Gravis looked at the three-meter-high piece of pure ore and had no idea how to punch it into uniform pieces. He didn't have such fine control over his strength.
'Wait!' Gravis immediately realized something. 'I don't have such fine control over my strength? Wouldn't that be an issue?' Gravis thought. 'Punching such a hard ore into uniform pieces seems impossible right now, but is it really? I remember some guy in my homeworld creating beautiful artworks by punching some stone only once. I still remember that I thought it was incredibly impressive.'
Gravis started looking at the stone differently and then turned to Old Man Lightning, who had been following him all this time. Gravis started watching Old Man Lightning with squinting eyes. 'Is this some kind of training? If so, how does he know that I lack such fine control?'
WACK!
The cane hit Gravis' head again. "Stop staring at me with those squinting eyes!" Old Man Lightning said, annoyance apparent in his voice.
Gravis rubbed his head and grew a little annoyed. This old man didn't have to hit him all the time. "Do you want to show me that I don't have control over my power?"
WACK!
Another hit with the cane. "Stop being a smartass and start punching!" Old Man Lightning said, but inside, he felt surprised.
'This boy is smart. He already realized my goal before he even punched it once. Quite impressive!' Old Man Lightning thought.
Gravis looked with annoyance at Old Man Lightning. "Just be honest! Are you?" he asked directly.
The grip around the cane tightened, but no additional hit came. The word "honest" had hit the right spot. Honesty was the most important thing in Old Man Lightning's heart. "Yes, now go punch!" he said through gritted teeth.
Initially, he had planned to annoy Gravis by forcing him to punch the ore until he despaired. Then, he would gracefully appear and tell him about the use of this exercise. Like this, this innocent young boy would be surprised about his increased power and look at the old man with shining eyes filled with gratitude.
Yet this little shit had to see through the whole point of this exercise in an instant, ruining his plans! Old Man Lightning had been so proud of his sudden spark of inspiration. In reality, he didn't really care for his home. Every time he got angry while inside his house, he would also explode like this. After all, it was lightning's temperament to lash out. The Sect would then rebuild his house in a matter of hours since they were very experienced in that.
But there was no one else who ever dared to touch his house. If he let Gravis off without punching him, maybe some other disciples wouldn't fear his mighty cane anymore. Everyone that crossed him or the Sect had to get a beating! This was an iron rule, and there were no exceptions!
While Old Man Lightning lamented in his failed plan, Gravis started concentrating on the stone. Yet, before he started punching, he thought about the advantages of finer control.
'Now that I think about it, I have quite fine control with my saber, but whenever I punch or kick with my body, I just unleash my power into the opponent. This has always worked in the past since my opponents' bodies were, at most, slightly stronger. But, when I punched Byron, it achieved nothing. Who knows, maybe with finer control, I would have been able to penetrate his defense and injure his organs. After all, organs are not as powerful as bones and flesh.'
Gravis also realized why he didn't have any fine control over his body. His body had grown too quickly, and he was always busy with training something else. Back in the Middle-Continent, he was busy with increasing his Realm and compressing his Will-Aura. He had some time while staying with the "Greys", but at that point, he hadn't even thought about refining his control. After all, it had always worked.
Gravis grew excited as he realized another method to increase his battle-strength! With more battle-strength, he had better chances of getting appropriate resources. No one at the Tree or Self Stage would care about resources that increased one's Spirit, for example.
Of course, those resources also wouldn't work on Gravis due to his peculiar Spirit, but that was only a hypothetical. As long as he was the strongest in his Realm or slightly above his Realm, he could get any resources he wanted.
The only fight for resources he fought had been the tournament for the fourth level of the Lightning Tower, back in the Proxy-Lightning Guild. Since then, he hadn't been involved in any more of those fights, but that didn't mean that such fights would never happen in the future. Gravis had to be ready for every eventuality.
Gravis concentrated at the boulder and gauged how much power he needed to break it into two even pieces. Then, he readied himself and punched.
BANG!
The boulder broke into four different sized pieces, and Gravis grimaced. 'This will be troublesome.'
'Wait! Didn't the ore harden when I used lightning? So, theoretically…'
Gravis looked at the other buildings and saw the sizes of their bricks. Gravis then used lightning and infused it into one of the boulders. He moved it around until it took the identical form of one of those other bricks. Then, Gravis punched.
BANG!
The boulder broke apart again, but a perfectly measured brick, identical to the other ones, remained. Gravis smirked.
WACK!
"No cheating!" Old Man Lightning said in annoyance.
Gravis turned to the old man with an annoyed sneer. "I know! I only tried it out! I won't sabotage my own training. Also, you don't have to hit me every time. I have ears, you know?"
WACK!
"Shut up! Less talking, more punching!" Old Man Lightning said.
By now, Gravis had enough. "Shut up, old man! You're not helping by constantly hitting me!"
"Oh!?" Old Man Lightning said with a warning tone.
—-
With a more bruised body, Gravis continued punching the boulders. It had been a couple of hours since he started diligently training. 'There is no reasoning with this stubborn, old brick wall. That ass is so stuck in his own ways that I can't even reason with him! As soon as I get powerful enough, I'll show him!'
Sadly, Gravis only dared to think such stuff. If he said anything like this, he would get another beating. It might feel good to release his annoyance and anger, but the only thing that would follow would be physical pain. All in all, it was not worth it.
Even worse, the old man was always watching. After around an hour of punching, Gravis had decided to take a small break, but not even five seconds into it, a cane shot at him from a distance. Gravis, of course, was very used to sneak attacks and quickly blocked it. Yet, what followed wasn't a charging cane, but a charging old man. He, apparently, took offense to Gravis not accepting his beating.
Like this, Gravis continued punching boulders one after the other. When the boulders got too small, he would push them to the side. In regular intervals, some people from the Lightning Sect arrived to take those boulders away.
It took a lot of resources to mine these boulders, so there was no reason to let them go to waste. After all, nearly no one in the Middle-Continent had the power to mine those. All the materials for the houses in the Lightning Guild in the Middle-Continent came from here. Only people in the Spirit Forming Realm could destroy this ore, and some Guild Master or Vice-Guild Master surely wouldn't waste their time with mining.
Even though Gravis was angry with the old man, he grew exhilarated when he saw his progress. Punching the boulder wasn't as painful anymore, and the boulders came closer to matching the image in his head.
This was something that Gravis had rarely seen. Progress through training.
Most of the time, he was just munching on pills or killing people to increase his Realm. The last time he felt something like this was when he was compressing his Will-Aura. Before that, the only other time, when his strength had increased by training, had been when he learned Martial Arts with William, back in Body City.
By now, Gravis was taking no more breaks. He was completely entranced by the feeling of his strength slowly growing stronger.
Like this, he continued punching boulders.
