Chapter 12: Progress In Many Forms

Another two days passed, marking the last moment of Roman's possible chance at a form of peace.

He didn't know what to expect when that timer above him finishes.

-013:22:46-

Roman at the moment, was trying to get in a few more hours of physical conditioning, before relaxing in order to allow his body and mind to recover back to its best form.

Although he could use his ability to do that for him, he preferred to do so naturally before all hell breaks loose later. Also, he noticed that {Peak Conditioning} only allows his body to remain in top shape. Mental fatigue doesn't seem to count for some reason.

So in order to be at his absolute best, he was finishing up his training by practicing his natural shooting, in an empty warehouse, with targets, dart boards, and dummies as far as the eye can see.

After all these days of constant practice and torture, he was now able to accurately hit any type of target, moving or stationery, within 500 meters. If he strains himself, he can shoot up to 700 meters in a straight line, and this is only his natural shooting ability.

After reading that booklet, he learned so much information that it was mind blowing. Some of that information also gave a shallow, but informative, glimpse on powers, and allowed him to form a better training plan.

One thing Roman learned was that there can be many different classifications regarding the uses of powers. {Sharpshooting} can be classified as an auxiliary power.

After learning this, Roman and Holmes hypothesized that most auxiliary powers can be trained in a relatively simple way, which is by training your body and certain complimentary skills.

The stronger your body, the more uses and strength you can bring out using your auxiliary power. In this case, by training his natural shooting capabilities, his {Sharpshooting} is capable of enhancing them to a higher degree.

For example, at the beginning he used to miss when throwing two or three darts at a time, or curved shots.

Now, he was capable of doing that with his eyes closed while having {Sharpshooting} supporting him when active.

The best way he could come up with a description was it being like an auto-aim assist and shooting cheat code.

If a sniper needs to calculate the distance, angles, wind resistance, margins of error, and other such data in order for the bullet to be able to kill someone from afar, then {Sharpshooting} practically skips these steps while giving him the desired result on a silver platter.

After confirming his and Holmes hypothesis to be correct first, he then tried to do some targeted training with his other abilities as well in order to make the most of his time.

His {Super Regeneration} and {Peak Conditioning} can both be categorized as passive/auxiliary body enhancement type powers.

In order to train it, he strained his body constantly under increased gravity in order to get used to it, while having his regeneration and peak conditioning play a role in healing him if he was injured to better adapt to it, and also improving all of his physical parameters in the process, killing three birds with one stone.

His {Super Speed} was an active/auxiliary body enhancement type power. Unlike {Super Regeneration} and {Peak Conditioning} which don't seem to have an on and off switch, his {Super Speed} does.

He tried coming up with different ways to use his {Super Speed}, while also trying to see how long his energy is used up when it's active.

In the beginning, he could only run for 15 minutes at his top speed with it active until his energy ran out. Now, he knows that he can definitely last much longer, but he hasn't actively tested his limit.

Finally, he has the least information on his {Item-Duplication}, as it could be considered a part of the mystery/energy based powers.

He concluded through tests and the obvious naming category that it requires a chunk of his energy in order to duplicate an object, but he doesn't know what is required to label a power as a mystery.

He tested it by constantly replicating those sets of knives, until he couldn't anymore. He could only make a copy 4 times, before he ran out of energy, which was surprisingly consistent with his past energy parameter readings which were a 4.

It took him 1 point of energy to make a copy of that small knife. He never tried testing it with larger items either like a sword, so he didn't know what exactly the energy cost was based on.

Overall, he's experienced a great amount of growth in so little time, due to the constant physical abuse he's put himself through, and amazing willpower to help him get through it.

{Owner: Roman Zackery (Human), Age - 22, Weight - 130.8 lbs. > 137.2 lbs. , Height - 5'8"

<Soul and Body Parameters>: Strength - 6.3 > 10.1 ; Endurance - 8.7 > 12.6 ; Dexterity - 7.2 > 8.9 ; Energy - 12.3 > 16.4 ; Intelligence - 24.1 > 26.1 ; Willpower - 37.4 > 42.3 ; Spirit - 0 (Locked: Insufficient Information)}

Although Roman's improvements being visibly shoved in his face were always nice to look at and helped to motivate him, he knew better than to fall into such a flawed thought.

The main reason being, he has no idea how he compares to other Power users, or maybe even species that could have a better starting line in some ways.

Yup, although it wasn't as surprising considering everything Roman learned so far, it still shocked him a bit to know about the so many different species that exist.

For example, there are Elves, Dwarfs, Fae, Fairies, some possible different types of alien races, and even Demi-Humans that are a race born from the past and ancient union of the different Godly Beasts and Humans.

The Elves are said to have higher intelligence and spirit due to their inherent connection through nature.

Roman assumed at first that all Elves had nature related power sets, until he later read something in the booklet that briefly mentioned how there are other Power Systems, but Power Sets are considered the greatest start people can have. Unfortunately, that was all that was mentioned, and there also didn't include anything on what Spirit could be.

Dwarves and Demi-Humans have stronger physical parameters, with Demi-Humans varying between those parameters based on which Beast Blood they descended from, and Dwarves usually having a greater strength parameter.

There wasn't much information on the Fae and Fairies unfortunately.

All of this information opened a brand new world for Roman, one filled with mysteries and adventures yet to be uncovered and explored.

His heart and soul are practically filled with ecstasy at the thought of experiencing such a life. But, his mind was cold as ice during this entire week of his training, knowing that only with strength and intellect can he be able to do anything that he wants.

There were some important people from different kinds of races recorded in the booklet for different reasons, most being how they contributed to the safety of reality as Fixers, yet they still somehow died, with no one explaining how or why.

Not even a job description was available.

That honestly scared him. First of all, there must be an extremely important reason for there to be so much secrecy surrounding Fixers.

There were also a lot of known ways one can become immortal listed in that information, with some of these people having an ability or perk that did it right off the bat. However, they were all dead in the end.

So, before he even gets to that level involving immortality somehow, he can't rest.

This isn't a video game, there's no respawning after death.

…Well maybe until he can generate an ability that gives him a 1-up or something similar hopefully.

But he can't take his chances even then. He likes to believe he won't be that warm-hearted anymore, so although he can't possibly say he can be prepared for every kind of strange scenario, he'll be ready for most of them.

-009:54:07-