An alarm rang and a tenue light lit up the dark room, Noah opened his drowsy eyes and told to the vocal assistant to turn off the ringing tune.

It was deep in the night but inside Vesper was just past midday, there wasn’t much time left before the training resumed with its afternoon session.

Noah got off the bed to do a really soft work out, more like a stretch. He needed to wake up his mind and be focused, another few hours of sword swinging awaited him.

‘ I have to hurry and log in before the training resume so I can chat a bit with Lawrence.’

He laid down and inserted his head inside the gaming device, then he materialized in front of a door with Vesper written over it. Noah quickly opened and stepped inside it, he was eager to go back in that colorful and alive world.

There on the training ground, he found all the soldiers waiting for the Head Instructor, they were chatting amongst themselves divided into small groups.

Some nodded at Noah while he passed by, one even encouraged him. It was the one who was appointed as march director and caller for the swings, apparently he got really absorbed by the role he was given, thought Noah. He then went to sit in an empty place on a bench used for resting and waiting for Lawrence to come back. It wasn’t until 5 minutes were left that he showed up in a hurry, all sweaty and wearing a nice smile. Seeing him coming closer, Noah saluted him and indicated a free spot near his.

> asked Noah while laughing.

> replied Lawrence while joining on Noah’s laugh.

‘It’s really impressive. Here is Lawrence, laughing with me and all the NPCs are so lifelike! they salute me, talk amongst each other and that march director got transported by his assigned role; I even fear that the guy is beginning to think too much of himself. It’s almost as if being amongst real people, it would even fool me into thinking otherwise but there are only NPCs in the battalion’.

Noah could tell such an information because there weren’t blue names and levels over his companions head. The only one with a green nametag above the head and ??? instead of levels, was Dominik.

He wondered if it could really be possible to create a new home among this people, these NPCs all had a personality, had aspirations and even felt love or, at least, simulated them quite well; they only lacked that strange feeling that the people from Earth transmitted, a sort of numbness, a sort of tired feeling. Exactly this sensation exhausted Noah and made him despise most human interactions he had, sometimes he felt like that he was speaking with someone tired of life, with no will to enjoy it or experience some new adventure; the majority was just letting time pass away for all their life he thought.

But here, inside Vesper, he could see people going out in the sunlight and interacting with each other, talking with a happy expression on; they were so rare out there. Even if he was referring to NPCs, after enduring hardship together and spending time with them, he began to think fondly of them, he just realized how eager of coming back to them he was.

While exchanging small talks with Lawrence, mostly about his daily life and the guard duty he did, came the time to resume the training. They all gathered in line at the training dummies and Dominik showed up, he demonstrated another time the moves and made his troops quickly resume the swinging they did for all morning.

‘ I think that before night, they should obtain both skills. Someone already looked close to grasp focused strike, while for the other one I can only push them to the limits making them march right after the swings. ‘

It only took 10 or so minutes of constant try to get the first damaged dummies, whit each blow now was possible to see improvements. Noah too was able to damage his target and this made him enthusiast, he felt like having achieved something with his efforts. Now he could see his destination right ahead, but at this moment, after 20 minutes since they began, Dominik gave the command to stop and start marching again, without resting between switching tasks this time around. He was forced to make his trainees stop after only so much time because they started to expend a lot of stamina with each strike, the closer they got to a true and real focused strike, the heavier their energy expenditure was.

So they marched for one full hour and then, they were back again at swinging, this time too without resting time before changing tasks.

Dominik's training was famous for being merciless, many couldn’t endure it till the end and gave up. This, with time and experience of losing trainees, made the head instructor personally pick the members of the battalions he had to train. It goes without saying that such cadets were then sought after by every division commander to join their ranks, it wasn’t strange for the survivors of The famous Head instructor to achieve good merits and even joining the elites of the army.

After another repetition of this cycle, with a slight rest between it, Noah finally saw a long awaited blue panel coming to be in front of him, right after he struck the dummy causing it to break apart.

Congratulations, New skill learned!

-Focused strike lv.1

You learned to concentrate your body strength to use it in a single strike, higher stamina expenditure will result in a higher burst of power.

10% of maximum stamina consumption will result in 20% of increased damage. Can freely decide the amount converted.

Each level up will result in better conversion rates and will grant strength points.

After acquiring this skill, he swung the sword with more enthusiasm. Now he could feel how much stamina he expended with each swing but after breaking the dummy he was left almost dry of it, still, he wanted to practice the movements of the sword attack and set to spend the minimum stamina possible on it, better leveling the skill up every time he could do so.

It was now past mid afternoon, the sun was visibly lower, approaching dawn time and they got ordered one last fast march before getting off for the day.

It was during it that Noah got another blue panel, an unexpected one.

Congratulation, new skill obtained

-Enduring Body(passive) lv.1

Due to resisting a heavy training without much rest, expending a huge amount of energy, but enduring it until the end. You have successfully tempered it.

Every level in Enduring Body will grand you endurance stat point and raw stamina points.

After this welcomed new, Noah gained half a point in both strength and endurance. With this dealing more damage with attacks and soaking up more damage received by hits. Remembering those little horned aberrations, he summarized that they should have around 11/13 in strength and 3 or so point in endurance, these two interacting in an addictive way.

Noah kept on marching and by the end of the training, which was a couple of hours before dinner, he gained 2 levels on Focused Strike and 1 in Enduring Body.