26: Chapter 26 Special Training

At 5:00 AM the next morning, the piercing assembly bell rang out simultaneously on the wristbands of every Core Class student in the apartment complex.

When Lin Yan opened his eyes, the simulated daylight outside the window had not yet switched to morning mode.

He spent three minutes washing up and getting dressed, and when he stepped out, Qin Chuan was stumbling out of Room 11 while pulling on his jacket, a tuft of hair sticking up that he couldn't press down.

"Is a 5:00 AM assembly even real?……"

Shen Xin came out of Room 14, her ponytail already neatly tied, though there were faint traces of poor sleep under her eyes.

The three of them exchanged a glance and tacitly ran toward the Training Center.

The training hall was brightly lit, and Instructor Meng Yuan was already standing in the center, his instructor uniform crisp and straight, showing no signs of having just woken up.

Two teaching assistants stood on either side, with several stacks of training equipment in front of them.

Twenty-four people arrived one after another, and no one was late.

"From today on, from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM every day, your time belongs to me," Instructor Meng Yuan said, looking around the room.

"This will last for seven days, and after seven days, we will enter the next random Dungeon. How much you learn depends on yourselves."

He walked forward two steps and stood directly in front of the first row of students.

"Let me ask you a question first," his voice echoed in the training hall.

"What did you rely on to survive in the novice Dungeon?"

No one answered.

"You," Instructor Meng Yuan raised his hand and pointed to a girl.

"Skills and equipment?" the girl asked, sounding uncertain.

"How about you?" he pointed to Qin Chuan.

"Talent," Qin Chuan answered crisply.

Instructor Meng Yuan lowered his hand and his gaze swept across the room.

"I have led six cohorts of the Core Class, and I have asked this question at the start of every one. Ninety percent answer with skills, equipment, or talent. The remaining ten percent who answer luck have at least touched upon the truth."

Instructor Meng Yuan tapped his wristband a few times, and the floor in the center of the training hall suddenly split, revealing a square gap, and an alloy platform half a person's height slowly rose from beneath.

The platform was dark silver, with a circle of pale golden runes embedded on the surface, somewhat similar to the platform used during the Awakening Ceremony, but smaller and with a more complex arrangement of runes.

In the center of the platform was a palm-sized groove, with a faint blue halo glowing around its edges.

"This is an Attribute Calibration Platform," Instructor Meng Yuan patted the surface.

"Most of you have added your free attribute points—Strength, Constitution, Agility—and when the numbers on your panel increase, you feel like you have become stronger."

"That is correct, the system does indeed make you stronger. But the system is only responsible for pumping attributes into your body; it is not responsible for teaching you how to use them."

He walked to the edge of the queue, his gaze falling on the arm of a boy in the first row.

"You, how many points did you add to Strength?"

"Twenty points," the boy replied.

"Step out. Use your maximum strength to hit this," Instructor Meng Yuan pointed to a fixed target against the wall of the training hall.

It was a thick, shock-absorbing pad secured by an alloy frame, with a sensor embedded in the bullseye that could display the impact force value in real-time.

The boy walked up to the fixed target, took a deep breath, clenched his fist, built up his strength, and struck.

His movements were as standard as a textbook diagram, and his fist slammed solidly into the bullseye.

The sensor beeped and displayed a line of numbers.

Instructor Meng Yuan glanced at the data board without comment, then turned and pointed to Lin Yan: "Lin Yan, step out. Your Strength is only sixteen points. Use the same movement to throw a punch."

Lin Yan walked to the target; Instructor Meng Yuan was not asking him to perform an attack power test—looking only at the panel numbers was meaningless.

He adjusted his stance, clenched his fist, twisted his waist, and threw the punch.

The range of motion was small, but the force conduction chain from his toes to his knuckles was extremely compact.

The sensor beeped, and the value was less than ten percent lower than the previous boy's.

The boy was stunned for a moment, looking down at his own hand, then at Lin Yan.

He had added twenty points to Strength, his panel was significantly higher than Lin Yan's, yet the actual value he produced was about the same.

"See the gap?" Instructor Meng Yuan let the two return to the ranks, his gaze sweeping over everyone.

"The system's attribute bonuses are injected into your body, but if your muscle fibers do not know how to coordinate, your joint angles are wrong, or your force conduction chain is broken, you won't be able to utilize those extra numbers on your panel at all.

His panel is lower than yours, but his force application efficiency is higher than yours."

He stood back in front of the queue, his voice raised a notch.

"This is also why many Awakened enter a Dungeon, and even though their panels clearly crush their opponents, they cannot gain an advantage when they actually fight.

The system gave you a number, but your body has not yet learned how to turn that number into real combat power."

"The improvement in reaction speed is the same. The system let you add Agility, and you run faster, but whether you can make the correct dodge when facing an attack depends not only on speed, but also on whether your body can make a judgment in an instant and react preferentially to truly threatening attacks."

"Judgment training concerns your real-time tactical choices. For example, if you face three monsters at once in a Dungeon, which one to hit first, which one to hit later, which skill to use, which skill to save—the system won't calculate these things for you; it all depends on your own brain."

He paused, his voice dropping.

"Skills, equipment, talent. Everything must be utilized through yourself.

Your physical fitness determines how long you can fight, your reflexes determine if you can dodge a fatal blow, and your judgment determines if you can make correct decisions when information is insufficient."

"As for luck, that is the only thing that cannot be trained, but the stronger your strength, the fewer moments you need to rely on luck."

He raised his hand and pointed to the area at the back of the training hall that had not yet been opened.

"In these seven days, physical fitness, reflexes, and judgment—you will train all three.

Morning for physical fitness and reflexes, afternoon for judgment simulation and actual combat, and evening for theory classes.

If you can absorb it all, it will be your second life."

He stopped suddenly, his gaze sweeping slowly over everyone's face, as if taking stock of a batch of weapons about to be tested.

"In these seven days, the first goal is to truly make the attributes injected into your body your own.

Physical fitness, reflexes, judgment—all three start from the basics, from scratch. Do you understand?"

"Understood!" everyone replied in unison.

"Begin."

The morning physical training began with basic movement patterns.

Instructor Meng Yuan had the teaching assistants clear a space in the center of the training hall, with a shock-absorbing mat for each person, and they started with the most basic squats, push-ups, and planks.

There was no added weight and no use of gravity chambers; it was just the most basic bodyweight movements.

They were not training for strength, but for the method of applying force.

"Adding Strength to your legs does not mean your joints will automatically find the correct angle to exert force."

Instructor Meng Yuan paced between the queues, the sound of his left leg dragging on the floor particularly clear in the quiet hall.

"You add fifteen points of Constitution, but if your support posture is wrong, your core muscle group will still collapse.

You add twenty points of Strength, but if your wrist is off by half a centimeter when you clench your fist, the force dissipates before it reaches the target."

Qin Chuan muttered quietly after finishing four sets of squats: "I Awakened an A-Rank Talent, and I end up doing horse stance squats in the Core Class."

Instructor Meng Yuan heard him.

He walked over to Qin Chuan, looked down at him, and said: "You think squats are useless?

The Strength attributes you added were injected into your muscles out of thin air.

If, in high-intensity combat, your joint control ability cannot keep up with the Strength data on your panel, your knees will be the first parts to fail."

Qin Chuan shut his mouth.

After the basic movement patterns came combat movement training: shuttle sprints, change-of-direction runs, and explosive power exercises for sudden stops and starts.

These trainings did not involve any attack skills; they all revolved around step frequency, stride length, and center of gravity transfer.

Instructor Meng Yuan had only one requirement: everyone must find their most economical way of moving.

"You focused on adding Agility and run faster, but if you don't know how to control your center of gravity, a sharp turn in a Dungeon could throw you right into a monster's mouth."

"And you focused on adding Constitution, so your HP is thicker, but if you don't know how to judge the attack trajectory, no matter how thick your HP is, you're just a target for others to farm," Instructor Meng Yuan's voice echoed in the training hall, without a hint of mercy.

Lin Yan leaned against the wall to catch his breath during the breaks between shuttle sprints.

He could feel his muscles working at extremely high efficiency.

The thirty thousand plus HP stacked by Heartsteel seemed to be more than just numbers on a panel; it brought with it muscle endurance and recovery speeds that were faster than ordinary people.

But his starting explosive power was clearly weak; he was always half a beat slow on the first step after touching the wall during each shuttle.

This was purely a weakness in Strength and had nothing to do with HP.

The afternoon judgment training took place in the tactical simulation room.

Above the 3D projection sandbox in the center of the circular classroom appeared a miniature Dungeon scene: an abandoned military fortress, with multiple collapsed passages, at least two different types of monsters, and the Evacuation Point located in the deepest part of the fortress.

The intelligence fragments consisted of only three sentences, and there was only one goal: find the Evacuation Point alive.

The twenty-four people were divided into four groups, taking turns to plan routes on the sandbox.

The first group chose to storm the main passage and was flanked by a swarm of monsters emerging from the sides in the simulation.

The second group was overly cautious, stopping to test at every fork in the road until time ran out.

The third group wasted more time arguing at a fork because the team members could not agree.

When it was the turn of Lin Yan's group, Jiang Ruoxue suddenly spoke: "Let me do it. Trust me this once."

She walked up to the sandbox, her fingertips sliding quickly across the projection, marking several possible routes.

"The main passage has the highest monster density, and the side passages have a risk of collapse.

But Ice-type skills can temporarily freeze the collapsed area, buying us time to pass.

The premise is that a defensive type is in front to tank the monsters that might leak from the sides during the passage."

She looked up at Lin Yan, her ice-blue eyes devoid of any probing, containing only a calm calculation.

"Can you tank?"

"I can," Lin Yan said.

Simulation result: Route feasible, shortest time, lowest damage.

Instructor Meng Yuan only nodded after the simulation ended.

After everyone else had left the simulation room, he called Jiang Ruoxue back.

"You've practiced this set of tactics."

Jiang Ruoxue was slightly stunned, then nodded: "I practiced it at home; my father taught me."

"Who is your father?"

"Jiang Haichao, Head of the Jiang Family."

Instructor Meng Yuan was silent for a moment, and a rare, complex loosening appeared on that cold, hard face, accentuated by scars.

He didn't say much, just nodded slightly, and then left.

Over the next six days, the training intensity increased daily.

Physical training transitioned from basic movements to weighted movement and gravity simulation chambers, starting at double gravity and going up to triple.

Terrain simulation expanded from flat ground to mud, ice and snow, and gravel slopes.

The duration of reflex training increased every day, and the speed, angle, and density of the training projectiles became trickier day by day.

The scenarios for judgment simulation became increasingly complex, evolving from single targets to multi-target coordination and optimal path selection under resource constraints.

The content of the evening theory classes went from monster classification to response strategies for intelligent creatures, and then to social structure analysis of specific Dungeon ecosystems.

On the evening of the sixth day, Instructor Meng Yuan announced the upcoming schedule at the end of the theory class.

"The day after tomorrow, you will enter a new Dungeon for a cycle of three to four days.

If you haven't reached level 10 or higher, you only have 10 days to train, rest, and process material supplies, and then you will immediately enter the third Dungeon.

This is your first experience with consecutive Dungeon operations, which is a dual test of physical and mental endurance."

No physical training was scheduled for the seventh day, allowing everyone to recover to their best state.

Lin Yan checked his equipment in the training room: the blood rage ring was on his finger, the bone tumor breastplate was worn, and the iron scale legguards, ant bone bracers, and fire scale boots were fitted one by one.

He tried throwing a few punches, feeling the more flexible and controllable force within his muscle fibers after seven days of training.

Titan Strength had already been integrated into his body, and now his control over his strength was significantly more precise than seven days ago; his joint angles, punching rhythm, and the fluidity of his center of gravity transfer had all improved.

He stood in front of the full-length mirror, looking at his tall, straight figure with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, wondering what Hextech he would draw this time.