Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 10 Joining The Dojo

Standing before Atid's Dojo, Elizabeth's latent hesitation sprung up, now of all times. She called into question whether or not she should really go into yet another foreign place; in the name of training physically, of all things. As she internally debated herself, trying to let logic and reason overturn her feelings of fear, she had absolutely no clue that from the inside of the Dojo, people were already talking about her…

"Ho-ho… Isn't that the girl you raved on and on about, yesterday?" A middle aged with wispy white hair asked as he downed a shot of whiskey.

Jane, sitting across from the middle aged man, smiled. She had her chin resting on her hand as she stared Elizabeth, who was still lost in her thoughts. Jane said "It really is her! I fully expected her to come down here eventually… But it's only been a day. Furthermore, we aren't even open yet..." She had many questions about Elizabeth, and the constant surprises she had thus far shown, only encouraged Jane's curiosity to grow.

"Well, lets not keep her waiting… Such an eager seedling must be rewarded for her "overwhelming" enthusiasm!" The middle aged man, stood up from his little drinking table and walked over to the Dojo's entrance. He practically blew the doors open, stunning Elizabeth to no end, while projecting a most powerful voice, saying "YOUNG LADY! Welcome to my Dojo!"

Without even needing to rely on the status functions, Elizabeth could instantly tell that the man, Atid, was a practitioner of Inner Strength; a strong one too. If his overpowering voice wasn't the most obvious clue, then it was the scary build he had cultivated. Atid's wrinkle-ridden face looked to be about 70, maybe 80 years old, but his body would put men in their 20's to shame.

And now, that Elizabeth had cultivated a bit more Inner Strength, she could swear that looking at Atid left her psyche frozen with a prickly sensation of sharpness. Disregarding the man's scary appearance, his voice had effectively stopped Elizabeth in her tracks, thus she needed a second to recuperate.

When her body started to functioning again, it still took a while for Elizabeth to start speaking. Upon gaining the strength to speak, Elizabeth said "Sir… I can train here?" It seems the shock Adit had brought her, left her so disordered that even her English was starting to fail.

"TRAIN?" Either Atid purposefully wanted to stun Elizabeth into a shell of her current self, or he couldn't control himself enough to not constantly shatter her will.

"Yes?"

"Mhmm? Yes? Or Yes! This is a Muay Thai Dojo! We don't accept half-assed responses!!!" Atid became especially feisty when confronted with a shaky Elizabeth.

"Y-yes sir!" Elizabeth managed to shout and not seem cowardly, thought the intensity of shouting like that made her withdraw immediately afterwards…

"Good! Jane has already told me about you, but we still don't know what level you should be placed in. Let me test your skill before we do anything too extreme." As Atid finished his sentence, he gestured for Elizabeth to follow him inside the Dojo.

As he walked to the bring Elizabeth into a sparring area, he almost fell over on his side as Elizabeth said "Um… I have no training."

Her unexpected confession came to topple even the currently sitting and smiling Jane as it was unbelievable to find a practitioner of Inner Strength with no formal training at all. It might come as a surprise to most people in the world Elizabeth was familiar with, as Mages were all but regarded as myths. Only the Martial Path of Inner Strength Cultivation remained in the current world. But in the Shadow Realm's various societies, they retained their heritage of Mage practices.

Elizabeth was training/meditating with the mantras of a mage and while it was true that both Mages and Martial practitioners cultivated Inner Strength, the end result of their cultivation was vastly different. In the near future, Elizabeth would be using her inner strength to form Magic Energy, as opposed to the Martial Qi of Martial Practitioners.

Naturally, both Jane and Atid had to regroup to figure out what they should do in training someone with a case as odd as Elizabeth, and in the end, it was decided to just teach her the basics of Muay Thai. The conversation led Jane and Atid to become giddy as they discussed an outrageous possibility…

It was shocking to Elizabeth how Atid shifted from a screaming mass of muscles into a proficient whisperer as he spoke to Jane. He made it so that Elizabeth could not hear with the utilization of his Inner Strength, saying "Jane… Didn't you mention that she had Inner Strenght levels similar to that of a recently awakened?"

"Yeah, but upon taking another look now… her levels of Inner Strength have more than doubled!" As Jane whispered back to Atid, the two of them started laughing maniacally as their eyes turn to resemble gold bars upon looking at Elizabeth. If only they knew that Elizabeth had effectively used up half her reserves of Inner Strength to train her Speed and Endurance while running to their Dojo…

"I knew you were my lucky star! Actually finding such a good seedling by random chance! Can you imagine how far we'll rise if we have her represent our Dojo in the International Wushi Tournament?" He believed Elizabeth's Inner Strength came from her naturally awakening, a rarely seen phenomenon across the entire Martial World. Furthermore, for Elizabeth's "awakening" to be both natural and to grow so quickly without any training, led him to turn starry-eyed at the thought of properly conditioning her.

"Whoa! You need to cool off! Maybe two or three Tournaments from now, we'll let her compete. I can't believe you would actually think to throw a fledgling into such abyssal pits before she can grow!" A disdainful face manifested on Jane's face as if she had heard blasphemy of the highest class against her most precious.

"Che! I didn't mean now, obviously! The next tournament is right around the corner, and she can't ascend to the heavens in a single step." Adit expression depicted that of an kindly old man being wronged.

Their conversation devolved into meaningless drivel for a couple more sentences before Atid finally turned back to face Elizabeth rather chummily. He said "It's fine if you don't have any training experience. We'll just have to run you through some paperwork first and then we can start training immediately."

Not that much time passed between Atid conversing with Jane, so Elizabeth wasn't too bothered by the time she stayed idle. She just nodded her head and followed Atid to read through and fill out the required paperwork. It was nothing out of the ordinary for her having to sign away her consent to participating in a sport as extreme as Muay Thai, effectively waiving away the Dojo's responsibility should she get "injured or worse," during her time there.

But the one thing that did come off as odd was that she didn't have to pay for the training and teaching services. When Elizabeth asked about the lack of having to pay, Atid responded "As long as you don't forget where you come from, that'll be enough pay for us in the future..." It sounded all types of bad-news to her, but considering her distaste of people in general, the current Elizabeth couldn't imagine changing Dojos in the future anyways. She happily signed away the papers after reading through them and confirming no hidden intentions where present in the contracts.

And in the next couple moments as she sat waiting for the Dojo master to set up several training devices, a new face appeared, emerging from the front entrance. Before it had only been Elizabeth, Jane, and the Dojo master, Adit. But now that this new person came into being, the balance of the sexes in the dojo evened out.

The newcomer didn't even face the people within the Dojo as he dragged a couple heavy bags through the front entrance with all his might. He said "Good morning guys! Aren't yall proud of me?" the tone of his voice shifted to a self-reveling mess as he continued with a really bad southern accent "I beat muh previous record 'n came a whole minute early t'day."

It was only after dropping all the heavy bags and turning around to find Elizabeth staring at him as if he were an idiot, that the newcomer stopped his "funny" act and began behaving like a normal person. Just seeing the beauty in front of him led to him quickly getting flustered and in an attempt to save face, his cursory glances made him look even dumber.

The newcomer said "Ah, you must be the infamous Sophie! Don't worry, I may not be of much help in the long run, but old Atid and Jane will surely take good care of you!"

Jane could be seen face-palming herself as she explained "Uh… Sun, this isn't Sophie… Take a closer look at her eyes and hair color..."

This Sun guy made Elizabeth unintentionally crack up with pure schadenfreude as she watched what she considered a complete cringe show unfold before her. Yet somehow, Sun didn't at all pick up on the undertones to her clearly derisive smile and thought she was just laughing away his mistake in good fun.

By the time Sun's blunder was cleared up with Elizabeth smiling, Atid had finished setting up a bunch of sand bags, heavy bags, and weights around the dojo's space. He looked at Sun and said "Sun! What good timing you have… As you can see we have a new member of the dojo here. She's a complete novice with absolutely no previous training, so could you please teach her the basics?"

Sun, was shocked to find that Elizabeth was a complete novice. But given Atid's request, he just threw his questions to the back of his mind and nodded. All the while he brought Elizabeth up to the training area to start learning the basics of Muay Thai.

Chapter end