Esko took his job seriously.

Too seriously.

“Hut! Hut! Hut! Up you get, maggot!”

He leaned over my pillow, glowering and spraying spittle into my half open eyes. There was a jumble of poles and red flags under his right arm, as well as a stopwatch dangling from his neck. It hit me on the chin as I stretched and yawned.

“I’ll be right with you, Esko. Just let me grab a quick brekky.”

“Spartans don’t get no vittles’, maggot! A Spartan keeps himself sated with glory! Are you going to be glorious, maggot?!”

I’d cursed myself by encouraging him. I should’ve just downloaded an app that yelled at me every few minutes — it would’ve been more peaceful.

“I am, Esko, I am. Fine, no brekky, but I gotta get lunch, alright? Can’t skip two meals.”

He grumbled something about ‘this generation’, then led me into the backyard where he’d set up a crash course. My eyes were still only half open, and the world was lucky I wore PJs, because this Spartan didn’t get a chance to change into his armour.

“I present to you, Esko’s Exciting Exercise Escapade! Be careful on the monkey bars, they’re a little rusty.”

By ‘rusty’, he meant that it was almost impossible to see a glimpse of steel that wasn’t infected with the browny-orange discolouration. It was pockmarked with holes and jagged edges, tempting me to run over to the medical clinic and make sure my tetanus shot was up to date.

There were also tires, a step-up box, dumbbells, and right at the end of the course, my practice spear.

“Esko, do you mind if I skip the boring stuff and get straight to the spear? I don’t see how hopping through tires and mortally wounding myself on those bars is going to help me win my fight.”

“You don’t see nothin, maggot! You either do this circuit or you find yourself another crazy old man to train you! We’re few and far between, trust me!”

His efforts might not have inflicted the same level of fear as intended, but he’d left his forest for this, so I had to give him credit.

“Alright, alright. I’ll be two seconds, alright? Let me put some clothes on, otherwise someone will take a happy snap and I’ll end up as an underwear model, not a B&B player.”

“Not with that scrawny ass, maggot!”

I raced inside, shaking my head and laughing. Mom and Dale were out, a note on the fridge saying they were looking for parts for Mom’s Pod. It had been a while since the incident, and I was happy to see her getting back into the swing of things.

The contents of my dresser were pretty boring, but I managed to find a decent exercise shirt and a pair of shorts that I could’ve sworn I’d had since I was 13. They were threadbare to the point that they seemed to grow as I did, stretching out one year at a time.

Having spent almost all of recent memory unconscious on a computer-couch, my aerobic capacity wasn’t great, nor any other capacity for that matter. My three sessions with Esko were the extent of my exercise, and they were more about training my weapons skills than my heart and lungs.

“Through them tires, quick legs, quick legs!”

My coach sat on the sidelines in a camp chair he’d brought along, munching down a leisurely breakfast foraged from our fridge. I didn’t recall if he had refrigeration in his shack, but the way he marvelled at how cold his breakfast-soda was, it didn’t seem that way.

At the end of each run through, he’d pick up either a sword, spear, dagger or club, trudge to the end of the circuit and engage me in a short interchange of strikes and parries. I had to prepare for all eventualities, whether my opponent be a lithe assassin, a man as big as a mountain, or a distinguished swordfighter.

The prospect of facing an assassin worried me the most. My Agility was good, and close-range fighting suited my abilities, but ultra-close-range could be a problem. If my opponent slipped past my spear and got into dagger-range, I was essentially holding a quarter-staff — a weapon I had no competence with.

That’s what the training was for. I could farm [Asterian Swordsmen] and [Asterian Captains] until the Kingdom of Asteroth was a nation of civilians, but if I couldn’t work out how to deal with a whole range of different fighters, both human and non-human, my B&B career wouldn’t last long.

“Alright! Enough jumping around looking like a fool. C’mere, I got something to ask you.”

I paused halfway through the circuit and dropped from the bars. My arms were killing me, as were most other parts of my body.

“What’s up?”

“Have you ever thrown a spear?” he asked.

I squinted at him, waiting for the punchline. None came.

“Um, yes? You taught me javelin throwing the first time we met. Are you alright?”

“Ah, yes. Javelin throwing. But what if you’ve already thrown your javelin?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Then you hold on tight to your only other weapon, I’d think.”

“You’d think, yes. But what if you didn’t? You’d still have a shield, correct?”

I didn’t reply, merely taking position as he hopped away, marking out a distance with a rake. He was teaching me a Hail Mary instead of anything useful, but I’d trust his process. If he wanted me to throw away both my weapons and face down some monster with just a shield as strong as a piece of Styrofoam, so be it.

“The spear is lighter and better balanced than the javelin,” he claimed. “With your strength — at least your character’s strength — you just want to fling it as hard as you can. Stand over there, watch my throw. I’ll grab a shield, too.”

It felt like Esko had a bow and I was the idiot with the apple on my head. Mom would’ve been horrified if she’d seen Esko lining up to throw a weapon at me, but I was reasonably confident the wooden tip couldn’t puncture anything valuable.

“I won’t hit you, just watch.”

Sure enough, he sighted down the distance, adjusted his aim, and ran forward, flinging the spear in a flat trajectory. It didn’t look any different from a javelin cast, if I had to be honest.

Instinctively, I inched away as the spear landed in the ground beside me, a tuft of grass flying into the air.

“Oi!”

I turned, and all I saw before Esko absolutely laid me out on the grass was a rabid man with his shield racing toward me, a jolly smile from ear to ear.

Wham!

The wind was knocked out of me as I landed on my back. I coughed and spluttered as Esko guffawed, parading around like a wrestling champion.

“See what I did there? The art of misdirection, I call it. Works every time.”

I was still recovering from his demonstration. It didn’t have to be so physical, but it definitely got the point across. Eventually, oxygen graciously returned to my lungs.

“Lunch time?” I asked.

“If you make it for me, maggot!”

Back to this, huh?

We went inside and the drill-instructor persona disappeared. Mom and Dale were back, happily unpacking groceries whilst I’d been flattened by a practice shield. I was granted an hour lunchbreak, perhaps in acknowledgement of the hard work I’d put in this morning.

Then it was back to it. The tires went away, as did the tetanus bars. Esko marked out a square on the grass — it had to be imaginary because there weren’t enough rakes — and we sparred.

I’d never ‘fought’ anyone in real life, much less with a mock spear in my hand and a shield in the other. Esko instructed me to attack, attack, attack, observing his expert movements and ability to turn my own jabs against me. At one point, he sidestepped my thrust, grabbed my spear and pulled me into close range, and my brain screamed at me to shout, ‘Shield Wall!’

Unfortunately, my B&B abilities did not extend to the physical realm, so Esko remained where he was, advising me that I was dead.

“If I were a swordsman or assassin, bang, Bill’s Yard is no more.”

Neither Mom nor Dale seemed to understand my concern for Bill’s Yard. I hadn’t told them about the quest and its outlandish rewards yet, for reasons unknown even to me, but it was nice to have Esko at least mention the place. Out of all this mess, preserving the town and its NPCs was my goal. My courier business required it, as well as my conscience.

I stepped away and assumed my stance once again.

“Esko, I know I kind of asked the other day, but what specifically made you leave B&B and the Olympics all behind? I get the sense that you and Dale were pretty good, right?”

He stepped in, throwing a jab that I deflected with my shield. I was learning to not take the full force of the hit in the centre, and instead diverting the attacker away, leaving them exposed.

“We were good, yes. We had a great connection for a Duo. I was more into the PvE side of things, but I’d always be his second in Duo Duels. He liked that I understood the [Hoplite’s] role in supporting…his class.”

“Which was?”

He switched to a sword and leapt in close, slashing diagonally. I pushed around the side, buffeting him with my shield until he had to move back.

“Not so fast, there. He’s tight-lipped about that stuff, and I respect that.”

“Dang.”

We circled round and round, switching weapons and homing in on my specific weaknesses.

“But if you must know, I had an incident with someone you may know. Peter Abermeyer.”

Oh shoot.

“Actually, it seems a few people did, because not long after our little spat, he disappeared from B&B for good. I’m sure you know that already, though.”

“I did. His son, Joey, never told us the details, though.”

I lost concentration and died yet again from a dagger in my side. There was some learning happening in my brain somewhere, but it was no longer the focus.

“If his own son won’t tell you, I should probably leave out the parts that don’t pertain to me. We actually used to be quite good friends; would you believe? He was a couple years older, but when I joined my first guild, Peach Packers, he showed me the ropes. A kind of mentor for the newbies.”

“I see. Any context on Peach Packers? Doesn’t exactly seem your style.”

“Ha! I wasn’t always this fancy with a spear, you know. The Peach Packers own a massive orchard that grows an extremely valuable potion ingredient. I was hired as orchard security, whilst Peter was a member of the raid team that took out any dungeons popping up in the area. The owners made a squillion, probably still the same people.”

I’d never heard of the Peach Packers before, but it was intriguing to learn of people making good money outside of the Olympics, especially because I’d never heard of them before.

“Interesting. So to skip to the fun part…”

“Ah yes. Well, we moved on, amiably I might add. One day, Dale and I were seeded against him in the Olympics, a Duo Duel of course. He sent us a message, asking if we wanted to meet for a beer the night before the Duel, along with his teammate.”

We stopped sparring as Esko hit his stride with the story.

“We said yes, because we were all chums, and Dale and I had made as much of a mark on the Olympics as we wanted to. Whether we got drunk and had a sore head for the fight didn’t bother us. But when we returned home later that evening, both our homes had been broken into, and our Pods destroyed. Dale was happy to lend me a spare, but I refused. I got the message loud and clear.”

He sat in his chair as he reminisced. I could tell it was tough for him to revisit, but after being contained amongst the trees for however long he’d been there, it must have been therapeutic. The forest listened, I’m sure, but it’s rare that the breeze whispers back.

“That’s terrible. What did Dale do?”

“Well, he brought a six-pack to my house, helped me clean up the mess, then 1v2’ed them the next day. Fucked ‘em both up in about forty seconds.”

I got chills just imagining the scene. Of all people, I wouldn’t have expected Dale to be the guy behind such a stunt. It defied almost everything he currently portrayed.

“He was that good, huh?”

“Yep. One of the best.”

His story finished, and our sparring began anew.