“Nicely done.”

That was the only praise that was given by Gracie. We weren’t really expecting more, but to sum up her praise in just two words was a bit, unsatisfying.

“Don’t show that kind of face! I just praised you all, you know?”

We exchanged looks among ourselves while we gave a tired smile. The damage that we accumulated from the fight wasn’t worth mentioning but the mental strain on us was real. We had fought enemies higher level than ourselves in a fight for survival for hours straight, with barely any rest in between. It was easy to see how haggard we had became.

“Okay, I can see that you’re all fairly tired. But if you really want to improve yourself, you’ll need to push your body and mind to the limits!”

Each of our own faces distorted in their own ways as we imagined the need to continue fighting in more of these life threatening situations without having a rest. Noticing the looks on our faces, Gracie seemed slightly pissed off, but then her face suddenly brighten up.

“I know! Since you’re all so tired, I’ll let you all rest for today if you complete one more fight!”

While being showered by looks of happiness from each of the others, I showed a face of condemnation.

“Since I’ve not gotten any action and I’m bored, you get to fight me!”

Her smiling face was not reflected by us. The others had their mood turned into that of mine.

“It’s not that hard, all of you can gang up on me at the same time. All you need to do is to hit me once and then the training for the day will end. Any punch, slash or even stab can count. As long as it hit me.”

Finding out about the condition for ending the training seemed possible. We readied ourselves and fought the fight with the devil.

The result? Total annihilation.

Every time our weapon draws near her and we held the hope to hit her, she sped up and dodged it. In return for the failed hit, she countered back with a punch towards whoever attempted the attack. This repeated itself multiple times even when I devised tactics to make use of her blind spot and surprising her to reduce her reaction speed.

Some of them worked in that it actually managed to slow her down, but like the many hits before, she barely dodged it. In less than ten minutes, each of us had many bruises and were already panting for breath. For herself, she hadn’t even sweat a drop and was in tip-top condition.

We knew in the back of our mind that she was a monster. We knew that the fight was a trap. We knew that she couldn’t have ended the day with such an easy bet. We knew, we knew everything, we just wanted to hold on to that false hope that we could end our day early and rest. It was all part of her plan, we knew that from the start.

After desperately struggling for more than an hour, where Slyvie fixed us back whenever we were out of the fight and couldn’t continue fighting, Slyvie herself joined the fight. It didn’t made any differences whether it was a one on one or five on one. The only reason we weren’t dead yet was that she controlled her strength on each hit so that it wouldn’t cause permanent injuries. She was so good at controlling her strength that she could send Aston, who was able to handle hits, flying and changing her target to Slyvie, who wasn’t able to take hits, the next moment while dealing the same amount of injuries to each of them.

Her instant reaction and control of her body made us in awe of herself, if we were not the one getting beaten up so badly. The hell ended about three hours after it started.

Due to intense usage of your body, you have gained the titles “Punching Bag”, “Living Hell” and “Zombie”.

Punching Bag

You got hit so many times that your body had gotten used to being hit.

+10 Vitality, +5 Willpower, +10 Defense, +1 Health/Vitality

Living Hell

You have went through hell and survived through it. That had caused you to become more resistance to both physical and mind attacks.

+5 Vitality, +10 Willpower, +10 Defense

Zombie

You are like a zombie. It doesn’t matter how many times you go down, you rise back up.

+15 Vitality, +10 Willpower, +5 Defense, +1% of max Health to Health regen

“Good job Gracie” is not something that I’ll say to her. The gains from the beat up was very high for the duration that we spent in it but the amount of pain that we had to go through for it is not worth it.

What I did found out from the aftermath was that each of us five obtained all three titles and benefited from it but other than that, Gracie also gained a title.

Movable Fortress

For remaining under attacks for long durations while dodging and returning each and every one of those hits, you have gained stats.

+20 Strength, +30 Dexterity, +15 Vitality, +25 Willpower, +10 Defense

Finding out about her title just makes me angry. She had already been so strong, and now she just had to gain a title to make her even stronger. Just how could we ever catch up to her? The differences in strength between ours and hers just seemed to keep on widening. That’s the feeling that I got. At least she wasn’t an enemy and that she was speed training us, that’s the only consolation that we got. Maybe the last part was the bad point.

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Author’s Notes: So, the protagonist isn’t a op character. Maaaaaaaaybe Gracie is one. Maybe.