Protagonist

'Lucian Gray'

I wasn't too surprised; I had already met two characters like this, and it was only a matter of time before I ran into the heaven blessed child himself with messy blue hair and gray eyes that were now looking at me with concern.

"Have you gone insane? Your arms gone red; you'll tear a muscle if you keep going!"

Looking at my left arm I realized that he was right, not only was it red but my elbow was also swollen.

I put my bow away and retrieved the arrows. There was no point arguing with him as he was right, and it was also getting late.

He sighed in relief before saying.

"I'm Lucian, Lucian Gray. You are?"

"Ajax."

"Nice to meet you, and I'm sorry for interrupting your training but you were going to hurt yourself."

"I understand, thank you."

He frowned before asking "Why are you talking like that?"

"What?" I said confused.

"Like I'm a customer and you're an employee. Loosen up man! People wouldn't want to be friends with you if you talk like that."

"...."

"I know that the academy can seem pretty intimidating but that's no reason to be so tense! Training is important but you should unwind and have some fun sometimes."

He seemed to have misunderstood me.

"Well, I won't bother you anymore. I look forward to seeing you back at the academy, I hope we can get into the same class."

Lucian said before attempting to shake my hand and then walking away.

I forgot that he started out like this, a relatively carefree teen who was far too loud and would say whatever he wanted to.

This got him in to a lot of trouble in the academy, but I didn't really care about that.

I had to focus on getting the next Combat Art in the next few days.

I could use the next two days to train with different combat arts, but I couldn't delay any further than that.

I began heading back as well, it was 7:45, I only had fifteen minutes to catch the bus back to the refugee homes and began to hurry my steps.

However, I kept thinking about what Lucian had said. Was I too robotic when I spoke to people?

I had never really talked to anybody in my past life and the only time I heard people talking to each other, it was employees speaking to customers, so maybe I copied the way they spoke making me sound robotic or unapproachable.

In fact, the only time I heard myself speaking with emotion was at the end of my life, when I had asked Derek to shoot me and even though I never thought about it too much, I would always try to suppress my emotions while thinking as well.

Not because I wanted to, but it had just been a habit that I had developed because of my fath... that man.

'There's no point in thinking about it.'

There was nothing I could do to change it now and pretending I had changed would just be even more off-putting.

I got on to the bus with as my brain kept repeating Lucian's words.

Why had they shaken me so much? Why did I care?

Maybe the reason I kept thinking about them was because I didn't have the answer either.

Hopefully after eating dinner and going to sleep these useless thoughts would be put to bed.

The church of preservation was handing out free meals again but thankfully it didn't seem like Clair was present.

I ate the goulash and bread before heading back upstairs into my room as I locked the door behind me.

A lot had happened today, I became a mercenary, went to my first ever danger zone, killed plenty of mana beasts and met the protagonist of the story.

It had all happened so quickly that I hadn't had time to process it all.

I began to take out the spoils of today's hunt, placing the bow in a corner of my room and taking out the money I had left after purchasing the bow.

After making sure everything was secure, I laid down attempting to eliminate the useless thoughts that kept bothering me.

'Maybe I'll be different someday.'

I thought before heading off to sleep.

*****

The first thing I felt as I woke up in the morning was muscle soreness from my left hand. It seems not even the healing factor of an awakened could save me this time.

I had woken up according to the schedule of my previous life, sharp at 5 AM.

In reality I had not much planned for today.

The dagger combat art I was planning to get were in a danger zone called the 'Shrieker Caves' which was of similar danger ranking to the 'Howling Cliffs', but its natural dark mana affinity made things tricky.

As expected, the caves were notorious for being pitch black with only F tier light magic having any effect on the ever-present darkness.

Thus, even with the low rated danger zone, many hunters would simply not enter the caves as a light mage was rare and the lamps set up by the organization were under constant attack.

Some even argued that the danger rating be increased to F despite there not being any monster of that caliber present in the cave.

For this reason, I wanted to train a bit more before heading into these caves despite not needing to go that far in to receive the Combat Art, especially with mana utilization and control.

Despite Rollins being a sadistic psychopath even before his corruption, he was decently skilled at utilizing his mana and used his dark mana to blend in with the natural mana of the caves and even achieved a form of night vision using it.

Hopefully I could train myself in both Combat Arts and mana control in these two days, it would also be very beneficial if I could avoid running into any more main characters but with the start of the academy soon, I didn't believe it would be a problem.

My main focus was a Combat Manual that was a gift from Adam that I had neglected so far.

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Edna Kane's Unarmed Combat Techniques (★★★)

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I dismissed the notification as I began heading to the training center once again.