SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 801: Wrong Place

The first punch landed on the wrong side.

Trafalgar had already pushed mana toward his left ribs when Dravok changed the angle, stepped inside, and struck him hard on the right. The impact folded Trafalgar slightly and sent him two steps sideways before he managed to plant his feet again.

Dravok lowered his hand. "You committed the instant you thought you had the answer. That's exactly what I told you not to do."

"I saw the shoulder turn."

"You saw what I wanted you to see. There's a difference."

Trafalgar rubbed his side once, then reset his stance. "Again."

Dravok obliged.

The next strike came straight toward the centre of his chest. Trafalgar waited longer this time, watched the hips, let the line develop, and moved the mana only when he thought the target was certain.

Dravok dropped the punch at the last moment.

His knuckles sank into Trafalgar's liver.

Pain spread through his side in a hot wave, bending him forward despite himself. He took a slow breath and straightened while Dravok stepped back into place.

"You improved the timing," Dravok said. "But you're still following the hand too much."

"The hand is the thing that's hitting me."

"The hand finishes the attack. It doesn't create it. If you're waiting for the fist to tell you where it's going, you've already waited too long."

That was how the first day went.

Trafalgar defended his jaw and took a kick to the knee. He reinforced his stomach and got an elbow across the ribs. He read a low attack correctly, shifted mana into his thigh, and Dravok changed the line halfway through and struck him across the collarbone instead.

By the end of the session, almost every part of him hurt.

The pool took care of that.

The next morning, Dravok started again.

And the morning after that.

Time inside the dimension quickly lost the shape it had outside. There was no sunrise to mark another day, no evening light to tell Trafalgar when to stop. They measured the days by training, food, sleep, the pool, and Dravok eventually deciding he'd been hit enough for one stretch.

Five days passed.

Then ten.

Trafalgar improved, but slowly.

He could move the mana where he wanted now without effort. Skin, muscle, bone, all of it could be reinforced in an instant if he knew where the attack was going.

Knowing was still the problem.

On the twelfth day, Dravok hit him in the face hard enough to split his lip.

Trafalgar spat blood onto the black ground and looked at him. "You could make the feints a little less convincing."

Dravok's expression didn't change. "Why would I teach you against bad feints?"

"Because I'm learning."

"And the people trying to kill you later won't care."

Trafalgar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Fair enough."

Dravok stepped closer. "You're still thinking too much. I can see it every time I move. Your eyes follow one piece, then another, and you start building an answer in your head."

"I'm trying to read you."

"You're trying to explain me to yourself."

That stopped Trafalgar for a second.

Dravok tapped two fingers against his own temple. "You see my foot move. Then you ask why. You see my hip turn and compare it to the shoulder. By the time you've finished deciding what the movement means, I've already changed it."

"So what do you want me to do? Guess?"

"No. Trust the part of you that already knows."

Trafalgar frowned.

Dravok continued. "You've fought for years. Your body has seen thousands of attacks. It knows what force looks like before your mind puts a name to it. Stop dragging every instinct through a conversation with yourself."

Caelvyrn had been watching from the couch, quieter than usual through most of the lesson. He finally leaned forward, resting his forearms over his knees.

"He's right. You're treating every attack like something you need to solve. Sometimes the answer is already there before you start thinking about it."

Trafalgar looked toward him. "Easy to say when you've had thousands of years to build those instincts."

Caelvyrn shrugged. "True. But you don't need thousands. You need enough repetition that your body gets tired of waiting for your brain."

That, unfortunately, turned out to be exactly what Dravok intended.

The days kept passing.

Twenty.

Then thirty.

Trafalgar stopped counting carefully somewhere after that.

He only knew that outside, almost nothing had happened. A hundred days here would cost the world beyond the Gate a single day.

Inside, his body remembered every hour.

Dravok hit him hundreds of times.

Sometimes lightly enough to correct him.

Sometimes hard enough that Trafalgar needed the pool immediately afterward.

He bruised ribs, split lips, twisted a knee, took a strike across the jaw that left his ears ringing for several minutes, and once reinforced his chest so confidently that Dravok kicked his shin hard enough to fracture it.

Rhosyn watched most of it without interfering.

One evening, while Trafalgar sat in the pool with his leg repairing itself beneath the dark water, she looked down at him from the edge.

"You're getting better."

"It doesn't feel like it."

"It should. He had to start hitting you harder."

Trafalgar looked toward Dravok, who was speaking quietly with Caelvyrn some distance away. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"No. But it's true."

By the time Trafalgar climbed out again, he understood what she meant.

Dravok wasn't slowing down.

He was speeding up.

The feints were becoming smaller. The changes in angle came later. The difference between the attack Dravok showed and the one he actually threw grew harder to read.

And Trafalgar was still starting to catch them.

Not because he was thinking faster.

Because he was finally thinking less.

Another stretch of days passed.

Dravok stepped in with his right shoulder slightly forward.

Trafalgar felt the attack before he consciously placed it.

Mana moved into his left ribs.

The fist landed there.

The reinforcement wasn't perfect, but the impact felt duller than it should have.

Dravok pulled back immediately and attacked again.

This one came high.

Trafalgar shifted the mana toward his shoulder.

Correct.

Dravok changed into a low kick.

Trafalgar moved the reinforcement too late, and the strike caught his thigh before the mana fully settled.

He stumbled but stayed standing.

"Better," Dravok said.

Trafalgar breathed out slowly. "I'm still missing too many."

"You are. But now you're missing because the attack beat your reaction. Before, you were missing because your own thoughts beat you."

That distinction mattered.

Trafalgar reset his stance.

Dravok studied him for a moment, then nodded once. "You've spent long enough standing still."

Trafalgar's eyes narrowed slightly.

Dravok took another step back and raised both hands properly this time.

"Tomorrow, we will stop drilling." There was a different weight in his stance now. "We will spar."