Training

"Follow me, my lord," Alfred says, as he walks outside through the back door. I follow closely behind him as we enter the forest behind the cabin. We walk for a few minutes before coming into an area that is somewhat flat and mostly clear of trees and rocks. We stop in the treeline looking out into the open field, Alfred looks at me and says, "run around this clearing until I tell you to stop." He then turns around and sits under a tree.

I look around the clearing for a moment, knowing this is going to suck, and start to jog along the treeline surrounding the field. The clearing is roughly oval-shaped and is about two hundred yards long and one hundred and fifty yards wide. It takes me approximately four minutes to jog all the way around at a steady pace.

About five laps in, I start to struggle. My breathing is starting to get very heavy, and my legs feel like jello. I do two more laps and stop for a moment at the point where I began, resting my hands on my knees. Somehow I notice something coming up behind me and raise my arms to block it. Alfred had come up behind me and slapped my arms. It would have been my head, had I not blocked. I fly back a few feet and fall on my ass and look up at Alfred and say, "what the hell, man?"

He looks at me with a stern look in his eyes and asks, "did I tell you to stop running?" Without responding, I get up and continue to run. I run at a slower pace than before attempting to conserve energy and potentially recover a little. As I jog, I suddenly get the urge to do a barrel roll, like a dodge, so I do. I wasn't the only one surprised by what happened next. As I rolled Alfred's fist flew through where my head had just been, I came out of the roll, putting my fists up facing Alfred. Moments later, Alfred disappears into the woods behind him. I stand there for a moment before I continue jogging. I keep my guard up this time because now I know he is testing me.

I jog three more laps before he strikes again, this time I don't notice him or get a sudden urge to get out of the way, so he hits me, and I fly into the middle of the field. By the time I have recovered, he is already gone. I take another couple of minutes to get my strength back and keep jogging. I'm feeling weak by this point, and I can't move fast at all. I continue to "jog" even though its more of a hopping walk at this point. After a couple more laps, Alfred strikes again. This time I somehow noticed him and was able to move just enough that he missed.

This time instead of running away, he smiles and says, "good job today, m' lord, thank you for persevering through the first day of training. I had to go rough on you to get a baseline of your speed, agility, and perception. Tomorrow will be a light day, and the day after, we will do what we just did again, except for strength and endurance.

I follow Alfred, and he leads me to a creek just east of the cabin. He hands me some soap and a fresh pair of clothes and tells me to get cleaned up. The stream is roughly ten feet across and only about three and a half feet deep at its deepest part. The banks of the creek are not very steep, and it is easy to navigate. I start to get in, and I am surprised. The water is a comfortable temperature. I slowly inch down into the water, attempting not to fall, the current isn't overpowering, but after today's work out, I am exceptionally worn out.

It doesn't take me long to get washed up, and I notice myself feeling better but extremely tired when I get out. We walk the rest of the way to the cabin, and the first thing I notice is a delicious smell. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it smells kind of like chicken and bacon combined along with maybe an apple pie.

Alfred looks at me and says, "smells good, doesn't it? Unfortunately, that is not what you are eating." and laughs at me. We walk into the kitchen and dining room, and I sit down at the table and rest my head in my hands and close my eyes. I'm so tired that I actually fall asleep. What I assume is a few moments later, I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder that wakes me up.

It takes me a moment to wake up enough to notice that it was Sophie that woke me up. She smiled and placed a plate of chicken with a weird veggie I have never seen before, in front of me. It was like broccoli and lettuce had a baby. It was shaped similar to broccoli but was layered identical to the lettuce.

I thanked Sophie and started eating, it was very good. She gave me a potion, she said that it would help with regenerating my body overnight so that I wouldn't be as sore in the morning. It was a purple potion and tasted like grape juice, and cough syrup had a baby. I ate everything she put on the plate for me, and afterward, she showed me to the room I would be staying in until the end of my training. I laid down and instantly fell asleep.

The next morning I felt amazing. I woke up on my own, and the sun was still down. I felt so energized that even without Alfred coming to get me, I went back out to the field and started running.

-Alfreds' point of view

I was about to go awaken the young master when I heard him get up on his own. I waited in my room to see what he would do, and to my surprise, he left the cabin and headed towards the field, presumably to resume training on his own. I notice Sophie coming out of her room, so I ask her, "what potion did you give him last night? He should be hard-pressed even to move right now."

She smiles and says, "it was a simple regenerative potion. The only difference was I added a little bit of elven healing magic to the potion. The magic healed him, and the regeneration made him stronger and gave him the energy you see."

As we leave the cabin to monitor his training, I say, "He is a strange one. How does he not know about leveling up? It's unheard of for an otherworlder to not know how to level up. It must have happened before, which is why the system made the rule about telling those who don't know about it."

Walking beside me, Sophie nods and says, "indeed, but it has given us an opportunity that no one ever has before. This mans' situation is completely unique, and the fact that he managed to get the money to get the advanced training grounds along with recruiting so many workers and soldiers is insane. He must have done something incredibly dangerous and brave to merit such an award."

not looking over, I say, "He killed a group of ten kid zombies."

She gasps and looks at me in shock. "That young man actually accomplished such a thing at level zero?"

"That he did. It's incredible. I plan on having him be strong enough to fight me head to head before we let him leave out on his own. Even then, I will likely follow behind him to ensure his safety."

Sophie looks at me, again in shock. "Alfred, you are level eighty-seven, It would take him sixty years to get that strong, even with the insane bonus to physical training while at level zero. I know between the potions and this room we can give him the equivalent of thirty years in six months, but then the room will need to charge for three years before it can be used in the same way. You know as well as I do that he won't accept waiting three years."

"Just watch him. He doesn't even realize that he is moving faster than he was yesterday, and yet he is moving nearly twice as fast without becoming winded. His growth speed is nearly double what it should be, even with the level zero buff. Something is special about him. We would be foolish not to take advantage of it. Also, you haven't been told yet, but he blocked a real attack from me and survived. He somehow snuck up on me, and I instinctually drew my knife and sliced at his neck, somehow he got his knife out and did a perfect block. He went flying across the room and got injured, but compared to what my knife would have done that was light, and a health potion was enough to heal him."

"Wait, wait, wait, he actually snuck up on you? On top of that, he actually survived a full-force attack from you? What the hell is he?" I chuckle quietly as she attempts to get over her shock.

"I'm not sure what he is, but it's an amazing opportunity to free the system from the council. If we train him properly, get him strong enough before he starts leveling, he will always be much stronger than he appears, people will underestimate him, and that will be his biggest advantage." We watch him run for another twenty minutes before I decide its time to give him some direction.

-MC point of view

Feeling amazing, I start running faster. After a couple of minutes, I realize that I have been running much quicker than I was yesterday, and I wasn't getting tired. Something in the potion Sophie gave me made an incredible difference. I run at a pace that I think is about one and a half times faster than yesterday, not running out of breath, for about thirty minutes before I finally notice Alfred out of the corner of my eye. He attempts to ambush me again. This time I dodge under his fist and try to strike back. He blocks it but gives me an approving look.

"Today, since you are feeling so good, we will commence with your strength baseline test," Alfred says, pulling a giant axe out of who knows where. It was a two-headed axe, had a handle roughly four and a half feet long, and weighed approximately thirty pounds. I don't know what made it so heavy, but I could already tell that this axe was going to give me a rough day.

I grab the axe and Alfred tells me to follow him. I follow him, and we head towards the middle of the clearing where there are some huge trees. Alfred points at the trees and says, "You are to chop down as many of these trees as you can. As you chop them down, I will come and move them to the edge of the clearing. You can stop when you are finished or when I tell you to stop." And he walks away.

I look at the trees here. There are roughly thirty trees, all of them three feet or more in diameter. I don't really know how to chop a tree down with an axe, but I remember watching the professionals do it on occasion, so I attempt to mimic their actions. It doesn't work very well at first, but the longer I chop, the more I refine the method. It only takes me a few swings to start getting tired.

This axe is hefty. The extra energy I had quickly being sapped from my efforts to chop just one of the trees. I cut at the tree for another twenty minutes, taking short breaks between each swing, before the tree finally starts to fall. I move off to the side and watch the nearly sixty-foot tall tree fall. I move on to the next tree, still taking my time between each swing, my arms feeling weaker and weaker the longer I continue.

I lost track of time, and after a while, my arms gave out. At that point, I figured out how to use my legs and torso to move my body in almost exactly the same way. I chopped like that as long as I could, and by the time Alfred appeared to tell me I could stop, I could barely move. I had chopped down ten of the trees, but the toll it took on my body was enormous. When Alfred told me that I could stop, I dropped to the ground and almost passed out in relief.

Alfred fed me a health potion and carried me back into the cabin, laying me on the couch, where I was woken up a few minutes later by Sophie. She told me she had some food and another regeneration potion ready for me at the table. I followed her into the kitchen. The food and potion were the same as the day before but just as amazing. Once again, right after I was done eating, I collapsed in my bed and fell asleep.

The next day it was the same thing, I woke up feeling amazing and energized. I climbed out of bed and almost stumbled because the strength I had was somehow much greater than yesterday. I feel light as a feather, and I have enough energy that I could probably do everything I did in the past two days twice, and still not be tired. It took me a few moments to get used to my new strength, but once I did, everything went back to normal.

I do the same thing I did yesterday. Only today, I ran fast, like as fast as I could. I ran five laps then chopped a tree down. I felt energetic enough and strong enough that I tried to pick up the tree by the end and drag it away, the way Alfred had been, but I'm not quite strong enough yet, so I tried rolling it. I am strong enough to do that, and I roll the log into the pile that Alfred had started, and do it all over again. It takes me about twenty minutes to do the laps, chop a tree, and move it. I get the whole interior part of the field cleared before Alfred shows up.

"Good job, thanks for getting those trees for me. For now, grab one of the boulders lying around here and run as hard and fast as you can around the field. I want to see you exerting the extent of your new strengths." He hands me a leather backpack, "Put as many as you can hold in that bag, it is a bag of holding and holds about one thousand times its size." I run around for a little while, grabbing stones and boulders until my bag is just heavy enough to strain me but not hurt me, and I start running around the field as fast as I can.

It doesn't take long for me to start feeling the workout. By the end of the day, I'm just as exhausted as the last two days. I eat dinner, take a potion, and go to bed.

I repeat this process, adding a little more weight every day. My growth in the first two nights was insane, but after that, it was slow but steady. After about ten days, Alfred started giving me basic combat training, on top of all of the physical training. It was a little rough, and I hurt enough that I needed a health potion many times. Around the thirty-day mark, at the end of the day, as we are returning to the cabin, Alfred tells me, "We will be staying here longer than the forty days we talked about. The room does not need to recharge yet, so we will be staying as long as we can."

I ate dinner and drank a regeneration potion, and as I was about to head to bed, Sophie approached me, "it is about time I teach you about meditation and controlling mana. I can see the mana is dense on you, and training it will benefit you greatly. Follow me, m'lord."

We leave the cabin and head into the woods in the opposite direction of the track. Up ahead I hear a waterfall, she leads me to the edge of the water around it and says, "This is the area with the most energy in the entire room. Even outside of the room, you won't find an area denser than this for thousands of miles. You will sit on the rock in front of the waterfall for three hours after dinner every night from here on out. Your goal will be to clear your mind and sense the energy around you. Once you have a clear sense of the energy, we can begin your real training." Then she just walked away and left me to sit on a rock in front of a waterfall for three hours.

The swim to get out to the rock was not difficult. When I got there, it was difficult to clear my mind, but after a time, I managed it, but I couldn't sense anything out of the ordinary around me. After the three hours had passed, I got up and swam back to shore and headed back to the cabin. The first session of meditation seemed unsuccessful, but I wouldn't give up. When I got back to the cabin, I went to my room and passed out as soon as my head hit my pillow.

-Sophie point of view

From the moment I saw this boy, he had an incredible about of magical power radiating off him. Only an elf trained in magic sight can see it. I managed to talk Alfred into letting me train him in magic as well because I knew that if I could, he would become one of the greatest magicians ever known.

When I finally convinced Alfred to let me train him, that night, I sent him to meditate for three hours in an area with extremely dense mana. Someone new to mana would barely sense it there, he shouldn't have too many issues sensing it and maybe even manipulating it.

I watched him as he meditated, and at first, nothing was out of the ordinary. After about an hour, something strange happened. Suddenly all of the mana around him started poring into him. As if the waterfall was flowing directly into him. It continued like this for the last two hours. The boy, not even realizing what he had done, just got up and walked away. The power radiating off of him was even more than I had at my peak.

I must teach him magic before he levels up and loses his bonuses. Even a fundamental foundation of magic before learning system magic will make him twice as strong as any other magician his level.