him - but Nyx's words sent him in the other direction.
"It's alright, Reid. You gained all you were supposed to - and more - from this exercise. Sleep and rest."
When Reid awoke again after nearly thirty straight hours of rest, Win was hovering over him. Apparently, he'd been digging for a day straight - which looked, to the outside observer, like a very odd and self-destructive sort of thing to do. For her part, Win didn't pry on why he'd made a tunnel to nowhere. The question was just there, in her eyes. She took him through multiple healing sessions before she reluctantly agreed to leave him be and let him rest on his own.
Her level of mana manipulation control had grown enough since the start of their training that Reid was now able to feel a difference himself. His best description would be that it went from feeling like one singular mass to a bunch of tiny, purposeful bits that made up a larger whole. In the day he'd been digging and the day he'd been out, Lycra's piles had become much larger - and his creations had become more complex and further from Reid's understanding. He'd etched glyphs and shapes into crystal that weren't part of the book nor the lessons Nyx had shared. His passenger was unusually quiet when he asked her what Lycra had made, and she brushed him off with an 'ask him yourself' answer. He stifled the curiosity on that, so he could get back to his own progress.
Nyx was adamant that he use the momentum he already had to grow dexterity again. According to her, it was the thing most likely to get him killed in a fight - and he would be doing enough fighting going forward for that to be a big risk. Her next lesson came in the form of... jumping. Reid knew how to jump - or at least he thought he did. Over the next 30 hours, he gained a deep appreciation for just how his feet and legs and core moved to influence the way his mass sailed through the air. More rest, then cataloguing and testing followed. Nothing was quite as profound as the initial gain, but his Dex stat steadily grew as he punished his muscles and moved through fully understanding more motions. Nyx had him focus on basics like dodging, catching a ball (which was actually a rock), and throwing (also rocks). In less than a week, Reid blew past his previous level of coordination he'd had while playing sports, and he found himself able to make his body move in the way he wanted it to.
Nyx had been absolutely right. Along the way, because of his growth in physical power, Reid had started to over-rely on his power stat to make up for his inefficiencies and lack of understanding in his own movements. As one outpaced the other, the issue had just grown worse and worse - until he got to the point where he couldn't hit a massive mole with what should've been a simple throw. Everything he'd done had been power first, form second. Even back when he'd practiced with James, he'd used power like a crutch. He'd approached the man's lessons thinking he just needed to limit the strength he was using to get the movements right, instead of focusing on the movements themselves. His brain went to coffee cups - god, he missed caffeine - and then it turned somber. How much different could he have made things if he'd just learned to move better? Would it have even been possible for him to learn on his own? He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He focused on the now.
Everything from the way he swung his mace to the way he walked had been out of balance. By better understanding specific forms and movements, Reid was able to improve the way he used his body in general. His final test for Dexterity was a walk, blindfolded, over the cavern floor without falling over rocks like he normally would - because he was taking care in how he placed his feet and how he reacted to the stumble. He'd reached the peak of the physical side of dexterity - in just over a week.
Dexterity: 32 -> 65
Reid laid on the ground, muscles screaming and tired, when Nyx shoved him into the next round of training.
"You're making good gains, and you've hit the half-to-whole measure I told you about. That means we could technically stop here. You'll be good enough on your foundations to not really hurt yourself going forward. But Reid - you're doing exceptionally well, and I'll admit you have me curious about what else you're capable of. So, I'm still going to try to teach you the metaphysical half of Dexterity. But if you struggle or don't get it quickly, we move on to the next stat. Sound good?"
The fervent excitement in Nyx's voice was a testament that she was really, truly enjoying his progress. Despite his fatigue, Reid found himself energized by her words.
Reid sat up, and rolled his shoulders. "Sounds like a challenge."
"Attaboy. Let's make your second metaspace."
