“That was fun! Now give me more challenges!”

I shouted towards Gracie as they made their way towards me at the end of the hour. They expressed shocked towards how I reacted and the corpses that surrounded me. It would be weird for anyone to see someone in ecstasy and no longer needing help when you were expecting them to do so.

Gracie reacted the same way as the rest at the start, being shocked by the scene. It quickly changed to happiness as she praised me.

“Now, I surely didn’t expected that. You even seemed like you’re dying for more! Now, that’s the kind of training that I want to give to the rest of you!”

Gracie exclaimed as she turned back to the others. All they could wondered was how they were going to complete the near impossible feats that Gracie was going to demand them of.

Knowing that there was no escape for the trainings, they could only accept each of their challenges as calmly as before.

I acquired the title “Speed Demon” after the completion of the challenge, which I expected would be the same for each of the others after their own challenges.

The rules for Aston’s challenge was simple, but not easy in any ways. He had to fight on his own until he could one hit his opponent. Perhaps, for easier enemies, this would pose no problem. The problem was that his opponents were hobgoblins and trolls. They possessed high health and defense, while being higher level than Aston himself, making this an impossibly hard challenge. Even more so when the challenge involves him taking a hit from his opponent for every hit that failed to kill.

It took a while as we watched him fighting solo, taking hits many times while not being allowed to be healed by Slyvie. Eventually, he showed his prowess as a berserker as he struck down enemies after enemies with a single cleave of his axe. He earned the title “Rager” for succeeding the challenge.

Chris didn’t have it easy either as he had to deal with a situation pretty similar to myself. What he was limited to was that he was only allowed to parry. He had to parry five hobgoblins for the duration of an hour, never allowed to strike back. That, is in a way harder than my own challenge. Since I was allowed to strike back, I could make use of my dexterity to strike them before dodging away, making my enemies weaker over time. Chris had to continuously parry and not outright dodge his enemies while being surrounded. He needs to focus and concentrate on each of his enemies’ movement constantly as each time he failed to do so, he would receive a hit from his blind spot. He earned “Diverter” for his skills.

Last but not least, the siblings had their challenge. It could be said that they were to challenged each other, just not directly. Raoul had to fight against a single troll. The catch? Raoul was to not land a fatal blow, and Slyvie would be healing the troll throughout. This meant that Raoul had to constantly maintain damage on to the troll so that it wouldn’t be strong enough to take out himself. Meanwhile, Slyvie had to heal the troll so that it wouldn’t die. Slyvie wasn’t allowed to heal Raoul too. If either of them failed in their task within the time limit of two hours, their punishment would be to extend the duration for another two hour with another troll.

Their challenge was actually harder than it looks. In the first place, both of their levels and fighting experience was way below the other members of the party. Meaning that it was a lot harder for them to fight the trolls that outleveled themselves. They also had less control over their skills, making it harder for them to not tire themselves out due to not knowing how to make use of their stamina and mana efficiently. It took them slightly more than three hours for them to complete their task as Raoul out damaged Slyvie in a moment of rage and killed the troll that they were supposed to keep alive. In the end, Raoul obtained “Precision” and Slyvie “Priest”.

All these challenges took us almost the whole of the second day. It was very taxing but helped us improved by leaps and bounds. By going through these challenges, we pushed ourselves over our limit and we got to learn to fight better in unfavourable circumstances, improving our skills, and also obtaining titles which increased more of our stats.

With the amount of hunting in the cave that we had done, I was pretty sure that the end wasn’t far away. With that in mind, we rested ourselves for the last day of the training. As we followed the same shift system we had the previous night, I was again awake alongside Gracie.

“It felt like it had been so long since the training that you’re conducting have started, but it had only been two days. And tomorrow will be the last day.”

“It’s only two days of training, how could you even feel that it had been that long? Is something wrong with your sense of time?”

“Nah, sometimes time just felt longer than it was supposed to be. Thank you.”

“W-Why are you suddenly thanking me? I didn’t do anything?”

“I’m thanking you for taking your time to train us. It hadn’t been easy going through the training, but it had definitely been effective.”

Gracie turned away and I could notice from the corner of my eyes that her ears were red. I supposed that she wasn’t used to other people thanking her directly like that. They probably got too used to her strength and had taken it for granted.

She then mumbled something so softly that other people shouldn’t be able to hear. But me being myself, I could hear what she had intended to say directly from her mind.

“You’re welcome.”

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