For the time being, the group decided to stay near the tower. It was somewhat of a novel experience for Ellis. Outside of the time he spent watching over Ena’s birth, he had always been mobile. He never truly stayed in one place for very long. The most would be two days. This time, Ellis decided to wait just a little bit longer.

The wooden gate, the spiral tower, all of it was weird. No, classifying it as weird would not be enough to fully encapsulate just how abnormal this place really was. He wanted to spend a few extra days searching through the whole area. For all he knew, there might still be additional secrets yet to be discovered. Ellis would never forgive himself if he were to accidentally overlook something crucial.

Outside of his own selfish reasons, for the others, they could simply think of this as something along the lines of a vacation. God knows they needed one.

Like this, nine days passed in a blink of an eye.

Ellis did not manage to uncover any of the ‘secrets’ he had been hoping for, but he did discover one interesting tidbit: there were no monsters here. Since his stay in the tower, he hadn’t encountered a single creature. This revelation somewhat surprised him. After three years of non-stop monster attacks, a day of peace really was quite jarring.

He later linked this new phenomenon to his current location. Something inside this tower was repelling all the monsters within the forest.

As a test, he wandered outside the gated area. It did not take long before he encountered a creature. It happened approximately three hundred meters away from the tower. This only served to confirm his theory.

Still, that raised the question, how were they able to get here? Wight, Ena, they could all be classified as ‘monster’. Even Ellis, depending on how you look at things, he too was a monster. So, what made them different?

The only point of contention he could think of was Ena. She was the one who guided them here. It was the purple light that she gave off. Again, he had to wonder, what sort of element did it correspond to? It was somehow able to bypass whatever ‘magic’ kept this place safe.

Well, thinking about it wasn’t going to do Ellis any good. Besides, this situation was kind of a good thing. At the very least, their stay here could now qualify as an actual vacation.

It was just unfortunate, then, that Wight and the rest of the wolf pack did not know the meaning of the word ‘relaxation’. They were far too antsy to appreciate the current situation. They often used their free time to spar with one another.

Now, their sparring wasn’t ordinary sparring. It was somewhat dangerous. It was the type of mock fight that resulted in snapped ankles and exposed ribcages. Teetering on the edge of death was also quite common. The most severe case of this happened during a fight between Umbra and Plush. Plush had nearly half of his throat ripped off. Back then, that fat wolf had lost so much blood that he looked noticeably skinnier than usual.

Luckily, Ena was here to provide immediate support. With her presence, these rambunctious brats could go all out without fear of the repercussions.

As for the little fox herself, she was probably the only one who knew how to enjoy life to the fullest.

Ena hunkered down beneath the base of the tower. She slept for most of the day, only occasionally waking up either to eat or to heal. In addition, she also increased her dragon scale consumption almost exponentially. Ellis could not even fathom just how many scales had disappeared into that tiny maw of hers.

Right now, she was truly acting like a lazy house cat.

While everyone else enjoyed their vacation in their own unique way, Ellis was hard at work trying to unearth the secrets to this tower. Unfortunately, even after nine days, he had yet to find any. At that point, he had to give up and face the truth.

With that, he shifted gears and decided to focus on something else. This time, Ellis wanted to practice the spear.

****

He stood in a small clearing. He could hear distant battle coming from behind the tower, but Ellis tried his best to ignore it. He took a deep breath and directed his gaze to the spear in his hands.

“Where do I even begin with this thing?”

Ellis knew next to nothing about spearmanship. For that matter, he knew next to nothing about martial arts in general. All this time, he had relied on his natural reflexes and his insane strength to persevere through the forest. If he was any weaker, if he was any slower, then Ellis would already be dead.

He knew he could not continue going on like this any longer.

For comparison’s sake, the actual heroes of this world probably landed somewhere near human civilization. Without a doubt, those guys would receive training from all sorts of people. Knight regiments, assassin guilds, secret martial arts clans, there were a number of various facilities that specialized in training combatants.

While he could not compete with any of Lull’s martial arts masters, Ellis still wanted to learn how to fight properly, if only to placate his worried heart.

Since he happened to stumble upon a spear, he naturally focused his attention on spearmanship.

The only problem here was how.

When speaking of the spear, Ellis recalled back to all the famous anecdotes and hearsays from his old world.

Out of the three main weapons (the spear, the sword, and the saber), the spear was the easiest one to pick up. It was a somewhat intuitive weapon that did not take years of training to use. If you were to equip a battalion of farmers with pointed sticks, then you would immediately have the capability of toppling a kingdom. As such, it was the chosen weapon of soldiers. Still, despite its ease of access, those who could truly qualify as a master of the art were few and far between.

Basically, it was a weapon with a low threshold and a high ceiling.

Well, Ellis didn’t really want to strive for perfection, so the fact that it had a low threshold suited him. In fact, he simply wanted to get a feel for the weapon and learn how to properly use it without the damn thing feeling so awkward in his hands.

“Besides, I doubt I can reach the pinnacle with a defective spear…” His eyes wandered to the hand attached near to the blade of the spear. It was a slender hand, befitting that of a beautiful woman, and while it did not weigh much, it still made the weapon feel lopsided.

To most people, this would have probably made the weapon unusable, but to Ellis, he only found it mildly inconvenient. In the face of his abnormal strength, it was like the difference between a paintbrush with 1000 bristles and a paintbrush with 1001 bristles. Completely negligible.

After putting all this into consideration, Ellis then had to wonder, what exactly comprised the art of the spear?

The spear itself wasn’t very complicated. It consisted only of a stick and a blade. Most fantasy novels like to embellish the weapon and exaggerate the attacks, but boiled down to its core, what was truly possible with such a simple weapon?

You could thrust with it and you could cut with it, but… was there anything else? There should be something else, right?

The spear was a universal weapon. It should include more than just thrusting and cutting. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he thought about the matter, he could only come up with thrusting and cutting.

Was it really just that?

Ellis did not want to admit it, but spearmanship really did only comprise of those two moves. So, with a bit of shaky resolve, he began his practice.

He thrust the weapon forward and he diagonally cut the air in front of him.

He thrust.

He cut.

Thrust.

Cut.

Thrust.

Cut.

Thrust.

Cut.

After over an hour of doing the same repetitive motions, he eventually stopped. A deep frown morphed his lips. “Doing it like this… it still feels awkward.”

It wasn’t much of a surprise, but Ellis did not really know what he was doing. Whether his form was good or his stance was proper, he was completely clueless.

“Something feels off.” He murmured to himself. “As expected, self-teaching yourself martial arts is a pretty bad idea, huh?”

After reaching such a conclusion, he decided to prematurely stop his ‘training’.

“Persisting down this road will only lead to self-destruction. In that case, then I only have one other option left…”

Live combat.

Even if he did not know how to properly handle a spear, through blood, battle, and forced circumstance, his body would naturally learn. It was the same sort of logic that fathers used whenever they threw their sons into the sea in hopes of teaching their children how to swim.

If it was through actual combat, then he’ll surely learn how to use the spear.

Sparring with Ena and the wolf pack was not an option. Firstly, he was concerned about his ability to hold back. Secondly, the gap between their strengths was too great of a thing to ignore. He needed to use other monsters as practice partners. Unfortunately, there were no monsters anywhere near his surroundings. He could travel three hundred meters away from the tower, but even then, the monsters there were weak.

No, he needed to return to the river.

“Well, I guess it was about time we returned. Those guys are getting antsier by the minute.” The mock battles between the wolf pups were getting more and more severe by the day. Ellis was secretly worried that they might accidentally kill each other.

With that decided, on the tenth day, the group began their journey back.

It was another month or so of traveling through the forest, before they eventually reached the river. Once there, it was back to a life of constant monster battle.

This time though, their usual pattern had changed. Ellis began participating in the fights. He took an active role in fighting off the monsters that attacked them. Of course, he did all this in hopes of honing his craft (spear).

Unfortunately, he quickly ran into another problem.

“I’m way too fucking strong.” He seriously stated with an exceptionally gloomy expression on his face.

Every time he fought… well, it couldn’t really be considered a fight. It was more along the lines of a one-sided slaughter. All it would take was a single thrust or swing, before the opposing creature exploded into chunks of meat. There was no thrill and there was no sense of danger.

He had truly gotten too strong. No, it wasn’t that he was too strong, but rather…

“As expected, the only creatures left are small fry.” He suddenly stated. “Well, I guess it’s only a natural outcome. After all, we practically tore through most of the strong ones. With the apex predators out of the way, the weak ones start coming out of the woodwork.”

Ellis had noticed this, but even the wolves were having an easier and easier time with combat. Wight and her siblings breezed through the hordes. Was this the result of their constant training or was it because their enemies had gotten weaker? Ellis did not really know, but he was leaning towards the latter.

After all, wasn’t it a bit too ridiculous seeing even that useless fellow Plush tyrannically ripping off the limbs of a bear more twenty times his size?

The only logical explanation was that the monsters had gotten weaker.

This gave Ellis a new sense of hope.

“If the monsters get weaker the further upstream we travel, then doesn’t that also mean the likelihood of finding human settlements also increases?”

While this was certainly good news, it also brought along its own fair share of problems. For one, it became increasingly harder for Ellis to find an opponent strong enough to practice with.

As such, he decided to tweak his original plans. He began controlling his strength. Or at least, he tried to.

Limiting his strength was a tasking process. He moved slower, his thrusts grew weaker, basically, he was learning the art of restraint. Naturally, things didn’t start off so easy. Holding back against your opponents, while doing such a thing sounded cool, pulling it off in real life was surprisingly harder than it looked. This was especially the case for Ellis, a person who never once held back in his entire life.

At the start, he got thrown around like a rag doll. The problem lay in the fact that he was restraining himself too much. At times, he would simply stand there, not moving. His opponents took that opportunity to attack. As a result, he was often sent flying through the air.

Was getting hit a part of holding back? Obviously not, but Ellis did not know that back then.

He only slowly learned through trial and error.

Thus, before Ellis could learn how to use the spear, he first needed to learn the art of holding back.

Like this, another year passed.