The entire room took a breath as they tried to process exactly what just happened.

When I swung my shorter sword at Kent I dropped the blade the moment I noticed him moving out of range of a slash.

This was a strategy I was planning on using during our third fight taking advantage of the fact that he probably wouldn’t be expecting me to let go of a weapon to hit him during a battle.

Throwing a knife was actually a part of the knife drill that I was practicing and I simply used the exact same skill with the short sword.

Since the blade wasn’t weighted for throwing the throw almost missed Kent entirely and barely tapped his side without much force but that didn't matter, all I needed was a single hit to win not cause fatal damage.

Just like that, I was able to finally defeat my teacher against everyone's expectations.

Numerous notifications flashed in my mind again, mixed with my exhaustion from the fight almost made me fall over grasping my head in pain.

I heard numerous voices around me.

They were shouting, screaming, something, but it all just sounded like static noise.

Before I could even collect myself and fight away the nauseousness and dizziness everything when black.

***

My head was throbbing in pain as numerous images and sensations swirled inside my mind and body in my straight half-consciousness.

I felt as if my own body was at war with itself.

In my semi-delirious state, I could have sworn that I could hear some shuffling in the distance then my already closed eyes were hit with a blinding light.

‘Wakey wakey sleepy head” Someone whispered in an obviously fake feminine voice.

I was so tired that I just pretended not to hear and continued to lie down.

*Smack*

I felt something hit my forehead with an audible bang jolting me awake and almost causing me to fall off of the bed.

“Yo what the fuck was that” I shouted looking around to see the danger when I saw Kent standing above me with a wide shit-eating grin.

“Language!” he warned in a serious tone while he was clearly restraining his own laughter.

“That’s not the damn point. Why did you hit me square in the head? I'm already injured and I'm not putting up with this kind of abuse,” I shouted in a roar.

I had already dealt with this kind of treatment from my mother in my past life and I sure as hell wasn’t going to put up with it a second time even if it meant that I had to live on the street.

“I apologize but since you were pretending to sleep I thought it was appropriate. How else would I give you your reward after all?” Kent said with a wide smile without any hint of remorse.

“Appropriate!” I groaned in anger before calming myself down and catching up with the conversation.

He said something about a reward. A reward for what?

Being suddenly awakened left me disoriented and slow so I wasn't able to think straight.

“Oh, right I kicked your ass” I laughed to myself while the easygoing smile on my teacher's face disappeared.

“I couldn’t use any of my skills, nor could I use stamina to enhance my movements, nor did I use my stats” Kent replied in an authoritative tone.

“I was using a bracelet on me that reduced all of my stats to one. That time I seemed to double in strength was when I finally brought up all my stats to two” My teacher explained in a flat tone.

“All of that has nothing to do with me. All I hear is simply the whining of a loser” I snapped back with a smile.

“The plan was that I would slowly up my stats until they were equal to yours and then add a minor amount of stamina to the mix. If you could beat me in that state then I would believe that you have sufficiently mastered melee combat” my teacher again answered blankly.

“The only reason you were capable of winning was because you caught me off guard by using a cheap trick,” he said with a hint of annoyance.

“Well last time I checked our bet was to hit you once during a fight not to hit you while you were at an adequate level to view me as proficient”

“If you held back more than you wanted during our match the only person you can blame for that is yourself. Stop acting like a child and start acting like you are a fully grown man,” I said all while filling my voice with as much venom as possible.

My typically calm teacher did his best to maintain a stoic expression but I could bearly see his teeth clenching and a vain pulse on his forehead.

“Of course, I wouldn’t deprive such a star pupil of his JUST reward just because I happened to be caught unaware,” Kent said with an ominous smile.

“Anyway, it seems that you were capable of completing the [Melee Generalist] Achievement all on your own without any of us noticing,” he said quickly changing the topic.

“I'm curious why you chose that Achievement instead of the [Specialized Combatant (Melee)] Achievement, wouldn't that have been a lot more useful? “

“It's what I thought you would be going for after I saw you attempting the [Super Human Training] Achievement,” Kent asked curiously.

“I was further convinced that's what you were going for when I saw how amazing your sword skills got in such a short amount of time and it's why I was so shocked when I saw you using a spear with a similar amount of skill.”

The corresponding Achievements Kent was referring to looked like this.

[Achievements]

[Melee Generalist] (Completed)

To complete this advancement one must learn 150 different melee skills for 50 different weapons within 100 days.

Weapon skills (150/150) (Completed)

Days left: 4

Rewards:

Skills;

Melee generalist Level 1

Combine all the skills you learned during the completion of this Achievement into one skill.

The skill has a 200% increase in effectiveness than the skills would have by themselves.

Practicing one weapon will increase your combat effectiveness with all of them by the same amount.

Stats:

+ 7 to Strength

+ 5 to Dexterity

Traits:

Melee Master:

You gain a 10% boost to the exp you gain while using a melee weapon.

You learn skills related to the melee weapons you used to complete this achievement 15% faster.

[Specialized Combatant (Melee)]

To complete this advancement you must level up one particular melee weapon skill by 20 levels in 100 days.

Level ups (20/0)

Days left: 100

Rewards:

Stats:

+ 6 Dexterity

+ 4 Strength

+ 3 Will

Traits:

Specialized:

You reduce the effort needed to level up skills related to the weapon skill used for this achievement by 200%.

Experience gained while using the weapon you are specialized in is increased by 30%.

You gained a 10% boost in stats when using the skill you specialized in.

“I'm still planning on pursuing the [Specialized Combatant (Melee)] Achievement, I just chose to do the generalist one first because I figured it would have been a lot more useful to learn early.”

“Once a Weapon-Skill fuses with the others to form the generalist skill you won't be able to use it as a specialized skill anymore” Kent lectured me.

“Yes, I know that's why I haven't learned how to use the weapon I actually want to specialize in yet. that's what I am going to be practicing for the foreseeable future along with my magic classes.” I made sure to emphasize that last bit to rub salt in the wound of my teacher.

“I wanted to have a variety of useful skills I could use depending so I decided to learn a wide range picking something similar to whatever my favorite weapon to use was,” I said matter-a-factly as I lied through my teeth.

The real reason I chose to go for the [Melee generalist] first was that I was originally attempting to learn the latter but every time I got somewhere with a particular weapon I would start to doubt my choice and lean toward something else.

When I realized that there wouldn’t be enough time to complete the advancement before my next fight with Kent I just decided to cut my losses while choosing something else which was more convenient.

The [Melee Generalist] advancement was simply convenient and effective for the situation at that time.

I figured that I would just complete my original choice in time for my final fight with Kent instead but I obviously couldn’t tell him that because that would make me sound like I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and just going with the flow.

I am of course just going with the flow but no one has to know that.

“So you've already gotten that Melee Generalist skill. How far along are you so far?” Kent asked using an actual friendly tone for the first time in this conversation.

That is a damn good question. I haven't looked at my skills for ages, I wonder what I got going on now as well.

“Just give me a second, I got a ton of notifications during our sparring session. I want to see where I am myself,” I said curiously.

Skills

Melee Generalist Level 5 > Advanced Melee Generalist Level 1

Stamina Control Level 1

Basic Concentrated Dash Level 1 > Level 9

Family abilities;

Minor Soul Communication Level 1 > Level 2

Minor Soul Sense Level 6 > Level 9

Minor Soul Control Level 1

Wow, I have pretty good upgrades all around but I never expected that my Melee Generalist skill would go through an entire evolution from level one in just one fight that’s absolutely insane.

Typically during an evolution, you gain a new ability you didn't have before as well as a massive improvement in previous ones like how my Concentrated Dash allowed me to save up stamina in a location in my body to release it in a burst.

It was an incredibly useful and powerful effect even though I haven't figured out how to spare the mental effort to use it in actual combat yet.

It can improve my short-distance speed by almost five times.

I also learned how to use a new Skill called Stamina Control which will probably help me circulate my stamina around my body a lot easier.

After I told Kent about what I had he had this to say.

“Hmm, this makes what you did during our fight even more impressive,” he said while contemplating something.

“What do you mean?”

“Well typically when someone first gets a combat skill it only teaches them how to do some basic moves more effectively you know Basic Stab, Basic step basic slash that sort of thing.”

“When that basic skill evolves for the first time reaching tier 2 that’s when you gain the ability to coat your blade in a bit of your own stamina increasing the impact of their hits and giving their attack a minor bit of range if you're a swordsman.”

“This is something you were able to replicate in a minor faction back during our first sparring session even though you didn't have the prerequisite skill which is why I was so surprised and caught off guard by it.”

“The next evolution after that when your skill reaches tier three, allows the user to augment their movements with stamina to increase the power of the specific movement they are performing.”

“It is typically at this point that people will fuse the three or more foundational skills (again, Stab, slash, step) into a proper combat art resetting their skill back to tier 1”

This is when you would see something resembling the stamina control you demonstrated in your fight with me but in a much more refined manner.

“In other words, I skipped four entire major steps to perform what I did in our fight,” I said surprised.

“Yes you did, you truly are a genius when it comes to stamina control but your actual technique is seriously lacking even for a normal person with the amount of training time as you.”

“Your technique is like having a cheap broken down wagon being pulled along by top-of-the-line horses. It may have a lot of speed and power behind it but it doesn't look fancy and has no kind of stability”

“I’ll have time to figure it out especially since I now gained experience with weapons faster due to my new Trait. It's only a matter of time till my level of skill matches my power.”

My teacher heaved a long breath seeing as I completely ignored his criticism before grabbing a book from behind his back and dropping it on my stomach.

The book was quite thick and heavy so when it hit my stomach it hurt slightly.

“Ouch! what the hell is that?” I asked exaggerating my pain.

“Work, that you need to complete by the end of the month mister genius”

“I'm sick I don't have the energy right now to be worrying about classes give me a break”

“Oh, but you were so excited about getting it before what happened to the enthusiasm you had at the start, didn't you want to learn magic.”

I quickly flipped through what was on my stomach and got a sense of what was in it which turned out to be a detailed guide on how to get the basic internal and external mana skills.

It was insanely dense and as thick as double my hand size.

“How long those it take to normally get through all this I asked in a timid voice”

“About a year”

“And how much time do I have again”

“One month” he replied while smiling ear to ear.