By the time I’d introduced Sigrid and Jane to Chow Li and she’d given them the okay to join in, we only barely made it into the training room before the session started. If they’d taken any longer changing into the standard gray clan gi we would have had to face Sifu’s disappointment, and I’d do just about anything to avoid that. He worked us hard, and by the time the punishing lesson was over my whole body ached, but it was the kind of ache that felt good, the ache of accomplishment.

The best thing about the session was the other Player I’d noticed training in the dojo. He was either a very fast learner or he already knew kung fu because he seemed to know what he was doing already, but what made him especially notable were his fantastic powers. Being able to adjust his physical abilities on the fly, adding strength when he needed to be powerful, or agility when he needed to be quick, or toughness when he needed to be resistant, could make him flexible and formidable in hand-to-hand combat with his kung fu. As for the one that could cancel other people’s powers, well that was just plain devastating.

Andy Wong Affinity: Ice - Novice Gifts: Thick Skin - Improved toughness Powers: I Think Not - Novice: Nullify a target’s Power

I Have the Power - Novice: Channel qi energy to improve physical performance where needed Skills: Football - Novice

Kung Fu - Novice

Rugby - Novice

I’d been too engrossed in my own training and scoping out Andy to pay much attention to what the girls were doing, but when it was all over Jane came running up to me and before I knew it I was being crushed in a tight hug.

“Guess what?” she whispered in my ear.

“What?”

She let me go and stood facing me, her expression serious.

“I know kung fu,” she said.

“Whoah,” I said in my very best Keanu voice.

She rewarded me with a soft, melodic laugh. “Actually, not really,” she said. “Not everyone can pick up skills as fast as you, but I’ve always wanted to say that.”

“I totally get it,” I said. “Listen, where’s Sigrid? We have someone to recruit and I don’t want to let him slip away.”

It turned out I needn’t have worried. Fate brought us together when he was part of the same ceremony to get his green armband as the girls. I watched from the sidelines as they received them, and instead of struggling to put it on themselves like I had, they all immediately helped each other, allowing Chow Li to give her initiation spiel. She was right, it was pretty moving when the person being initiated wasn’t a total doofus like me.

We approached Andy after the ceremony and, as planned, I did none of the talking. We learned that he really had done kung fu back on Earth and was in the dojo because he’d sought out a place to train here as well. I took him for a serious guy at first. He was built like a tank and looked intimidating, but Jane and Sigrid didn’t even have to gang up on him to get him talking. He was the one who initiated the conversation with them, revealing a rough but charming personality. Next thing I knew, he’d agreed to join the team and was standing there grinning at me.

Quest: Be A Team Player - Assemble a team of 10 Players before the end of the Tutorial

Restriction: [Hidden]

Assembled Players: 3/10

Quest time remaining: 24:52:42

We were getting there.

Being accepted to train with the clan had its perks, such as being able to borrow weapons and a free room in one of the dormitories. The girls decided to ditch their shared accommodations over the cafe and along with Andy they were each given their own individual rooms in the same clan dormitory building as mine.

The dojo itself was a compound made up of multiple structures. It had gardens and training grounds, and even an area with a creek winding through it with ponds full of gigantic red-gold koi fish. We’d been allocated rooms in a one-storey, U-shaped building with a large, open-skied courtyard in the center. This courtyard was a miniature version of the one we’d trained in, with weapon racks, an archery range, and practice dummies, along with a beautiful garden with its own little pond. The individual dorm rooms, ten along each arm of the U, all opened onto this central area like rooms at a motel, and there was a full kitchen and dining hall plus more multi-purpose living areas at the base of the U. Apart from us, it was empty. There were more than enough empty rooms that I was already planning to make this my team’s headquarters.

Andy wanted to stick around and do some more training — he really wanted to raise his kung fu skill — and there were still several hours of daylight left, so the girls decided we’d do a little shopping. They were pumped by the thought of going outside the city to get some experience, but they needed to get some gear first. I had no choice but to come along. They said it was for my own protection, but I suspect the fact that I could evaluate everything in the shops and help them pick the best items must have played some part in their decision-making process.

First, we had to change out of the training gis. I considered putting on the armored nehru jacket I’d worn into the forest earlier but decided against it. After all, we were only going shopping. I chose something more casual instead, a shorter tang jacket, still with the Mandarin collar, but with frog buttons and some subtle decorative embroidery. It took me no time at all to change into it, which meant I had a while to wait for my companions to get themselves ready. I decided to put the time to use by trying to polish my tarnished ring. It was surprisingly easy to rub the accumulated grime away, and even more surprising to discover that underneath the tarnish the ring was made of a shiny metal that was probably silver. The final surprise came when I evaluated it and saw that its description had changed.

Untarnished Ring

A simple metal band.

Powers: A Bit Faster - Small increase in movement speed

Its power used to be ‘A Little Bit Faster' and it used to give a ‘very small increase,’ but after a little bit of TLC it got a little bit better.

Not too shabby.

They still had not emerged yet, so I started practicing with Affinity Control. I focused on using Fire, tossing fireball after fireball at one of the practice dummies. They all fizzled against it, but towards the ends I was sure that the fireballs were getting a bit bigger, their explosions a bit stronger. I was close to improving my mastery of it, I could feel it. I ran out of mana before the girls finally came out and we were able to start our shopping excursion.

I couldn’t fathom what had taken them so long, but whatever my other failings were, at the very least I did know better than to say a word about it.

It’s a cliche that men hate going shopping with women. They don’t like being dragged from shop to shop, waiting around. This was not at all true for me. I’d had ample practice with this in the past, and I was very much looking forward to going out with my new friends and outfitting them with armor and weapons. I myself didn’t need anything, the nehru jacket I borrowed from the Dragon Clan was as effective as any normal armor you could buy, and I had no weapon skills yet so the knives the clan had given me were more than enough for now.

The girls, on the other hand, had a long list of things to purchase, and they were overflowing with bubbly zeal, so it was with great enthusiasm that I consulted my map that had all the best shops marked on it and helped them formulate a plan of attack like Allied Generals in their war room before D-Day.

Sigrid had started with combat skills in sword and spear so she wanted to buy one of each weapon, along with some armor. Also, given her Shield Maiden power, a sturdy shield was a given. (Jane made a joke about her being no maiden and earned a slap from Sigrid as a result.) Sigrid decided that she should embrace her Nordic heritage and stick with the Valkyrie theme, and walked out of the armorer Justine’s shop that Diego had recommended looking a lot like she had at the convention, only better. The fitted breastplate glimmered in the sun, the abdominal muscles shaped into it matching the real ones protected underneath. It suited her.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Jane also ended up sticking with the swashbuckler theme and purchased some slick leather armor that cinched around her slender body like a corset, along with a very nice rapier to go with her sword skill too. I had questions about how effective the corset actually was as armor, but Jane was far more interested in form over function and could not be dissuaded from buying it.

“Why are you even arguing about it?” she’d said when I brought it up. “You’re the one who benefits most from this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

She heaved an exaggerated sigh and flipped some red hair over her shoulder as she struck a pose. “You get to see how good I look.”

There was no denying it, she did look good. She had also picked up some appropriately showy clothing that included tall, laced up boots and a shirt she could wear under the so-called armor that also laced up at the top and showed just enough cleavage to be distracting, along with some supple leather pants that fit like a second skin and were also too distracting than was good for me. A pair of soft leather gloves completed the ensemble. She looked really good.

We were just about to leave the weapons shop when she saw a thin stiletto dagger in the window that she took a liking to. Once I told her that it had the added bonus of a power that raised the wielder’s agility slightly, kind of like my ring did for speed, she had to have it. It was a testament to Jane’s charm — and the effectiveness of her Dominating Presence power — that she managed to persuade the NPC selling it to give it to her for the same price as a normal dagger.

I said I wasn’t going to buy anything myself, but then I saw a healing potion in one of the shops. If I’d learned anything from watching isekai anime it was that people get hurt. A lot. If they don’t have any healing powers, then people get through by chugging healing potions like a freshman downs beer at their first kegger. But the potion was expensive, ludicrously so. I asked about it and learned that healing magic was pretty rare, so also valuable. It made me think about that morning when Shashu had suggested I owed my incredible recovery from the beating Kiki’s gang had given me to Sifu’s healing potions. How many had they given me? How much would it have cost?

I couldn’t count on Shashu to rescue me every time. Regardless of the cost, knowing how effective healing potions were I wanted one. Just in case. I couldn’t possibly ask Sifu, not after all he and the clan had already done for me. Had I been thinking, I should have negotiated a healing potion instead of gold as payment for the Jackalope parts. Instead, I used the gold I’d been given to invest in one at the shop. The girls thought I was crazy, but they hadn’t watched the animes, they didn’t realize the danger that was likely to come.

I really hoped to bump into Nina and Byron, and soon. Before someone else scooped up Nina’s healing power. I was still very interested in Byron’s Artifice power, but you could really only consider that something that would be good to have on the team. Suddenly Nina’s healing seemed vital.

Once we’d finished all our shopping I noticed we drew a fair bit of attention from people as we walked by. From other Players, at least; the NPCs ignored us. But I couldn’t blame them, we must have made quite a sight walking through the city fully armed and decked out in warrior attire, two gorgeous women and...me.

“So Daniel,” Sigrid said as we made our way up Bow Street, headed for the center of town. “How’d you get to be such a good shopper?”

“Huh?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“How do I say this?” she said, biting her lip.

“You shop like a girl,” Jane said.

Sigrid laughed. “Yeah. Most guys just stand around like tools, but you were actually very helpful.”

I chuckled. “Would you believe me if I told you I'm used to this kind of thing?”

“Oooh, sounds like there’s a story here,” Sigrid said.

“You really wanna know my sordid past?”

“Damn straight,” Jane said.

“Oh dear. Well, I guess it stems from back in high school when I sort of got adopted by a group of popular girls.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I suppose I’d been a bit of a loner for the first couple of years.” I saw the skeptical look on Jane’s face. “Okay, fine: I was a total loner. The archetypal nerd, good at school but awkward at everything else and largely friendless. Happy? Anyway, for whatever reason these girls took me under their wing."

"Maybe you were a project for them," Sigrid said.

"Or, like, a mascot,” Jane said, earning her a reprimand from her friend. “I suppose there are other possibilities. Were you rich?”

“Hardly.”

“So much for that theory.”

“They probably saw something in you,” Sigrid said.

“Either way, being part of their clique raised my status at school. People noticed me, which was really stressful. But after a while, the attention felt nice. Strange, but nice. It turned out they were a hell of a lot of fun, and it turned into a real friendship that lasted until the end of high school and beyond.”

We walked in silence for a few steps, then Jane said, “and?”

“And what?”

“That cannot be the end of the story. Gimme more.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“Which one did you have a crush on?” Jane said.

I laughed. “All of them?”

Jane laughed too. “Sounds about right.”

“Hell, I was a teenage boy surrounded by pretty girls giving him lots of attention. How could I not have a crush on them?”

“Do you think they knew?” Sigrid said.

“Did they know I had a crush on them? I dunno.”

“They did,” Jane said.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. I know.”

“Did anything ever happen between you and any of them?” Sigrid said.

I snorted. “Of course not. I had zero confidence, zero experience, and was far, far below their league. But I was okay with that.”

“No wonder nothing happened,” Jane said.

“It was fine. Better than fine, really. They actually helped me grow into myself a lot, and I like to think that’s why they pulled me into their circle.”

“I'm back to thinking you were a project,” Sigrid said.

I considered it for a moment. “That tracks, actually. The first thing they did was a makeover: hair, clothes, the works.”

“You were a project, yup.”

“That’s where you learned how to shop,” Jane said.

“Yeah. They wouldn’t let me be another mannequin in the stores, I had to be an active participant.”

“Good training.”

“They were like that with everything. I suppose you could say they helped me out of my larval stage, and larva’s not a bad description of how I was before I met them. Of course, what emerged was more of a moth than a butterfly, but at least they gave me wings.”

“That’s a really weird way to look at things,” Jane said.

“You think? They showed me that it was okay to be myself, that even though I was obsessed with games that was fine. Chacun son gout. I wouldn’t say they completely transformed me, but I did get a wee bit better at social stuff.”

“Sheesh, I’d hate to have seen you before,” Jane said.

“I would hate for you to have seen me back then too,” I said, looking at the ground.

She opened her mouth for what was no doubt a witty rejoinder, but after taking one look at me quickly shut it again and bit back whatever it was she’d been about to say. That made me realize how morose I’d suddenly become so I took a deep breath, gave my head a shake, and looked up again.

“Anywho, it’s fair to say they rescued me. If it weren’t for them, my high school experience was on track to being a total cringe. Because of them I managed to crawl out of my cocoon and make other friends outside of their circle.”

“Ugh, you’re bringing back all that high school clique crap,” Sigrid said.

“Oh come on,” I said. “There’s no way you weren’t one of the popular kids.”

“Well, yeah, sure,” she said. “But if you think that the popular kids don’t also struggle with social stuff you’re dead wrong.”

“Preach, sister,” Jane said.

“If you say so," I said. "I did get pretty tired of having the more popular guys, the same ones who’d ignored me for years, suddenly coming up like we were old buddies. I knew what they wanted, and it wasn’t to be my pal. I never gave it to them, none of those cretins were good enough for my friends.”

“Good boy,” Sigrid said. “Protect your friends.”

If she wanted to think I was trying to protect those girls, I wasn’t about to tell her I was honestly just jealous. I knew deep down who really wasn’t good enough for them.

Jane skipped a few paces ahead, then turned around and started walking backwards, facing Sigrid and me. “So I guess that’s why you had the idea to have us pave the way to other Players, huh?”

I nodded. “That’s how it worked in high school. Those girls back then were on a whole other level socially, and they gave me credibility with others. If they accepted me, it meant I was safe, you know?”

“I get it,” Jane said.

“I’m pretty sure when people saw me with them they immediately assumed I was gay, but that only made other girls more comfortable with me, and I was more than okay with that too. Not like I stood a chance with them either, you know?”

“Not with that attitude,” Jane smirked.

Sigrid made to kick her friend but Jane danced out of the way, still trotting backwards.

“Any guys ever hit on you thinking you were gay because you hung out with the hot chicks?” Sigrid said.

“One or two.”

“I hope you took it as a compliment.”

“I did. It meant a lot to me, especially because it was one or two more than the number of girls who ever hit on me.”

“Have you ever considered that other girls probably thought you were dating one of the ones you hung out with.”

“As if.”

Jane chewed her lip as she looked at me, then suddenly spun around and started walking normally beside us. “So you’re strictly a platonic friend sort of guy, eh?”

“Well, although things were nothing but platonic with my three friends, they were the ones who connected me with my first real girlfriend.”

“Now things are getting interesting.” Sigrid said.