With a clear conscience, I opened the instaltion file for Chainsaw Punch. Just as Novak had warned, the interface threw a fit at least ten times, cursing the source as unreliable and the developer as unknown.

  Oddly enough, this had a calming effect on me. Instead of adding to my irritation, it brought a sense of relief — finally, I was doing something useful.

  Once all confirmations were given and the technique had settled into the list of active ones, I stood in the middle of the room and activated the channel hologram.

  Chainsaw Punch, in its modified form, looked both familiar and alien. The same base structure I had worked on myself. More than 90% of the original technique remained, my edits, and new subtle shifts that didn’t stand out at first gnce. I had to zoom in to really see them.

  The logic behind the changes still escaped me. Take this part — the knuckle of the pinky finger. Previously, the channel ran straight through the centre of the joint. Now, it passed between the skin and the muscle of the palm’s edge. What was the reasoning? How did that affect the technique?

  Someone had spent a ridiculous amount of time solving problems I couldn’t even properly define.

  I ran the technique through step by step. Then again. Then I overid my old version onto the new one for comparison.

  Not just the channels had changed, the motion of the fists had shifted too. In this version, they dipped lower. The oval trajectory traced by the fists as they extended forward and pulled back now sank much deeper, resembling a heavily rounded triangle, with one tooth pointing downwards.

  My brain finally had the kind of work it craved. A new curiosity. Pure analysis, free of prediction or specution.

  I settled back into the chair and felt it — real relief. I was doing what I wanted, and this was rest.

  The next logical step was the gym. And not just any rented hall, but a specific pce: Rene’s hall. The one I considered as much of a home as this apartment. I even stood up in anticipation, then remembered the time.

  Too te.

  At this hour, Rene was either cultivating or already doing private sessions. I sat back down, slowly.

  Fine. Not today.

  I reviewed the hologram once more, made a few mental notes, and closed the interface. My mind was quiet. Not empty — quiet and calm.

  Now I could finally read a book. Just not the one I'd already started.

  I picked another story from Novak’s recommended list, and only when my stomach demanded dinner did I realise I’d gone through a dozen chapters without even noticing. An entertaining little tale about a young crippled warlock. How someone managed to write that in a world of cultivators, hell knows.

  Then again, I’m an outworlder myself, and the theory that books are glimpses into other worlds feels more and more pusible to me.

  Either way, I didn’t keep reading at night, didn’t want to get stuck until morning. With my current metabolism, a few days of bad sleep wouldn’t do much harm, but reaching peak form would be out of the question.

  So in the morning, after breakfast, I headed to Rene’s.

  I made it in before the main rush, when instead of the usual hum of the crowd, you could still make out individual detonations of projections, quick shouts, the scrape of soles across the floor. This sound felt far more familiar than the metallic ringing of Bde’s hall.

  I spotted Rene right away.

  He was with a group of newbies, doing what he did best — praising their screw-ups and then burying them in an avanche of small corrections that, in total, changed everything.

  “Good! Good! Foot’s in the wrong pce.”

  “Nice! A bit more decisive, more energy.”

  “Almost perfect! Your torso was te. Shoulder forward. Again!”

  The st cadet clearly didn’t understand and started filing, trying to cover mistakes with speed. Rene just gave a short grunt.

  “Better, but don’t rush. You did almost the same thing, just faster. You’re here to learn.” He shifted into stance himself to demonstrate. “Foot, anchor, fist goes, leg-torso twist, bam!” he narrated, miming the projection that should’ve burst from the fist.

  I stopped near the entrance and just watched. Didn’t interfere. Didn’t step in. It was almost meditative, watching him deconstruct chaos into simple movements.

  Rene didn’t notice me right away. But when he did, a wide grin immediately spread across his face.

  Oh no! He’s going to do it again.

  “Well, look who it is!” Rene shouted, instantly drawing everyone’s attention to me. “It’s the star of our hall! Jake Sullivan — winner and multiple-time finalist of st year’s weekly tournaments and this year’s exchange student to Yellow Pine!”

  And yes, he did it again! Every damn time he turns everything into an ad for his gym.

  Rene walked up to me, arms open for a hug.

  "Did you bring me any juicy essence?"

  Oh no. I’d had enough trouble with that stuff back in Yellow Pine. Besides, I forgot! I totally forgot to restock.

  "No. And I’m not hugging you!" I decred.

  "Oh, don’t be shy!" he said as he caught me in a rib-cracking hug and whispered in my ear, "Smile, buddy."

  "You’re a real piece of shit," I hissed back. "You’re gonna break something, let me go."

  He let go, still smiling, patted me on the shoulder for everyone to see, and offered, “Tea?”

  Tea was a great excuse to escape all the staring eyes, so I happily agreed.

  Inside the small gss coaches’ room, Rene dimmed the transparent walls, set a kettle on, grabbed two cups, and sat down across from me, studying me carefully.

  "Definitely no essence? Or are you just mad about the show?"

  "I straight-up forgot," I admitted. "I had other priorities, and in the st few days there I was working like a damned cursed one."

  Rene gnced at me through the interface.

  "Whoa… What’s with all that Space?"

  "Novak," I replied the obvious answer.

  "But that can’t be Space. Bde?"

  "Added disks to my arsenal and a rough draft of Fist-Bde."

  "Who’s the author?"

  "Me. With help from a friend of Novak’s. Don’t ask who, I don’t know myself. I sketched a few prototypes in FlowScan, and he cleaned them up. Says it’s Yellow-grade."

  "Could he look at some of my prototypes?" Rene asked.

  "Are you even listening? I don’t even know who it is."

  "What kind of technique is it?"

  "A modified version of Chain Punch. I call it Chainsaw Punch."

  "Sounds intriguing! Will you show me?"

  "Of course," I said. "Wait… You’re not going to turn this into another show, are you?"

  Rene ughed.

  “Your own technique — now that’s an achievement worth noting!”

  “That’s it then! Free access to the gym till the end of the year!”

  “Yeah, keep dreaming,” he replied. “You’ve got two weeks. Come on, show me before the tea brews. Or am I wasting Clean Thoughts on you for nothing?”

  “Your Clean Thoughts are total crap,” I said.

  “Well, excuse me, I’m not Novak. I don’t have access to red-grade tea!” Rene feigned offence.

  “Light mode,” I warned. “No show.”

  “You’re the one putting on a show,” he smiled. “Fist-Bde draws attention no matter what.”

  I sighed and pulled a pair of training gloves from my spatial pocket. I’d put them there specifically for this. Wearing armour wasn’t common practice in this hall, but I still didn’t want to leave my fingers unprotected.

  The recoil problem should’ve been fixed in this version of the technique, but it’s not so easy to forget the feeling of your fingers scattering across the floor.

  Rene just gave a small amused snort at the demonstration of my spatial pocket. He’d already seen my Space root, so he wasn’t too surprised.

  I pulled on the reinforced pstic gloves and tightened the straps. We stepped out into the hall.

  The newbies had already scattered to their own zones. Corners and wallside areas were all taken — cultivators instinctively picked positions that gave them at least partial isotion from the others. Especially first-years, who lived in a constant state of distrust and expectation of backstabs.

  Rene asked one cadet to move aside and cleared us a spot in the corner near the wall.

  He stepped back a few paces, crossed his arms, and shifted from his showman mode into trainer mode — focused and silent.

  I exhaled and activated the technique.

  The first movement was slow. I repeated the physical motion sequence. My fist dropped downward and forward along the new trajectory, not tracing a circle anymore, but dipping down as if under its own weight and then rising back up. A rounded triangle instead of a loop.

  I repeated the sequence several times before adding qi.

  The channels hadn’t been fully paved yet, so the actual flow threaded its way between the original Chain Punch path and my intended new yout.

  The air rippled briefly as a vertical, slightly tilted silver bde shot from my fist. A second followed from the other hand, angled in the opposite direction. The first one detonated. A third flew out.

  I found the rhythm, dictated by movement and the sharp pop of the bde’s detonation.

  I sent out two or three dozen strikes before stopping.

  The hall grew quieter. Most of those present were now watching. The bde projections looked unusual.

  Rene stepped closer and nudged me lightly with his shoulder.

  “One moment…”

  I took half a step back.

  Rene dropped into a stance and performed a cssic Chain Punch. Clean, precise, with no wasted motion. His fists followed the familiar oval trajectory, like he was spinning an invisible wheel. Phantom fists shot into the air, each ending in that sharp, characteristic detonation.

  He paused, repeated only the physical part, froze halfway through, and began mimicking mine, rewinding and repying the motion for analysis.

  “It’s like a stretched uppercut,” he said.

  “I thought of it more like a triangle instead of a circle,” I replied.

  Rene repeated both sets of movements.

  “Ah. I see it,” he said. “But if you ask me, you’re cking smoothness. You’re throwing yourself into the strike too hard, then braking on the way back. Makes for a jagged rhythm.”

  I didn’t argue.

  “Mate, this was literally my first time using it.”

  “And before the technique was revised, were you spinning the circle?”

  “Yeah…” I said, gncing at my fists. No marks beneath the knuckles. No sign of that nasty recoil.

  “And what was wrong with the circle? The bde uses discs, they handle it just fine.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But the circle came with feedback through the fingers. Like when a shield forms wrong.”

  “Explosive feedback?” Rene crified.

  “Sshing,” I said, smirking.

  “Sshing as in…”

  “As in fingers-all-over-the-floor sshing.”

  “You cut your own fingers off developing this technique?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “You all hear that? he suddenly called out to the students. “That’s what happens when you experiment with stuff you don’t understand!”

  “Oi!” I protested.

  Ten minutes ago I was the shining success story. Now I was the cautionary tale.

  “You’ve got no shame, Rene!”

  “Yeah, but at least I kept my fingers,” he shot back.

  I lobbed a projection at his face in irritation.

  He dodged it with ease, monkey-flipping to the side.

  “You want me to kick your arse?”

  “I want you to stop using me as a bloody visual aid!”

  MaksymPachesiuk