Shattered Sanity

(One week later, The Imperial Academy, Riven’s POV)

For the next week, Riven slowly found himself developing a daily routine as he settled into Academy life for good.

Every morning, he woke up roughly two and a half hours before dawn, and after quickly washing himself and tidying his clothes, Riven rushed towards Professor Mike’s Physical Conditioning class, where the punishment he had earned during his confrontation with the Aureate students continued making an already brutal class considerably worse.

His legs remained shackled throughout the training session while a weighted vest was placed over his shoulders, as Mike took particular pleasure in making sure that Riven never left the training grounds without his legs quaking with every step.

Then, around sunrise, he usually returned to House Argent with his muscles aching and his stomach demanding more food than he had ever been accustomed to eating.

In fact, within barely a week, the increase in his appetite became impossible for even Riven himself to ignore.

Where three eggs, two slices of bread and a bowl of fruit had previously been enough to satisfy him during breakfast, he now regularly consumed seven eggs, four slices of bread and two entire bowls of fruit before the hunger inside his stomach finally disappeared.

The change was hardly surprising considering how much physical activity had entered his daily routine, although Riven still found himself occasionally hungry between meals as his reconstructed body seemingly demanded more nutrition the harder he pushed it.

Once breakfast ended, the remainder of his morning was usually occupied by whichever other classes had been scheduled for that particular day, while after lunch came either Foundations of Aether Theory or Professor Jean’s Spell Mastery class.

Foundations of Aether Theory primarily educated them regarding the various forms of Aether, their historical applications, the differences between Ascension Ranks and the warriors who had pushed those powers furthest throughout recorded history.

Spell Mastery, however, gave Riven an opportunity to finally begin putting some of the Storm Aether he had gathered to practical use.

[Lightning Step]

Despite having already memorized the technique’s instructions, actually executing them remained considerably harder, as Riven repeatedly practiced the required circulation while slowly learning how to move Storm Aether through his legs before releasing it at the correct moment.

However, even after an entire week’s worth of practice, the best he could manage was a sudden burst that propelled him approximately two meters forward in a single quick step and nothing more.

To an onlooker, it seemed like nothing more than a simple sideways jump performed at considerable speed, but compared to what [Lightning Step] was actually supposed to become once mastered, Riven understood that he remained nowhere close to properly learning the technique.

Still, two meters was more than he had been capable of covering with it a week earlier, and so he did not allow the slow progress to discourage him.

Once his afternoon lessons ended, Riven always made his way towards Professor Jude’s Dueling and Practical Combat class, where the professor had already begun implementing training regimens specifically designed around the weaknesses he had identified within each student.

For Riven, unfortunately, those weaknesses extended to his fighting style as a whole, and so instead of simply giving him drills to overcome individual shortcomings, Jude assigned one of his own assistants to personally train him so that he could improve under the guidance of a private mentor.

The assistant was a master spear user, and since there were currently no halberd masters available among the Academy’s instructors, he was the closest long-weapon specialist who could be assigned to Riven.

While he could not teach Riven everything, he could at least teach him the fundamentals of wielding a long weapon and correct the mistakes that had become embedded within his fighting style.

Under the assistant’s instruction, Riven repeatedly corrected his posture, grip, balance and footwork while learning just how much his previous movements had depended upon raw physical strength compensating for mistakes he had never realized he was making.

However, the strangest part of Jude’s training regimen was not the assistant, but rather the one-on-one sparring sessions against a large wooden training dummy covered with padded spikes across several rotating sections of its body.

Whenever Riven struck one section from an incorrect angle, the force caused another portion of the dummy to rotate towards him, with one of its padded spikes frequently smashing into his ribs, arms, shoulders or head before he could withdraw his weapon.

At first, Riven hated the damned thing.

The openings he instinctively identified as opportunities repeatedly resulted in him being struck immediately after attacking, forcing him to reconsider much of what he believed he understood about fighting with the Sky-Cleaver.

An opening did not necessarily mean that his opponent was defenseless.

Sometimes Riven could land his attack perfectly and still leave himself exposed to a counterattack immediately afterward, while other angles allowed him to strike and withdraw without giving his opponent any reasonable opportunity to retaliate.

That distinction had never mattered much when his overwhelming physical strength allowed him to simply endure whatever came back at him.

However, Jude was now forcing him to understand exactly why it mattered.

By the end of the week, the padded spikes were still hitting him far more often than Riven liked, although considerably fewer attacks ended with him getting punished than during his first attempt, while his movements with the Sky-Cleaver were gradually becoming less dependent upon memorized sequences alone.

.

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Finally, once Dueling and Practical Combat ended, it was time to replenish the Aether he had lost throughout the day, and while some students preferred going to Professor Elena’s classroom to meditate, Riven instead chose to practice from the comfort of his own dorm.

According to the manual, an Ember Rank Ascendant should have been capable of replenishing a depleted Soul Vessel in approximately forty-five minutes.

However, Riven currently needed about four hours, since he could only successfully complete around one out of every ten cycles he attempted, as the slightest mistake in his breathing, circulation or timing forced him to abandon the attempt and begin again.

Despite the low success rate, however, he was not too demoralized.

One week earlier, completing even a single cycle had required nearly half an hour of repeated failures, while now he could at least reproduce the process consistently enough to replenish his entire Soul Vessel before going to sleep.

”I will soon learn how to do this in under two hours, and once I reach that point, I can add another two hours of spell training to my daily routine.

That’s the area I’m currently weakest at...”

Riven told himself, as before going to sleep every night, he evaluated his progress against the bar he had set for himself and realized that spell training remained the area where the greatest improvement and effort were currently needed on his part.