The next morning, Arthur’s morning wake up call came in the form of a solid kick in the ribs, with no holding back, followed by a deep, angry voice shouting just above his prone body.

“Up on your feet, fledgling!”

Arthur scrambled for his spear, entangling himself even further in his blankets. He stopped a couple seconds later, when the shock of being woken up so suddenly and violently dissipated, and he stared up at Jackal in confusion.

“W-what?” Was all he could say, his mind still slightly muddled from sleep. Looking around the tent, there was still no sunlight coming from outside, and the only source of light was a simple rock with a light-producing inscription written on it.

“If I have to train you, then we’re going to do it my way. I’ll treat you as the worst recruit to ever join the hunters of this tribe, and you’ll be grateful I even give you this opportunity.” Jackal eyed him, waiting for him to disagree or complain, but Arthur had enough sense to shut up, for the moment.

Arthur had already decided he needed to train hard if he wanted to be able to defend himself, and if he needed to be roughed up a bit, then that was a fair price. If the thug just wanted to trash him, and he got nothing in return, then he’ll just have to speak with Nadia again, and hope she was as honest as she seemed.

He clothed himself quickly, under the watchful eyes of the hunter, which was fitting, considering he was starting to feel just a bit like prey.

When he was ready, Jackal instructed him to take position in the centre of the tent, and then started moving him through a long series of warm up exercises.

Some of them he recognized, and even knew how to perform well enough; others he had heard of, but never done before. Most of them, though, were completely new, and quite… exotic.

Exotic meaning incredibly difficult to even get into a start up position, resulting in Arthur falling to the floor and eating sand quite often. As if that wasn’t enough, Jackal wasn’t shy in using the safe end of his bardiche to point out his mistakes, tapping him with slightly more force than he felt was necessary.

After an undetermined amount of time spent stretching his legs over his head, trying to balance himself in contorted positions, and a few other exercises he wasn’t quite sure how to describe, sunlight started filtering through the cloth coverings of the tent.

Jackal seemed to take this as a sign that the torture was over, since he stopped trying to make a pretzel out of him, and Arthur took that as his clue to collapse on the floor, exhausted.

“Honestly,” Jackal started with a deep sigh, “you are even worse than I thought. I expected something since you managed to kill a Larvae Queen, but this… what combat Skills over Level twenty do you have?” Jackal asked, extending his arm towards him as if he could physically hand the answer over to him.

Arthur for his part simply stared blankly at his face, prompting the Oni to blink.

“Are you serious? Well, this’ll make things harder, but… do you have weapon-related Expertise Skills?”

Arthur looked at him for a moment, but he guessed there was no harm in telling his instructor about what he needed to know to teach him.

“[Self-taught Spearmanship], Level 4, and [Self-taught Javelin], Level 10.” He answered, truthfully. He would keep the other Skills for himself, if he didn’t ask him.

Jackal looked thoughtful for a moment, before shaking his head.

“I’m not about to waste my time teaching you how to use a javelin properly, that would take too long, and it’s not even a weapon I know much about. You’ll have to find yourself another master, or create a style for yourself,” the Oni actually snorted at that, as if the thought was absurd to him.

“The spear on the other hand… it’s not too different from a bardiche, in that it has absolutely nothing in common with one, but you should be able to at least get the [Royal Oni Spearmanship] Skill. If you have even a grain of talent in you, which I doubt.”

To Arthur’s horror, Jackal flashed him a predatory smile, “well then, let’s go out and see if you can even hold your weapon properly, then I’ll grind some proper basic forms into you.”

As both of them were expecting, Arthur’s capability to hold a spear properly was on another level in comparison to Jackal’s requirement. The latter was chilling in a penthouse on top of a very tall skyscraper, while the first was currently scraping the bottom of a well.

The following was a long session of Arthur taking a stance, and Jackal smacking him in the calves and on the back, trying to make him adopt proper positioning while leaving as many bruises as he possibly could.

When the time for lunch came, Jackal deemed they had wasted enough of his time, and left Arthur sprawled on the ground, groaning from the soreness coming from all over his body.

As he laid there, a couple members of the tribe whom he didn’t know came to check on him on their way to lunch, but when it was clear that he was still alive, they left him to his own devices.

While waiting to recover enough to regain the ability to stand, Arthur wondered whether the pain was really worth it. The question was quite simple, in all honesty. While this method of training was harsh and painful, especially because Jackal seemed to hold a grudge against him, it was also the safest way he had levelled up with combat Skills until today.

And he had levelled up. His spear Skill was now Level 6, two levels in just a couple hours, or tacks, of training, and he hadn’t done anything apart from standing there. And getting hit repeatedly, but that probably didn’t have much to do with it; although, then again, maybe it did, he couldn’t be sure.

In the end, as Arthur slowly lifted himself up from the ground, he decided that all of this pain was worth it, and that it was probably normal in this kind of training. Plus, it would be better to have both Levels and actual skill, rather than just relying on his Skills to keep him alive.

That said, the day was far from over, and Arthur needed something in his stomach, or else he wouldn’t be able to get through it all with both an empty belly and sores covering his back.

So he rushed, or well, wobbled, towards the centre of the cluster of tents, where people were already eating.

Arthur found himself in the biggest tent in the village, which he understood was some kind of storage facility for everything else other than food. It was shortly after lunch, and he was still sore from his morning training.

A part of his deal with Nadia was that he would help the community by working from lunch to dinner, but what that work would entail would be decided by the grey Oni currently standing in front of him.

The Oni’s name was Stiff, which was a very well fitting name as far as it went. The man was built like a mountain, slightly bigger than even Jackal, making him wonder how he had never noticed the man in the time he had spent in the village.

His jaw and shoulders both resembled solid cubes of marble, and he stared unflinchingly into Arthur’s eyes, as if he was analysing his very soul.

After what felt like an eternity, the mountain spoke.

“The Elder told me you can make wood,” he took a shaft of chitin, a third longer than Arthur’s arm was, from a nearby table, “Can you recreate this arrow shaft?”

His voice was deep and thunderous, his eyes still fixed on him, and Arthur felt like a deer caught in the headlights for more than a few seconds.

“I- Yes? Why?” He asked more than answered, stumbling over each word. Stiff didn’t seem to mind, although he couldn’t be sure since the Oni’s face never seemed to change expression.

“There shafts are made from chitin. It’s good enough for weaker creatures, but the material is too heavy to aim properly, and most arrows break after just one or two uses.” He stopped for a moment, then spoke up again, thrusting the shaft of chitin to Arthur. “Show me,” he demanded simply, and Arthur obliged.

He took some sand from the ground, a material which was luckily in abundance even inside the tribe’s tents, and went to work on the object.

The modelling process was simple, since it was just a thin and long cylinder, but he focused as best as he could to make it evenly balanced and trying to impress upon it his will for bumps and imperfections to not form.

The seed took barely more than a minute to finish growing when he was done, and Stiff seemed moderately impressed by the display. But as he inspected it, the Quartermaster looked less satisfied than before.

“Can you make the arrow heavier on one end?” The man asked without beating around the bush.

Arthur didn’t bother to answer, and simply made another one, with a third of its weight distributed on one end as he had requested.

What followed was a half-tack of back and forth, as Stiff demanded a change on how the shaft was balanced, and then having him add holes of various shapes and sizes to fit arrowheads and fletching.

When he was seemingly satisfied, Stiff nodded, “Very well. You can call me Quartermaster, master, or sir. I’ll need this much shafts, as fast as you can make them,” he said, raising a hand and showing him five fingers.

“Only five?” Arthur asked, confused.

He honestly regretted asking, as the Quartermaster’s mouth split in a feral grin, and he spoke with a mild tone.

“Five hundred.”

Arthur’s back, legs, and arms were sore and hurt. His head pounded as if someone was actively trying to break through with a sledgehammer. His hands were sweaty, knees weak, but the thought of spaghetti upset his stomach at the moment.

At his side laid a pile of arrows, three hundred and twenty one to be precise. He had kept count, since it was one of the few things he could do to distract himself from the mind-breaking, repetitive work.

He had to catch a break every twenty five arrows, to prevent spikes of pain from forming in his brain, but every time he had to take longer and longer time off, and he was starting to doubt he could make his deadline before his infernal shift ended.

Again, he wondered if it was worth it.

On one hand, they were letting him stay and giving him food. On the other hand, he could probably sell the shafts to someone, and get much more money than two meals a day; then again, there was no one to sell to, apart from the tribe, so that was a useless thought.

Another benefit was that his Magick set was now Level 15, and a sigh escaped Arthur’s lips as he realized that just for that, it was already enough for him. He was probably developing an addiction to levelling up, but that was a thought for when he had a shrink available.

Just as he was about to turn back to his work, Stiff appeared in the little corner which had been given to him to perform his Magick, which now presented a deep hole dug in the ground, from which Arthur got the essential component for his spell.

“Dinner time has arrived. How many did you manage?” The Quartermaster asked.

Arthur grimaced, hoping the man wasn’t prone to violence as Jackal was; he probably wouldn’t survive even a friendly slap on the back from the giant.

“Well, I didn’t- get everything done. But I can probably finish by the end of tomorrow?” Arthur answered hesitatingly.

It was then, as he noticed Stiff appeared neither angry nor disappointed, that Arthur realized something. And as comprehension dawned on his face, the Quartermaster from hell gifted him with another of his terrifying grins.

“I didn’t expect you would get it all done in the span of the next ten cycles, but this is impressive. Now that we know your limits, it’ll be easier to know how much I can stretch you before you break.” He revealed to him, still wearing his ferocious grin.

Arthur ignored any sexual innuendo about stretching that may have been imagined there, and simply started in horror at the giant looming above him.

“Well now. I think it’s time we go for dinner. We don’t want to be late.” He started to walk out of the tent, but turned around one last time before going outside.

“You must eat, if you want to survive.”