“I will not be so unreasonable and ask all of you to start your training right away. Not with the amount of injuries on your bodies. But that doesn’t mean that I will be going easy on you all, the whole training will still only last for three days. Which means that the amount of rest you get will be determined by how well you perform.”

The fearless smile on Gracie’s face hinted to us the future that she holds for us. We couldn’t reject her though and quickly moved ourselves to a spot which we could guarantee our safety before we rest and recovered as much of our depleted health and stamina as we could in the half day rest we all agreed on. We didn’t want to think too much about the future that would be us doing the hellish training that Gracie suggested and relaxed as best as we could for that moment.

When it comes the time for our training to start, we all worn worried expressions. What Gracie said changed our minds soon enough,

“It’s not like I’m forcing the training on you, you can deny your participation in partaking in the training if you would like to. It just meant that the others would be growing at a rate that you could never hoped to achieve without the training. Or you could always continue to relax for half more day, and squeeze the three days training into two instead.”

None of us were willing to remove ourselves from the training, we each knew that it was a necessity to get stronger. This was a prime opportunity to do so. Trying to squeeze the training program into a shorter period would make it worse than what it could already be, causing no one to express their interest in extending the period of calm before the storm. When Gracie confirmed that no one wanted out on the training, she brought us to another cave that we have not been to.

The cave didn’t seemed much different from the other two caves that we had been to; Dangerous creatures lived within it. We could smell the danger in the air that entering the cave could bring, but we just follow the instructions given by Gracie and cautiously went deeper into the cave. We had difficulty in seeing the further we went into the cave as the amount of moonlight that shined into the cave was limited. Slyvie wanted to light up a torch but was prevented from doing so by Gracie with a “This is part of the training.”.

By the time we spent five minutes walking into the cave, we were already engulfed in total darkness or so it would seemed. We navigated our way forward by walking with our hands on the wall. More than half an hour later, a message popped up.

For traversing in near total darkness for a long duration, you have gained the skill [Night Vision].

Night VisionThis skill allows you to see slightly better in low light conditions. As your skill improves, the effectiveness of the skill will improve too.

It seemed like I wasn’t the only one that gained the skill as I noticed the others were each surprised with the sudden improvement in their vision. With the aid of the skill, our current vision capability is only helpful to the extend of being able to see silhouettes of those around us within a few metres. It still did help as we could actually walk somewhat without keeping a hand on the wall to guide the way.

A few moments more of walking later, we realised that the surrounding was getting brighter. It was barely bright enough for us to see figures a short distance ahead of us with [Night Vision]. The figures were humanoid in nature but were huge if they were actually human, which I discovered was actually hobgoblins! This cave was probably the one that Gracie fought her way through, or if not, somewhere related.

The same moment I noticed the hobgoblins, they noticed us too. I was sure that the others saw the hobgoblins too as I could feel that they had tensed up. I told them to act clueless with my telepathy.

“There is a group of eight hobgoblins ahead. I’m sure that each of you have seen them and I’m also sure that they’ve seen us too. But I believe that they don’t know that we could see them and probably plan to ambush us. What we need to do is to act like nothing's wrong. We’ll strike them when we’re close enough, before they execute their ambush. The confusion from our sudden attack will prevent them from fighting effectively as a group.”

After receiving an affirmative from each of the party members, we continued our walk as though nothing was wrong. I did noticed that Gracie had stopped quite a distance from the hobgoblins, far enough for them to not notice her presences. I supposed this was the start of our training, excluding the walk in the dark. When we were mere moments away from the hobgoblins, I shouted “Attack!” which shocked the hobgoblins and we went into battle.

The shock from my sudden shout and each of us rushing at them costed their initiative even though they already drew their weapons long ago. We made used of that opportunity to injured four of the hobgoblin with considerable wounds before they could react, only Slyvie failed. She was equipped with a short sword and shield and only went through a crash course on how to use them, it wasn’t a surprise that she wasn’t able to land a hit even with the surprise element.

Losing the advantage of the surprise attack, the five of us need to fight off eight hobgoblins, which wasn’t an easy task. I gave off instructions through telepathy,

“Aston, keep three of them busy, Chris and Raoul, two for each, Sylvie, assist as you see fit. I’ll take down one by myself before coming to help you Aston.”

With a simple plan of delaying the enemy while we lower their numbers, I took on the role of the assassin. I was one in class in the first place and I couldn’t really take on multiple opponents easily unless they were weak. These hobgoblins weren’t. I had to make full use of my skills which works perfectly on a single target to take them down swiftly.

The first hobgoblin wasn’t too hard. In the surprise attack from before, I had stabbed my dagger deep into it’s guts. It had already suffered a near fatal wound before the duel begin, making it easy for me to dodge and parry his attacks. I waited for the moment he flinched as I parried his sword and kicked his guts. That stunned him long enough for me to stabbed my dagger deep into his throat before immediately pulling it out and stabbing it again to the back of his head and jumping away. As I confirmed that it fell down lifeless, I ran to take off some pressure from Aston.

Aston was coping well enough considering that he had to juggle three hobgoblins that were higher level than himself at the same time. His parrying was especially good as each parried strike made the hobgoblins lose precious time to take Aston down as I arrived. Knowing that they couldn’t hope to take Aston down easily in a short while, even more so as I had arrived, the hobgoblins decided to change their targets to me. Two hobgoblins rushed at me as one brandished a gigantic sword and the other a huge axe, leaving the one with long sword to block Aston’s way.

It wasn’t difficult to notice where and when they are attacking as the hobgoblins held weapons that were heavy and slow. The size of the weapons did made it so that I had to dodge a longer distance to avoid their huge hit range. They tried to surround me by attack from two sides but I was able to sidestep some of the attacks instead of jumping back. I took one of the opportunities to slashed the throat of the axe wielding hobgoblin as he struggled to lift his weapon which had dug itself into the ground. An axe came flying past my face as I turned back to face my other opponent, hitting it in the face, killing it in the process. Looks like Aston had finished off the other hobgoblin and came to help me out.

“Thanks!”

I shouted out to Aston which he replied with a hearty laugh before heading towards Chris while I went to help out Raoul.

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