Jacob was awaken by Brian once the two moons were well on its way to setting, the group immediately placed Jacob for the last shift when they were settling down for the night.

He took his shift, thankful for the sleep. Brian took Jacob’s place in the tent erected yesterday by Aurelius, it was not a state of the art facility by any means.

But Aurelius managed to string up three tents and covered it with enough leafage both on top of the logs and the ground for anyone to feel comfortable enough for one nights sleep, compared to the accomodations in the past few nights. It was a five star hotel room, even the rotating guards were freshly cleaned and had suave clothings. With the three tents,everyone was able to have a good rest.

Jacob did not have to crunch his essence into his core, so after he awoke. Jacob went through some of the basic fighting techniques for mixed martial-arts from Brian and some of Aurelius hand to hand combat training that they went through after the shock Jacob applied with his news of the impending separation of the group.

Both Riley and Jacob participated in the impromptu training, learning what to do against an armed opponent. Practicing against Aurelius while he was wielding a weapon and Brian in a bare-handed fight.

Jacob had his ass handed to him by both, Aurelius kept the distance between him and Jacob easily with Flowing Water in hand. Everytime, Jacob made an attempt to bridge the gap he was met with the edge of Flowing Water. Jacob tried swatting the sword aside to get inside the guard of Aurelius, it was met with a slap across his head with the flat of the sword as he moved in.

He exchanged places with Aurelius and was shown the difference in experience. He did not seek to emulate what Aurelius did as Jacob felt that was beyond him, instead he tried keeping Aurelius at a distance with multiple slashes. Instead of dodging away from the strike or slapping the sword away, Aurelius moved along with each cut that Jacob did.

It was poetry in motion, Jacob tried feints,cuts, thrusts and slices whatever Jacob could think of. Even mixing them up randomly, at one point he even twirled the sword randomly to try and hit Aurelius. Aurelius was able to weave through all of the strikes without much effort, instead Jacob was the one left panting even when he was the one holding a weapon.

The training with Brian went differently, further improving Jacob initial impression of him as a brutish oaf. Brian, first went through some basic forms with Riley and Jacob. After they performed up to his expectations, they went onto 1 on 1 open palm sparring with each other.

Throughout the 5 bouts, Jacob and Riley went through. Brian gave real-time advice on what to improve on and where to strike. With their speed equalised Jacob was unable to get a upper-hand through his non-existent techniques. After the five bouts, which left Jacob tired to the bones. They finally had 1 on 1 sparring with Brian and there was where both of them got their ass handed to them.

Brian allowed Jacob to use his highest speed and promptly demonstrated speed was not everything if it was trounced by prediction. When Jacob had moved first, Brian anticipated where Jacob would strike. Casually block the hit and before Jacob could bring back his arm. Brian already hit him in the chest. In every 5 exchanges, Jacob only won 1.

Jacob got out of the 1 on 1 against Brian, with even more bruises all over his body than his training with Aurelius. He watched Riley train with Brian with much enthusiasm, along with her entertaining sound effects Jacob was entranced by the movements of her body.

Riley caught him openly ogling at her, but she did not chastise Jacob but instead returned to her training with Brian. Despite not being scolded for his lecherous behaviour, Jacob was embarrassed with his own action so he walked away from the sparring session between the two.

As Jacob went through what happened yesterday, he was going through the training taught by Brian, remembering the motions. As he went through them one by one, his proficiency with the movements increased. As his moves got sharper and sharper it turned to instinctual movements. Until he was able to perform the movements with no error as he moved to repeat the movement one more time, the now familiar voice of the System ringed in his mind.

[Progress for Gifted Learner has been completed]

[Learning is akin to building a foundation and you can build the most stable of foundation with the fastest speed]

[Mind will be given a boost of 3x and Intelligence will receive a boost of 2x]

[Your learning speed will be increased]

[Buff has been applied]

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

[All skills will have a faster rate of progress]

‘Well shit fuck’

Jacob took a look at his new status as he willed it to be shown to his eyes.

Name

Jacob Castus

Titles

First Adventurer of Earth

Luck of the Draw(D)

Race

Human

Grade

1

Level

21

Job

Squire

Vigor

68

Endurance

28

Strength

82

Dexterity

42

Intelligence

15 (30)

Mind

52 (156)

Luck

27

Free Points

12

Before Jacob even had the time to process his huge mistake of Job selection, he was brought into another vision. He tried to get out of the vision according to what the Suzerain taught him so he could process the previous things the System told him. However, he was unable to imagine himself moving out of the vision.

Instead, he was forced to look at the younger version of himself living through his life. However, Jacob did not recognise the scene in front of him. The Jacob he was looking at was indeed him but, baby Jacob was smiling and was hugging two unfamiliar figures.

He could only see the silhouettes of the figures and not their faces, however he did not recognise them at all. Neither, the backs nor the shape of the figure. The scene quickly switched to another, now baby Jacob grew into a teen.

He was having dinner with a table of 5, in addition to the silhouettes of the previous two figures. Another two joined the scene, their shorter stature indicated they were the younger sibliings of the other Jacob.

The scene switch again, this time the Jacob in the scene was of a similar height to the current Jacob. But he was holding onto something while a whole group of silhouette was holding the same item. All of them looked at the same without moving as if it was a stillframe.

The scenes continued switching showing the entire life of the other Jacob, throughout all the scenes. Jacob could only see the body and face of the other Jacob in full colour, rest were always a muted gray and foggy silhouettes.

Once the other Jacob life ended, another one unfolded. Jacob was forced to look through the life of another Jacob. All the while, shouts could be heard echoing. Jacob still caught in the loop of Jacobs, one where he was underwater facing a huge silhouette of a fish. Through the two lives, he still went through the integration from the System.

Jacob clutched his head as the visions filled his mind and the shouts got louder as he looked through the visions and as it gets louder but his ears started discerning the words and who was shouting them.

“I should never had trusted you!”

“Thank you all for spending time with me”

“Its like you all wanted me to die”

“Whats going on?”

“Don’t die on me!”

“I refuse to live like this”

It was his voice and they were all saying different things, colliding into a myriad of tones and voices. Some of them were rough, some had insidious meanings and others were just plain gibberish to Jacob.

The shouts continued to get louder as the scenes progress, until Jacob could only shut his eyes and tried to block off his ears as his hands slid from his cranium to his ears. But try as he might the scenes still continued playing and the voices continued echoing in his ears.

Unable to bear the pain caused by the visions and the now booming voices. Jacob screamed and screamed to counteract the voices. When the pain got too much, he tried digging out his eyeballse.But even as he as he dug out his own eyes, his eyeballs grew back as it was pulled out. The vision continued through the digging, not giving him a single second, a single moment of respite. He tried punching his own ears to stop the ear shattering voices. Try as he might the voices never ceased.

Jacob finally unable to withstand the vision, the sounds and the pain. Collapsed unto the ground, a bleeding sobbing mess. Even that did not stop the endless flood of voices and visions, only the pain slowly receded as it grew faint while Jacob was bombarded by what he was forced to hear and see.

The visions and voices blurred together, constantly pounding his senses. Jacob slowly lost himself to the pain. As all sense of time was pounded out of him, he laid on the non-existent floor as scenes continued flitting past him.

Until everything suddenly stopped and he saw. He finally saw something other than more versions of himself and he was no longer hearing his own voice constantly repeated back at him in all sorts of variation. It was the same place that he was moments ago or eons ago. But he was finally back at the camp, as the warm campfire reminded him of its presence and Jacob was still mid-way through his practice forms.

Jacob broke down crying into the same position that he held as cried in that vision, no that nightmare. The tears came out in droves as he was finally out of that horror show. What kind of ability would require a person to experience such a thing and why could he not get out of it at all. He did not know and he felt like he never wanted to find out. Jacob just wanted to forget about it all.

His crying got the attention of Bryan who was just falling asleep and awoken the sleeping Riley. Only Aurelius remained asleep.

They got up to see the source of the crying. The rather confident Jacob, now looking more like a child than ever. Left the two of them flummoxed.