I’d finally gotten comfortable enough with Chain Punch that I could channel qi from my solar plexus to my knuckles without losing control or breaking the flow—four times out of five. Not exactly impressive, considering the principle behind Chain Punch is a machine-gun burst. Mine jammed every fifth shot. Though to be fair, "jammed" might be wrong…The hardest part was splitting the qi thread evenly across the triple channel. Sometimes I couldn’t reach one of the knuckles. The projection would still form and shoot forward, but it was incomplete—underpowered. Worse, the leftover qi that failed to reach the endpoint would start to accumulate after a good volley, building up in my hands and threatening to detonate. More than once I had to purge it, blasting out uncontrolled qi just to clear my channels. By the end of training, I’d run the reactor dry.At first, I panicked. But René explained I’d simply depleted my energy reserves.According to my interface:Energy: 2/156You could buy potions from the shop for instant recovery, or tea to speed up natural regeneration. Left alone, it would restore over two or three days. The less strain, the faster the recovery—so I wrapped up training and headed home to research energy-restoring teas. Pure Thoughts, for the record, were absolutely useless for that. But there were other options on the market that worked just fine.I decided to ask Kate which one to go for.Our next training session was set for six in the evening—after my shift—in the same sand-covered hall.This time, Kate brought a bag of tennis balls."I want you to start learning to counter-attack while you still have the chance. Right now you’ve got an advantage—your core technique creates a barrage, which throws off an opponent’s focus. That means in a real fight, you’ll probably be the one pressing. But just in case your opponent seizes the initiative—that’s what we’re training for." (...)