It was Thursday morning. The rays of the sun entering through the windows landed onto the desks of the students that gathered here. The classroom was already full with students that were not very eager to sit around for maths but to hang around with their friends. No one was alone here.

Except one person.

It was 7.55 AM and there was a boy. Looking out of the window from his seat, he felt kind of lonely nowadays. With his blonde hair waving slightly from the cool wind coming through the window and with blue eyes looking through it, he sat alone.

Usually next to him would be a boy the same age as him with dark brown hair and eyes with square glasses on his nose. His hair was fairly long and usually messy which only gave him more of a nerdy look which suited him quite a lot. He felt lonely now that his best friend was not even coming to school for the last three days.

It had been 3 days since he last saw his friend anywhere and he got worried that something might have happened since Laith didn’t even answer Felix’s phone. The only thing Felix heard was that Laith got beat up at the sports centre by a rich boy called Walter. And when Felix heard this, he became so angry that he wanted to jump right at that fucker for that. How dare he beat up Laith like that! Doesn’t he have any kind of empathy for other people?

Felix’ worry slightly lessened when he heard from his teacher that a relative of his was looking after him, sending daily reports of him not coming to school for some personal reason. But after 3 days straight it was obvious that something must have happened to his best friend. The fact that he didn't answer his calls or messages was also not helping him out and only made this situation worse for him.

His legs started to shake out of impatience. A habit of him when he was cornered couldn’t think of a solution. But this shaking stopped as soon as it came when he heard a certain voice. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the voice he hoped for…

"You should probably calm down first." Said a beautiful voice from his right as Felix was drowning in his own thoughts. He looked to his right to see a girl with dirty blonde hair and shining blue eyes. His eyes were frozen with a mixture of different feelings when looking at this girl but ultimately, his feeling for slight anger won over.

His eyes were now showing his slight anger when he looked at this girl who after realising why lowered her head in slight shame. She didn’t like this outcome either but she had to do what she did.

"If you helped him then maybe he'd not have vanished just like that. Maybe he’d be-… "

"He is with his relatives right now and you shouldn't bother him that much… He is already hurt enough…" Gina’s voice carried a bit of frustration itself but she didn’t regret what she did. She may regret it if she did too much. But nonetheless, it was in the past and right now this boy in front of her was saddened that made her still feel a bit guilty.

"Uuuuhhh…ARGH SHIT! ….mmm you are right I shouldn't break my head about this. Maybe calling his parents would help me a bit."

Seeing this, Felix came back to his senses a bit. He was scratching his head with all the frustration that was left and calmed down. But his head was still not quite right when even Gina could point out something Felix could have done before even speaking.

"Don't, it will only make it worse for the both of them if they knew about the incident. Now I gotta go. If I stick around any more we'd have another gossip…"

"Alright see ya and… thanks."

It was weird to begin with that Felix and Gina being seen together didn’t gather the attention of multiple people but that was for the better. The only time this would have gathered enough attention was if Laith was here as well.

Thinking of this and seeing Gina walk back to her table, his mind only spun with the thoughts of what his best friend is currently doing while he is here, left all alone in this chalice dungeon called school.

Or that’s something he would have said…

'FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! I NEED TO GET AWAY AS FAST AS POSSIBLE BEFORE-…'

"WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT MY COOKING AGAIN, BOY!?!"

"HIIIIII!! SPARE ME THIS ONCE, CRAZY OLD MAN!"

"IT IS MASTER FOR YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL BRAT! NOW GET OVER HERE BEFORE I TURN YOU INTO UGLY GREEN GOO MYSELF!"

“SO YOU ACCEPT THAT IT’S UG-HAAAA!!!!!”

I was running for my life as I was chased by a man with black long hair with white strands and a can in his right hand. Holding the cane by the neck like a sword, the man, who is obviously that old man I met in the alleyway, chased me through the forest. Or at least the part where the time barrier is deployed. But this was so huge, it felt like it was the whole forest. Such a cheat…

Wait! This isn’t the time to think about his abilities when he will turn me into green goo! I have to run!

I was moving around the forest with ease, jumping, sliding and dodging the projectiles this old man keeps shooting at me. If Felix would look at me now he'd not recognize me at all to be honest. if not for my face, messy and long hair and the dark brown eyes, Felix would definitely think I was someone else… but he had a right to do so because after more than two hundred days, my body obviously changed with all this torture that crazy fucker did to me.

I was still 190 cm tall but instead of looking extremely weak, I looked like I worked out in the gym for the past 10 years. Every muscle on my body was defined and my body structure looked extremely well balanced. Not to the point like his master who looked more chiselled by the gods than well trained but I’m sure I was stepping into that direction from now on. That made me happy since now I definitely had the charm to bewitch. Or at least that’s what I have been telling myself.

'Shit! I need to get away from him before he starts one of his notorious combos again! Push those legs, Laith! Push them!'

My steps became quicker, my breathing steadier and my gaze more focused as I looked in front of me while using the rest of my senses to predict the projectiles that were coming from the old man’s cane. With the past two hundred plus days of experience, every move had true experience in them, making me an expert in running away right now.

And you heard me right! More than two hundred days passed. To be precise it was about 264 days now and I was getting yelled at because I called out his disgusting food he always made me while he himself ate such delicious looking food! Unfair treatment! Treat your disciple at least a bit better.

But besides my extreme growth in physical powers and coordination, nothing changed much I think. That was a good sign and a bad one as well. The good sign is that I did change. Even if it took more than two hundred days, the old man said I have a great battle sense for someone that never trained and it kept improving under the guidance of that same old man.

But the bad news was that they probably needed to find a goal with strong emotions tied to it. For 264 days… for exactly that amount of time, this old fucker tortured me under the name of awakening and training. And afterwards he fed me that disgusting green goo that tasted even worse than it looks. I still wonder how that is possible to make my food so bad it tastes worse than you’d think disgusting green goo would taste like.

And refusing was a no, as you can see.

"Alright! I'm sorry I won't say anything bad about your cooking and that disgusting goo again!"

BOOM

"Argh!"

'Cheater! Why are you sti- OH! Shit i said that last part out loud, didn’t I? Ah shit… my vision…'

Hitting me exactly behind my neck with precise strength that it knocked me out, making me fall unconscious on the ground. The old man had a mad expression before it changed immediately to a tired one.

"Hmph! That's what you get for pissing off your master. Haaaaa… Youngsters these days don't know how to be grateful sometimes…"

He bent and picked up the unconscious me from the ground and in the next moment we were back in the cosy hut we were in for their last 200 days. He took one step and traversed probably hundreds of metres.

My daily routine for these last 264 days was basically 18 hours of fighting or escaping the old man with everything I got and 6 hours of rest and eating the stuff he put on my plate which he calls nutritious food. While this was already enough to make most people faint, what really bothered me the most though was the taste of his food. And the rest about it.

The plates were always filled with dark green goo that looked grotesque to a normal person and even the most famous chef would be scared of commenting on this as he'd be scared to be thrown into this goo by its maker. Sometimes I could swear I saw some eyes out of this. But whenever I didn't eat my fill, I'd get either tortured by the old man or I wouldn't be allowed to sleep which was also a kind of torture for me. Having most of your time in fighting a madman made one treasure his sleep very well.

Today was the day where, and I swear on my name, I saw 3 eyes in the goo. This made me almost faint but at the moment when my mind turned blank , my body found the courage to actually escape from the old man’s food. As if I could outrun the old man who can literally run faster than the speed of sound. And the rest after that was as you have seen…

At this moment, Akira was putting his disciple back on his bed in the room getting back to the kitchen to put his delicious creation away so his disciple can eat it later.

' I can't believe this kid only needed 200 days to be on par with a General rank official of the Association. It feels like it was almost 3 days ago that this kid got beat up by that Paltro kid. Hahaha if that fucker knew that his opponent got this deadly in only 200 days! Hahahaha!'

"Hm huhu huuu daladida daaa~"

Akira hummed away as his thought went around his disciple, stopping when he thought about his next training.

'Physically, this boy won't advance unless he awakens. If talking about technique in a fight then this kid is already on par with any one of the heads of the association branches. Training is not the thing that would help him but experience. So the way to awaken him boils down to a goal with a strong emotion .'

While Akira was awake and thinking about his strategy for the training , I was in my dream.

Or to be precise , that dream.

Since I got into this barrier, every time I slept, I would be brought back to this dream. And I found out something fundamentally interesting. The first time inside my dream were five beasts. The second time as well but I killed one and at the third time, I saw six beasts.

It turns out this number can increase.

This startled me but something else did too. I was ready! Not to kill them all but to take this challenge on! My determination shot through the roof as I didn't give in to any weakness in my mind. And I killed two at that time. Though as luck would have it the next time I saw my dream , I encountered 8 beasts and each of them got smarter with the way they fought. By now , I understood 2 things from my dream. The first is that the beasts get smarter and stronger with each dream.

The second was that the number of beasts would increase in the amount I killed them. If I killed 4 beasts then the next dream would have 4 more. If I killed 10 then 10 more and so on.

At first I hated the thought of going through death again and again in such a gruesome way but then it hit me. Even if they are beasts, they are fighting partners I can abuse to train. I am not a masochist but after some time training felt good. Even if the old man remains one of my greatest fears, the thought of getting stronger every time was almost addicting.

And when I took it seriously like training then I never thought about killing as much as possible but killing as efficiently as possible. The better I killed these beasts while having enough energy for the next one, the better my chances of killing almost every beast in my dream. By now, I am fighting against a whole army of them with nothing but a metal rod that I sharpened as soon as I entered the dream.

It seems I hit a limit with the amount of beasts here. They stopped getting more than 10000, which was still a lot for one person, especially since they weren't even fully superhuman. I slashed and pierced the monsters in a blink of an eye. That I can kill even more than a thousand was pure shock to me but it seems that the old man didn’t lie to me when he said that the green goo was very nutritious.

My battles were now not overshadowed by the fight of the 2 godlike entities but we're almost equal. Of course that is an exaggeration in some way but seeing a human fight a 10000 army of beasts which gets smarter with every death and deadlier with every passing dream, this was still amazing. But I wasn't idling around at that time. I learned how to create emergency weapons which speed up my fight and training by a lot. Whenever I hold an item that had the potential to become a weapon, I somehow become restless and want to form it into that perfect state of a weapon it could be. And with every swing, every thrust, every aim of the weapon in my hands, I became more and more aware of it. It became easier to handle.

Easier to use.

And easier to kill

He understood his weapons.

That shouldn’t be as easy as I did it but I can guess why. The old man mentioned that the closer you are to awakening, the more odd things you realise. And the more odd things appear in yourself. For example if someone that could awaken the ability related to water, then that person right before awakening would feel more intimate with water and feels much better inside water or with water around.

This made me realise that my ability will have something to do with weapons. But I really REALLY hope I won’t be a crafting class. I want to fight, and not support. But these thoughts have to return later since this time, the horde of monsters was inching closer and closer.

I cut.

And cut.

Pierce.

Thrust.

Swing and Stab.

But I never stopped. Never until my body would give in. Never until I knew I had no more chance. And that soon came as a beast with the same body but the height of 3 metres managed to bite my neck after countless tries from his brothers. The place was filled with the corpses of his brothers. It was a desperate fight and both sides knew it. But only one side knew why they fought. I knew why heI fought.

To never feel powerless again!

My world turned dark before turning white again as I woke up on my bed inside the hut. I walked to the living room towards the old man.

"How long did I sleep?"

"4 hours and 36 minutes."

Reading some book that was probably 400 years old, the old man answered my question without even glancing at me. But it didn’t feel like a cold answer so I didn’t complain about that. As much as I got rest time, the old man was too and me asking every time how much time I have was now natural. I wanted to measure if the amount of time spent in the dream now had a connection with the amount I slept.

I nodded at this answer and went to the couch and laid down. I was still a bit exhausted after a full escape from a monster and the battle against ugly puppies. Let me just get a liiiiitle bit of rest…

"Don't worry about training. You'll have a break for now. We'll start with another approach tomo…"

RIIIIIIIING RIIIIIIIIING

"who is it? " Asked the old man as he took a sip from his tea while fiddling with a magic circle that appeared over his open palm.

"It's a number I don't recognize… +44… Should I open it?"

"So a number from the United Kingdom? Just do it."

The old man wasn't in a great mood at the moment so his answer sounded more like a grunt then a normal reply. But I ignored that and opened the call.

"Hello?"

-Hello. Here is detective Carter. Am I speaking with Mr. Laith Arslan?