(3)

*Crash*

Ashton coughed as the dust went into his lungs after being thrown into a tree by Mordred. She'd insisted on teaching him some basic close combat moves, something he regretted agreeing on now.

"You didn't have to hit so hard," He said as he stood up and put his hands in a boxing pose. Mordred scoffed and didn't reply before delivering a right hook to his jaw, flooring him.

"Are you ok?" Mordred asked seeing him not getting up. As she reached down she widened her eyes and jumped back avoiding the backhand fist that Ashton had tried to hit her with.

"Damn it..." Ashton said seeing he had missed and scrambled up as Mordred attacked him again, knowing he was okay.

A few minutes later, Ashton was laying on the ground with a bruised face and breathing heavily. Mordred nodded satisfied with his small progress and took out her sword.

"The bag has rations, but we need more food, I'll go hunt while you sit here like a princess," Mordred said and walked away wielding her sword as Ashton grumbled something incomprehensible.

"What was that master?" Mordred said as he just turned to the side with an annoyed expression. she then walked away to find something for them to eat.

After she left Ashton smiled and grabbed inside the bag bringing out all the items he'd been given by the God Sage except for the bandage.

Looking at them he studied every one of them with a smile, he knew that these would be the key to becoming stronger in this world, and hopefully go back and fight in the Holy Grail war.

"I should work on my aim if I'm going to be using this..." Ashton said holding the bow forward and setting it beside him and grabbing the Dagger of Vadrurmuk as well.

These were the only ones that were offensive except for the unusable bandage that he still kept in the bag of infinity.

"Ok... can't be too hard to control right?" Ashton said to himself pulling the bowstring back and aiming at the tree. If he remembered correctly all he had to do was imagine how many arrows he wanted.

'Let's start with 1' He thought to himself and aimed at the center of the tree.

*Thwip*

He let go of the string just as an arrow appeared in his sights and it went straight toward the tree before falling and hitting the ground in front of it. All in all a good first attempt, but not where he wanted to be. eventually, they'd need to get out of this forest, and who knew what awaited them out there?

The rest of the afternoon, Ashton practiced his aim, not knowing he was being watched by a smiling blonde girl. It seemed he didn't want her to know he was training, so she kept silent and waited for a while with the rabbits she'd caught.

As Ashton looked around and put away his things Mordred revealed herself and didn't mention what she saw.

It was a pride thing as a man, and she didn't think for a second about teasing him or making fun of him for trying to get stronger, in her eyes he was already better than half the knights she used to know, some of them didn't try as hard to get stronger and died quickly under her stolen blade of Camelot.

"I brought food for us," She said and they gathered things for a fire and they cooked the rabbits in silence. As they finished Mordred looked over at him and finally decided to bite the bullet. "What's the plan?... we can't stay here forever you know..."

Hearing her question Ashton finished his Rabbit and looked back at her with an uncertain expression. "I... don't know... to be honest, I'm winging this whole master thing... I didn't even know about the Holy grail war before summoning you..." Ashton sighed and stood up before walking away to bathe in the nearby pond.

Mordred stayed frozen hearing her 'master' say something like that. she expected for him to act prideful and pretend he didn't have a plan... but seeing him admit that he didn't know what to do she wasn't sure how to respond.

"Whatever, we can figure it out later," She said to herself and rolled over in her white tank top and short jean shorts and fell asleep. The clothes had come from The Bag Of Infinity, a seemingly endlessly useful item that had most of the things they needed for now, but it still had a limit.

...

At the pond, Ashton was doing pushups and situps with squats and a 10km run. This was the best workout he could think of to get him stronger faster, He was honestly worried about the future, the way the god had thrown them there couldn't have been a coincidence. He was sent here to get stronger, so he was sure that this world was dangerous somewhere at least, this was only strengthened by the fact that there seemed to be fantasy monsters here in this world.

"Phew..." Ashton let out a breath as he died the sweat and looked down at his body. It wasn't anything special really, just an average amount of muscle and fat, not fat but not muscular either, he was actually closer to skinny in his eyes.

"Now... for the real workout..." He said quietly seeing that the fire had gone out and grabbed the bag from a rock he had set it on and pulled out the bow and the knife, along with the Elixir.

As he walked into the opposite part of the woods he didn't have to wait long for him to see the large green goblins. Seeing them walking around and eating apparently celebrating something.

Seeing this Ashton let out a deep breath and picked up a rock, throwing it against a tree in front of him and backing up after seeing he'd gotten one of these guys' attention.

He couldn't... no he wouldn't let Mordred do everything for him. If he was going to be the Master then he'd need to stop being a little bitch, the way he was convincing himself was that these were monsters, not humans, making him more receptive to the idea.

As the Goblin came and stuck its head in the trees looking down at the rock, it started to back up sensing something coming at it but stopped after getting a small scratch from the dagger.

The pain didn't start yet, otherwise, every Goblin would know that Ashton was here. "I... have to do this..." Ashton unslung the bow and aimed at the top of the Goblins head, closing his eyes once more he let go of the Bowstring hitting dead on and killing the Goblin.

As it dropped it evaporates into black dust and left a core there, just like the 3 before, he had picked up the cores not giving them much thought as he tossed them inside the bag, but they could be valuable in this world, so he grabbed this one with a different mindset and quickly got out of the goblin tribes area and ran back toward the camp.

As he lay down with his heart racing in his chest he smiled at the feeling before calming down and going to sleep. He was proud of himself for doing this, this would all go to his mother's recovery later when he went back home.

Little did he know that a certain blonde was proud of him as well as she finally fell asleep knowing he was back here safely... not that she would ever tell him she was worried. She'd seen his memories, and also found it honorable that he was trying his best for his mother, even though it was a little late. Mordred went to sleep with a smile on her face that night, and she wasn't even sure why.