Noboru decided to blitz the monster before it could notice his presence, but he underestimated the beast’s perception. The moment he dashed out from the underbrush, the Gorillama whipped around towards him. It hocked a spit directly at Noboru, but failed to account for his speed so the spit splashed behind him. Noboru could hear the grass sizzle behind him, it would not be a pretty sight if he got hit by that. He quickly banished those thoughts from his mind, it would do him no good to be scared right now. As he continued his rush forwards, the monster opted for a larger area of effect attack. It swung its large, muscular arms in a half circle in front of him, forcing Noboru to halt his charge. The beast kept swinging its arms, trying to keep Noboru at bay. In the short intervals between swings, it was spitting at him. This was the Gorillama’s basic defensive strategy, and also the reason why so many people failed to subjugate the monster. However, Noboru was not just anybody. He dashed forwards after the next swing, dodging the Gorillama’s spit by a hair’s breadth. Some of the spray grazed his face as he jumped past, he felt a slight stinging pain in his face, but sucked it up and didn’t stop for a moment. The Gorillama panicked once Noboru got past its spit, it quickly attempted to turn and run. Noboru was not one to let that opening go, he stepped forwards and cut the beast’s rear legs right in their tendons, preventing the Gorillama from using them. He then jumped onto the monster’s back and cut through its neck from the back. The Gorillama head fell off of its shoulders, rolling slightly away from the corpse before stopping. The body of the beast collapsed, throwing Noboru slightly off balance. He quickly jumped away from the corpse as it finally fell over.

“How’d I do?” Noboru asked, looking towards the bush where Junior was hiding. Junior nodded, clearly impressed by Noboru’s showing. This kid killed without hesitation, I know Gaharad has them kill once but this is insane. Just who is this kid? Junior’s inner thoughts ran in direct contrast to the seemingly satisfied look on his face.

“Yeah, you did well. Didn’t seem like an issue for you at all. Maybe we should go for stronger prey then?” Junior turned towards his squad as he asked that question, looking for their opinion on the matter.

“Sure, but we’d have to go to a different hunting ground, the Gorillama is the strongest monster here. We thought we’d take at least a week to train Noboru here.” Arthur spoke first, with the other two nodding along as he spoke.

“Hmmm.” Junior hummed in thought. “Alright, we’ll leave tomorrow. Noboru, hunt as many Gorillama’s as you can before we leave, alright? It’ll boost your stats, even if only a bit.” Noboru nodded, then started walking into the underbrush on the other side of the clearing where he fought the Gorillama.

“Jameson, follow him and make sure he doesn’t get hurt. We’ll head back to camp and make sure we have everything all prepped to leave.” Junior sent Jameson with Noboru as an escort, while the rest of them headed back.

Roughly a week and a half after Noboru left the castle and hunted the Gorillama, Noboru had hit a plateau in his growth. The monster he was fighting no longer raised his stats very much, and didn’t even really count as training. He almost never ended the day tired. He also no longer needed an escort, the squad accompanying him trusted his skills, so they went around doing essential work and keeping up with their own training, while Noboru hunted. It was at times like these though that Noboru relied on others.

He asked Junior how to get out of his plateau. “Ah, yeah I expected this to happen, just not so soon. The monsters around here are too weak to give any real career soldier experience anymore. That’s why these grounds were basically deserted the whole time we hunted. The only people we saw were other rookie hunters. But luckily for you, there’s a way to get stronger even without increasing your stats. It’s only available to you heroes though, so us normal people can’t do it.” Noboru’s heart dropped when he heard those last words. I’m not a hero though, at least not according to Aiden… Will the method work for me? Before Noboru could get too deep in his thoughts Junior spoke once more. “ This is not going to make you physically stronger, it’s not a way to increase your attributes, it’s a way to increase your abilities.”

Noboru cocked his head in confusion. “But, the only ability I have is still hidden, I can't use it. How would I increase it?” Junior let out a small laugh. “No no, not the ones you already have. This is a way for you to gain new ones. Though, from what I’ve been told it’s only simple abilities, and there’s not many, but it will still get you stronger before we go onto actual combat.” Noboru blinked. A way to gain abilities… “We’ll start training tomorrow, for now, get some rest. This method is tiring, or so I’ve heard.”

At the same time, in the castle, the other students were receiving a similar lecture from Grand Cardinal James. "What abilities can we get?" Orochi was the first to ask questions. James smiled, "There easiest to gain, and most essential, are Summon Weapon and Avatar. You can get these simply by imagining the effect. Summon Weapon might take a bit because you have to imagine the right weapon, but there are only nine different options. Gaining Avatar is simple, but it might take you longer than anything else. Simply put, for Avatar you must let the Goddess into your body. By doing so, your body will become much stronger and your manipulation will be more efficient." The students all hummed in thought.

"Isn't that kind of vague? I mean, letting the Goddess into my body isn't something I can reasonably imagine." Gorou expressed his thoughts first, the rest of the students nodded along with him.

"Yes, it is. But there is no other way for us to explain it. After all, we cannot experience it, only you heroes can. However, I believe you all can do it given time. Please, spread out and begin trying both of these. Tomorrow, I will teach you other abilities, but today I want you to focus entirely on these two." The students split up after the Cardinal's words, each moving to a different space in the room. The room they were in was quite large, about the size of a university's lecture hall, and was used for a similar purpose. It was a hall used to teach, but it didn't teach normal subjects, it taught only the word of the Goddess. The reason why the students were learning here was simply because what they were learning was the word of the Goddess. According to the Cardinal, the Goddess left instructions abou any summoned heroes on how to make them grow. The training up until now had been normal, but now they were shifting into teaching as the Goddess intended. Starting with this.

Most of the students started with Summon Weapon. It was rather obvious why Avatar, even after the explanation, just didn't make sense to the students. To start, they didn't even believe in the Goddess. They understood that some entity must have summoned them, but they were skeptical, and rightfully so. On Earth, there were multitudes of different religions all trying to explain the same thing, and they expected it to be the same thing here. Summon Weapon on the other hand, made sense. It was just imagining an object appearing in your hand, anyone could do that. However, the students quickly realized how difficult it could be. The Grand Cardinal had told them the list of weapons they could summon, it was a total of nine: a dagger, a one and a half handed sword, a great sword, a katana, a battle-axe, a warhammer, a polearm, a bow, and a staff. The problem lay in imagining the specifics of each weapon. There are many different variations that exist of all nine weapons, and to imagine the weapon you had to imagine it with all of its different intricacies.

Even with this difficulty, it only took an hour before someone succeeded. Orochi was the first, who let out a roar of satisfaction when an all black dagger appeared in his hand. Next was Akane, she let out a yelp of surprise when an intricate staff suddenly appeared in her hands. James seemed pleased with her weapon, letting out a smile and a small chuckle. The next thing to occur shocked even him though. Instead of a weapon, what appeared next was a blinding flash of light. The air around Yuriko swirled as if it was moving to avoid her, and, despite her breath being steady, sweat dripped from every pore as if she was exercising. James opened his mouth in shock. "No way… Avatar… In one hour…" Yuriko had unlocked the hardest ability right off the bat. Akane, Naoko, and Gorou all crowded around her.

"Hey, hey, how did you do that? Teach me, teach me!"

"Yeah, yeah, teach us!"

"Please?"

Yuriko opened her eyes, the swirling wind around her subsided, and the sharp aura dissipated. "Uh, I just opened my mind." She said, as if that made perfect sense. The three around her all raised their eyebrows in confusion.

"Huh?" They said, looking at each other to see if any of the others understood what she meant. Yuriko just watched with a sheepish grin.

"That's really all I did."

Throughout the day the students all worked towards their abilities. Most of them were able to successfully manifest their weapon, including Yuriko, but there were a couple who weren't able to. "Man, I couldn't even get my weapon today." Naoko was sulking as the students returned to their rooms. Kei lightly slapped her on the back, " Mika and I couldn't either, you're not alone."

"Yeah but, Yuriko got hers and she got Avatar, I feel like the dumb kid in class right now." Naoko's head drooped as she spoke.

"You being the dumb kid aside, it's not a bad thing. Remember what the Cardinal said before we started, it might take us a while. You'll get it eventually."

"Yeah you're right… Hey wait, did you just agree with me being the dumb kid?!"

"Huh? I don't know what you're talking about." Kei whistled innocently, avoiding eye contact with Naoko. Yuriko looked at the two of them with a slight smile. They still got along well, even in these weird circumstances. Looking at the two reminded her of Noboru and herself, which made her thoughts naturally drift towards Noboru. I wonder how he's doing right now…

Noboru was currently running. He was at full speed, panting in exhaustion as he ran. A voice rang out from beside him. "Keep it up, you have to push yourself to the very limits to get results." That's right, Noboru was currently training. He had been running full speed for about three hours now, doing laps around the campsite. This was apparently the method for obtaining the ability Sprint, which increases your speed for a short period of time. All you had to do was keep running past your limits. Unfortunately for Noboru, his limits were rather high, so he had to run for three hours to approach them. He was getting close now, if he kept it up any minute now he would obtain the ability. Just as that thought crossed his exhausted mind a small chime rang in his ears. A display popped up in his face, just like the display that the stat orb showed. The message was simply "Sprint unlocked."

Noboru collapsed when he saw that. "Hah, hah, hah, don't tell me… that all of them… will be like this." He spoke while out of breath on the ground. Junior smiled at Noboru's obvious exhaustion. "Don't worry, the others are much worse." He said with an evil smile. Noboru groaned.

"I hate you."

"Haha, that may be, but my methods work."

Noboru sighed, but he couldn't refute Junior's statement. Noboru thought back to yesterday, when he first started training. Junior had started Noboru off just like the other students, telling him about Summon Weapon and Avatar, however, no matter how much Noboru tried, he was unable to get either ability to work. He had hypothesized that, just as he feared, he was unable to learn new abilities like the other heroes. But this training today proved that that was incorrect. So why can't I get the other two down? Noboru was left on the ground, exhausted and confused, until Junior forced him back on his feet.

"Now then, let's get started on the next one shall we?"