Chapter 634: Chapter 634 - Taming the Fifth Year - First Exams - 6

Lin continued. "When I teach you combat techniques, your body automatically overcorrects and finds ways to make them slightly more efficient. You improve the speed, the power, the economy of movement in almost imperceptible ways... but they’re there, small corrections accumulating more and more every day."

"And that’s bad?"

"For combat, no... On the contrary. But for noble protocol, I suppose yes," Lin had smiled with something like sympathy. "Those positions they’re trying to teach you aren’t efficient. They’re not natural. They’re ceremonial. I think your body rejects them because they go against almost everything it considers balance and efficiency."

And she was right. Ren could copy Lin’s combat techniques without problem, simplifying and improving them in the process without even realizing it. His body was a learning machine when it came to fighting, absorbing and optimizing with frightening speed.

But here, where he needed to replicate exact movements without improvements, without optimizations, without his instinct to make things better...

His body simply refused to cooperate.

Additionally, his memory and cerebellum for specific details like these wasn’t the best. His head in those sections was full of information about beast cultivation, mana patterns, combat positions.

The neural pathways had been carved deep for things that mattered to survival.

And without access to the enormous neural network of ’Mooshito’, who had been encysted this entire time, he didn’t have that additional support to process and retain information with the speed he’d previously taken for granted.

Now his brain had harder limits. Now he was just... human.

At one point he even practiced desperately in front of Aldric during their classes, carefully analyzing his tutor’s reaction. But each time he executed the protocols, Aldric maintained the same neutral expression.

His mana showed no particular concern, no surprise, no satisfaction.

Ren could read that clearly: he wasn’t improving enough for Aldric to worry.

The assessment was damning in its implications.

The second month passed like this, with Ren stuck at a level that was technically correct but completely lacked the ’perfection’ that the evaluators with the help of high Perception beasts would demand in the exams.

Larissa’s sessions became longer, more intense. She stayed up late drilling him on minute adjustments. Her dedication was absolute, her belief in his potential unwavering even as the evidence suggested he might not be capable of what she demanded.

Min watched him struggle with growing concern. "Maybe you should just focus on looking decent, not on perfection," he suggested one night.

But Ren knew better. With his rewards, with the targets on his back, that wasn’t enough at all.

Mediocrity would be weaponized against him. Only perfection would be safe.

♢♢♢♢

Two weeks before the exams, everything changed.

That day, Aldric had said something that made every alarm in Ren’s mind go off.

"Keep it up, Ren," Aldric had said with an almost paternal tone, the kind of voice adults used when praising children for trying their best even when they knew it wasn’t enough.

"It seems you’ve reached your first wall. Improving beyond this point will be... difficult. But what little you manage to learn will serve you. Though you know, don’t pressure yourself too much."

The words had been carefully constructed. Setting expectations low while pretending to be supportive.

Ren had left that class with that familiar knot in his stomach tighter than ever.

That night, he met with the girls in one of the private study rooms.

"He told me I’ve reached a wall," Ren explained, his voice flat yet showing frustration. "That improving will be difficult."

Luna frowned, her wolf markings darkening slightly with anger. "Two weeks before the exams? That’s..."

"He thinks he already won," Liora finished bluntly.

Larissa leaned back in her chair, her eyes thoughtful. "Selphira and Arturo already confirmed that both Morgain and Aldric manipulated the tutor assignment system a bit. They used contacts, political favors. The system was supposed to be impartial, but..."

"They corrupted it," Luna said with bitterness. "Like everything else with most nobility."

"But in the end," Liora added, trying to find some silver lining in the dark cloud, "Grandma Selphira said the tutor was the least of it if we study with Larissa anyway."

"Except that in my case the tutor doesn’t even matter... not even ’nobility genius Larissa’ has been able to teach me correctly," Ren admitted, feeling that familiar frustration rising. "I still can’t execute the movements at the level of correctness that’s needed..."

The silence that followed was heavy, oppressive.

"It’s unfair," Luna finally said, her voice carrying resentment at the system they lived in. "Us nobles have too much advantage being taught all this since we learn to walk. Normal people don’t have a chance with so little time."

"Not necessarily," Larissa murmured, but she didn’t sound convinced. "Ren always..."

But she couldn’t finish. Because this time, maybe Ren couldn’t pull off another miracle.

Ren felt like the killer of joy and left that meeting early, feeling worse than ever. He walked through the academy’s dark hallways, his thoughts spiraling downward in tight circles.

He had faced corrupted creatures. He had distributed revolutionary cultivation methods. He had survived battles that should have killed him. He had almost changed the kingdom’s social structure.

And now he was going to fail because he couldn’t bend some parts of his body at the correct angle?

It was ridiculous. It was frustrating. It was...

His mantis materialized briefly, the jade glow of its body illuminating the hallway with soft light. The creature positioned itself in front of him, its forelegs moving in a strange pattern.

Ren blinked, watching the movement. It seemed random at first, but there was something deliberate about it.

And then the mantis did it again. Exactly the same pattern. Exactly the same angles.

Precise. Repeated. Intentional.

"Are you... trying to tell me something?" Ren murmured.

The mantis tilted its triangular head, its compound eyes gleaming with intelligence. And then it repeated the movement a third time, perfectly identical to the previous attempts.

Ren’s heart accelerated, pounding against his ribs like it was trying to escape.

"Wait!"

He ran back to his room, the mantis following him like a jade shadow. Once inside, he closed the door and positioned himself in front of the mirror, his breath coming fast with sudden hope.

"Do it again," he told the mantis. "What you were copying."

The mantis repeated the movement pattern.

And Ren saw, with crystalline clarity, that it was one of the bows Larissa had shown him before. Not perfect because the mantis didn’t have the same body structure, but the pattern, the relative angles, the sequence...