Advanced training meant Yeon Ha-Jin.
Ha-Jin was a twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Commander in the Vanguard Division who had been described in official GDF files as 'the most technically precise Void Arts practitioner in active service' and described by the people who trained under her as 'deeply, specifically, and consistently cruel about what she makes you do with your body.'
Both descriptions were accurate.
She was Korean, five-foot-eleven, with a staff weapon called Void Lance that she wore on her back like it was part of her spine, and she had the stillness of water in a container completely motionless until a force was applied, then responding with exactly the amount of energy the force had given her and not one unit more.
She and Ray did not get along immediately.
The first session was assessment. Ha-Jin put on sparring parameters for two C-Class suits limiting both herself and Ray to thirty times human baseline and they circled each other in the training bay for three minutes while she watched him.
Then she said 'Attack me.'
Ray attacked. He was fast fast enough that at full Genesis output he would have been difficult for most operators to track. In C-Class parameters he was still quick. He committed to the attack the way he'd committed to everything since Harlan's Gate fully, immediately, without holding anything in reserve.
Ha-Jin redirected his attack at the first contact point, used his force against him, and had him on the floor in 1.3 seconds.
He got up.
She said: 'Again.'
He attacked again. She redirected again. The floor again. 1.1 seconds.
He got up.
This continued for forty minutes.
At the end of forty minutes, Ray had been on the floor approximately thirty-five times and Ha-Jin was breathing as evenly as when they'd started.
"You fight well for someone with no formal training."
"Thank you."
"I mean it as an observation, not a compliment. You fight well for someone with no formal training and this will become a problem as soon as you face something fast enough and large enough that your instincts and your suit can't compensate for the gaps in your technical foundation."
"How do we fix the gaps?"
"You spend a long time on the floor."
He looked at the floor. He looked at her.
"How long?"
"As long as it takes for getting up to be faster than going down. Again."
He trained with Ha-Jin every morning for three weeks. She was methodical and unhurried and never praised him for anything he'd done correctly on the first attempt. She praised him exactly once, on the twenty-first day, when he successfully redirected her attack at the third contact point rather than the first.
She said 'Better.'
That was the praise.
He thought about it for a week.
What he was learning, underneath all the technical form, was something he couldn't name for a while and then could: he was learning to be in his body instead of ahead of it. His instincts had always been good good enough to survive Harlan's Gate, good enough to pass the Threshold Test but they'd been running on adrenaline and observation rather than foundation. Ha-Jin was building the floor under the house that had always been flying.
He was also learning, without it being directly stated, that she was watching his Void Resonance.
Every time it triggered every time the pulsing in the suit enhanced, every time the blade lit up she paused for exactly one second. Not to stop the session. To record it. She had a small notation system on a bracelet she wore and he watched her tap it, session after session, without comment.
On the twenty-eighth day, he asked about it.
"You've been tracking the Void Resonance triggers."
"Yes."
"What are you finding?"
She was quiet for a moment in the way that meant she was deciding how much to say.
"That the triggers correspond to moments of extreme focus rather than extreme emotion. Most enhanced human abilities are emotion-driven fear, rage, grief, love. The Void Resonance activates when you are most completely present. Most clear. As if it responds to awareness at its most refined rather than its most intense."
Ray thought about this.
"What does that mean?"
"It means you don't unlock it by feeling more. You unlock it by thinking less."
She raised the Void Lance.
"Again."