Rogue Villain-Chapter 197: Passable
Ackster slept the entire day, only waking up to eat, after which he returned to his bed and slept the rest of the night. And when he woke up—
’Continue.’
’Of course...’
Ackster picked up the next weight and started a new cycle of mobility exercises. The routine continued with the occasional rest day until he reached the heaviest weight. At that point, Bo finally showed up again.
The first thing he did was give Ackster a scrutinizing look.
"Passable."
Ackster sighed and finished his last cycle before collapsing on the ground. But Bo wasn’t in a mood to let him rest more than necessary.
"Up with you."
Ackster stood up and wiped the sweat from his brow as he watched Bo set up a set of pillars around the stone area. Holes varying in size from the thickness of a cat’s claws to fists lined the hollow, wooden pillars.
’I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
When the dozen or so pillars were all arranged in a circle around the training area, Bo went around and tapped all of them once before stuffing Ackster in the middle and drawing a circle he would need two steps to leave, which he wasn’t allowed to while training started.
"Uh...—"
"Don’t get hit."
Bo was outside the training area before Ackster noticed. Bo also didn’t leave any time for Ackster to ask any questions or think about what to do before a tiny pebble hurtled through the air and brushed against his arm. The perfectly round stone left a red gash in Ackster’s arm before whizzing away right into a stone pillar on the opposite side.
"Wha—"
Ackster didn’t even have time to react to the pain before another pebble flew out from another pillar and toward him. Thankfully, it came from in front of him, so Ackster had time to see it and dodge.
Gradually, Ackster caught up to what was going on, and instead of doing something as useless as asking questions or distracting himself, he focused on dodging all the projectiles that came his way.
The pillars soon began picking up the speed of both the projectiles themselves and the interval between the projectiles. More and more stones, darts, hilt-less flying daggers, and various items filled the air of the training area as the pillars bombarded Ackster.
None of the hits Ackster occasionally took were fatal, but they still hurt. Pain Tolerance wasn’t active anymore, after all. Still, Ackster put on a brave face as he did his best to endure while still feeling the fatigue from the weighted mobility exercise.
However, it didn’t take long before the pillars overpowered and buried him in a pile of pointy or hard projectiles that forced him to cower on the ground until the rain stopped.
"Again."
Unfortunately, his trainer was merciless, and Ackster had to repeat the dodging training until he collapsed several times. Only when it was time for dinner did Bo grant Ackster some leniency.
It was short-lived, though, since Ackster had to continue the next day. And the circle was a little smaller this time, so he would have less room to dodge. Just like yesterday, Ackster continued dodging until he collapsed before restarting and dodging until he could dodge no more.
The intense training went on, sometimes supervised and sometimes unsupervised. But the one thing that remained a constant was the increasing difficulty.
Ackster couldn’t tell if the pillars were starting with a higher speed each day, but it sure felt like it as the circle he was allowed to move within while dodging shrank. And that wasn’t the only change that made it more difficult.
Bo added restraints after some time while still decreasing the circle’s radius. At first, it was a blindfold that merely reduced visibility. The blindfold’s opacity rose until Ackster couldn’t even tell if it was day or night when looking straight at the sun.
Ackster could only use the sound of the projectiles piercing through the air to sense them. And when the intensity started becoming too much for him, Ackster had to use the different sounds to differentiate the speed and shape of certain projectiles since he had to choose which ones to get hit by in order to avoid getting struck by others.
However, before Ackster could start feeling a sense of accomplishment at his growth, Bo upped the difficulty even further as he started muting Ackster’s hearing.
’How the fuck am I supposed to notice anything now?!’
Ackster wanted to curse Bo out. But before he could, the pillars started shooting him again. It didn’t take long before he figured out how the air pressure shifted right before he was hit. It took a couple of scathing hits until he could react quickly enough after that.
But Ackster slowly learned how to dodge the incoming projectiles using only his sense of touch. He couldn’t hear or see anything, which was disconcerting in itself. But that only heightened his sense of touch.
Ackster feared Bo would come up with a way to block that as well. But before he did that, he shrank the circle so that it was only enough for Ackster to have his feet pushed together in one place without moving them at all. As if that wasn’t enough, he also tied his legs together and his arm to his torso.
Ackster’s urge to curse Bo out rose to the surface again. But he stayed silent. He hadn’t been able to feel the effects of the mobility training other than noticing that he could lift heavier weights while doing it. But Ackster immediately noticed how rapid his growth was as he learned to dodge when his sight and hearing were impeded. It was something he would have only been able to obtain on his own by risking his life multiple times.
The training wasn’t even that intense, dangerous, or advanced, though the pillars probably were quite the technological or magical phenomenon. But it was painful enough that Ackster sorely didn’t want to get hit anymore than necessary, so he did his best to improve.
Ackster wasn’t the only thing improving. The training did as well.
Ackster’s feeling that the pillars were beginning at a higher difficulty before ramping up the intensity was gradually proven correct. It took a while for Ackster to notice. But the projectiles were becoming less and less noticeable, even for his trained senses.
Ackster doubted he would have heard them even without the ear muffs as they barely displaced any of the air they flew through. Soon enough, projectiles Ackster hadn’t even sensed hit him like sniper bullets.
’How the fuck am I supposed to dodge these?!’
