Edited by:tommyjl7

Your skill [Spear Usage - Apprentice level 1] has leveled upYour skill [Spear Usage - Apprentice] is now level [2]

Your skill [Mana Shock Wave level 4] has leveled upYour skill [Mana Shock Wave] is now level [5]

You still have [15] unallocated attribute point(s). Do you with to use them now?YesNo

No. I am waiting with that on purpose. During tutorial you said that I don’t need to spend them right away, so stop bothering me now! Stupid System.

Hm? Why am I waiting with distributing my points? One, to check if that affects my training. Let say that I have 10 points in Strength. If I have to do 100 pushups in order to increase it to 11, would it be affected if I would give +10 points from leveling up? Let’s just say that I did 99 of 100 pushups required, then I boost my stats by leveling up and 10 turns to 20. And to increase STR from 20 to 21 I need 200 pushups. Does my 99/100 from the previous exercise turns into 198/200? Is it transferred to 99/200 progress? Or disappears completely?

The system counts progress of training in 0-1 system, where 0 – fail; 1 - succeed. If you change the requirements by increasing base value of attribute, the whole progress is erased.

You mean that each time Sebastian was bullying me with his training, I was doomed to obtain nothing because each time I raised all my stats by few points?

Affirmative.

… why didn’t you tell me that earlier?!?!

Answer lies in specific section of [System Tutorial] that you can read whenever you wish to.To get certain information from [The System] by using thought menu the question needs to me made as either thought or vocalized order.

None such action has been registered before.

I was busy, ok?

Affirmative.

Don’t me here! You did that on purpose! You enjoyed watching me struggle without benefits over and over again! Admit it!

XD

… no comment, please. And I gave you my pie…

- “Zari, how much longer will it take for you to get back in shape?” Giselle asked me.

She was getting bored and nervous. Her fingers itched to draw her sword and torment me with some sick Jericho-themed training. I looked at the timer.

You are now using [Nature Healing Magic Level 14]Estimate time until removing all damage:00h18m42s

- “An hour or so.” Hearing my answer Lanele raised her brow. She looked at the power of my spell, at my wounds, again at green orb of mana that was shining in my hands, and again at me. Looking her deep in the eyes I shook my head to the sides, trying to move as little as possible.

She nodded a little in response.

Most of the bruises were gone, one of ribs that broke was agonizingly slowly snapping back on its place. It was itching like hell, I almost wanted to dig a hole in my chest just to scratch myself from the inside.

- “What, bored already?” I asked my dragoness. She pouted in response.

If I play it right I could kill two birds with one stone. I only have to provoke two certain individuals. Oh, provoking Giselle was nothing hard. But… elf? Dunno, they are still mystery to me. I started conversation with Devris, one would think that I did that only to break weird silence.

- “You took your sweet time, didn’t you? If you wanted you could’ve finished it in five moves.”

Lancer smiled sitting next to me.

- “You are flattering yourself. You wouldn’t last four.” He gave me friendly punch in the arm. He didn’t say that to boast about his skills or humiliate me, just to hold the conversation, with a longer answer than a simple yes or no.

I rolled my eyes.

- “Whatever, we can even agree on three and half if you want to, what I wanted to ask is why did you let this little charade go on so long. I bruised you here and there, I mean, you were ugly anyway, but with that swollen eye of yours you don’t look more appealing.”

- “Miss Lanele is an important friend of mine, also someone I am responsible for. I wanted to check if you could keep her safe.”

- “A-ha, and you failed horribly.” Mavik raised his voice.

Devris wanted to scold him once again, yet I kicked him lightly in the leg. As soon as he looked in my direction with little movement of my head I asked him to let him continue.

- “… Just as I thought, you couldn’t face an elf on equal ground even if Devris was fighting with blindfold over his head with one arm tied behind his back! Still, that you actually managed to catch him off guard with that dirty move? I didn’t expect you to be able to do even that, lesser life form…”

Now kids, this is how you start a bar-fight

- “Sorry to hear that…” I said trying to make my voice sound as sad as possible “… what else could change your mind about that… Ah! Of course! I won’t be with her alone! Giselle will be protecting her too!... wait, don’t tell me that you are doubting in HER skills!?”

Giselle raised her head and looked with anger at elf.

- “Hmph. Two lesser-life forms, both worthy of each another!...” even if I saw him looking at Giselle with something that could be called as tiny piece of tolerance, he couldn’t say it aloud. Not now, as he was boasting about his own race.

- “Pardon me?” Giselle got up from her sitting ground. “… just because Zari got his ass handed to him as he was fighting without using his main branch of skills…”

- “Doesn’t change the fact that he would have his ass handed anyway. Same goes to you…”

- “Listen now, you little piece of shit. I have been killing before I started to count how many ti…”

- “Wow! You eventually learned to count!” Swordsman started slowly clapping. A single vein appeared on redhead’s forehead.

- “If I may suggest something… I can’t train just now, so Giselle is bored, Mavik needs a proof of our… competency. So, as I am still healing myself, why don’t the two of you duel together? You would kill some time… and with some luck each another…” the last part I added whispering

- “You planned that from very beginning?” my new conversation partner asked

- “Planned? No. I just don’t want to train with Giselle so I thought that your partner could help me with that. To be honest, I am very grateful that he is so… willing.”

- “You are… much more dangerous than one could guess.”

By this moment Giselle and Mavik were already standing next to each other yelling and waving their hands.

- “Please! Please! Lady and gentl… Mavik, could you please solve your differences in a more civilized way?” I called.

They both looked at me with hatred in their eyes.

- “If you think that I will not stop after this bitch called me a…”

Who did you call a bitch, my friend? Oh, I would intervene if Giselle wasn’t about to turn you into a tree-hugger.

- “By civilized I mean… with swords. Stop yelling like traders on the market square already and finish this childish argument like adults – with blood and violence!”

- “FINE!” they both yelled picking dulled swords from the ground

- “Do you think your woman will be fine? Mavik may appear bit soft due to his inability to shut up, but his fencing in quite splendid.”

- “I hope it is, if he won’t exhaust Giselle she would be back to bullying me.” I exhaled air from my lungs exhausted.

- “Just asking. Giselle said that our battle would look differently if you were to use your magic, I do believe it, but tell me, taking into consideration that you know that I didn’t show all of my abilities myself, do you think you could take me?”

Once again, he wasn’t boasting, he was just curious.

- “Not only my magic, I have also another set of abilities that I don’t show while having an audience. If I could use my magic, I can promise you that I would make you sweat just right…”

- “What if you were using the other set of abilities also?”

- “You would stand no chance.” I smiled

- “I hope one day I would be worthy in your eyes to fight against me with everything you got.”

- “It’s not about being worthy, my friend. This is my little secret that saw very few people, mostly my friends that I fought side by side with. If you are my enemy and see this form of mine, then I am doing everything to make that person live as short as possible, in order for that knowledge to remain a secret.”

- “Is it that powerful?”

- “No. It is that disgusting.” I exhaled again.

Giselle and Mavik were already fighting. Elf was jumping from place to place avoiding wide swings of Giselle, he was trying to fit one or two focused stabs. Dragoness didn’t have these problems, she was making up for lack of accuracy with quantity of blows. Despite the fact that her weapon was made of wood, her blows were strong enough to create a sharp, piercing sound.

- “Stop! Running! And fight! Like a… Man!” she would yell between her blows.

- “I don’t have to! You are manly enough for both of us!” Elf would tease her avoiding yet another strike that left a huge dent on the bark of a tree.

Eventually, Giselle baited an elf into attacking her.

- “A-ha! An opening!” he yelled thrusting forward.

She grabbed the wooden blade aimed at her chest with her hand

- “A-ha. An idiot ahead!” she would response before landing a blow with her fist on elf’s face.

A sound of jaw being broken could be heard from afar.

- “Anyway, Devris, are you free now?” I asked after all numbers on my timer hit zeros.

- “Sure, why?”

- “Would you mind training me a little? At least until Giselle is occupied.”

- “Sure, you never had a formal spear training, did you?”

- “Formal training? No. Once Jericho, Giselle’s father, trained me. Once again, it couldn’t be called a training at all, he was just humiliating his opponents.”

- “I could tell. Your moves are all quite made-up. You looked like a fighting, cornered dog. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing. Making up lack of moves with instincts is what makes a good warriors. When you don’t find gaps in enemy defense, you make one. Still, in my opinion it is important to at least know the basis before starting improvising. We will take it nice and slow, training won’t be exhausting, but… well, boring and repetitive. We will need to teach your muscles certain moves.”

- “Trust me, boring training is preferable form than whatever Giselle would make.”

We raised from the ground, walked toward opposite part of glade holding our wooden spears.

- “Now, legs further apart, left one bit onward, twist your body, face your enemy standing bit to the side, yes, this way your enemy see less of your body, less body to see means less body to hit, you make him target smaller area, this way you can predict where he will attack more easily. Good, now, bend a little, lower your body. Yes, this way you will be able to cover smaller distances faster… unless your knees wouldn’t explode, after few hours of walking like that… let’s just say that tomorrow you would prefer staying in bed. Now, the spear, we will skip forms and postures for now, let’s get used to maintaining balance. Grab it in front of you, and swing to the left! To the right! From above, from below! Thrust! Again!”

So I did as he spoke, swing from left, then right away from the right, quickly I raised my weapon over my head and brought it down hitting the ground just to once again, perform an attack position my weapon in the center and put the whole power I had into a thrust.

- “Again!” Indeed, in this position my weight center was bit pushed, even more, with every attack it was shifting a little, after every swing I had to push my left foot either forward or back, further from the body or back where it was.

- “Again!” Without paying attention to it, I was actually walking all this time. Each time I would perform a series, I would end few centimeter away from the place I started.

- “Again!” My hands became bit warmer from all these swings.

- “Again!” my knees kept getting bit heavier, I felt as muscles on my calves were being pulled.

- “Wait a moment!” my instructor would come to me every 10 performances and correct my stance. Without noticing it my body tried returning to the posture it was more familiar with, to put less burden on my lower body and twist whole upper body back to the front

Devris wasn’t getting irritated. Oh, he would punch me lightly on the side when I was performing something wrongly, but not to cause pain. It was just a reminder .

Such a gentle way of training.

Is it that hard to be nice? Jericho? Giselle? Sebastian?!

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Chapter RSS About the author 2 Fictions 0 Posts 0 Threads Anuel Follow Author Thursday, April 12, 2018 6:20:05 PM

Bio: Some people want me to write with Style, some people want me to write with Passion, some people wish to see me using logic, yet I... I find madness to be much more alluring.

Srsl tho, I am kinda crazy, ya know?

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