We head inside… Going to the top floor… I'm starting to get nervous again. It is just… Being locked inside for an entire year… No escape… No normal person could train for an entire year straight without having mental problems… I mean, when I was a child, before I came to Shienta I trained everyday non stop but this is… Worse... It is different.

Leon and Lance both look similar to me. Trice and Leaf came with us and look the same way. As if they are nervous for us. I'm surprised both decided to go through with it. Leon looks around the room for a moment.

“It doesn't look like we have nearly enough food to survive in here.”

“Yea, we don't need much food. The tree will give us a food supply.”

“How is that?”

“… You were inside the room for two weeks. Did you not figure it out?”

“No, we almost ran out of food and had to ration it out the last three days...”

“… Oh shit! I'm sorry, I should have told you about the fridge that the tree can form. It should have enough food for all three of us to live off of. I also have a 3month food supply just in case.”

“So you mean to tell me we almost starved because you forgot to tell us something!?”

“… Yea… My bad.”

Well, now everyone is mad at me. I guess almost starving with that much food they didn't know about around… How was I supposed to know they didn't know how to get food? Even Leaf looks at me angrily. I feel like such an idiot right now. I can think of all these complex patterns and ways to get stronger but little things like this slip my mind.

“Well… Sorry again, little things just... Sorry you almost died because I'm an idiot... Leaf and Trice close the doors on the outside. Until they close the remaining doors the trial wont start.”

Leaf's point of view

We close the doors locking in the three of them… It feels like I'm losing again. It feels like Kite is leaving me behind. Once these doors open again they'll be an entire year stronger… It hurts my heart to think I'm slowly getting left behind again… There is nothing I can do though… Why am I so weak? I… There has to be a way to get stronger. Trice seems to notice the frustration I'm having.

“What's wrong?”

“It's… Just… They're going to get a whole year stronger… What if Kite gets so strong he doesn't need me anymore?”

“… I feel the same way with Lance… Well, I guess not the exact same… Lance is so reckless I'm not sure I'll be able to stop him from rushing to his death. Being in his party helps alleviate some of the stress but… There is always some left...”

“Can't we do something? I just… I don't want to get left behind by everyone.”

“Do you want to stay in one of these time chambers?”

“I thought you couldn't handle it… I don't want to force you.”

“I said I couldn't handle being stuck inside for an entire year. I think I can handle a month or two.”

“Just a month would help me feel better. It would help me focus more on training than anything else… We just need to remember the fridge thing Kite was talking about.”

“Yea, before we enter. I would definitely like to gather some supplies. I doubt they'll even know we didn't close the doors yet. Let's prepare before we lock ourselves in.”

Kite's point of view

We're going to have an actual battle to start. Sort of seeing how strong the three of us are. Once we exit here, we'll have another fight to see how much stronger we've gotten. We square up like I did with Darkclaw and Sock. All of us standing towards the other two, sort of forming a triangle... Who is going to m-.

Leon rushes at me. Big mistake, I have too much burst I can do now. I activate all my buffs. I form my shadow doppelgangers. Giving my shadow wings to my left clone which is Aegis. The will make his attacks more unpredictable since he can fly. I start to take in a breath for what seems to be a dragon breath attack towards Lance who is also running at me. He dodges out of the way… It was a bluff the entire time.

I shield charge into goblin punch combination at Leon. My attacks are coming out too fast for him to counter with his wooden training tonfas. He was also so focused on attacking that he barely even attempted to defend. He makes one punch which is easily dodged by me, far to straightforward of an attack.

I punch with my retractile claws outstretched, Aegis pulls the metal back around my fingertips enough for this attack to connect with both hands. Soaking them in my numbing poison before hand. I don't cut enough to leave scars. The attack is enough to beat Leon. He didn't land a single hit before he was defeated... He should have thought his attacks through better.

Just me against Lance now. Both of my shadow clones are still up, that entire fight with Leon was only a few seconds. We all rush towards Lance together. With all my buffs still activated, both my shadow clones still up. Lance will be on the ropes the entire-.

Lance rushes in. What is he planning on doing!? I take an actual breath while preparing for him to get close. He thrusts his training spear at me while also throwing out a kick. Yea right, that isn't going to work against me anymore.

I block his training spear by palming it away from myself. His kick landed between my legs as I walked. I continued to walk, pushing his foot away off balancing him enough for his wooden training spear to miss completely. He looks amazed at my dodge up until he got a face full of poison breath. Enough poison to drop a troll, it phases him but isn't enough to finish him off. HOW!?… It is enough for my two clones to get two strikes on him, knocking him down since his body was weakened form the poison... What has Nami been teaching these idiots?

“Are you two for real right now? What was that!? You didn't make any intention of hiding your attacks against me.”

Lance and Leon answer almost together.

“Yea what was that!?”

Lance took over the conversation. “You move just like Nami does. It is like you know which moves we are going to do before we even do them.”

“I sort of do, every attack you used was easily predictable. You need to add variety to your attacks other than swinging your weapon around… I guess my numbing breath is good enough to weaken you… Sock wasn't foolish enough for it to work on him… Leon you barely got an attack off before you were defeated, did you really think you could beat me with a regular jab when I have all my buffs going?”

This seems to deter Lance… It feels like something is wrong with him. Lance wouldn't fall for a trick like that so easily. I didn't even need my poison breath against Leon… Did Sock beat them when they were training together? It seems the only thing they've been doing against Nami is get beaten up. Neither have been fully learning from her at all… I guess the only thing I can do is become their teacher as well.

“So what moves has Nami taught you two?”

Leon answers this question.

“Just a bunch of unarmed techniques. I don't think I'll ever use them outside of unarmed sparring.”

“…You guys get your asses kicked by someone repetitively like that and don't think maybe she is so strong because she is that strong unarmed? You both are too reliant on your weapons. If you don't start soaking in this training your going to get left behind by everyone taking it seriously… Like Sock.”

It seems I was right. I guess neither of them put it together. Why was Sock (someone who lost to Gobber in one hit) suddenly so much stronger. It is because he cared about his training, taking the losses in stride to become stronger from them. To the point where he was so focused on learning he caught up and passed everyone else who was above him… I guess losing to Gobber might have been a good thing in the long run.

I had fought against them without Gear… Gear is in here but he doesn't have training weapons attached to his hands, he could seriously injure someone if he fought against them. Using him is essentially doubling the amount of people they are fighting, so it would feel like cheating. I haven't needed to use him in so long that he has just been sitting in my room in the castle mimic… Trice always has her Gear mk2 with her.

I plan on upgrading Gear… At least to the point where he can move on his own. So I'll be adding folding legs to him, sort of like his hands. Maybe they can double as another pair of hands if he is in backpack mode.

They have both went off to a corner to sulk. Lance is hitting a dummy with his spear while Leon is running laps around all the supplies I stored here. I could understand Lance's loss, he wasn't expecting a new breath attack. Still, he seems almost weaker than he was before... Maybe it is just my imagination? Maybe I've just gotten that much stronger. I call out to both of them…

“So, do either of you know what you did wrong in that fight?”

Neither of them answer, both continue doing what they were doing. I think I might have encouraged them both too much.

“Leon, I easily seen you moving towards me to attack as you rushed full speed. This gave me plenty of time to set-up a counterattack. I bluffed my dragon breath towards Lance so that you and him would be separated far enough for me to finish you off with no repercussions from him. Also you were so focused on attack I easily beat you before you could even land a single attack. You need far mo-.”

Leon cut me off.

“WE GET IT! YOU GOT STRONGER AGAIN! YOU ALWAYS DO BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPID CLASS! Stop rubbing it in our faces!”

“What are you talking about!? We're all getting stronger, when you get beaten you have no one to blame but yourself… What happened to you two?... You both used to put in more effort to get stronger...”

“We all just can't bounce back from a loss like you!... When Nami beat me in our first fight, it was as if she wasn't even trying to win. I trained my ass off since then and all that got me was more beatings from her… Do you know how humiliating it is to lose to the same person over and over again?”

“… Until a few weeks ago… That is all I did was lose… I guess you weren't there from the beginning... When we set out on our journey. Me, Lance and Kattie, the first enemy I fought was a slime… I almost lost to a slime… Do you know how much of a setback that was from my last life!? I was clearing tier 5 and 6 dungeons easily in my past life. A group hired me to tank an easy dungeon for them and I ended up falling into a trap room with a very skilled enemy that killed me.”

It seems what I'm saying is starting to sink in to him. Neither of them speak so I continue.

“I was forced to start over from nothing… I knew what real strength was, so I tried to reproduce it with my weak body. Even still I continued to lose. Almost every single fight I was in, I lost or got knocked out. Every loss showed me a kink in my makeshift fighting style. Losing is nothing to feel bad about. Losing is the quickest way to get better. It shows your weakest points, the ones people better than you are going to exploit until you fix them… Instead of fixing them you've given up… Stopped getting stronger... I guess that is where we're different. I'm just a better loser than you.”

Leon finally speaks. “… How… How do I get stronger then?”

“You try hit me. Until you can hit me you don't stop. Every time you get knocked down you get up again and fix your mistakes. When you can finally hit me you are stronger than when you couldn't hit me. Then you keep hitting me until you can beat me. Then beat me until I can't even hit you. Then I have to get stronger otherwise I will get left behind…”

We square up. My motivation has gotten him excited. The spark in his eye is back after that, the spark that Nami had put out. He charges at me and I sidestep him with circle walking and grab his arm that he tried to hit me with, slamming him down on his stomach with an aikido throw… As excited as he is, he still has a long way to go to catch up to me.