"Every human on Earth has been led to believe that humans only have five primary senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound.
This is a mistake—
an error bred through conditioning and misinformation.
There are, in reality, at least nine senses, if not more. And these senses are the ones we rely on the most in our day-to-day lives, often without ever realizing it.
Walking, running, jumping, even just breathing require senses that do not involve the big five..."
The lecture hall was massive, comparable in size to a stadium, and it was completely full and entirely focused on the speaker.
"Now, some of you are wondering: what are these senses called? Well, here is your answer:
* Balance: The sense of spatial orientation of the body.
* Proprioception: The unconscious awareness of bodily orientation in space.
* Thermoception: The sense of temperature in the surrounding space.
* Nociception: The sense of pain throughout and outside the body, alerting us to physical damage or environmental hazards.
"We often oversimplify these and lump them in with the other senses as some sort of extension, when in reality, these are completely separate and unique senses that—through constant practice and refinement—can expand the capabilities of a human far beyond what we are used to.
"We have examples throughout history and even today. Ninjas would practice balance, proprioception, and nociception to the point where they could perform tasks no ordinary human could—silently walking across a brittle field of dry leaves without cracking a single stem, scaling sheer castle walls that have seemingly no footholds, and mastering muscle control to slow their heart rate and conceal their presence entirely.
"People today, through proprioception, train their flexibility to the point where we see impossible feats of contortion.
Gymnastics are performed through extreme training of proprioception and balance, using both in tandem to perform mid-air rotations that the average Joe would never dare consider.
Even free-divers manipulate their internal sense of oxygen deprivation and pressure, pushing past biological alarms that scream at them to breathe.
"Today, I have come to educate and demonstrate to you all what training these senses to the extreme can achieve.
For my demonstration, I have brought along a group of what fiction would call 'superhumans.'
But today, they will prove that fiction is not only possible, but real and far greater than anyone could imagine."
A slight murmur ran through the crowd of students in anticipation of what they would see.
"I welcome to the stage... The Untethered."