With what transpired the day before, we fell asleep immediately the moment we were allowed to rest. Of course, we did not forget about having someone for guard duty, but Gracie suggested to do that in our place instead. We were thankful for her volunteering but still decided to not let her take the whole workload herself. It ended with Gracie and myself on the first shift, Aston and Chris on the second, and Slyvie and Raoul on the third.

At the start of the shift which last for three hours, with only Gracie and myself left awake to guard the others, we had a little chat.

“Thanks again for the help back then, also thank you for being able to forgive me for that attack.”

“Heh, no problem. You already explained earlier on the reasons for doing it and that it was kind of harmless which was the reason I forgave you. If it was otherwise…”

“Yeah, I know, you will roast and skin me alive before cutting each piece of my muscle and force me to eat them till I die, though you don’t really meant it.”

She remained cut off mid-sentence and couldn’t think of what to reply with. Seeing that she was uncomfortable with her threat as the last thing that was spoken before the unnerving silence, I changed the topic to something more up her alley.

“So, you mentioned before that you pretty much dived into a hobgoblin cave and fought your way through. How were you able to win against opponents that were so much stronger than yourself while being outnumbered?”

“Simple. You treat each fight as a fight for your life, which isn’t far from the truth. You need to constantly put yourself into such dangerous situations in order to push your body and mind to the limit. Only by constantly challenging your limits will you improve. By fighting in situations where you are fighting opponents unworthy of your skills, you will just be limiting your own growth potential. When comparing two different people who started out the same way but honed their skills through either staying within their limit or by constantly challenging their limit, the one who challenge will surely win in the end. Even if the amount of time that was put in was far less, the effort put in by the one challenging will still be higher.”

“I see, keep on pushing yourself and never stop moving forward.”

After that, we only had meaningless chitchats before we changed shift with Aston and Chris.

Waking up from the sleep, my muscles were sore and my bones cracked as I moved my body. It was due to overexerting myself the day before. I was pretty sure that the others were the same. As I looked around for confirmation, I figured that I was right. Even Sylvie and Raoul who woke up three hours earlier for guard duty still looked sore and tired. Thinking about the day ahead which would be worse than the previous day made me sigh out in response.

With dried bread and meat as breakfast, we got up and continued our training. Like what I had expected, the fights that we had to go through was getting harder. With every fight we fought, the enemies grew in strength and number. We had to adapt ourselves rapidly in order to survive through the trek deeper into the cave. Before we knew it, the sores in our muscle were long forgotten.

Like before, we relied on tactics in our fights. The differences was that we had each grew stronger, and faster, so much that I could probably fight three hobgoblins by myself at ease. If I were to compare myself to Aston, who is a monster in the making and could handle six or even seven hobgoblins by himself now, my capability wasn’t much to speak of. Seemingly satisfied with our progress, Gracie made rules for us to follow to challenge ourselves. Before I knew what was happening, I was left alone to fight ten hobgoblins.

What I was told by Gracie was simply this:

“You, go ahead and fight the next group of enemies. You don’t have to defeat them, just survive for an hour by yourself and then we’ll come in to help. If you can’t handle them, then run back to us. But, prepare for additional training if you were to fail.”

With how demanding the training already was, any additional training would make this hell even more unbearable. I had to accept the challenge, or die trying in the process. I would probably die to the training if I failed the challenge anyway. With that being done and said, I’m back at where I was.

Ten hobgoblins looked over to where I stupidly walked towards. They roared at me and each charged towards me with their own weapons. A sword came flying at me from the side, aiming to slice off my head in one clean sweep. I ducked and it flew past the top of my head, slicing off a tiny bit of my already short hair. With that sword attack, five more came flying. Jump left, roll right, jump back, duck again, and parry the blow to the right. The attacks kept on coming, and I just kept on dodging, parrying with my weapon whenever it was impossible to dodge.

What worked in my favor was that the space wasn’t so big that all ten of them can attack me at the same time, yet it wasn’t small enough that I couldn’t find space to run within the gaps of their bodies. Twenty minutes in, I felt that I could continue this for as long as my stamina could last, which seemed to be much more than the hobgoblins themselves.

It was damn tiring, but also so satisfying and fun, when I run and hide between themselves as they struggled to keep me within their sights. They also had to control their attacks in fear of hitting their allies. Meanwhile for me, I had no such limitations. I stabbed into their blind spots when I could find the opportunity to as I slipped past each of them.

The hobgoblins were extremely agitated at being unable to hit me and finally stopped caring about hitting their own allies and I parried each of their hits to the others, which led to a blood bath. I got so used to dodging that I was even able to dodge the blood that was theirs as I attacked and made use of their own attacks to hit the others.

What the others saw when they arrived at the end of the hour was me, standing in the middle of ten corpses. My smile almost looked menacing, and surrounding me was pool of blood that belongs to the hobgoblins, with no stains on my clothes.

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