Everyone loved the lasagna, way more than whatever glop Triff produced, it was good, I was a good chef, so good in fact that my skill in the real world was equivalent to 4 skill levels here, I told Jeremy about that and he said that getting any skill above level 3 was a very arduous task.

I was finally full, I had eaten so much that I felt like I was gonna burst. I almost forgot that I had a plan to get XP and deal with the dungeon boss.

“Hey, Mole, come over here.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me a favor, we’re training to beat the boss of the dungeon we found, but we need to grind XP, can you take us to those forest training facilities so that we can get a few levels in before facing the big bad.”

“Ah, no worries, I do have to pay you back for this delicious lasagna sometime anyway, you taking Jeremy with you?”

I looked at him and he nodded

“Yep.”

“Then let’s not waste time, I’ll dig us a tube to a more advanced training facility, it’s for the warrior-assigned people, it will only take me a few minutes, alright?

I nodded and he went outside, I went outside too to see him work his magic, he dove into the ground like it was water, he was like a massive worm easily pushing the mud out of the way.

It was true, in a matter of minutes I saw him slide out the hole, flip a couple times and land straight on his feet.

“There it is, slide in when you’re ready.”

I looked at Jeremy and walked closer to the tube, I jumped in and immediately felt like I was going at hundreds of miles per hour, I do not know how he did this, was it some enchantment or magic he had, I don’t know, I just knew it definitely didn’t follow the laws of physics, but I don’t think the ability to allocate stat points into strength and suddenly get more muscles follows the laws of physics either.

I landed on the other side after a good minute of the most exhilarating ride of my life, I landed with a flop after being shot 3 meters up in the air, luckily my hardhat absorbed most of the damage to my head. I got up shortly after.

That was when Jeremy shot up from the ground too. I tried to catch him but it felt too risky so I just let him fall on the ground too.

“What a tool, do those backflips like Mole instead.”

“Piss off.”

“Hah.”

I held out a hand and he gripped mine, I helped him back onto his feet and we were ready to start grinding.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

This training facility definitely was harder than usual, I saw spear-wielding frog people that Jeremy referred to as Bullywugs. They were definitely hard, they were skilled at managing distance and keeping the enemy at bay with its spear and fancy footwork, which mostly consisted of hopping a few meters away.

But its weakness was that if we just ripped the spear off of its hands it was powerless, we would just javelin it and claim our XP. Bullywugs gave us 2 XP.

There was another monster too, scarecrows.

They fought hard and were just annoyingly hard to kill, they did not stop even if you speared it, the damn thing just went through it, but the secret with the scarecrows was that there was a crystal inside it that you could pinpoint and destroy quite easily, but that was if you could handle the very hard punches they threw.

They gave an appropriate amount of XP for their toughness at 50. We took time to recover after each encounter to make sure we were on top of our game and were ready to take on any threat, you never know what could happen, the hobgoblin equivalent of the scarecrows or the bullywugs could appear.

Or people could appear.

Dangerous people.

A knife soared past my head, thinly cutting it.

“Target missed, evacuate, evacuate.”

“Roger.” Another voice said, the tree branches rustled as dark silhouettes dashed away.

“Should we go chase after them or?”

“That’s just how Warrior-Assigned training facilities are, they try to breed the toughest if they aren’t already fit enough when assigned, let’s hope we don’t get killed next time. If we’re lucky enough, we might be able to kill them.”

“Kill another person.”

“Yeah? What about it.”

“I’m not ready for that type of stuff, I’m a nice guy, I don’t wanna kill these people.”

“Do you wanna die?”

“No, of course not-” I explained, but he rudely cut me off.

“Then kill, it's a requirement if you want to have any strength or power in this world, what are your goals.”

“Well, of course, to take down the Empire.”

“Well, you need to kill the leaders and all the strong men backing it, you might as well get used to it, there isn’t gonna be a better opportunity.”

“I’m still not sure about this, my mind will be weighed down by all this, just killing someone because they happened to end up here.”

“James! Goddamnit, they tried to kill you, what more convincing do you need, little pacifist hippie. Look, what helps me is separating myself from the people I have to unfortunately finish off.” He explained. “They are not people, they are simply just monsters, globs of XP, can you find the difference between them and the Bullywugs?”

“No…”

“Louder.”

“No.”

“Louder.”

“No difference at all!”

“Attaboy, next time someone tries to kill you, stop being such a pussy, you’ll suffer for it.”

“Right…” I was still hesitant about it, but at least I was prepared, next time, those people will regret their decisions.

I took the knife from the ground, it looked high quality, not the cheap goblin stuff, I could use this instead of whatever I had now.

I tossed away the old blade, I’d give this a try.