Author's Corner: Sorry for both the long wait and the info-dump chapter. I originally had more planned on this chapter but it got too Long so I'm splitting it in two as info-dumps should stay info-dumps and action should have its own chapter. Also emergency at work is taken care of so chapters should come faster.

Legend

" " = people talking

italics = people thinking

* * = sounds

' ' = people talking within telepathy

CAPS = Power usage

Book 2: Chapter 2: Training Montage?

Some plans are good, some plans are bad, yet some plans are neither as they never come to be. Like the plan Nick set to be awaken in the middle of the night by a certain Princess.

*KNOCK* *KNOCK*

“Come in!” –Nick

Without opening his eyes to see what time it is, Nick immediately beckons the female at the door to come in. Still a little tired he does not yet realize that the voice is unknown to him.

“Mr. Hero sir! It is time for breakfast. Please follow me.” –Random Maid

And like that Nick’s hopes and dreams, at least for the night, were shattered! Not to waste any time, Nick gets up quickly and checks his costume to make sure it’s clean. Fortunately Supers don’t sweat naturally so they don’t stink either so cleaning clothes is much easier, especially when one has telekinesis.

“I’m ready so lead the way.” –Nick

With that Nick is lead to a beautiful dining room that one might find in a castle during the Victorian age. Beautiful polished wood on the ground and surrounding all the frames and furniture. Red painted walls to go with a golden themed finish around various paintings including the mural on the ceiling depicting some great hero slaying a dragon to rescue the princess. And even though there is no chandelier, the crystal ball sitting on the ceiling in the middle of the room was very beautiful while it used some type of mana system to light most of the room. There was even a fireplace that was carved out of some type of white material. Being a fantasy land it may be wise enough to assume it is the bone of some great beast or dragon. The table itself was made out of wood which was a little sad since glass would have been perfect with the lighting. With that thought Nick recalled there wasn’t glass used for anything! Even the material holding his window closed was some type of enchanted device that allowed one to see out and not glass at all! One must suppose that enchanted material probably works better since it keeps out the weather whether it come from the heat of the sun(s) or the cold of winter.

“Welcome Nick, it seems you are the first of the heroes to arrive!” –Tiffany

As she says this she eyes the seat next to her as if to dare Nick to sit anywhere else. Oddly the only one who noticed this was the Queen as the King and High Priest were too busy going over what they are going to do after the Demon King is dead. As if things are going to be that easy.

Nick finally noticed the seating arrangement. The King was sitting at the head of the table with his Wife to his right and the High Priest to his left. The Princess was next to her mother and no other seats were taken up yet. The table is pretty big so Nick sitting near the Princess would set the tone for the other heroes as they came in.

Taking the hint, Nick sat next to the Princess but not before wandering the customs of this kingdom. Nick recalls some old kingdoms in the past having the seat across from the Queen either going to her most trusted adviser or lover. Knowing that the High Priest is clearly neither that must mean the customs here are slightly different even though most of the other things look similar. But before he could even comment on this to learn more, as soon as he sat down his thoughts were interrupted by the Queen.

“It seems you have gotten to know my daughter already. Is there something we need to know?” –Queen DeMonte

Damn this woman is smart! I bet she has some skill to see the truth of things. Tiffany did say her name changed. Well fuck, no way I’m admitting to anything in front of the King, I’ll let the Princess handle this. –Nick

TELEPATHY!

‘Your mother knows! I’m not dealing with her, get her off my case as I don’t need the King to find out right here and now!’ –Nick

‘How are you talking in my head?’ –Tiffany

‘An ability of mine, I find it really easy to send thoughts to my wives however, it doesn’t even require a full link. I’m sure you girls will figure out how to send thoughts back to me at some point too. Either way you must stall!’ –Nick

“Well yes, she was kind enough to show me the library last night as well as some other things.” –Nick

Of course Nick is always going to be Nick and thus gave her all the information she needed to put two and two together. Fortunately the King is clueless and still talking to the Priest in a very happy mood.

“Mother, we can talk about this later. Let’s not ruin fathers mood.” –Tiffany

“Fine! But I better get the full story and not some lie!” –Queen DeMonte

Before the King could even commit on his wife's outburst the doors opened and the three child heroes finally came in together. With the Righteous Hero in the lead he was followed closely by his two harem members. It appears Aya had the poll position as she sat right next to the High Priest even though Hiro was trying to give them some space while sitting. Making the seating arrangements go from High Priest to Aya to Hiro then finally Hina.

“Good we are all here so let’s eat! I know we have many things to discuss but it is our custom to not discuss anything of import until the food is eaten!” –King DeMonte

Good it seems some customs stay the same. Who knows, maybe the High Priest is close to the Queen, as an adviser or something. I’m not going to pry however and leave things be. –Nick

With that the food was served in the usual courses which takes so long that Nick wanted to kill something. Even worse since he could go a week or more without feeling hunger! To make things worse, as custom would hold the Queen kept bringing up stupid topics like the weather and other useless shit that nobles like about at the table to waste time while people are eating.

Finally the pain ended with the last course being finished. Nick did not miss the look Tiffany kept giving him since his emotions were clearly on his face. At the end of the meal he got the look that said he would have a nice talking to about manners when this was all over.

Nick was feeling very restless for some reason. He felt like he was forgetting something extremely important but could only focus on how to get strong enough to defeat the Demon King. Seeing as that was the plan anyways he didn’t think too much of it and finally started to pay attention to what the King and High Priest were saying.

“We need to instantly give them all the skills they need from the start. They are heroes and can master their skills after simply leveling a few times so no need for more than a day of training!” –High Priest Buni

“Ahh, that’s right! It had been too long since heroes were summoned so I forgot about their stat points! Us royalty only gain 1 per level but they gain 10! Yes, let’s quickly go and get them trained. Send the Captain of the Guard to teach them all the weapons and we just need someone efficient in all things magic to teach the basics!” –King DeMonte

“I can teach them, I’m not doing anything else for the rest of the day.” –Tiffany

And I need time to avoid my mother for a few more hours! –Tiffany

Fortunately for Tiffany, before her mother could even speak, let alone object, the King spoke.

“Excellent! I’m glad I have such a dedicated daughter! Who knows, if one of the heroes kill the Demon King you may find yourself a husband!” –King DeMonte

Like most useless kings with daughters, this king was no different and has already planned to sell her to the guy to kills the Demon King. Of course he does this without asking anyone their opinion. This got both Aya and Hina upset since there was no way they were letting Hiro get taking like that. Then they both looked at Nick and gave him the ‘you better kill the Demon King’ look. This even made Nick shudder a little, but since he planned to anyways he didn’t think much about it.

“Yes, that sounds like a great idea. The one who kills the Demon King will marry the princess.” –Queen DeMonte

She says this while somehow staring daggers at Nick even though her daughter should have been blocking her vision! Of course Nick would never let someone take one of his women.

“Challenge accepted!” –Nick

*DING*

Quest Accepted!

“Huh? Seems I got a quest. Oh well that’s no biggy.” –Nick

With that a man wearing a full set of shiny plate armor standing around 6”1’ walked in the room. All that could be seen were his piercing blue eyes with hints of dark hair on the face that was seen.

“Excellent! Guard Captain Joseph, these are the heroes that you must train in all the basic weapons!” –King DeMonte

“Of course your majesty! Are you four ready? This shouldn’t take long.” –Joseph

With nods around the four heroes plus the Princess got up from the table and followed Joseph to the training hall which was a good 15 minute walk away. This made Nick remember how huge the castle was and this caused him to dream about what he was going to build once he had complete and ultimate power!

“This is the training hall, over in that room are various weapons of all types and different dummies and simulation rooms where you can train them. You only need to gain the basic weapon skill with the weapon and then you can stop and either gain a new weapon or be content with the weapon skills you have. Once you level up and put stat points into your skills you will automatically learn all the stances and styles that go with the weapon and your body will automatically adjust with the magic to be able to perform all the moves. Yes it seems like a cheat but everyone in power can do this so there won't be any advantage while fighting the sentient races, but it will help tremendously while fighting monsters and some magic beasts that are on the weak side.” –Joseph

With that the four heroes went to the room with the weapons. Nick grabbed one of each weapon type (dagger, sword, axe, hammer, staff, bow, polearm, throwing weapons etc…) and put them in his ring so he wouldn’t have to come back. He then walked into one of the simulation rooms ignoring the dummies as he wanted to actually fight something. Knowing his stats already he set the room to level 100 monsters (he is scared of magical beasts and humanoids) and got started.

Nick spent a solid hour in the room gaining many notifications that he wanted and some he didn’t while not fully understanding what he was missing to merge all the skills together. Since the monsters he fought were fake he didn’t gain any levels as only living creatures can give experience points. Not sure of his progress he checked his skill list to see what he lacked after having used every weapon type in his ring.

“Show skills” –Nick

SKILL LIST!

Active Skills:Analyze (level 10)

Passive Skills:Light Spell Mastery (Level 1)

Piercing Mastery (level 1)

Crushing Mastery (level 1)

Slashing Mastery (level 1)

Throwing Mastery (level 1)

Bow Mastery (level 1)

It seems I’m still missing stuff in the ranged department. Shit I forgot to grab a crossbow! –Nick

Nick quickly left his simulation and put all his weapons back and grabbed a crossbow with various types of bolts. When he left the weapon room he realized he was the only one not done.

“Sorry I’m not done yet, this should be the last weapon then I’ll be out in 5 minutes.” –Nick

With that Nick went to the target dummies instead of the simulation since this is the only weapon he hasn’t used yet. It took a few shots but he finally hit the target.

*DING*

Skill Unlocked: Crossbow Mastery

*DING*

Skill Merge: Throwing Mastery, Bow Mastery and Crossbow Mastery

Skill Unlocked: Projectile Mastery

Waiting for the next Ding to happen Nick was disappointed when he did not get the skill he wanted. It was at this time that he realized that there is one weapon type that he hasn’t used. The gun! Sure this world doesn’t have guns but Nick knows about guns and thus it is considered a weapon to him and thus the system considers it a weapon. Not having any guns in this entire world Nick realized he would have to make one. But Nick is lazy so instead he just modified the crossbow in his hand to shoot the tips of the bolts instead of the entire bolt. This only took 2 minutes to modify and he went back to the target and focused as he remembered that unless he hits the target he won’t gain any skill.

*PLINK*

Fortunately Nick hit the target on his first try!

*DING*

Skill Unlocked: Shooting Mastery

*DING*

Skill Merge: Piercing Mastery, Crushing Mastery, Slashing Mastery, Projectile Mastery and Shooting Mastery

Skill Unlocked: All Weapon Mastery

“Finally got it!” –Nick

With that Nick hastily put 9 points into his newly made skill and fell to his knees as not only knowledge of all the known fighting styles using the weapon types bombarded his mind, but also his body was quickly changing to accommodate all types of weapon usage! Including all the esoteric unarmed fighting styles from back on Earth that he had only read about but never attempted to learn due to being a brainiac that wanted money and not physical strength!

“What did you get?” –Tiffany

Seeing his enthusiasm Tiffany as well as the others all ran over to see what happened.

“I finally got the ultimate skill! Show skill all weapon mastery to all!” –Nick

*DING*

Skill All Weapon Mastery (level 10)[tr]

[tr]Description: If a weapon exists, if a fighting style exists. You are the master of it.

*GASP*

“H how did you get this skill?” –Joseph

“Last night I killed some stuff and experimented and realized that skills could be merged to become something greater so I just spent the last bit of time learning the basics of all weapons and merging the similar ones over and over until I finally got here. The reason I got stuck is your land was missing a crucial weapon from my land and I had to create it to finally get the final skills.” –Nick

“Well you saved some skill points but as a hero that isn’t necessary, at level 200 you will have over a thousand points just sitting there gaining dust.” –Tiffany

“Yes, if I ever planned to reach 200. I plan to finish the Demon King at the level that I’m at. My race doesn’t gain regular stats on level up so the points that go towards skills matter, and since I’m already level 12 I have more than enough. Now I just need to learn some good magic skills and I’ll be ready!” –Nick

“Good job! I guess your job is done Joseph and now I’m up.” –Tiffany

“But Princess, I must protect you from harm, no telling what ideas these heroes have, they may accidentally hurt you!” –Joseph

“Buahahahahahaha! You are so funny Joseph. I guess you did not hear my fathers proclamation about the hero that kills the Demon King will become my husband. Looks like you lose, as if I’d marry a commoner like you anyways.” –Tiffany

Damn my woman is harsh. I’ll just stand in a corner over here and wait, no need to make myself a target. –Nick

“You have no chance either as Nick is going to kill the Demon King.” –Aya

“Y yes, Nick already promised to do it.” –Hina

*GLARE*

“U uhh, yes! I did take a quest pertaining to this now that I recall. It seems Hiro already has his girls and doesn’t want the Princess so I will take one for the team and be sure to give the final blow.” –Nick

A flustered Hiro just stands there dumbfounded, but seeing the aura of the two girls latched onto his arms he realizes his fate is sealed and remains quiet. Somehow Tiffany has the same look as the two girls, what is with the women here!

With that Joseph looked around, and then promptly left as even he didn’t want to get in the middle of three vicious women. Sure he wanted to fight Nick but his self preservation simply had him leave. Though this caused him to train to ridiculous amounts, even surpassing normal human limits and shortly reaching the 100,000 mana threshold… but that is a story for another day.

“Okay now that the buffoon is gone let’s learn the basics of Mana. Key skills you will need to master in order to cast any magic and learn new affinities are mana manipulation and mana control. Another good one is Magic mastery as it allows you to cast the fancy arcane spells like teleport.” –Tiffany

“How do we learn the basics? I can’t even feel my mana!” –Aya

“Though standard meditation isn’t classified as a regular skill the version that lets you regain your mana in and out of combat is. But until you can spend your mana you cannot learn either version of the meditation skill so just quietly sit still and try to feel your mana core and then try to send mana to your finger tips or simply move it around. Mana manipulation allows for mana to move internally or externally so once you have the skill you will learn how to do both even without skill points. These skills are unique and this one is necessary to learn mana control which is mainly for casting external spells since it effects spell casting speed and projectile speed.” –Tiffany

With that everyone started to sit quietly and meditate to feel their core. Nick already mastered regular meditation when he spent four years compressing his Aura core and upgrading it to the 5.0 level. This caused him to simply move around his Aura to see what skills he could gain.

*DING*

Skill Unlocked: Aura Manipulation

Wow I finally understand what it is that I was doing when I compressed my core, now I can freely move my Aura round even easier. –Nick

After putting 9 points into Aura Manipulation Nick tried to move it outside of his body to cast a spell. It was at this point that he realized he didn’t know any spells.

“Tiffany, can you teach us some spells to practice with? I figure some require chants right?” –Nick

“Oh that’s right, you have the light affinity and thus can automatically cast spells in that tree. Here I’ll teach you the spell Light Orb. Once you master a tree you can freely teach others the spells by saying teach, the person’s name, and the spells name. They just have to have the same tree with the same level as the spell to learn it. Teach all here Light Orb!” –Tiffany

*DING*

Spell Unlocked: Light Orb

Without caring what the spell description said Nick decided to cast the spell.

LIGHT ORB!

With that a ball of light emerged from his hand and just sat there doing nothing. Nick used this moment to learn how the Aura interacted with the Light element to create the spell. Then he started to move around the spell to see what he could learn.

*DING*

Skill Unlocked: Aura Control

“Woot! I learned manipulation and control!” –Nick

“H how did you learn it so fast?” –Tiffany

“It’s because I’ve had Aura for many years and thus already knew how to use it and touch my core. I just needed to know a spell to learn the rest.” –Nick

Nick then put 9 points into both Aura Control and Light Mastery. It was then that he learned the Aura equivalent of the Magic Mastery.

*DING*

Skill Unlocked: Aura Mastery

Once he put 9 points into his newest ability he realized that he understood how Porter teleported as well as everything there is to know about the Light element. Realizing that learning how to heal might be useful even if other elements would be useless to his current goals he went about learning them.

“Since I already have skill points and maxed out light mastery, can you teach me all the support skills that you can?” –Nick

“Sure!” –Tiffany

With that Tiffany went to Nick and started to teach him various skills like Restoration, Cure, and Buff. The highest rank skills are all purpose and are very vague for a reason. Now Nick knew that he could keep people alive with his Aura which might come in handy later in his schemes.

Not having anything else to learn about casting spells and not caring about the other elements Nick decided to let them continue training without him.

‘Princess I’ve learned all that I need to for now. Please come visit me later in my room for some private lessons.’ –Nick

‘I’d like that.’ –Tiffany

With that Nick left to contemplate on what to do next. He thinks he has enough skills to break the 5.0 Aura bottleneck but he isn’t sure how to do it. Even the Library had no techniques on how to get to 100,000 mana which was weird. It must mean the lessons are either done solo or by word to word. With this knowledge in hand Nick decided to meditate until Tiffany arrived. But not before Checking his stats and skills.

“Show status and skills.” –Nick

*DING*

STATUS WINDOW!Name:Nick CageAge:32Race:Evolved HumanAlignment:NeutralLevel:12Aura:5.0Titles:Superhero, HeroStrength:2000Vitality:2000Dexterity:2000Concentration:2000Intelligence:2000Wisdom:2000Unlocked Affinities:LightStat Points:66

SKILL LIST!

Active Skills:Analyze (level 10)

Passive Skills:Light Spell Mastery (Level 10)

Aura Mastery (Level 10)

Aura Manipulation (level 10)

Aura Control (level 10)

All Weapon Mastery (Level 10)

___

Sorry for info-dump but it's not really over as this was all Nick's perspective, we still need to see what the *cough* real heroes are doing so expect a side chapters with even more info-dumps muahahahahaha. Don't worry, side chapters won't be as long so they won't take as long to write. Expect the next real chapter tomorrow with some action, revelations, and pain and suffering!