Chapter Seven: Pointers

Lacy’s second day as a guard in training was entirely unremarkable. The recruits were awoken just before dawn, they sleepily ate breakfast, then the training began exactly as it had the day before. They started with stretches, they jogged for hours across the city, then they rested in the cafeteria where only a handful of recruits actually had the stomachs to eat.

After that was the same as usual, except an hour into Lacy’s workout of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, Instructor Kong parked his fancy leather boots—which somehow remained quite clean despite kicking up so much dirt—right in front of her in the middle of a sit-up.

Lacy scrambled to her feet and reflexively assumed the parade rest posture that had been ingrained into her the day before. Breathing heavily from pushing herself so hard, trying her best to stare into empty space in front of her instead of at the instructor’s ever-present scowl, she asked, “Y-yes, sir?”

“Your exercise routine is substandard!” he bellowed in what definitely would have felt like harsh criticism had Lacy not heard the man really yell at some of the other recruits. “Inadequate! Or best described as too simple, because while it would work for any regular person, I can tell that you are squandering your potential! Watch,” he commanded, before dropping to the ground.

Lacy obeyed and observed as Instructor Kong performed a push-up, brought his right knee forward when he raised, did another push-up, brought his left knee forward when he raised, did another push-up, then bounced up onto his feet before executing three jumping jacks. When he finished he gave Lacy an expectant look.

“Yes, sir!” she cried, before dropping onto the ground and following his example. When she shakily finished three burpees the instructor held out a hand for her to stop.

“Excellent work, recruit! But that is not all!” he said, before he gestured to the workout equipment shed. “I expect you to incorporate lifting weights into your routine, as well!” Then he swept his arm out at the courtyard’s walls. “But there are also plenty of trees! Use a strong branch as a bar from which to lift yourself! Do you need me to show you an example?”

Lacy’s first instinct was to deny needing anymore help, but she quashed it. She wasn’t trying to impress the instructor, her goal was to pass the exams. If her teacher was going to volunteer his time to help her succeed, she should accept it!

“Yes, sir! Please show me a few exercises I can perform on a tree branch!” she shouted, trying to ignore her dizziness. She really was giving it her all and could barely walk as the instructor led her to the nearest tree with a low-hanging branch.

Instructor Kong lightly jumped, grabbed the branch with both hands, and began performing muscle-ups. Lacy gulped. The man was lifting his entire body weight from below the branch until he was over the branch, then let himself down gently before doing it again. He dropped and put his hands behind his back.

“That is a muscle-up. They are difficult, but I hope to see you successfully complete one by the end of the week. Until then, simply lift yourself with your arms.”

Lacy nodded hesitantly, causing the instructor to give her a raised eyebrow, to which she hurriedly said, “Yes, sir!”

Lacy incorporated the new exercises into her workout without fanfare and the hours passed by like they did the day before: too slowly.

“Looks like Instructor Kong is pretty fair to us,” Shu said as they ate dinner in the cafeteria after washing themselves in the bath-house. Poko wasn’t there today.

“So far,” Lacy said skeptically as she stabbed a root vegetable with her chopsticks—she still wasn’t very good at using the native cutlery. “I appreciate it, I really do, but I’m always waiting for something to go wrong, y’know?”

Shu hummed in assent.

“Yesh, when fhings are choo good,” she said around a mouthful of some small, round grain, “you wondger how long ich’ll last.”

Lacy went to bed so tired that night that she didn’t even mind the fact that she and Shu had separate barracks. It had bothered her the day before because she felt safer around Shu in a place full of swole men, but the workout was so grueling that her body was jelly and she immediately fell into dreamless sleep.

……

Lacy’s third morning began with the usual gong drums just before dawn. It didn’t always wake everyone, so it was the recruits’ responsibilities to ensure everyone was awake. That day Lacy was out cold and only got up once Shu burst into the near empty room with a smile.

“Morning, Lacy!” she shouted, shaking her friend out of her cheap bunk. “Get up! Get up!”

“Huh?” Lacy asked as she blinked the sleep away.

“We’re being taken to the wilderness!”

Shu finally stopped shaking Lacy, who stared up at her with wide eyes.

“What?”

……

As it turned out, active-duty guards went out into the nearby wilderness to hunt spirit beasts quite often to keep the populations down and train themselves. But despite the frequency of their hunting trips they were strictly prohibited from bringing non-cultivators. This meant that Shu had gone all her life knowing that her mother went on dangerous adventures out into the dense forests but had never been allowed to tag along to see her mother and her fellow guards hunt. She had seen spirit beasts be killed a handful of times over the years when some strayed too close to the city, but Shu felt strongly about not having seen enough carnage.

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Needless to say, Shu was excited for the chance to see the instructor fight spirit beasts. Then both Shu and Lacy were delighted to see a familiar face next to Instructor Kong, illuminated by light crystal flashlights. Poko was back, reaffirming Lacy’s inference about their meeting in the bath-house not quite being a coincidence. Behind Poko also stood what looked like a pair of brothers, though their scars made that inference shaky. What Lacy was confident in, however, was that the new male duo were in the male bath-house the same day Poko spoke with her and Shu, judging by the faces and whispers of the other recruits.

The men introduced themselves as the brothers—their facial similarities hadn’t led Lacy astray—Jery and Jeinai who were active guards pulled from duty to help today, and Poko revealed herself to be an instructor who had been watching the initiates from the beginning. That caused a ripple of murmurs that was quickly shut down by Instructor Kong.

After a quick breakfast—Shu wasn’t the only one eager to watch cultivators in action—the instructors guided them all to the small armory in the City Guard Management Office compound. To Lacy’s surprise, she found herself itching for what came next.

Her lips quivered slightly as Instructor Poko handed her a spear just a foot shorter than she was. It was lighter than she expected, maybe because of her new body that was slightly stronger than the last, but it was probably her expectations that were off.

“You all are guards in training!” Instructor Kong said. “Not children! You will wield weapons capable of spilling blood just as the rest of us do! You will NEVER be in the forest without a weapon! We have taught you nothing yet of spear discipline but we expect you to use your good sense to not cause trouble! If you hurt yourself or a fellow recruit, on purpose or accident, you will IMMEDIATELY fail the exams!”

Unsurprisingly, as soon as they were outside, Shu began twirling her spear a safe distance from the rest of the recruits with such deftness it looked like she’d been practicing it all her life.

The instructors tossed them all bags of supplies from a storage room and they were off, jogging out of the compound and out of the city’s west main gate as the sun rose behind them.

It seemed to have lightly rained during the night because a warm humidity clung to Lacy’s skin and hair as her footwear kicked at morning dew. The air smelled just wonderful and the plant life was so vibrant that she couldn’t help but to daydream about her few experiences hiking back on Earth.

Hiking had never not been pleasant but it just wasn’t her preference, since she leaned more towards being an indoor cat than an outdoor dog. It had actually been one of her biggest regrets after dying and watching it all happen on repeat—she hadn’t gone out to enjoy nature enough, consumed by her internet hobbies instead.

But now she had no choice but to enjoy the wilderness, Lacy realized. This world had no internet, no video games. It held magic, monsters, and boundless nature to explore. From her understanding acquired by being tutored and seeing how people lived back in Pole, the wilderness was far too dangerous for humanity to conquer like they had on Earth. Animals that somehow cultivated ruled where humans didn’t immediately live, though this rule didn’t apply everywhere, from what she could tell, because Pole was only guarded by three cultivators and had few issues with wild beasts.

If Lacy had to guess, she figured that some wilderness areas were far more dangerous than others, and the farming villages like Pole were built in the safer zones. Otherwise, the mostly ordinary populations would be quickly overrun by the powerful beasts that got too curious.

“Recruit!”

Lacy’s body suddenly felt heavier, her muscles clenched, and sweat beaded at her forehead and armpits. She stumbled out of a jog and nearly tripped but managed to right herself. The first thing she noticed was Shu glancing worriedly at her from over her shoulder, and then Lacy looked over her own shoulder in terror.

Instructor Poko stood behind her with arms crossed, spear idly propped up in the pit of her elbow.

“This is your first and only warning,” she said in a soft voice but with a serious tone. “Reverie is fine during your exercises within the safety of the city’s walls, but out here,” she said, gesturing with her chin at the surrounding woodlands, “you will concentrate with everything you have. Many cultivators have lost their lives in mere seconds of distraction. Yellowvine cannot afford to take you in if you give us reason to believe you will be one of them.”

The pressure suddenly eased and Lacy gasped, not having realized she was holding her breath.

Instructor Poko patted Lacy’s shoulder with a softer expression, though still not a smile.

“You are not in trouble, simply do not let it happen again.”

Then the instructor continued her jog, leaving Lacy to scramble to catch up with the rest of the group who had chugged along without her.

……

The first live spirit beast Lacy laid eyes on was a squirrel the size of a medium dog. One of the brother instructors—either Jery or Jeinai, Lacy found it hard to tell the difference—pointed it out as it hid in a tall branch ahead of them, so they stopped the march to instruct the recruits.

“I’m Jery,” Jery said, clearing up Lacy’s confusion. “No matter what kind of spirit beast you see, treat them all with utmost caution. That one is a squirrel, a simple herbivorous rodent. However, despite consuming mostly plants and bugs for its diet, all spirit beasts get stronger through devouring other spirit beasts and cultivators. Being a squirrel it is most likely to flee, especially from a large group like ours, but you never know when it might be close to evolution and decide to attack in order to make you the meal that will take it to the next realm.”

Jery seemed to purposefully leave out the relevant cultivation knowledge, judging by the confused expressions of Lacy’s peers. However, she got the gist. The stages of power were called realms, as opposed to an RPG’s levels. When a spirit beast reached the next realm it’s called evolving. That was simple enough, though Lacy didn’t understand much else about how the magic might actually work, because while she’d heard of cultivation novels she’d only read LitRPG and watched video game isekai anime.

When Jery moved closer the camouflaged squirrel didn’t budge, even when Jery looked straight at it from below, jumped up and down, and shouted. When all that failed he picked up a rock and flung it high. That made the squirrel retreat at a shocking pace.

Jery turned around to smirk at the recruits.

“Take note of how quickly it scampered away. It may be just a squirrel and not too big a threat to any one of us on its own, but it is still a beast of four legs. It will always be faster than us and our skin will always be vulnerable to its claws, just as it is to our spears.”

He and his brother both wore different robes to Instructors Poko and Kong, and the reason why became clear as Jery pointed at his exposed skin.

“This scar,” he said, pointing at his ankle, “came from a rodent much like a squirrel. I don’t know exactly what nicked me because it was too fast to see.” He pointed at his brother’s cheek, where an angry red scar cut horizontally from cheekbone to ear. “Jeinai was merely scratched there by a dormouse not too long ago. Do not forget that even the smallest and least intimidating spirit beast is still a threat to your life.”