Chapter eight: the stick and the carrot

Although I tricked Sherry into learning swordsmanship, the unfortunate truth was that she simply lacked the necessary stamina to even begin, meaning we had to start at the very bottom at regular exercises and muscle-building activities. That said, I had to be careful in this because she was still a five-year-old child and excessive muscle development at such a young age would likely be more detrimental in the long run. ‘Moderation’ was the key word; I just had to build enough stamina for her to start properly learning swordsmanship. I just hope she doesn’t stop halfway through because it was likely learning swordsmanship would take far, far longer.

That said, I also wanted her to develop her own philosophy on how best to utilize power. Understanding one’s role in the world and what affect they have on it was just as important as learning the skills to begin with. I may have messed up allowing her to learn so many destructive spells at such a young age, so this was a good way to slow down her progress and give her the chance to meditate on them.

Therefore, against her wishes, I started off by making her do some laps around the park. It was a small, local park and at around this time of day there wasn’t anyone else besides the two of us. “Sherry breathe through your nose, not your mouth; you’ll just get more tired doing that,” I instructed her. It had only been about fifteen minutes since we started, and she already looked like she was on the verge of collapsing. “Just how low was your stamina,” I let out a long sigh. It was looking like this would take a long time. However, willpower was an important part of mastering support magic as it consumed a tremendous amount of concentration. “Take a break if you’re feeling too tired, but if you think you can continue, then do it. You have to learn to pace yourself; when you’re caught up in a hectic battle the enemy won’t kindly wait for you,” or so I said, but I wasn’t really sure how much real combat she’ll see in this relatively peaceful, modern world. “Eh, better safe than sorry, right?” I mumbled to myself.

“O- okay… I’ll try… my best!” she told me as she was on her fourth lap.

“Okay, keep it up. I believe in you!”

“You do?!” she suddenly sped up.

“Now then, while she’s doing that,” I moved over and found a quiet place to concentrate. There was one thing I had been putting on hold ever since I came to this world, and that was my ‘Guild Castles’. There were five of these castles in total, all with their own themes and biomes. The word ‘guild’ might be a little misleading however, since I largely operated a solo guild for the conveniences and benefits, they provided. Socializing within an online game, unbelievable! Despite the real money costs, there were numerous benefits to possessing guild castles: personal castles, guild bank and storages, assistant NPCs, free daily material gathering, and the like.

“Lets see,” in much the same way I pulled up my status screen, summoning the Guild list was equally simple. With just a bit of concentration a holographic list spawned in front of my eyes with the details of all my castles noted.

[Please select the desired destination]

Hot Spring Resort

Sacred Underground Temple

Sky Fortress

Warship Cove

Forest Shrine

“They all appear to be intact,” I had been wondering at the back of my head if there were any changes since moving over to reality. I tapped on one of the options and expanded the information screen.

[Hot Spring Resort]

Managing NPC: Olivia

Guild facility upgrades: Level 3 upgrades unlocked (maxed out)

Population: 12

Daily Gathering Spots: All available

Gold Storage: 2.147b

<< Enter Guild Castle >>

“Nothing different then.”

“Corentinnnnn…!” after a while Sherry dragged her tired body over to me and collapsed onto my leg, using it as a lap pillow. “I… I can’t anymore… too… too much!”

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“Whoa, you’re sweating like a pig,” with just a small touch over her forehead my entire hand was almost drenched. “You’ve only been running for like thirty minutes, how are already about to die?”

“It’s your fault! Take responsibility!” she said as she rubbed her face onto my clothes.

“Geez,” I withdrew a small bottle of water that I had kept in my inventory and fed it to her through a straw. Interestingly, perishable and consumables didn’t expire while in the inventory and they didn’t lose any heat or coldness either. Rather than being like a cupboard or a shelf type storage, it was more of a frozen instance in time. If we were to continue at this rate it’s likely she’ll give up on the idea of swordsmanship entirely; I’ll have to dangle a delicious carrot in front of her. “Okay, how about this Sherry? If you can keep up with the training schedule, I’ll bring you to a nice place.”

“What kind of nice place?”

“One I think you’ll enjoy immensely.”

“Hmm,” she didn’t seem convinced, but decided to go along with me. “Well, if Corentin says it’s something I’ll enjoy, then it probably is. Okay, I’ll continue with the training!”

After which, I decided to join her in the exercises since I felt a little bad. We ran around, did some push ups and sit ups, but over all wasn’t anything too strenuous. By the time we finished it was around three in the afternoon and a lot of school students were coming home from school. Looking at their little uniforms made me feel a little nostalgic about the time I went to school when I was a young boy all those years ago. Perhaps in that life those were my most peaceful days. “This isn’t good. I shouldn’t be reminiscing about something so long ago,” I slapped my face and came back to reality.

Sherry tugged at the corner of my shirt and asked, “you said you’ll bring me to someplace nice, when are we going? Is it far?”

“No, it’s not. Okay, just close your eyes for a second.”

She did as I asked and closed her eyes without hesitation. Sometimes I think she’s a little too obedient. With that thought I opened the Guild list once more and clicked on the [Hot Spring Resort]. Doing so opened a prompt:

[Would you like to take your party member (Sherry Sinclair) to your Guild Castle?]

<< Yes / No >>

“Party member?” I wondered to myself. The party system was a staple of any MMORPG in which players could do activities together. However, I didn’t remember creating any parties. “No matter, ‘yes’,” I tapped. Normally there’d be a brief loading screen in between but that didn’t happen here. Instead, the transportation system was as quick as blinking and before I knew we had already arrived at my guild castle.

The Hot Spring resort was, as it sounded, a place of relaxation modelled after the Japanese hot springs and bathhouses. The place consisted of the main building which was a large three-story complex with dozens of rooms and baths. Surrounding the main building were several smaller buildings with their own facilities like a game room, massage room, dining hall, amongst other things. The resort was surrounded by a forest, and to my knowledge there should be an invisible wall there, but I wasn’t quite sure how that worked in real life. Questions for another day. If filled to a comfortable capacity, the entire resort could house up to two-hundred patrons at once, although that would never happen since this place was my private property. Heck, it wasn’t even located on a physical plane of existence.

“Whoa… what, but how did we get here?!” Sherry shouted in surprise as she looked around confused and amazed all the same. “Co- Corentin?! Just what is this place?”

“It’s a place in between realities,” or so I explained it away like that, but I didn’t know where this was either. It’s my own pocket dimension. “But before we do anything, Sherry, you’ll have to promise you won’t tell anyone about this place. Got it?”

She nodded, “All right.”

As we were dawdling around in the front entrance, an elderly lady dressed in a neat, rose red Japanese traditional yukata greeted us. Though I say ‘elderly’, she only appeared to be slightly older than my father with a few streaks of grey hair in between her predominantly black hair. There were slight wrinkles on her face, however they only accentuated her aura of a calm, elderly woman more than anything. With the clacking of her wooden sandals she came out to greet the both of us.

“Welcome back, master Helvetius,” she greeted me as ‘Helvetius’ even though it was my first time here in this body. My character’s name back in the game certainly wasn’t that but I suppose it wasn’t the strangest thing.

“It’s been a while, Olivia. I take it nothing major has gone on here?”

“Certainly not, master. This place has been left as you remembered it.”

“Excellent. Then, please take Sherry into the baths and give her the ‘full treatment’.”

“Of course, master,” she bowed and turned to Sherry. “Please, this way, lady Sherry.”

“Eh? What, what’s going on?” Sherry asked in a flustered tone.

“You don’t have to worry; she’s not going to do anything bad. Just trust me.”

“But… but I don’t know what’s going on here. Corentin, come with me?”

“Come with you? You’re going to be taking a bath, you know? Surely you don’t want me with you,” or so I tried to turn down her offer but those large puppy-dog eyes that were about to cry couldn’t be refused. “Ugh, fine, just go first then. I’ll join you in a bit,” I sighed. I suppose I did run around a bit too, and a soak in a hot bath didn’t sound like a bad idea.