Emilio showed the Shopkeeper how to use the tablet, and left him to explore all of the content by himself while he entered the Energy Trial. This time the room was green but there was no other difference.

  No more endure? I just have to assimilate it. This is the one where Amelia passed nine times in a row. I have to get at least a few Stats to keep some face.

  Emilio could feel the World Energy around him. It was several times heavier than on Earth, which meant there was more of it.

  He focused on the invisible fluid and he realized it was entering his body by itself. It did nothing to his body, but it was compressing inside him. It was then that he realized what assimilating it meant. He had to somehow fuse it with his body.

  Emilio focused on trying exactly that, he used his Mind, Body and Vitality control to try to push it into assimilating in his body. It slowly started to work and he also realized there was another kind of control he was actually using that was not Mind, Body or Vitality.

  It was like discovering you can move your ear. Everyone can technically do it, but you have to discover how to do it. Most people discover how to do it by moving the eyebrows first, that also moves that muscle, before discovering how to move it for real.

  This same process was happening to Emilio, the World Energy control was something completely different, but as he kept pushing with all his other Stats, he unconsciously also used the Energy Stat, that he had never used.

  Slowly, he was learning how to use it while he assimilated more of the Energy into his body.

  In no time, he had passed the first Trial and the timer was not even on 90. Emilio had no idea on the actual time between numbers, but it didn’t seem to be a standard measure.

  It was quite a lot to process, like the fact that the System didn’t increase the Stat, but was considered to be increased by his assimilation. Emilio decided to leave any deductions for later and focus on the assimilation of Energy that became even denser than in the last Trial.

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  As time went by, Emilio realized that the timer was counting slower, making it obvious it was not a standard unit of time and it was just a percentage. Leaving the timer be, he focused on the assimilation and in identifying how to control the Energy without using his other Stats.

  He completed the second Trial without any problems, and the timer was still at 70 by the time he finished. That time, he upgraded his weapon to the [Regular] Quality which left him enough time to check his new Skill.

  Is this a teacher Skill? Do I still have such a bad technique that the System decided that it had to teach me himself?

  Either way, it was a good Skill to have. He would have to discuss with Rafael about the usefulness it had. For sure, it had no use in the Energy Trial. When Void finished upgrading he could continue with the Trial.

  Emilio had no problems in passing the next two Trials. He passed them with the timers in 40 and 10. If everything kept going in the same rhythm, he would not be able to get another point, but the solution was right around the corner.

  When he reached 5 points in Energy he gained the Energy Control Trait. While the weapon was upgrading to [Medium] he had time to check it out and it was similar to the other three Traits.

  When Emilio continued with the Trial he realized that even if he was better at controlling the World Energy with the Trait, he was not going at the rate he needed to finish the Trial.

  Watching the timer go down, Emilio decided to push himself beyond what he thought was safe and started assimilating the Energy in a harsher way. That would allow him to increase the rate, with the downside of damaging his body.

  Emilio used his Regeneration Skill to heal and the Pain resistance Skill to ignore that pain from his body breaking down from the inside. This was obviously a bad idea, but he was inside the Trial where the System was going to heal him and he had the Skills necessary to do it.

  He kept going on like this until the Trial ended. He was exhausted, but he passed it once again. Not only that, but the System detected he was not in his best form and decided to heal him up even in the middle of the Trial.

  After he was healed, he had to start to assimilate the Energy once again. He decided to assimilate in an aggressive way from the very beginning, pushing himself beyond his limits and healing the damage.

  When the timer reached 15, he realized he still had over a third of the way left to succeed. And decided to take the risk to push himself even farther.

  He pushed all of the World Energy inside his body and healed the damage using both Regeneration and Focus Vitality. He would not have been able to control everything at once if had not upgraded his Mind before, but he was barely managing with his improved Mind.

  He could not have done it without the Pain Resistance skill either, but with the Skill it was possible.

  When he was reaching the end of the timer, his body finally gave up. His mind generated the thought that he could use his Vitality Trait to push the limits of his healing, but the moment he received that thought he got distracted and lost control of the fine balance on his body. As a result all of the Energy accumulated inside his body violently left it via his wounds, breaking all of his Body at once.

  Emilio was actually lucky to have the Pain Resistance Skill activated, as the amount of pain he would have felt otherwise was much more than what he could withstand.

  He was even luckier to have been inside a System Trial that didn’t let him die. His body was suspended in the air by the System and patched back together while, at the same time, failing his Trial.

  Emilio didn’t know any of this because he lost his consciousness the moment his brain was destroyed.

  Thanks for reading!

  Second chapter drops today at 22:00 Argentina time (UTC-3).

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