After I woke up from my brutal defeat the head maid Tresha helped me by rubbing my bruises down with a low-tier medical gel which was a thick green solution with little grains of crushed herbs suspended in it.

“You had already lost the sparing match. Why didn’t you just surrender before you got yourself hurt? Are you trying to get yourself killed!” Tresha scolded me.

I opened my mouth to speak but right before I was able to respond she rubbed down a bad bruise I had on my forearm which made me flinch in pain while instinctively moving back.

“Don’t run!” she gripped my hand and pulled me closer before I could even think about escaping.

“This stuff will help you heal faster, and don't you look at me with those puppy dog eyes, it's your fault we have to be doing this in the first place,” she said sternly sending me a glare for moving too much and making her job more difficult that it had to be.

My two sisters were giggling in the background but didn't directly interject in the conversation yet.

I looked out of my window trying desperately to ignore the stinging pain produced by the medication and my injuries.

It was about an hour before we would normally have lunch so the sun was shining brightly in the sky producing a beautiful sight when the light hit the vibrant leaves of the trees surrounding the mansion.

The time of day also meant that the air was hot and dry which irritated my injuries.

Today was the first day that I truly felt the effect the Polluted Soul trait had on my body.

I felt an almost ghostly corrosive sensation and I felt like there were little worms floating around in my body with caused minor pulsating pain in the rhythm of my heartbeat.

I knew that the reduction in my constitution meant that my wounds would heal slower because they didn’t warn me about the healing process would also become more painful.

I constantly felt those beating worms in my body but the pain was not nearly as pronounced as it was now.

Now that I got accustomed to the sight of the trees I tried to distract myself by focusing more on the people around me.

I was currently sitting on my bed while Tresha was sitting in front of me on the chair I normally would use to sit at my desk.

It had a tiny bookshelf over it where I kept the reading material I needed to catch up on for my classes as well as anything else I was personally interested in.

Right now the book I was the most focused on was A Basic Guide To Melee Weapons by Nathanael Charles.

It was what I was currently using to learn the basics of melee combat which covered a wide variety of different weapons while also being a skill book.

It was great to start me off with because while I thought I would be using the obvious protagonist answer of a single long sword as a weapon when I actually tried it out I realized I didn’t actually like using swords at all.

The movements used with them were a lot stiffer and strict than anime had led me to believe and if you were actually planning on using a one-handed sword it made absolutely no sense to use it without a shield which I found inconvenient.

Realizing this I tried to move away from swords and into other types of melee weapons but as it turns out bad news comes in pairs and I discovered that most melee weapons required extremely good footwork and body movements to be used to their full potential

Something that running really fast didn’t actually translate well to.

As a matter of fact, melee combat was much more similar to dancing, something I had always been terrible at even as a child.

My problem was that despite my incredible learning speed for most things my mind-body coordination was ass which made me terrible at sports and was also terrible at resting to things at the moment.

While swords and stuff like that in fantasy novels were considered simple weapons that any tom dick and harry could use (My lazy nature was a big unspoken part of my decision to pick it up after all) I was beginning to think that the other weapon types were actually much easier.

In any case, I already talked way too much shit and gave a bold speech in front of Kent and my siblings about how I knew what I was doing in spite of Kent's protest which honestly made me feel like an idiot now.

I had absolutely no experience with any of this but I thought that I knew better than everyone else simply because I was technically older and thought of myself as the smart one.

Again just like earlier, I could only swallow my shame. I had already made my bed in this mess and now was the time to lay in it.

I was a quick learner and a genius after all I had a knack for figuring things out eventually and my mind was already a buzz thinking of different solutions to my problems.

Tresha saw my attention was being taken away by the bookshelf so after she finished rubbing the last of my visible bruises with the gel she handed me a glass of bitter clear medication to drink and then got up and took a book off of the shelf.

“You should be focusing on getting some rest and recovering right now not that you're falling behind on your academics,” she said in an exacerbated sigh. she seemed to be thinking of something but didn't say it out loud.

She then opened the book at a random page and was looking through it slowly while we talked.

“I can't understand why you would want to embarrass yourself like that. It was already clear that you were not good enough with the sword to be focusing on other things.” Rina added that while Tresha was too focused on something else to add to the conversation.

While she spoke she walked from the corner of the room all the way to where Tresha was sitting next to my bed.

“Why are you so stubborn about this anyway?” Emma asked in a very light and friendly tone trying to diffuse a bit of my discomfort but knowing that she was trying to do that only made me angrier.

“The reason I continued the fight is that unlike the two of you I have half of a brain” I retorted back quickly and snarkily.

‘What is that supposed to mean” Rina fired back not expecting the sudden insult.

“You shouldn't talk like that to your sisters like that,” Tresha hit me with the book that she was holding way harder than was necessarily causing my headache to get worse.

I was really getting tired of being hit at this point.

“Don’t do that, the half of the brain he has left has gotten shacked around enough, I think he's going crazy” Rina added to get chuckles from the people in the room.

I hated this atmosphere It felt like I was getting ganged up on and beaten.

If I didn't want this to continue I would have to fight back.

“Haven’t the two of you realized that our skills level up much faster when we're fighting our teacher” that line moved the satisfied expression from my sisters’ faces which made me smirk.

“Think about it. It took me a whole year to go from the Crawl to Walk and eventually to Sprint, and all of that took just fifteen levels in total” I began to lecture them.

“With each level up it becomes harder to get the next one which is why in the entire month since we had dinner with dad I hadn't been able to level it up again by even one level” I gave a pained expression I had a habit of making exaggerated hand movements while I talked to get the point across which became extremely painful due to my injures.

“Despite this, I’ve only spared with Kent two times now and I’ve already gotten to evolve Sprint to the next tier”

Both my sisters looked at me in shock while contemplating the new information.

“How were we supposed to know that?” Rina shouted while shooting me a glare as though me giving basic information was somehow offensive to her.

“By using the basic critical thinking skills the two obviously don’t have access to you have both already fought with kent this week you should have noticed how much faster you were improving,” I said in a sarcastic tone.

*Slam*

*Smack*

“Ow, Mom…? What was that for?” Trisha quickly slammed the book she was holding shut and then quickly delivered a thunderous hit to my forehead with it without warning.

“Like I already said you shouldn’t talk to your sisters like that Norman,” She told me in a lecturing tone while a rubbed my forehead.

“Why did I get hit for doing the exact same thing they did not twenty seconds ago” I was finding it extremely difficult to keep my cool now.

Being called dumb for no reason was upsetting enough but there was nothing I hated more than unfair treatment.

“Also I’m not your mother” Tresha completely ignored my question and continued to speak in a self-righteous tone.

“You basically are anyway. You're the one who’s been taking care of me ever since I was a month old, remember,” I said back.

I was upset but I was also a child with little autonomy, I knew from dealing with my old mother that the best thing to do in situations like this was to get on your caretaker's good side.

If you didn't they could make your life very difficult until they let out their frustration, and again as a child, there was little you could do about that.

I knew that Trisha liked me more than my sisters and I guessed that a woman around her age would want children, especially with how much time and effort she took with me when no one was looking.

“Who told you that?” she went from angry to suspicious.

“I remember we used to play those little alphabet games together remember, I always considered you my mom” the sentence came out a little awkward on my part but being a little kid had its advantages as she didn't seem to pick up on the poor delivery and unnatural wording.

It helped that what I was saying was also the truth.

The best kinds of manipulation always used the truth to some degree.

Luckily the moment I gave that line another one of the maids knocked on the door.

She was another maid to whom I had become accustomed.

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name but she was slightly shorter than Tresha, had short platinum hair tied in a regal-looking bun, and had a pair of black rectangular glasses and pearl blue eyes which gave her an intelligent appearance.

She wore the same outfit as all of the other maids but what made her stand out to me was her pointy ears and her hair color which was a marker of elvan heritage and the fact that similar to Tresha, she was assigned to deal with most of our needs, especially for the girls.

“Sorry to interrupt but we need help preparing dinner, and it is your supposed to be on the roster for meal preparation today” the maid spoke in a quiet voice that lacked any kind of energy.

I came to realize through my interactions with her that her lack of energy wasn't due to overwork but was simply a part of her natural disposition.

She wasn't lazy per se but she definitely did not like to waste energy.

‘I'm going to go help in the kitchen now, you three behave yourselves and make sure to study.”

The closest thing I had to a mother promptly left the room placing my book back on the shelf along with the others, but her tone of voice clearly showed that she was restraining her happiness.

“I also see you as our mother,” Emma added quickly as Tresha was leaving.

She was trying to piggyback off of my statement to increase her relationship score with Tresha.

It was an awkward and poorly timed statement but her social-related skills had been leveling slowly but surely and I could only imagine how terrifying she would be once she got older and more experienced.

Rina didn't notice any of the social manipulation going on and just came at me screaming.

“What else are you hiding beside the sparing thing?” She looked genuinely upset and I didn't understand why that was the question she wanted to ask now.

“Nothing, and I wasn’t hiding anything I just didn't bother mentioning it before because I didn’t think it mattered.” I got a bit defensive at that question because I didn't know when it became my job to figure things out for the two of them.

“What the difference?” Rina was getting more and more unreasonably and angry by the moment and at this point and it was annoying me.

God, there were many damn annoyances today!

In the past, six or so hours I got my ass beat beyond recognition in front of everyone and then got made fun of for it.

When I tried to defend myself and explain my reasoning I got a hard-cover book to my forehead.

If anyone should have been angry and screaming it was me so how come I was the one being yelled at especially for something so stupid?

“Rina, we should go downstairs and practice our mana manipulation,” Emma stated calmly as he grabbed he sister by the shoulder.

“Norman’s just been practicing on the side without the help of a teacher and his already ahead of us,” Emma, the saint that she was, realized that I wanted to be by myself and tried to push Rina in that direction.

“Didn’t you want to beat him soon? Let’s get in some extra practice before lunch so that you can get one step closer to that”.

Rina for her part was not having any of it and continued to argue long after I stopped listening to her or responding to anything she had to say.

Thankfully, eventually, Emma got her to leave me the hell alone.

I was already exhausted for the day and my body was in excruciating pain but I still had a lot of important things to do.

I pushed off of bed my screaming muscles reminding me that this was all my fault. The worst part about having so much muscle soreness was that I knew that this was only the beginning.

When I get up tomorrow morning I am going to feel infinitely worse and it still only going to get worse from there until about 48 hours from the initial exercise.

Despite that, I got down to the floor and began to finish my new daily workout.

Push-ups

(96/100)

(97/100)

(98/100)

(99/100)

(100/100)

Push-ups (Completed)

I rested on the floor panting like a dog and sweating like I was trying to turn my bedroom into a swimming pool.

Back in my old body doing twenty pushups in a row wouldn’t be that big of a deal but I was five years old now and one couldnt underestimate the effect of a workout when you were already tired.

If there was any consolation it was that I could feel Endure slowly pushing me forward and drip-feeding me stamina so that I could continue pushing.

The fact that I could do this much was insanely impressive in its own right but I still had more work to do if I wanted to complete my goal for the day.

[Achivments]

[Super Human Training]

To complete this advancement one must complete the following workout every day for one hundred days.

Push-ups (100/100) (Completed)

Pull-ups (80/100)

Sit-ups (100/100) (Completed)

Squats (100/100) (Completed)

Run (10Km/10Km) (Completed)

Days Left: 92

Rewards:

+ 5 to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution

Unlock Traits:

Athletic

Endure

Disciplined

Unlock Advancements:

[Gym Rat]

[Super Human Training II]

[Stamina Master]

The achievements tab was one of the two major things I gained access to after my first evolution and to me, it was the most impactful.

It consisted of thousands of different selectable achievements that you could choose from to complete.

They were organized in alphabetical order but the ones you started completing would be at the top of the list whenever you entered the tab.

If you did not choose to select an achievement but completed all of the requirements you would not make progress on said achievement nor would you gain any of the rewards.

Meaning that it was in your best interest to familiarize yourself with the tab and select the achievements that you were likely to achieve passively.

An example was the [Healthy Eater] achievement which required one to eat enough food to fulfill one basic caloric requirement every day for one year.

While I wasn't actively trying to complete that advancement it was something that would likely be completed in the background at some point without me noticing so I still chose to select it.

Most of the advancements were unique but followed the same general formula as the ones above, a bunch of tasks that needed to be completed daily over a specific time period and if you did all of them without pausing for a single day you would get a reward.

At first, I didn't interact with this menu because I was overwhelmed with the sheer amount of choices you had but I slowly but surely narrowed down what I wanted to complete at the moment.

The [Super Human Training] was one of the three achievements that I was actively trying to complete right now.

I did most of the exercises while I was finishing my morning training with my sisters but I still had twenty more pull-ups to do and I would need to head downstairs to do so.

It was nice that the exercises did not all have to be completed in one go.

The only two exercises I could do all in one go at the moment was the ten-kilometer run which in my past life would have been the hardest for me to complete due to my piss poor cardio but was now a breeze due to my skills, traits and the effort which I had already put into running.

I took a deep breath and remembered the brutal beatdown that I took earlier today.

I would defiantly make Kent eat his words and prove that I was capable of learning both sword combat and magic at the same time but to do that I would need to complete my advancements, place my bet and get accustomed to this.

I went to the bookshelf and picked up the book that my substitute mother used to hit me upside the head.

This would be my secret to finally getting the upper hand on my teacher.