More than nine days has passed since Zane first began exploring the starting village. To be exact, nine days and eight nights had passed. Currently Zane was sitting in a tree in the forest during his ninth night. He had recently finished a battle and he was going over the battle in meditation. As he meditated, he thought about what he experienced over the past few days.
The past nine days were uneventful. On Zane’s second day in the village, he spent most of his time trying to teach Brad some of the skills he learned. Brad only managed to learn the slash skill. He was unable to learn pierce, stab, cleave or any other skills. However, Brad was able to learn a skill called thrust. Zane was surprised to see Brad use a skill he didn’t know but he quickly unlocked it and learnt it after seeing Brad demonstrate it a few times.
In addition to teaching Brad skills Zane also sparred with him. The spars helped improve Brad’s performance in battle and improved the level of his skills. Zane would also spar with Shane and have Brad watch from the side. What Zane enjoyed the most was standing at the side while he watched Shane and Brad spar.
Zane would give advice to Shane and Brad while he watched the fight. Doing this reminded him of the time he trained with Teacher Isabelle. She would send him to fight an enemy and shout at him or throw something at him when she felt like he did something wrong. When he asked what he did wrong she didn’t have a specific answer. She only told him that his movements didn’t look right and he should work harder to be better. This always left Zane feeling annoyed and frustrated,
Now, it was his turn. Zane took great pleasure in terrorizing Shane and Brad. Whenever they made a mistake Zane would collect some sand and use mana to turn it into a small ball before throwing it at him. He would shout words like wrong, sloppy and terrible form whenever he saw them make a mistake. They asked Zane what they should do better but Zane only told them to work harder and try to figure it out.
Terrorizing Shane and Brad was fun but it couldn’t continue forever. Zane knew that he had the responsibility to teach them and he made sure he did that after every spar. While they recovered Zane would sit with them and explain the movements, he thought were wrong. After making sure they understood why their movements were wrong Zane would offer them suggestions on how to improve. Shane improved a lot after Zane’s explanation but Brad still repeated some mistakes. As Brad and Shane improved, the spars that Zane had with them became more difficult. This encouraged Zane to give them the best training possible. He hoped that they would become sparring partners that could give him pressure and help him activate his bloodline.
The third day was similar to the second day, the only difference was the speed at which Zane and Shane’s skills improved. Brad’s skills were improving rapidly but the increase in Zane and Shane skill level slowed down. The fourth day was when Zane’s time at the warrior training ground started to change.
On the fourth day people began to approach Zane, Shane and Brad. The humans that approached them were impressed by the sparring they were doing and wanted some advice. After discussing it with Shane and Brad Zane agreed. The advice Zane gave wasn’t at the same level as the advice he gave Shane and Brad. Zane only told them about the mistakes he saw when they sparred but he didn’t give them help in correcting it.
The next five days followed the fourth. More people would notice Zane and the others sparring with each other. As a result, more people would approach them to ask for advice and to spar. Although the spars weren’t challenging to Zane, they were verry rewarding. Zane was able to practice his skills with various opponents and the level of his skills were steadily increasing.
Zane was happy about his increase in his skills but disappointed about the lack of powerful opponents. The Messenger had mentioned people who reached tier one. Whether they kept their tier one abilities or forgot them like the Messenger suggested didn’t matter to Zane. He knew their experiences would make them powerful opponents. Unfortunately, Zane was unable to encounter any of these experts at the training ground during the day. Even Old Saber was absent from the training ground. This left Zane with no other choice but to spend his nights looking for powerful opponents.
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During the night Zane fought a lot less than he did during the day. It wasn’t because it was difficult to find people or mana creatures to fight. In fact, there were plenty of mana creatures and people moving about at night. Sadly, most people Zane met were too weak to provide a challenge. The problem with mana creatures was the lack of challenge they provided and their high levels.
On the second night Zane noticed that the maximum level that mana creature could reach had increased. He wasn’t completely sure at first but after the third night he had less doubts. It became more obvious to Zane and everyone that moved through the forest at night that the levels of the mana creatures were increasing. For some people this meant that they had to work harder so the mana creatures did not create a large gap between their levels. For Zane it meant that he had to slow down or completely stop killing mana creatures.
By the second night it was obvious to Zane that his level was increasing at a very fast rate. He had noticed it the first night but started paying a lot more attention to his personal growth after gaining six more levels during the second night. The reason Zane considered this a bad thing was because it went against what he originally planned.
Most people tried to reach the first tier by time they reached level fifty. People could advance to the first tier before level fifty and people could advance after level fifty. Zane didn’t know who came up with the idea that level fifty was the best level for reaching the first tier but he was told that the decision was made after watching mana creatures. On average mana creatures would reach the first tier after reaching level fifty. Therefore, it was reasoned that level fifty was the perfect level for reaching the first tier.
Zane didn’t know if that was true but he had always planned to reach the first tier at level fifty. To prepare for this Zane wanted to improve his stats as much as possible and Zane wanted to have at least one skill that was at the first tier. Truthfully, he already decided on the skill that he would have. Having a tier one skill increased a person’s chance of having a perfect source field.
This wasn’t information he received from school. The person who told him this was Teacher Isabelle. In fact, she insisted on him obtaining a tier one skill before he reached the first tier. He had no reason to doubt Teacher so he was determined to do what she said.
The result of following Teacher Isabelle’s words was Zane barely fought or killed mana creatures while he moved through the forest at night. Zane would have occasional fight with powerful mana creatures, elves or humans when he was lucky to meet them. It didn’t happen often though. Zane only managed to have twenty fights that he considered challenging. Of those twenty fights only ten managed to activate his bloodline.
When Zane wasn’t searching for his next opponent, he was training his skills or relaxing by the shelter. He also spent time doing quest with his friends. Sophie and the others were also worried about gaining levels to quickly but they weren’t as worried as Zane. Other than the quest they did together they didn’t participate in many battles. Shane would stay by the tree with Sophie, Jason, and Shawn. Luna and Lana would move through the forest but they were able to move unnoticed and avoid fights.
Zane felt restrained whenever he moved through the forest and had to avoid battles out of fear of quickly increasing his levels. But that changed tonight. After six nights of restraining himself, avoiding conflicts and focusing on improving his skills Zane was ready to fight. He recently finished fighting a pack of ten wolves. Before that he had fought nine panthers and before that it was twelve spiders. Zane felt like his suffering was finally over.
Truthfully, Zane wasn’t suffering by not being able to fight the weak mana creatures he passed by. By avoiding the weak mana creatures, he could focus on the powerful opponents that moved through the forest at night. If he was being honest with himself, what he didn’t like was the fact that he had to restrain himself from fighting. Now that he killed a few mana creatures he felt he satisfied his desire and that he could stop now if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to stop. Zane was still a little hungry and he knew exactly what dish he wanted to have next.