Before we left the village I went to the group of men who did most of the manual labour in the village known as the workers. When we went they nodded their heads with respect while carrying their work of chopping wood. They would’ve just ignored me and carried on but they knew who I was from a few weeks ago and silently but strongly respected me.
After nodding back to a few people I walked up to the man who looked in charge, and as you can probably imagine he was the man with the power level of [15]. When I got to him I asked if he had a spare axe or something anywhere if I could have it.
Just as I was going to tell him what it was for he raised his hand to stop me and motioned to on of the other workers. A few minutes later the worker came back with a battered axe however not extremely.
I was very grateful and surprised because I knew that they didn’t have many tools at all neve mnd important ones like axes and in this semi-good state as well. I took the axe and nodded my in respect before leaving the village with my young student trailing behind me.
As we were walking through the forest I was scanning the surroundings and trying to find a good area for training James. While I was sanning the forest James never took his eyes off me which annoyed me because he was completely ignorant to his surroundings.
So, extremely fast, as fast I could I turned around and and clapped as loud as I could to scare him. It worked like a treat he jumped back and froze in his steps and just stared at me.
“What do you think your doing?” I asked the boy with a less than subtle angry tone in my voice.
“W-what do you mean master?” James said, still a little shaken from the recent scare.
“You’re letting your obsession with me blind you, your following me while taking no note of anything around you.Your being stupid and naive,”
Now you might be wondering why I’m acting like hardened a battle veteran, but I really like parts of anime where the MC finds a badass teacher who molds the MC into the awesome beast they become.
After watching so many of these it just became common sense that: you need to be aware, never underestimate opponents and know your limits. In a fight or to get stronger.
Hearing this James suddenly realised I was right and looked disappointed in himself before his face became serious. “Thank you for the advice master I will become more aware and will not let you down!”
I nodded and then carried on walking with my hand behind my back and James following me but this time he was making sure to be aware of his surroundings.
We continued walking for a little while before we came upon a little clearing of trees and I motioned for James to sit down on the grass in front of me. I then held out the axe and he took from me with a smile.
“This axe is for collecting wood and killing monsters nothing else. I will leave you with this, these two bean and the clothes on your back.”
“Beans?” He asked questionnig the significance of them
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“Yes, you can think of them of a magical item, they can fill you for ten days and restore health and stamina. This is why you can only eat the first one after two days even if you find nothing else you have to wait.Use the other one only if you really can’t find food or are injured. You will be left here for a month and will be required to kill 10 monsters and if you fail you will be immediately dropped as my student.”
“Yes master.” Was his simple yet meaningful answer filled with his resolve.
I then made it look like I left but I actually flew up onto a nearby tree branch to observe him. As I watched him, he got up and gathered dried wood and dead grass, as I saw this I thought ‘Good, obviously growing up in a medieval like world he understands the necessity for fire.’
Within an hour he had started a fire and was doing his best to make sure the smoke didn’t rise too much, as to not draw any unwanted attention from monsters, and was gathering leaves for a makeshift bed.
With this he was set up for the night and his first night in the forest went by without a hitch. I was impressed and happy to see that he could make it through the night without a problem.
When he woke up he was smiling with a refreshed look on his face as I silently thought to myself ‘This kid is always happy.’ While almost not believing that a person could be this optimistic, especially an orphan.
He got up and started looking around the are of the forest I left him in, I imagine he was familiarising himself with his surroundings. As he was doing this I silently and carefully followed him while moving from branch to branch.
He was walking around looking for any signs of monsters or small foods that he knew was sfet to eat: berries, nuts etc. All the while that he was doing this he was being very careful to be alert, showing that he had heeded my advice from the previous day.
I imagine that he was looking for a stream or some sort of water source that was safe to drink from, thus ensuring his survival even further.
After a little while he eventually found a stream that looked clean enough, but just for safety he decided to boil it anyway. Yet again, displaying his intelligence (for those of you who don’t know, boiling water helps to get rid of any bacteria that might be inside.)
So he took some water back to his makeshift camp, boiled it and drank it. Obviously it wasn’t just James’s luck that helped him find that stream, I made sure there was one nearby before telling him to stop and giving him the axe.
After he had boiled the water and drank it, he heard a noise come from outside his amp area. He immediately jumped up with his axe in his hand and tried to ready himself for what could be there.
Just then, a goblin came from behind a tree with a tiny club in his hands. James got scared a bit, but he calmed himself down quickly before waiting for the goblin to do something,
All the time that this was happening, I was scanning the goblins power level to make sure James could take him. If he couldn’t I would just kill it myself. Thankfully though his power level was only [13], as I saw this I let out a sigh of relief.
So, I began to make myself comfortable so I could enjoy the oncoming fight. As I suspected the first to make a move was the goblin as it cme charging towards him. James narrowly escaped jumping out of the way.
He then got behind the goblin and slammed the sharp bit of his axe into the goblins unsuspecting back. The goblin let out a yell of pain as it flew forward, roughly a metre, James ran after it and brought his axe down on his head as hard as he could.
Blood splattered all over his face and James flinched, he obviously hadn’t been around that much blood before, and never had to kill anything.
I almosted wanted to clap after seeing him do so well but 1 it would reveal my position and 2 he might think I’m a devil that loves death. So I decided against it.
After a minute or so, James reluctantly got up from where he had slumped on the ground after killing the goblin. He was still a little shaken up from the whole experience.
However I noticed something when my power scouter scanned James’ power. It had risen from [12] → [14]. It turns out battle really is the best training.
Exhausted, James laid down for a while. After a little bit he eventually started cooking the goblin while scrunching up his face, remembering the goblins head smash.
When he finished cooking it he, begrudgingly ate the meat while holdings his nose because it stunk. However he knew he had to eat it for his survival and didn’t want to disobey me by wasting his senzu beans, or magical beans.
By now it was night and James was looking looking up at the sky stargazing in an attempt to calm himself. He was loving the sight and I liked that he was enjoying himself.
Then I heard something that shook me to my very core. James said in a happy and calm voice “Wow the full moon is gorgeous and it amazes me every time I see it.”