Damian sat at the old library table, immensely perplexed.

'What do I even make of this? I should probably tell someone about this, right? Maybe Instructor Kley would know something about what's happening in this strange room. But what if it's just a one-off occurrence? Maybe…it would be better to try to learn something from this. Let's…wait a little bit longer…perhaps something will change in time.'

Coming to a conflicting final decision, Damian left the old library, choosing to continue his everyday life for a little while longer.

As the days passed, Damian felt himself falling into a fairly comfortable routine pretty quickly. For each day, the entirety of his life could be broken down into just a few simple words: eat, sleep, and practice. Although occasionally, he would find himself studying his runes before he headed to bed or more recently, visit the old library to observe the strange knocking at the wall.

Each night he would read his runes and jot the inscriptions down in his notebook little by little as he fought the irritating pain that always accompanied the process.

At the end of his first week at the outpost, Damian sat hunched over at his desk late into the night, carefully recording the last remaining rune text imprinted onto his arms.

At the moment of completion, Damian heaved a desperate sigh of relief as his eyes watered uncontrollably.

'Finally! This is the last of it! I don't have to put myself through any more of this torture…!'

Emotionally and physically drained, Damian looked over the entirety of his runes, transcribed onto his notebook.

From his notes, he cataloged each collective passage. From all the translations that he'd gathered, a clear noticeable distinction had been uncovered in the process.

'So in total, I've got three separate rune passages imprinted onto my arms. Although, why does it feel like this passage is different from the others?'

Damian inspected the first rune passage where he read over the vague story of the Architect.

'This rune text feels a lot more…useless than the other two? It definitely has something to do with that whole thing with the forest incident, but why would I care at this point?'

Choosing to ignore the rune text, Damian glanced over toward the other two passages.

'Now these runes here are definitely what's giving me my abilities.'

To Damian, the other two rune passages followed closer to that of bestowing a power. While it still felt cryptic and complex in meaning, these sorts of passages always ended with the bestowing of a gift. This made sense when runes are supposed to be gifts given by the Gods watching over them.

Take for example the recent passage Damian had learned and pieced together:

``Those who are lost, require guidance: You have been gifted with Travelers Guide.``

'Unlike the story about the 'Architect', the runes here are actually doing something useful for once. In this case, it would be gifting me whatever the 'Travelers Guide' was. It also goes the same way with the rune text about gifting me Rune Interpretation too.'

From everything he's uncovered so far, you could say Damian had been gifted with two abilities; Rune Interpretation, and Travelers Guide.

'The first gift, Rune Interpretation, is obviously my ability to read runes—the second gift, not so much.'

Damian sat at his desk, pondering the cryptic message.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

'What the hell is this ability supposed to be..? Ignoring the bizarre writing before that, what exactly is a Travelers Guide?'

Damian closed his eyes, surfing through his memories to uncover the answer.

'If I've been awarded with an ability, it has to be something I've already experienced or noticed. What parts of me have changed since that whole church disaster? One is that I can read runes, but the other?'

Damian rubbed his eyes in frustration.

'Let's just head to sleep. I haven't even begun looking into the rest of the passages yet. Why does everything need to be so damn hard!'

***

"Hello everyone, now that the first week has ended, your group training with Vailecks will now be rotated into training with me instead! I look forward to our time together!" An enthusiastic figure proudly announced.

Damian felt his expression shift uncomfortably at the bizarre attitude.

'So Instructor Guriya is in charge of Group B now. I guess it's fine…but what the hell is wrong with this woman?'

Leaning toward Mika who stood beside him, he calmly whispered to her:

"Do you have any idea why she is so happy all the time?

"I uhh…I honestly have no clue." Mika murmured, slightly unsure.

While everyone had now grown familiar with the instructors, most people still didn't really know what to make of her unexplainably positive attitude and enthusiasm. Regardless, she was still the nicest instructor out of the three, so most people didn't really care and simply accepted her goodwill.

"For your week with me, we will be going over cooperative training and survival tactics! So everyone, be sure to find someone to partner up with today so we can begin the lessons!"

While some loathed the idea of interacting with others, the training went by smoothly with Mika and Damian partnering up and going through basic exercises and warm-ups. For all the newer students in Group B, the change of pace felt odd to them as they had mostly gotten used to Vailecks' straightforward one-on-one combat style teaching.

The tempo for everyone seemed to slow down as the labor of their training now slackened to a far easier degree.

With every student grouped into pairs, Guriya demanded everyone to take a seat on the fine dirt of the training area.

"To start, why don't I start with a simple question? Why are all of you here?"

The crowd of lounging students remained silent at her question—a sour realization fell onto the faces of each recruit.

"Because each and every one of you is worthless."

Instructor Guriya spat, her tone and atmosphere flipping in an instant to that of disgust.

Damian widened his eyes, along with many other newbies, completely caught off by her drastic personality shift.

"However, even for people as insignificant as yourselves, the city still chooses to try and utilize your talents even if, for most, it may seem like a waste of valuable time and resources." Guriya continued her demoralizing speech.

"So for that reason, we train you, in the hopes that even just one of you rises and becomes someone of great respect and capability. While it may seem hopeless, know that I have seen it. I have seen many people discarded and left behind, only to become some of the most powerful beings currently alive."

Damian scrunched his brow, feeling her tone subtly growing in bitter compassion.

"So please, learn well and survive, even if it seems hopeless."

At the climax of her meaningful speech, Guriya began class. At her gesture, the whole group quickly stood, awaiting her lecture with resounding attentiveness.

"Unlike Instructor Vailecks, I will be teaching you teamwork and utility. Learn well. Because out there, beyond the walls, you will never survive without it."

***

Throughout block training, the class followed closer to a genuine school lecture, with her giving clear questions and answers to some of the most basic problems you will encounter traversing the dangerous outside. Hunger, thirst, sleep, and observation taking precedence over everything else.

However, one student asked a very important and rather obvious question in the middle of her explanations.

"Instructor, what exactly are we hiding from in the first place? What sort of monsters are out there?" A certain student asked.

Guriya indifferently glanced over at the student.

"Your question is rather difficult to answer. There are so many drastically diverse creatures lurking in all environments, each with completely different weaknesses and abilities. I will eventually teach you a few different kinds of beasts common in the forest, but I would much rather you look toward studying the environment itself instead."

"Look at the forest, for example. There are tall trees and masses of vegetation. Anything could be hiding atop the tall trees, within the forest grounds and vines, or possibly even the vegetation itself could be hostile."

"Although I can't provide you with a library of vast knowledge on this subject like that of an inner-city instructor, I can at least provide you with the skill of basic awareness and adaptability."

Signaling to the recruits, Instructor Guriya finalized their lecture with a few key points on survival before suddenly demanding that everyone get ready for combat.

"Alright, everyone! I think that'll be enough lecturing on survival for today; now we will move on to learning about teamwork!"

"Instructor, what exactly are we fighting against?" A curious student questioned.

Guriya replied with a knowing smile:

"Me."