"…into a shovel? Why the hell would we bite into a shovel of all things?" my mind supplied helpfully slipping right through my teeth before I could stop myself.
"Hmm, why wouldn't you?" Lockhard replied back, though before I could voice another snarky reply, due to my new instructor being a bloody moron, something that irked me big time, another boy to my left voiced his own two cents on the matter.
"Actually, I did…" at my incredulous stare the boy hastily continued "b-but only once!" as if that would make this the matter any less retarded.
"Good, good. What did it feel like?" Lockhard asked back while my left eyebrow began to spasm up and down at a ridiculously fast pace as a result. I can say for certain I've never had a conversation this retarded before, that is as far as I can remember of course.
"W-well…hard? Painful on my teeth? OH, and the crunchy feeling of the earth on my teeth was kind of annoying afterwards…" The boy answered to which Lockhard nodded in satisfaction at the answer. Ye, I'm not gonna honour this stupidity any further with any more comments of my own…
"You may wonder why I'm asking you this, right? Two reasons! Number one: Sturdiness! The reason why your teeth hurt after biting into a shovel made of steel is because you and your teeth aren't sturdy enough! Observe!" Lockhard stood, with his finger raised, in a lecturing pose after which he stood up and walked over to a nearby bush from where he pulled out, you guessed right, a freakin' shovel.
Under my incredulous gaze the moron proceeded to shovel said shovel between his teeth and after a nearly unperceivable tensing of his whole body bit down onto the shovel. Internally I winced on reflex when watching the dude do so, wholly expecting to hear a painful shriek and the crunching of broken teeth to come but that never happened. Instead, Lockhard bit right through the shovel as if it was made of paper!
After spitting out the piece he had bitten of Lockhard came back over to us and let himself fall down on his ass once again. I just couldn't help myself in response but voice what probably everyone of us was thinking about right now. "What the fuck just happened…?" To which Lockhard only grinned a toothy grin behind his bushy beard.
"You see, when you train Tekkai you literally, and I mean literally, train every single part of your body you have conscious control over. What I just showed you was an application of my trained jaw muscles. Though you should not yet try that yourselves, even when you trained your jaw muscles long enough, as I used something else besides a simple Tekkai to do what I just did. But that isn't important right now.
The fact that you will be training your bodies every muscle with the Tekkai is the main reason why you all start with either Tekkai or Kami-e as you all know already. But there is another reason. Two actually. The first is that the Tekkai and Kami-e where originally only meant to be training exercises to reach another form of absolute control over your body: the Seimei Kikan!
You will learn more about the Seimei Kikan the further you progress in your training so let's get back to the Tekkai.
As I said earlier the Tekkai and Kami-e were only meant as training exercises to reach the Seimei Kikan but soon those training in those two techniques realised that both actually had the potential to become a part of what later would become the Rokushiki.
Now, the second reason. Just now, we covered the physical component to the Tekkai but there obviously is another, namely the mental one. What do I mean by that? Simple. Confidence! You need to be confident in yourself and your ability to take anything that is thrown your way or die trying. You need to be able to endure and have the mental fortitude to not flinch away from pain and ailments! That is the main reason why I believe the Tekkai to be, contrary to what most people will tell you, a technique that requires more mental fortitude than physical strength as the human body has more power than you may think. Your mind on the other hand is fragile and easily swayed." Lockhard said and I had to give it to the man, he had a point.
Though how do you train yourself to be more confident in yourself? Before I could lose myself in my thoughts though Lockhard stood up from his place, probably tired of talking so much as he doesn't seem the type to blabber on without dot and comma.
"Now, lets get to training! In the next couple days we will begin our training with the usual training exercises you've already been doing for the duration of your stay here. Occasionally I will increase your weights some but that shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you. The interesting part though will come after the morning training. Any idea what we may be doing then?" Lockhard asked into the circle of us who had stood up by now.
When I looked at Lockhard though an uneasy feeling began to creep into my stomach as a sort of manic light burned in the fellow's eyes like a torch held behind a curtain.
"No ideas? A shame but no matter. I'll just have to show you then." You remember me saying something about having an uneasy feeling in my stomach? Yes, my guts were right. Again.
Lockhard, smiling slightly and twinkling eyes directed onto us, walked over to Bruno, who stood next to me, and while facing him suddenly turned around and buried his fist in my stomach, causing me to tip over and wheeze for air while my breakfast nearly crept up into my mouth.
"What…the…fuck man?!" I managed to wheeze out while I came back onto my now slightly trembling feet. Though, after I looked back towards Lockhard's face and saw the small frown on his face while he looked down onto his slightly bruised fist, my thoughts could only form into one word, 'fuck.' which coincidentally also portrayed my current situation perfectly. Coincidence? I think not. Now, how to resolve this without giving away my ace…