At the crack of dawn Marcus was met with Camilia kicking down his door dressed in what he thought looked like studded leather armor. Behind her were two other men that rushed over to him.


    “They are gonna help you put on your training gear, they will lead you down to the mess hall then lead you to the training area. “ With that he quickly stood up and nodded as the men gave him his padded armor and attached it before putting on his actual training plate mail. With that he made his way down to the Mess Hall where he saw Celeste looking very rough with her black hair disheveled and messy with obviously last night''s makeup on her face.


    As he moved over to her after grabbing a massive bowl of porridge and bacon. “Looks like you had a good night. Are you excited for today?” Celeste shot him daggers in his eyes as she ate some crusted bread with a side of scrambled eggs before she spoke.


    “Did you also get woken up by someone kicking your door down?” He nodded and chuckled before she continued. “Yes, I got woken up by this small red haired woman with a large walking stick that broke down my door and threw me some battle robes and gave me a ‘guide’ that would lead me to her training area. Apparently, I am a bit too strong for other trainers to train properly.“


    He smiled and spoke. “I imagine that based on our different styles of fighting and roles that having two different teachers makes sense. Are you still down to be here for a year? I am down but I understand if you don’t want to.” Celeste shook her head and smiled.


    “Turning away a once and a lifetime opportunity is not something I plan on doing, at least for now. I gave my word to you to try for a month and outside of certain death, I plan on giving it a shot.” With that she stood up having finished her plate and her guide stood up with her and they walked away. Before she fully left though she turned to him again.


    “Knock em dead meathead.” With a simple smile she walked away leaving him sitting down by himself with his two guides also eating. Despite being close to him they did not really talk to him at all. Content to just talk among each other and drink coffee. He also finished him meal and nodded at the two other guides as they also stood up and walked him out of the building.


    As he walked over to the training area he was at the very least surprised. There had to be over 200 different men and women spread across over 6 different training fields with traps, training dummies, and even resting stations. As he walked past them all he was led to a large football sized field with Camila talking to Father Birion and several other important looking people.


    As he entered Camila waved her hands and the two guides walked away from Marcus as he approached. She had quarterstaff in her hand and her hair tied behind her head in a tight ponytail. As he walked up to her he noticed that she had all of his weapons and gear beside her. Despite being on edge, he tried his best to keep his calm before she quickly spoke.


    “Hello Marcus, today we are gonna get a good baseline of your power on its own and your basic combat ability. We will work through each of your weapons and your armor before allowing you to train with it. We will start with your Fists of Havoc.“


    She threw him the Fists of Havoc so hard in the chest that he felt his bones creak as it hit him center mass. As it hit him she rushed to him as he as combat rolled to the side she left a massive indent where he would''ve been as he put his gauntlets on.


    He rushed towards her and threw a flurry of punches wildly trying to tag her as she quickly spun her quarterstaff blocking each of the attacks before striking him directly in the sternum easily punching through the plate mail like paper. He almost dropped to his knees from the lack of air and pain before he rolled away.


    As he looked up again he saw Camila she about to deliver a powerful downwards slash that he attempted to block before she kicked him in the throat then used her staff to throw dirt in his eyes as she rushed him he leapt directly up attempting to gain distance as he felt his body get pelted by small rocks that felt like bullets bouncing off his armor.


    As he landed he decided to focus on his other enhanced sense to get a feel for the battle. As he listened to the sound of the air coming from her staff he rushed to block the sound of wood on metal he heard a shuffle before feeling himself get launched dozens of feet in the air with a powerful kick under his chin.


    As he was launched into the air he felt his arms get wrapped around him as he felt someone from behind grapple him and wrap their legs around his lower body as they piledrived his head into the dirt. As his head got stuck a foot in the dirt, he felt himself being attacked over a dozen times with the quarterstaff before it stopped.


    “Ok, that was decent….lets try your whip.” As he freed himself from the ground and cleared his eyes of dirt he looked and saw that they now had well over 50 people watching them now. He nodded as she threw him the whip. As she threw the whip he rushed towards her as she smiled.


    He caught the whip in one hand as he tried to hit her with a lunging jab. She blocked the strike then sidestepped as he went for an overhead slash. She followed through with a low sweep as he jumped and she smiled.


    “Always stay grounded! You''re a warrior right? You need to stay on the ground!” As she swept her staff began to glow as she blasted him directly in the chest with a burst of powerful air that launched him dozens of feet into the air.


    As he was falling she spun her quarterstaff again as dozens of wind blades erupted from it. He unleashed his Resonance Nova destroying the sound blades. Extending his whip he plunged it into the ground he pulled himself closer to the ground before a wind blast hit him and pushed up into the air again. For the next several minutes Camila using her wind powers was able to juggle him and harass him for several minutes with little difficulty.


    This pattern continued with all of his weapons and armor. After several hours of this Camila began a soft clap.


    “You had good instincts, you can’t teach that but you are like an unrefined diamond. There is beauty there but you have only tapped a small portion of it. I can see why Deacon wanted me to train you. For now we will focus on your martial arts as your basis then work on your armor then weapons. Unlike others who would take years your baseline wisdom will allow you to pick this up much faster than most. Most start around 5 wisdom but you have ten times that.“


    Marcus nodded as the other elders and important people left. It wasn’t until they left that he noticed that he had gained an audience of over 100 people watching and talking amongst each other. He looked at Camila with his body covered in minor cuts and bruises that were quickly healing.


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    “Ok so how do we begin, teacher?” Camila walked over to him and motioned for him to sit down in lotus position as she also sat down in front of him as she smiled before speaking.


    “You are what I would consider a pure warrior archetype. That''s rare, even though I am not a pure warrior, I prefer to mix things up but I was taught by a pure warrior and I can give you the basics of it that you must build upon. You need an Image.” Marcus looked at her closely and scratched his beard.


    “What do you mean an Image?” Camila nodded before speaking again.


    “When you look at me what do you see?” Marcus thought about it for a long while before speaking. She was a wind based hybrid warrior, she could use her wind based quarterstaff to not only shift opponents but also shift herself getting her out of harm''s way and punishing mistakes. She was the ultimate counter-striker.


    “You are a wind based counter-puncher that focuses on mobility over the sheer ability to take a punch.” She laughed and plucked him on the head.


    “Not quite but close, I am She who Dances with Death and Gale, Emissary of the Deathlily Winds, The Whispered Killer. That''s my Image. An Image is who you see yourself to be in combat. It''s who you manifest when you fight. It allows you to clear your mind and have your actions you Image takes become your ‘nature’. It''s the baseline of those who are warriors and have that kind of potential. While most warrior-adjacent types can commit our abilities and techniques to our ‘Image’ pure warrior types from my understanding ‘Image’ is much more like an embodiment of your being than something you can turn off or on. But in exchange your ‘Image’ potentially is much more vibrant and deeper allowing you to commit more of your fighting style to just pure muscle memory. “ Marcus was a bit confused as he looked at her again he spoke,


    “So an Image is the manifestation of my muscle memory?” Camila bonked him on the head with her quarterstaff.


    ‘That''s what it can do but not what it is. But it''s fine. Crafting an image is not something easily or that you can make in a day. It comes from trials and hardship. “ With that Guin spoke up in his mind after being silent for a while.


    “Think of an Image like this, from your world you would have beings that people would emulate parts of into themselves. Think of stuff like a Tiger style, Crane Style, or a Snake Style. That image would be their animal. You need an image of what you fight like and who you are. The more ‘true’ the Image is, the deeper your body''s connection to that will be. Once you have an Image you can get a feel for others who have an Image on an instinctual level.“


    Marcus pondered this for a moment before Camila continued. “We will focus on boxing, kickboxing and grappling for now. You fight like a madman against lower level monsters that works but anything that''s comparable to a level 300+ soldier would exploit it and kill you in a heartbeat. Now let''s begin.”


    Camila and Marcus began to work through the fundamentals of boxing, using movement, sidesteps, blocks and counters. For the next several days they never left the area and had food brought out to them. Then they continued to fight. With his Superhuman body his body produced much less fatigue toxins and he could fight much longer than he humanly possible. It wasn’t until the following afternoon that Camila told him to sleep and eat a proper meal before getting 3 hours of sleep and waking up in the middle of the night to continue their training.


    For the next seven days he trained for a total of 140+ hours and was able to put strings of combos and combinations together in boxing and kickboxing but his movement saw the biggest improvement. He was able to not only sidestep and advance quickly but he was able to take note of his feet and know which parts of his feet allowed him to propel him and how to move properly.


    He was now able to slide and strafe while his feet barely scraped the ground as it was drilled in him to always keep your feet on solid ground or you die. Now as they trained he appeared almost as a ghost with his feet sliding around the ground. This also improved his base mechanics when it came to moving and striking making him more efficient and tighter.


    What he also learned about stats also shocked him. While stats did make people better, they only raised you up to the baseline of your threshold of your stats. While his stats were impressive he was only really using them around the baseline level. He did not train or “push” himself to the peak of his stat threshold for his stats.


    This is one of the drawbacks of people raising your stats. You would never be as good as someone with the same stats that had been around the same level for years.


    As he continued to train the idea of an Image still escaped him but he had a much higher understanding of muscle memory. Just like telling his body to breathe, he could now just tell his body to do actions instantaneously based on surrounding and outside triggers or factors. While Camila gave him the raw information about fighting, Guin was able to process that information into knowledge from his past that he could understand.


    As he continued to build up his base of actual information. Camila worked on toughening up his body; she exposed him to extreme cold, heat, winds, water, icy ground, and even magma. By week three his body was a well oiled machine. At this point he spared against other guards and soldiers his level with his training armor and no weapons.


    He lost a lot but this was not the point. He was sharpening his skills and every single spar, every single minute of every day his body became more dangerous and like a weapon. After week three he began to train with restrictions. With his arms behind his back, with him carrying thousands of pounds of weight, being blinded, deafened, impaired breathing. He had done it all and as he continued he actually became leaner as he went from around 280 to 260 and looked like he was carved from stone.


    He had training for more than 560 hours in a single month.


    After more than a month of training he had earned the right to use his armor. As he fought he began to feel a tingle in the back of his mind from something. The more he fought the more something in mind was forming.


    Crush them all. Crush everything, leave nothing in my wake. I like titans from mythos that sundered the world for a new beginning. I will be Calamity Incarnate that brings in a new age...