Chapter 2

When I appeared, I was in a small field with glowing orange rocks surrounding me. Obviously, they were lava rocks, a specific rock that was found by volcanoes. I knew that because of the beginners guide that VitCorp had released a week before [Virtual Fantasy] came out which was also how I looked up the hybrid options. I hadn’t studied it at my work since I thought that would be unfair. I would use only public knowledge to play my game.

I was clothed in a simple cotton shirt and cloth pants held up with a tied rope. A pouch was tied to the primitive belt above my right leg. Reaching into the pouch, I pulled out ten copper coins. The monetary system was simple, 100 coins of one type would equal the next higher type of coin. There were copper, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond coins. So ten copper coins meant I had a tenth of a silver coin. It was probably just some change to buy a weapon when I reached a town. As I studied my belongings, a small blue screen appeared in front of me.

Beginning Quest: Take Shelter

You have appeared on the outskirts of Sival. Make it to the to the town alive in order to set Sival as your respawn point.

Difficulty Level: E, Quest failed upon death

Reward: Sival becomes respawn point

Penalty: Sival will no longer be a valid beginning village for you

I shook my head. So even spawning here was a test. A gray transparent arrow appeared in my vision, pointing forward. I smiled in delight and started walking, enjoying the various scenes around me. I took a deep breath. Ah, the smell of sulfur. It was truly amazing how realistic I had made this game.

As I walked, various types of obstacles appeared in my way. Scrawny trees blocked my path along with glowing lava rocks that were too hot to touch. As I kept walking I crawled over a couple trees in my path.

I was in my helion elf form but I was starting to get tired. Checking my stamina levels, I realized I was at 6/10 stamina. There was still plenty stamina left. If it started to get low, I’d have to switch to elemental mode. While the terrain was annoying, there was nothing too scary or dangerous. Soon I entered a large plain so large I couldn’t see the end of it. Standing behind one of the lava rocks I surveyed the field.

Hmm. There was a town faintly visible straight in front of me. Must be Sival. Backing up my theory the gray arrow pointed directly towards the town. Shrugging I started across. Various holes were scattered randomly across the field, though I had no idea what caused it. I assume it was because of the volcano somehow.

I was close to the town now and could barely make out the stone wall when I heard something. Pausing I tried to identify it. Yep, it was a scraping sound, like what you hear from a snake going across concrete.

It was coming from behind me. Looking back, I saw this big orange monster. It was a large centipede, about as half as big as a man. Orange liquid dribbled out of its open mouth, burning a hole through the ground. Its mandibles clacked together, revealing large, sharp teeth.

Above its head was a curved green hp bar and above the hp bar was a name. Fire Centipede 60/60 hp.

When I saw it, I panicked. Everything felt so real here that the idea of a monster like this terrified me, though I knew pain was disabled. Not to mention the fact that I had no weapons at all, not even a stick.

I scrambled backwards, falling to the ground. The monster leaped towards me, its jaws wide open to swallow me whole. I rolled left, dodging it. Instead of slamming into the ground, the centipede went straight through the ground, leaving a perfect circle.

As I got up and started running towards the town in the distance, I still had enough of my wits about me to realize something. ‘Ah, so that’s what caused all those holes.’ As I closed in on the town, the centipede burst out of the ground occasionally, trying to kill me.

I admit it. I screamed the first time it hit me. It burst out of the ground right in front of me as I ran. The only warning I received was the soil rippling in front of me. Then all of a sudden there was this big thing in front of me.

It hit me, knocking me backward and leaving a red mark on my chest. A red number appeared in front of me. -5. It must be the damage counter. Orange blobs of lava spit fell on me, causing -2 burn damage. That one strike took me down to 48 hp instead of 55. I clutched at my chest for a second before I realized something. It didn’t hurt. Oh yeah, pain was disabled in the game.

I got up again and started running. I was attacked three more times, bringing my hp to 72. Eventually, though, I managed to make it. Running into the village, the villagers looked at me like a madman.

I sighed. Great impression for the villagers.

One of the villagers walked up to me. He seemed important, dressed in a pretty snappy suit. “Hello, traveler. I can see you are one of the visitors from another world. I am the village elder. Perchance, would you be staying here in Sival?”

I nodded. “Yep, I'm going to be staying here for a while.”

Quest ‘Take Shelter’ Complete

Reward: Sival has become your respawn point

“Well traveler, since you are staying here, what should I call you?” The village elder asked me.

Beginning Quest: Introductions

You have been asked your name.

Difficulty Level: E, Quest cannot be failed

Reward: You shall gain a name for yourself.

Penalty: A random name will be chosen for you.

I hesitated. Of all the things I had thought of, this wasn’t one of them. I mean, I’d just been so excited to play the game, I had sort of forget about choosing a gaming name for myself. Random names popped into my head, most of which I dismissed immediately. ‘Drago. No, to copyright. Carter? Nah, too boring.’ A couple seconds later, I finally came up with a suitable name. “You can call me Agni Delgado, Agni for short.” Agni, the Hindu god of fire. Seems appropriate.

The elder nodded. “A worthy name indeed.”

Quest ‘Introductions’ Complete

Reward: You have gained the name ‘Agni Delgado.’ If you wish to change your name in the future, you must seek a temple.

“Well Agni Delgado, would you be interested in training at the local training camp? Its free, since we wish for all to learn how to defend themselves. If you don’t want to, you can go to the magic guild and register there to learn magic. It will cost you ten copper coins to do so.” The elder acted as though the screen that had popped up in front of me was invisible.

Matter of fact, it probably was. Wouldn’t make sense for everyone to see what your screens said, it would violate privacy policies and all that other crap. I never did like politics, it’s the reason I did the programming and left the PR to my co-founder and friend, Sam.

I was getting off topic. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at the moment. I definitely wanted to learn magic, but getting in some basic training seemed like a good start. The training was free after all and I could always go to the magic guild later. Facing the villager, I smiled. “I think I will do the basic training first. Please tell me where the garrison is so I can start right away.”

The elder smiled. “Ah, a hard working man. Just go down this street. It’s at the very end on the right, you can’t miss it.”

I nodded at the elder. “Thank you for the directions. Farewell.” With that, I departed down the street he had pointed at. Soon I reached the end of the street. On the right was a large field. Weights were set on open racks on the right side of the field while in the middle there were sets of dummies and racks of wooden weapons. Then on the left side of the fields, there were some targets and a rack of bows and crossbows. A female elf clad in primitive leather armor could be seen firing arrow after arrow down the field at the targets. Most of them completely missed the target in front of here with only a few hitting the very edge.

Ignoring the elf, I studied the rest of the training camp. A track went around the entire field and a wooden wall enclosed the entire field off from the rest of the world. A large open gate facing the street was how I could see the training camp’s layout. Sitting in a chair beside the open gate was a grizzled man in his late forties. He had on ragged leather clothes on and a worn out hat on his head. His chair was leaned back as he stared up at the sky A stream of smoke curled upwards from the pipe in his right hand.

I shrugged. Since I picked such a small town, I should expect it to have that little town feel. Maybe if I picked a city I could see what passed as business wear in the game. I decided to go ask him where the trainer was.

The man must have heard my footsteps as he looked down towards me when I approached. Standing up, he strode towards me, favoring his left leg as he walked with a slight limp. He transferred the pipe to his left hand and reached out his right hand towards me. “Good evening young fellow. Since I haven’t seen you around town before, I assume you are an Otherworlder?”

I clasped his outstretched hand and shook it firmly. “Yes, I’m an Otherworlder. My name is Agni Delgado. I heard you run a training camp.”

The man returned my firm grip and smiled at me. “Yep. My names Sergeant Guff, or rather, retired Sergeant Guff. I used to work for the border patrol for the army, ended up retiring on account of my leg.” He patted his left leg. “Took an arrow to it when Aglacia fought with Guthrum, the country bordering ours. It had a nasty curse of crippling applied to it. Since it would cost more than I could pay to have it removed, the army let me go with a little pension.”

“Anyway, I’m sure you don’t wish to hear me talk about my past glories.” Guff surveyed my figure up and down before nodding. “Helion Elf, wonderful at fire magic and long-range weapon. That is what I would recommend for you at least. Is there a specific area you wish to train at or do you want to receive my basic training?”

I figured if Guff was going to be training me, I needed to show him everything I had. “Well Sergeant Guff, I have one more thing you need to know. I’m actually a Helion Elf and Earth Elemental Hybrid.”

Sergeant Guff blinked twice. “Well. Ahem. Never thought I’d see that one. Human and dwarf, elf and dwarf, even saw an elf and an orc hybrid before. Never saw an elemental hybrid though. Can you, ya know, turn into an elemental? Or are ya secretly made of dirt.”

I guess elemental hybrids were rare then. “I turn into an Earth Elemental. Thanks to the Hellion Elf’s racial skill, I can also turn into a Fire and Magma Elemental.”

Sergeant Guff took a long drag on his pipe before letting out a puff of smoke. “A fairly good combination right there. If you utilize it right that is. I saw many people have good talent, but couldn’t put it to use. Such a shame. I would recommend specializing early on though. Elementals make ya harder to kill and a bonus in casting magic. Makes for a pretty darn powerful mage. The Hellion Elf means another bonus to fire magic but the weakness to ice magic does make it weaker."

I nodded. “Well Sergeant Guff, you offered me training. What would you suggest I do now?”

Sergeant Guff paused for a little bit. “Hmm. This is a tough one, that’s for sure. Hellion Elf means fire mage and archer. Earth Elemental means earth mage and a knight. I guess you’ll have to figure it out on your own. I suggest the full basic training and then you decide after what you wanna be.”

It seemed reasonable. My races leaned towards being an all-rounder type after all. To most people, this would be a downer. After all, typical people wanted to quickly level, gain fame, beat the dungeon first, yadda yadda yadda. In this game, you would have to spend forever to truly become strong as an all-rounder. Luckily, I had the rest of my life to do so, so I wasn’t that concerned. Especially since I could learn any skill I wanted, so there was literally no limit on what I could be. Unless it was ice magic. Then it was out of the question.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Alright Sergeant Guff, I guess I’ll do the basic training and decide on the specialized training afterward. That alright?” Politeness was always the best policy. My mom had instilled in me the basic principles of being a gentleman and it had served me well in the business world. Being smart and hiring good lawyers was also really helpful.

Sergeant Guff nodded. “Alright then Agni, let’s begin.” He walked through the door to the training camp. I followed him but when I before I could enter the training camp, a blue screen appeared in front of me. Ignoring it, I tried to go inside. A red transparent wall appeared in front of me. I tentatively pushed against it. It felt solid. Sighing, I decided to read the blue screen after all. It was still floating a little bit to the left of my head.

You are about to enter Sival Basic Training Camp

Traits: Gain 10% proficiency in physical skills, all attacks do no damage. PVP allowed.

Choose Option 1 for instance training. Choose Option 2 for communal training. For more information, choose option 3

Choose: Option 1/Option 2/Option 3

I wasn’t exactly sure what the choices were, so more information was necessary before I chose an option. I mentally selected Option 3. The blue screen changed, now displaying the information I had asked for.

Instance Training: Instance training is an option available for all training areas. Upon selecting this option, you will enter a private instance that is an exact replica of the training facility. There you will be the only player and all other characters will be NPCs. You will receive one on one training with the trainer of the facility.

Communal Training: Communal training is an option available for all training areas. Upon selecting this option, you will enter a public instance that is an exact replica of the training facility. There you will be one of many players and all characters except the trainer will be players. You will not receive one on one training with the trainer of the facility, but you can train and befriend other players.

Would you like to go back to Sival Basic Training Camp options?

Choose: Yes/No

Hmm. Bit weird, but I guess if I didn’t want to be bothered, the instance training was for me. As it was though, I wanted to hear what other people thought of the game so far and if they had any tips. Not that I thought anyone would choose such an out of the way town to begin with. Maybe that elf girl I saw training was another user.

Choosing yes, I was presented with the same screen asking me to choose between instance or communal training. Choosing communal training, I looked at the gate expectantly. The red barrier was now gone, revealing the impatient Sergeant Guff. I walked into the training camp and stopped beside Sergeant Guff.

Sergeant Guff turned towards me, his face stern. “Now, I don’t teach magic here. In order to learn magic, you need to pay for registration at the magic guild. It’ll be ten copper coins. I can give you directions to the guild if you wish.” Ah, the secondary prompt. With how realistic everything was so far, you could almost believe that Sergeant Guff was a real person. The NPCs were really interactive thanks to the AI and yours truly for programming it.

“No thank you Sergeant Guff. I would like to take the basic training.” I gently persisted on receiving the basic training. If it went on like this, I was going to complain to the scriptwriter. A reminder or two was alright but too many and it would become annoying.

Sergeant Guff grinned. “Nice to see some still want to try the old blood and sweat method then the fancy magic. Does my heart good. Anyways, first I’ll show you how to fight unarmed or with a weapon. What kind would you like to use?”

I thought for a little bit before replying. “I would like to use the sword, spear, and bow.”

Sergeant Guff nodded. “I can train you in those weapons. Which would you like to train in first.”

“I would like to be trained in the sword.” The sword was one of the most common weapons. It seemed like a good choice to start with.

“Come with me then.” Sergeant Guff walked over to the rack of weapons. Pulling out several wooden swords he presented them to me. “These are all different kinds of swords. Which one you choose doesn’t matter, but the techniques may differ. You can try them on the dummies here until you choose one. When you do, ask me anything.”

With that, Sergeant Guff went over to his chair and resumed his pose that I had found in him. Soon, a trickle of smoke could be seen coming from his chair. I looked at the rack of wooden weapons, checking out the selection. There was a thin rapier, a katana, a short sword, a large greatsword, and a regular longsword.

I picked up the rapier. It was light, so light that it was more like picking up a stick than anything else. It was well balanced as well which really helped reinforce the feeling of being light. I walked over to the dummies. Stopping in front of them, I held the rapier in one hand and pointed it at the dummy in front of me.

A blue screen appeared in front of me, completely blocking my vision. Annoyed, I decided to quickly read it and get it over with.

The system has detected you entering combat training for the first time. Would you like to optimize the combat system?

Choose: Yes/No

Maybe this had more merit then I thought. Choosing yes, I started going through the options and manipulating them until I was finally satisfied. All notifications would be halted until combat had ended and I manually reactivated them. Floating damage numbers were now gone and red would highlight damaged areas. There was an option to enable gore but I decided not to do that. I kept the healthbars and enemy name though and added a level indicator.

With that, the combat system would be streamlined. For those that wanted a more realistic approach, they could take away all indicators and turn on the gore, allowing them to live in a world that mimicked real life. I didn’t want to live a life like that though. The whole point was to get away from life.

Now that the window was gone, I could now focus on the rapier. Level 1 Training Dummy 100/100 hp. Rapiers are slender swords with no edge to the blade. The tip of the blade was only thing sharp about them and they were meant for thrusting. Taking a step forward, I lunged at the dummy. The rapier struck a glancing thrust on the dummy’s side before sliding to the side. Without the expected resistance, I stumbled forward and rammed into the dummy. 98/100 hp. I had done one damage from the rapier and one damage from ramming it.

Ears burning with shame, I glanced around to make sure no one had seen me do that. The only other person around was the elf girl, but she was still practicing shooting arrows at the targets. I took up my stance again. 100/100 hp. I gave a small jab at the dummy to try and practice my thrusting skills. I needed to hit the dummy where I wanted to otherwise, it would be useless in a fight.

I hit it lightly on its right shoulder. Frowning, I concentrated and thrust the rapier at the dummy. This time it was closer to the chest area but still not in the center where I was aiming for. Frustrated, I threw down the rapier. I had watched a few fencing videos and their beautiful fighting style always entranced me. That was the reason I chose the rapier first. It seemed I wasn’t suited for the rapier after all.

Picking up the rapier, I place it back on the weapon rack. I thought about picking up the katana, but I decided not to. It just didn’t fit the image in my mind of a magician wielding a katana. I turned to the greatsword. This one was a huge hulking beast. It was incredibly long at five feet from tip to hilt. The base of the sword was three inches wide and tapered down to a mean looking point.

I picked up the sword and almost immediately had to put it down again. The thing was incredibly heavy! It was balanced but that didn’t help that much. I reached down to pick it up again, this time with two hands. With some strain, I managed to pick up the sword.

I paused. This wasn’t the sword I wanted. Taking this much effort just to lift, just how would he use it in a fight! Swords were supposed to be agile and quick. If I wanted something heavy, I could have just picked up that warhammer right over there.

This time, I chose the longsword. 100/100 hp I took up my stance in front of the dummy with the longsword in one hand. I slashed downwards, cleanly slicing into the dummy’s shoulder. I felt stiff resistance but cut through the dummy completely. The longsword struck the ground and bounced upwards. A red line could be seen where I had cut into the dummy. 87/100 hp.

I grinned. This was the most damage I had successfully done so far. I tried to swing the sword as fast as possible and sliced into the dummy nine more times. I swung upwards, downwards, sideways, slanted, I tried every move I could think of. By the time I hit nine, could feel my wrist throbbing and I started to pant from the exertion. It seemed like I needed more strength to wield the sword one-handed. Longswords were typically meant to be used two-handed after all.

I paused. Why could I feel throbbing? Pain wasn’t supposed to be sensed, so why could I feel this throbbing sensation? “Open help menu.” The blue screen popped up in front of me. I started looking through help topics but gave up a few seconds later due to the sheer number of topics. I tapped on the search bar at the top. A translucent blue keyboard appeared in front of me, floating in midair.

Reaching out, I started to type with the keyboard. It was weird. The keyboard seemed to be anchored to the air and wouldn’t move at all. I could feel the keys on the keyboard like they were real and not a touchscreen mimicry. I decided to ignore the weirdness of it.

I typed into the search bar ‘soreness exercise.’ That should be brief enough. Pressing enter, a list of topics popped up. Clicking the first one, I found the answer I was looking for. Apparently, aches and soreness were not covered under the no-pain policy. The soreness would only appear after the stamina reached low levels. Aching was included to resemble reality more and prevent someone from breaking their bones due to overstretching. It was more a way for people to know when they reached their limits. Looking at my endurance, I could see it was now at 1/10. That mad rush to make it to the village combined with swinging the sword around must have drained me pretty badly.

I sat down on the ground, trying to get my breath back in order. I watched my stamina levels and saw them rising fairly quickly at 1 stamina per minute. I smacked my head. Obviously, I shouldn’t be doing this in elf form! I could still turn into an earth elemental, and they didn’t need stamina since they ran off mana.

“Body Transformation.” I whispered and a cloud of white mist surrounded me, obscuring me from anyone looking. I felt myself grow taller and wider. My hands became thicker and clumsier. My skin turned into craggy rock and I could feel a hardness in my chest. Obviously that hardness was my core. The mist was sucked into my body, revealing my change to the world.

Checking my stamina levels I saw there was only a N/A where the 2/10 had previously been. Since that was the case, I could totally go bonkers on this dummy. I reached down to pick up the longsword but it seemed a bit short. It was supposed to be a two-handed sword but a single hand covered the entire handle. I guess my body had grown more than I first thought.

I picked up the greatsword. It was a little bit easier to pick up due to my twenty percent increase in strength, but it was still really awkward to swing though. I attempted to swing it at the dummy in front of me and it cut right through the dummy. 82/100 hp. The dummies regenerated their health after they took damage, so it was always at a hundred hp when you hit them.

I tried swinging the sword a couple more times before eventually putting it down. It was large, unwieldy, and even with the increase in strength, it wasn’t light. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could train in it. However, I wasn't planning on being some lumbering giant with a sword. I just didn't like it. I changed back to my elf form, but I was only at 3/10 stamina. Seems as though the stamina recovery was still active in my elemental form. Since there wasn’t enough stamina, I switched back to my elemental form. I stood before the swords Sergeant Guff had picked for me.. All of these swords were meant for my hellion elf form.

I couldn’t pick up any sword except the greatsword in my form. Frustrated, I punched the dummy in the gut. 85/100 hp. What? That was as more damage than the longsword had done! Maybe it was a critical hit? I struck at the dummy again. 85/100 hp. Just what was happening! I switched to elf form and hit the dummy. 89/100 hp.

Checking my stamina, I was now at 4/10. I grabbed the longsword and swung it at the dummy. 87/100 hp. The longsword still did 13 damage. I punched the dummy. 89/100 hp. Looks like I did damage that was equal to my strength when fighting barehanded. If that was the case, then why did I do 15 damage with my elemental body when I only had 13 strength in that form? I checked my skills and finally came up with an idea. Earth Body said in its description that it could allow me to form weapons from my own body at high levels. Maybe my body already counted as a basic weapon like boxing gloves.

I decided to ask Sergeant Guff about this. Approaching him, I mentally compared myself. I figured in my elf body, I stood around six foot tall and I was the same height as Sergeant Guff. With my elemental form I was probably closer to eight foot tall and towered over the Sergeant.

I walked in front of him to get his attention. “Sergeant Guff, I would like to know how to calculate damage in the game.” Upon hearing me, the Sergeant stopped smoking. Getting up, he glanced up and down at my figure.

“You must be that hellion elf hybrid huh. Agni right? You sure are an earth elemental. Most confounded thing ever. Now, what was that I heard about a game?”

I remembered that in the user manual for [Virtual Life], it was mentioned that NPCs couldn’t hear anything about their world being a game. I decided to test it out. “I said, I would like to know how to calculate damage in the game.”

Sergeant Guff stuck his finger in his ear and cleaned it out. “Sorry about that son. I must’ve had something in my ear. Now, what was that I heard about a game?”

It seemed as though there would be a rote response every time in order to clue in players that their questions were touching on a forbidden subject. “I asked if you could tell me how damage is calculated.”

Sergeant Guff grinned. “Well, that one is simple. If you are talking about the damage done in melee combat, the two main factors are your strength and weapon damage. If you have ten strength with a sword that does three damage, you can deal thirteen damage. Would you like a demonstration?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Sergeant Guff nodded. He walked over to the training dummy and then grabbed one of the longswords from the rack. Level 1 Training Dummy 100/100 hp. He lifted the sword above his head and swung the longsword at the dummy. A red line bisected the training dummy into two even parts. The longsword stopped an inch from the ground without ever touching it. 78/100 hp. Sergeant turned to him. “My strength is currently at 20 points. This sword has a damage of 2. If you hold the sword and say analyze, you can see what I mean. You can use analyze on any equipment you are touching”

Sergeant Guff held the sword out to me and I took it. “Analyze.” When I said that, another blue screen appeared in front of me. [Training Longsword (Common): 2 damage]. Hmm. So when I used the longsword in hellion elf form, I would do 13 damage. In elemental form, I was supposed to do 13 damage. I guess that meant that Earth Body was adding two damage to every punch, making my punches do 15 damage.

I grabbed the greatsword and used analyze on it. [Training Greatsword (Common): 5 damage]. I guess it was a tradeoff. Greatswords did more damage, but they sacrificed the typical agility that was associated with swords. Now that I could see everything, I decided what sword I wanted. Even though longswords did less damage, they were far faster than greatswords. Katanas clashed with my sense of aesthetics, I couldn’t wield rapiers, greatswords were too heavy, and I didn’t want a small shortsword for my first weapon.

Sergeant Guff stood in front of me, waiting patiently. Now that I had my made my decision, I decided to inform him. “Sergeant Guff, I have decided to choose unarmed combat and the longsword.”

Sergeant Guff nodded. “I can train you in several unarmed combat classes. Would you like to focus on fists, feet, or general fighting.” Hmm. I wasn’t sure about the damage my kicks did. Maybe it was better to check that out first. I kicked the dummy and checked its health. 13 damage.

Well, that decided that. “I would like to focus on fists.”

“Alright.” Sergeant Guff seemed pleased at my decision. “Now, what would you like to learn? The available fist focused fighting techniques are, Boxing or Wing Chun. Boxing focuses on punching the opponent while Wing Chun focuses on using the hands to deflect incoming damage.”

“I choose boxing.” No brainer there. Boxing seemed to be the only skill that focused on dealing damage on the ones available.

“Alright then. Pay attention.” Sergeant Guff walked off a little bit before looking over at me. He put his right hand vertical and his left hand diagonal. “This is a classic boxer position. The hands are important because in this position they can block most damage to the chest and by bringing your hands up they can also block for your face.” He demonstrated this by lifting his hands slightly.

“The most important part though is your footwork. Keep your feet even with your shoulders and rest on the balls of your feet.” He looked almost like he was tip-toeing. I mimicked the stance he had taken.

“Now when you are fighting a monster, you can’t just stay in this stance. Most of them are big enough to knock you over. Instead, you have to use your feet to bounce around. Dodge and roll, be ready to jump around.” Sergeant Guff bounced up and down on his feet. He suddenly dove to the side into a roll, coming up out of it in a crouch. “Now, I know everyone can’t do a roll like that. So instead, I’ll teach you how to side jump.”

He retook his stance. This time, he shoved off the ground with his left foot. He shot sideways by about two feet. “That is a side jump. With that, most monsters attacks would be dodged. Remember that if it is a sideswipe it won’t work. Now you can do back jumps but they can easily put you off balance so try not to do so unless it is necessary. Go ahead and try side jumping a little.”

I was still in the stance but it was hard. My feet started to ache since I wasn’t used to this kind of pose. I should really find a way to turn that setting off. I shoved off the ground and moved sideways. It wasn’t as far as Sergeant Guff had moved, but it was a start.

Sergeant Guff nodded. “Good. Now you can practice doing side jumps and keeping your posture until you learn Boxing Footwork Basics. Afterwards, I’ll teach you Boxing Punches Basics. Once you learn that, the two skills will combine into Boxing Basics. Would you like to continue the training?

Training Quest: Boxing Training

You have been asked to practice boxing

Difficulty Level: E, Quest failed upon rejection of training

Reward: Boxing Footwork Basics

Penalty: None

Accept Quest: Yes/No

It was the first time I had been able to reject a quest. I guess the basic quests were required so I couldn’t reject them. It made sense that you couldn’t reject the respawn points and name quest.

Seemed like I was going to have to train for a little while if longsword training was anything like boxing.