War Preparations

In the training room, time seemed to freeze amid the clash of fist against fist, bone against bone.

The last Time Afterimage took a punch that carried all of Benjamin's explosive strength, and its chest caved in completely.

The elemental energy composing its body fell into violent disarray, then collapsed soundlessly like a punctured bubble. It dissolved into motes of light that vanished into the training ground's energy filtration system.

"Huff... huff..."

Benjamin held his punching stance, breathing hard. Sweat mingled with a faint mist of blood and slid down his bronze skin.

He could clearly feel the blood and vitality surging through him like boiling magma.

An indescribable sense of power filled every limb and bone. With it came an instinctive urge to destroy, to let loose, born of that sudden surge in strength.

"Hah..." He drew a deep breath and used a calming method from the Qi Refining Method to suppress his seething blood and vitality. Clarity returned to his eyes.

He left the training ground, washed away his exhaustion and the blood on his body, then stepped into the medicinal bath prepared for him, as he always did.

Warm liquid enveloped him, nourishing the cells damaged by overexertion and consolidating the new limits he had broken through.

A Black Giant Priest entered carrying testing equipment. Benjamin merely waved him off, signaling that he need not report the exact figures.

Because there was no time left.

Only a little time remained before the Coordination War that would decide the Noren Workshop's fate.

His preparations were nearly complete, and the strength he could gain had almost reached its short-term limit.

In this final stretch of preparation, Benjamin weighed his options again and again, then concentrated his limited energy and resources on two things above all else.

First, he continued