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Chapter 5 - Small Steps

By the time I looked at the time again it was already noon.

I pulled down my mask and looked up at the ceiling while contemplating. I contemplated how I didn't actually need to use the mask anymore. The air here was good to breathe, not filled with metal dust which slowly and painfully killed.

I looked down again and pulled my mask back up. I didn't exactly know why I put the mask back on, but it just felt right to do so.

Axmon's voice sounded in my room. "Attention, ensure you are inside your room and wait. You will be given clothes which after putting on you will go to training hall B."

It was just a short time later that my door opened. I saw Axmon and a cart of clothes his assistant was pushing. Axmon simply looked at me and then threw the clothes at me. Before Axmon closed the door I asked "Can I keep the mask on?"

Axmon turned back to look at me and to my surprise said. "I'll allow it." Then I closed my door and walked away.

'Things are… actually going well?'

Despite how far 3 had shown I need to climb to catch up, I was still optimistic. 

Remembering that I had to go to training hall B I switched into my new clothes and started to walk over.

Axmon was going door to door in order which also happened to be the light direction and therefore I would have to walk through the heavy direction.

I bitterly walked all the way around the heavy direction to arrive at training hall B. I knew I had to take every advantage I could, which included getting used to the room and how to train right inside early. That couldn't stop me from complaining within my own head though.

'Hate this.'

Walking into the room I saw 3 already inside. She was sitting on the ground in the corner of the completely white room meditating.

I sat a fair bit away from her and did the same. I noticed immediately the sheer difference in how it felt, just being in this room made getting to the tingling part very quick.

Roh is the Arabic word for soul but roh is not the soul, it's a sort of energy the soul creates in some way. roh has few inherent properties, it's how we shape our will that causes our roh to change. 

What confuses me about this room is that roh is not an inherent energy source around us, it comes directly from us. So how does this room affect our roh? Applications like the roh test we had done might be an exception, there might very well be a way to transfer roh which is what the tests do but it doesn't seem like that's what is happening right now..

After a moment I noticed I could actually feel what felt like slight patterns of how roh moved within my body. I couldn't understand the full picture at once but I could feel the roh traveling up my arm and to my fist, then it circles back around roughly towards my heart. It moved very similarly to blood except for the fact it was continuous, completely unlike the rhythmic beating of my heart.

'So what did my roh use to move?'

My focus waned slightly to which I noticed the room was full and that Axmon was talking, but I only heard the end of his sentence "-Like these two idiots. Despite the fact we had all walked into the room they didn't even notice. Make no mistake though, if not for the fact that they are doing exactly what this lesson entails they would have been severely punished."

A shiver ran down my back, I knew just how rough punishments can be for normal people, I could only imagine how bad they would be in a military setting such as this.

On the side of the room I saw someone point at 3 and whisper as if no one could hear him say. "Isn't that the girl who just goes into the gym randomly and beats the life out of the punching bag and then leaves? She's damn scary." 

Axmon didn't react and just simply let his booming voice speak over the idiotic fool. I was very surprised to see how lax he was compared to many of the teachers I've ever had, he hadn't even hit anyone yet let alone sent them into the altitude 'training' simulation. 

I snapped myself out of the thoughts before I had flashbacks to that particular 'training' method.

At the corner of my vision I saw 7 and 9 looking straight at me while covering their mouths trying to restrain their laughter.

'come on, guys.' 

After a few moments I stood up and stretched. I was surprised to see I could still feel roh within my body, not very well mind you but it was definitely progress, I hadn't hit a single roadblock yet. That at least was great news, gave me hope I could keep up in time.

Axmon noticed I had stood up and said. "It seems 4 here has gotten used to the very fundamentals of sensing roh within their body, to help with roh manipulation moving forwards he will get this."

Axmon reached into the carrier he had used for our clothes and pulled out a full body suit which looked weird with its many technological parts.

Axmon handed it over to me "Go to your room quickly and put this on." He then turned around and said. "As for the rest of you sit on the ground like 3 over there and try to sense the same feeling that you should have had in the earlier test." 

I didn't hear the rest as the door closed as I walked to my room and changed, I could very well guess that what he was doing was simply telling them to do what I had already done. One thing I did notice is that 3 was indeed the girl's designation and I was not the extremely weak one, she was just simply an absolute monster.

I put on the suit and walked back to see the entire room sitting down meditating, except for Axmon himself of course.

He turned to me and said "You and that suit will be used as an example later, for now just keep doing what you were doing."

I did as he said and found a place to sit and started meditating again. The suit itself didn't seem to do anything to my roh, so I just kept trying to get a grasp on how the roh itself felt.

A thought suddenly came.

'Is it possible to sense the roh of others around you?'

This idea left me stumped, I genuinely had no idea if I was possible or not. So I tried it, I tried sensing the roh of others. For a moment I thought I had but I quickly realised my mind was playing tricks on me. 

This was indeed one of the main problems when first learning roh, the fact that it doesn't actually really do anything and therefore can easily just be imagined instead of actually felt.

'If I could sense the roh of all beings around me that would make it impossible for me not to notice anything which is alive or I guess more accurately which had a soul.'

"Number 4, stand ready." Axmon's voice jolted me out of my mind but Axmon just turned around to address the room. "This is going to be a small demonstration, the suit which 4 is wearing. This suit monitors the flow of roh inside your body and gives a small electric shock when the flow doesn't follow whatever it is configured to."

'Oh no, I shouldn't have put on this suit should I?"

Axmon clicked a button on his phone which caused a constant but mild pain, much like the pain of having worked your muscles too hard which I was already fairly familiar with today.

"This as you can probably see isn't too painful at the first sensitivity, the higher sensitivity you go the better aligned the flow of your roh has to be to what the device is configured to. Currently it's on a body enhancement ability, you will also be given one more food token this week because of the curse of this enhancement."

I half expected Axmon to turn up the setting just to give me a fright but he didn't do that so I simply started to train.

'He really is nothing like the others.'

Concentrating on sensing my roh again didn't give me any ideas as to how to actually change the flow but the slight pain given would both tell me when I am doing good and incentivise me to do so through pain.

Some say pain is a great motivator, while I didn't exactly want to feel pain it would atleast be helpful.

"Sensing roh and then manipulating it won't take too long once you get that first spark of understanding on it's done. Once you can sense roh to a satisfactory degree you will be given one of these training suits. Now continue to meditate, that will be all for now." Axmon explained then promptly walked outside the room.

So I looked at someone who seemed to always lead me to some kind of progress, which of course was 3.

She was still sitting in the corner, her breathing powerful and controlled but somehow still silent despite how heavy and quick her breaths were. These were things to keep in mind but not really all that useful.

But there was actually something I picked up on.

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