Chapter 50: Another Needed Lesson
Another Needed Lesson
"Now, while it’s speculated that Neutral Energy exists in a separate plane, it more than certainly persists in the material plane, still only accessible to ability users. It sounds contradictory, I know, but I don’t make the rules." She shrugged before continuing.
"Now, back to Internal Energy, every ability user possesses an Energy signature, with every Energy signature being unique to the person. Think of it as a fingerprint, but with Energy." She tapped her foot against the platform twice, and two slots opened, releasing two humanoid dummies made of some odd synthetic material that looked pretty durable.
"As I said, Internal Energy is what fuels your abilities, however, the fact that it’s yours means it can be controlled, which brings me to the main lesson of our first couple of lessons." She sounded oddly annoyed as she said this, making everyone curious as to why.
"Energy control. It’s Energy control." She shook her head with a sigh.
"Now, before we proceed, how many of you think bigger explosions equal bigger damage. No need for a verbal response, just raise your hand if you think so." She asked, and a moment later, around 70% of the gathered students raised their hands, Mike included. It seemed like the natural conclusion, right?
"Wrong." She said with a deadpanned expression, making everyone who’d raised their hands recoil in surprise. Mike glanced at Theresa and Kris, and realized both hadn’t raised their hands, which made him blush a little, but he forced himself to look forward.
"You see, this is what sets me off about you damn kids." She rubbed the bridge of her nose before raising turning to the two dummies and snapping her fingers.
Two orbs of Energy appeared next to her. Both had the same size and consistency, so there weren’t any real differences to spot between them.
"Can you notice any difference between these Be it how much energy is packed into any of them? Their size? Anything?" She asked almost rhetorically, and pretty much everyone shook their heads.
"Good, now observe." She faced the dummies and flicked her fingers. Both orbs shot out at the same time and struck the dummies in their chests, both generating loud explosions. However, this is where a discrepancy was soon found.
Both orbs exploded at virtually the same time, with even Mike struggling to find a difference in their impact times. However, when they both exploded, the resulting explosions were quite a bit different.
The one on the left created a large explosion that completely engulfed the dummy, while the one on the right created a more localized blast that barely covered the torso of the dummy.
Despite the two orbs being identical and containing the same amount of energy, the generated blasts were different.
Now, one might think ’Well, the bigger one must have been more damaging, right?’ Well...
The dummy on the left which had been completely engulfed looked pretty bad. Parts of its ’skin’ were missing, with large chunks having been blown away from the blast. There was no heat to cause burns, but the sheer kinetic energy had shaved away quite a bit of material.
That was pretty bad, right?
Well, in comparison, the second dummy just didn’t have a torso anymore.
Most of the students paled at the sight, and a commotion was immediately raised.
"What the hell was that?!"
"There’s no way! That makes no sense!"
"She must have done something to the other orb..."
"That can’t be right, they truly seemed identical. Maybe it’s the other dummy that was odd."
"But then why was the explosion there smaller?"
The instructor let the students vent their shock for a bit before speaking, her voice easily smothering the noise.
"That, was a clear example of energy control." She said as the floor opened and swallowed the dummies.
"In some cases, bigger does mean better. But not with energy and abilities." She shook her head. "When you use your ability for virtually anything, be it convat or utility, making it appear flashy doesn’t mean better. It can be flashy by default, but not better. Moreover, as I said, bigger doesn’t mean better. The explosion caused by my energy just now was certainly flashy and large, but it caused less overall damage to the dummy, compared to the more subtle explosion that wasn’t so visually appealing." Her voice turned serious.
"This is why I’m placing so much emphasis on energy control. Have you ever seen two powerful individuals fighting, perhaps ones capable of destroying a planet, but despite going all out, the planet remains intact despite their clashes?" A few people raised their hands in confirmation as having come across humans who could destroy entire planets was rare. Possible, but rare.
"That’s because they have good energy control. In that moment, what matters isn’t how much damage you cause to your surroundings, but how much damage you can do to your opponent. If you just randomly send out an attack, sure, it’ll cause a big explosion that can spread out for a vast distance, but the damage dealt to your target will ultimately be lacking, as the energy of the attack is too dispersed to do proper damage, and a bit of defending on the part of your opponent will more or less render whatever energy that COULD do damage ineffective." She paused.
"To summarize, if you want your ability to be as effective as possible, you need good energy control. If it’s an attack, don’t just let it out and hope for the best. Make sure every ounce of energy that makes up that attack remains for as long as possible when it comes into contact with your target. If it’s a defensive ability, same idea. Don’t just activate the ability and hope your opponent can’t overpower it. Keep the energy within as stable as possible. If you are a healer, don’t just pump as much energy as possible into the one you are healing and hope you can patch them up faster than they can die. Control every ounce of energy and focus it. I can keep going, but you get the gist." Her voice dropped.
"As an ability user, energy control is one of, if not the most important thing you can learn in regards to your ability. You can be incredibly talented, you can know all sorts of hidden techniques, but if you have poor energy control, you will be on the losing end against anyone at your level or in any situation people at your level should be capable of handling with their abilities." She sighed.
Mike watched on with slightly shining eyes. She was truly taking her time to hammer home the point of good energy control, and the more she spoke, the more Mike understood just how paramount it was.
’Am I like that too? Just activating my ability and hoping for the best?’ Mike thought as he recalled the times he activated his aura to do anything.
Specifically in his fights against Theresa.
Most of the time, their fights were a game of cat and mouse, with Mike trying to close the distance while Theresa tried to maintain it. But in the few times where he did get close, he never recalled putting much thought into his punches.
Okay, he perhaps did as he used Predator’s Foresight to read her movements, but the punch itself hardly had much thought behind it beyond simply going forth and dealing damage.
’What if I made the energy in my fist to persist with each punch instead of simply throwing the punch? Making aura-infused punches more effective?’ He wondered.
Now, one mustn’t misunderstand. Controlling the energy in his fist and condensing the aura in his fist were different concepts, even if they went hand in hand.
For the latter, it simply needed him to control his aura to a specific part of the body, increasing the augmentation it brought to a greater degree within that specific body part.
On the other hand, controlling the energy adequately within that same aura-infused fist would make sure that his aura didn’t just dissipate upon impact, but instead did more lasting damage and was more centralized, allowing it to break past natural defenses more easily.
All in all, the more Mike thought about it, the more he realized that he was probably among the group of people that their instructor was so heavily teaching the importance of good energy control.
They were young, and their fantasies were strong, but they ultimately lived in a world where those with abilities were seen as assets, and an inadequate ability user would be discarded while the sufficient ones would be uplifted.
Getting an ability increases one’s chances of being prominent, but one still needs to be competent to become prominent with it.
So their fantasies wouldn’t cut it, they needed to be practical and approach the way they used their abilities in a pragmatic manner.
What she was doing was rooting out that innate desire they had to look cool with their abilities. Because who didn’t want people to be in awe as you destroyed a mountain with a large ball of flames?
However, her words were like a douse of cold water on fire. Because newsflash, you destroyed that mountain but didn’t do any damage to your opponent, so you just left yourself open to get sniped.
The sooner such a mentality was rooted out, the better.
’She’s good.’ Mike admitted. It felt a bit weird being called out so thoroughly by someone who looked like a literal child, and even now, the weird feeling of offense hadn’t vanished, but Mike didn’t care about any of that right now. He was fully focused on the lesson, eager to have his unconscious flaws pointed out so he could improve.