BXBX NOVEL Chapter 138: Reaction Time Training
Shye took his time and diligently read the manuals of each machine in hopes of understanding how the machines would improve his reaction time.
Around fifteen minutes later, he finished reading all of the manuals and chose the most appropriate machine for his experiment, the Fastball Dodge.
The machine was fairly simple, Shye just had to set the speed of the balls which would randomly shoot fastballs from the small cannon attached to the main body of the machine, press the start button, and stand in front of the machine to either dodge or catch each ball.
He could also stand either farther or closer to the machine to further adjust the difficulty according to his preferences.
\'For starters, let\'s try the standard speed of 80mph fastballs…\' Shye thought as he walked towards the control panel of the machine, set the desired fastball speed, and pressed the start button.
He then walked towards a line marked as "standard" and stood in front of it as he waited for the fastballs to start flying out of the small cannon.
There were still no balls after thirty seconds though so Shye couldn\'t help but doubt if he correctly operated the machine.
Just when he was about to leave the "standard" line and walk towards the machine…
*FWOOSH*
A white ball suddenly flew out of the cannon\'s barrel and headed straight toward Shye\'s face.
"S-Shit!"
*BONK*
Caught off guard, the legend of Colzen Academy suffered a humiliating defeat from the fastball machine. The ball wasn\'t that fast but he wasn\'t focused so his face was struck by the white fastball.
Shockingly, although the ball seemed to be quite heavy, it didn\'t hurt one bit. All Shye felt was that he was struck by a huge marshmallow.
\'Oh? This reaction time machine is quite great…\' Shye inwardly complimented as he returned towards the "standard" line and waited for the next ball to come flying at him.
*FWOOSH*
Sure enough, after a few seconds, another ball flew out which was easily dodged by Shye this time, considering that he chose the most standard machine set-up.
*FWOOSH* *FWOOSH*
After easily dodging two more balls, Shye walked toward the machine and pressed the stop button.
He then changed the speed of the fastballs to 95mph, to identify his limits.
*FWOOSH* *FWOOSH* *FWOOSH* *FWOOSH*
Unfortunately, although way harder to evade, 95mph was still dodgeable for him. Hence, he decided to increase the speed of the ball again, this time to 105 mph.
*FWOOSH* *FWOOSH* *FWOOSH*
The balls flew out absurdly fast, however, Shye was still able to narrowly dodge them so he concluded that the limit of his current reaction time was 105 mph.
Now, he can begin the experiment.
First, he changed the speed of the balls to 110 mph and tried to dodge the balls.
*FWOOSH* *POP* *FWOOSH* *POP*
Unfortunately, out of five balls, he couldn\'t dodge a single one, thus, he temporarily turned off the machine and opened the Flashy Adventurer System.
After purchasing the semi-passive skill [(Dark) Harrowing Aura Lv.1 (Semi-Passive)(Rare)] for 6500 points, Shye had 4500 points left.
The intelligence attribute currently costs 80 points per upgrade but Shye knew that every ten-point increase corresponds to a 20-point increase in cost.
In addition to this, he also knew that a single-point upgrade wasn\'t enough to test if the intelligence attribute does indeed improve reaction time.
Thus, he decided to take a deep breath and upgrade the intelligence attribute 20 times (47 -> 67) for a total cost of 2080 (240 + 1000 + 840) points.
2080 points wasn\'t small but he had to do this or he might be missing an important combat factor that he needed.
Finally, after the familiar warm feeling coursed through his body, Shye pressed the start button again and focused on the small cannon as he waited for 110mph balls to start flying.
At that moment, time seemed to slow down for Shye.
Feeling extremely nervous after using 2080 points which was supposed to be a sizable part of his emergency points for the upcoming Adventurer Academy Competition, Shye started to breathe heavily.
Fortunately, the small cannon didn\'t make him wait for too long as a small white fastball the size of his fist blazed out of the barrel and ferociously flew toward his face.
*FWOOOSH*
Shye was stupefied. He hoped that the intelligence attribute would improve his reaction time and it sure as hell did.
After the massive 20 attribute point pump, Shye felt that the 110 mph fastball was as fast as the 95mph one from earlier, challenging to avoid, yet it didn\'t compel him to exert much effort in attempting to evade it.
*POP*
Dazed in elation, Shye was hit by the next ball squarely in the face but he didn\'t care.
To him, the experiment was a huge success which would not only aid him in winning his matches in the adventurer academy competition but would also aid him in fighting against fast and deadly creatures inside the adventurer zones.
Based on his experience, if he had to fight the blind kobold general again, then he wouldn\'t have been on edge as he did back then.
Happy about the results of his experiment, Shye continued testing the limits of his new reaction time as he gradually increased the speed of the fastballs until he reached his current limit of 125mph.
He reckoned that the pesky scout course opponents wouldn\'t give him as much of a difficult time now.
Still, Shye didn\'t become lazy and complacent upon learning the secrets of improving his reaction time.
He still had some questions unanswered such as:
\'If learning new knowledge from reading books would increase one\'s intelligence attribute, then how the hell is reading books connected to faster reaction times?\'
Due to these absurd questions, Shye felt that training reaction times without relying on the intelligence attribute could also be done. It\'s just that, increasing the intelligence status directly affects one\'s brain and so, it also improves one\'s reaction time in the process.
Naturally, to further increase his knowledge about reaction times, Shye continued to enthusiastically train inside the reaction time training room in hopes of proving that reaction time could be increased without increasing the intelligence attribute.
This time, he didn\'t increase his intelligence attribute at all and simply tried to exceed his 125mph limit by continuously trying to dodge 126 mph fastballs though all of them were currently undodgeable for him.
Finally, after three hours of intense training, Shye clenched his fists, a wide smile plastered on his face as he marveled at the joys of becoming stronger as an adventurer.
By the end of his training session, he was already dodging 129 mph fastballs without upgrading a single point of intelligence proving that his guess was right.
Now, the only question in his brain was: does the intelligence attribute correlate to one\'s potential regarding reaction time improvement?
To know the answer to this question, he had to continue experimenting.
However, now was not the time to do it since their training time was up and it was already late at night.
The deans must be looking for them so although he wanted to train more, he had no choice but to stop for now.
He would have a lot of chances to train his reaction time in the future anyway so there was no need for him to rush.
What\'s important is that he found an improvement path that might be unknown to other warrior-class adventurers or even outright impossible for them given the limited time every human had.