5 Fighting Isn't Easy for Amateurs

[x5000 gold coins and 100 EXP received]

Hinata falls into a doubtful silence. "I'm not sure someone of your competence can handle double-daggers. Most adventurers can't."

[Basic Training Mode Unlocked]

"Tsk, as if you can associate the capabilities of others with me," she challenges. Unsheathing her blades, she spins them between her fingers dexterously. Biting her lip, closing one eye, and fixing her aim on a dummy at the far left of the room, she lunges forward and throws, each dagger penetrating the fabric of either side of the dummy's shoulders.

Mizuki stands back, gawking at her abilities. Hinata does the same, struggling to come to terms with the fact that a peasant girl has managed to show that level of competency with weapons. A brief 'ping' echoes off the walls of the room, breaking the Mizuki out of her daze.

From her chest, a blue hologram panel appears, and on a tab next to her character profile, is a list of achievements with the topmost one checked off. "That's your commission panel, so you don't always have to travel here to the Headquarters for you to collect your rewards."

"Heh, did you see that?!" Mizuki guffaws, pointing her finger at her blades. Hinata hides his face with his hand, clicking his tongue.

"Don't get too ahead of yourself. I've definitely achieved more than that on my first."

"You're too full of yourself to admit I did more than you can on my first try," Mizuki sticks out her tongue teasingly, running to retrieve her weapons. Hinata watches her from the corner of his eyes, holding himself back from an obvious frown.

"I'm going to try a trick," Mizuki smirks, stretching her neck in preparation.

"This isn't a good idea," Hinata remarks firmly as she takes a step forward. Mizuki chuckles arrogantly under her breath, telling herself that Hinata's only jealous of the talent he couldn't build up with all his experience. Twisting her hip and readying her aim, she twirls mid-air, throwing her daggers in the direction of the training dummies. When she lands, she dusts her hands confidently, looking up again with the expectation that she pulled off the stunt effortlessly.

Hinata snarls, "Who are you using as your dummy here?" Upon turning, she notices Hinata with his elbow locked right over his shoulder, dagger grazing his neck.

Mizuki freezes, pressing her lips together. She should apologise, and she knows, but she can't seem to utter a single word. Hinata flings the dagger towards her, earning a frightened flinch. She retreats, hugging her abdomen as if praying for her life.

Slowly, when she doesn't feel a change, she opens her eyes, finding the dagger lodged into the ground, cracks emerging from where the blade struck.

Shaky-eyed, she stares at Hinata who warns, "If you're going to be flinging your daggers around like that, you're going to have to learn how to receive them too." Mizuki lowers her head, picking up her blade. Increasing pace, she grabs the other one, lying at the foot of the dummy.

Too mortified to speak, Mizuki only wishes the ground would engulf her with her arrogance and teach her a good lesson. She shouldn't have gotten ahead of herself and it's about a few seconds too late for her to realise. Noting a few of her achievements, she attempts to practice a few of her short-ranged attacks, hacking and slashing at the training dummies.

She ignores the clicking of shoes behind her, only until she's stopped by the shoulder. "What, you want me to hurt you again?" she grumbles, a tremble in her voice as she nudges Hinata away.

"You're doing it wrong," Hinata grabs her blades from her. He demonstrates, showing her how to first block the enemy by their neck and then wound their shoulder to shock them. When they recoil, it would then be easy for her to get a hit on their vitals or kick them off balance to land a final hit. His step sequence is dexterous and difficult to follow, something Mizuki wouldn't have expected from someone who once claimed the usage of the weapons to be difficult.

"Try it yourself," Hinata raises his chin as he hands Mizuki her weapon by its hilt. She nods once, trying her best to recall his moves. Step-by-step, she follows, a lot less confident and much slower but something. The dummy crashes to the ground and Mizuki steps down on it with her heel, throwing her dagger at its neck. She huffs, turning to Hinata for his approval.

"You have a habit of throwing things."

"Is that wrong?"

"Do whatever you like," Hinata shrugs.

Mizuki takes it as the most positive possible answer she can pry out of him so she settles, sliding her daggers back into their sheaths. "Also, why am I not getting any more achievements for fighting these?"

"This isn't training mode. If you activate it, the dummies here will start to move and you need to defeat a certain number within a certain time to get your achievements," he laughs as if Mizuki asked a ridiculous question.

Jostling him to the side, she turns away with a faint blush dusting her cheeks. Flipping her hair, she positions herself in the center of the room, expecting further instructions from her self-entitled mentor.

"Open your achievements and one of them should lead you to the training system. It will activate the enemies immediately. I'm not going to help you with this," Hinata mentions, positioning himself at the corner closest to the door, folding his arms.

"As if I'd need your help for something this easy," Mizuki teases, following his previous instructions. The ground rumbles and then flashes bright blue, a holographic panel reading "Training Mode begin" appearing before her eyes.

Mizuki finds herself shaking on her feet as the room around her is engulfed in blue pixels. She bends her knees for better stability, watching owlishly as her room morphs into a ruin-like setting. The cement breaks into massive pillars that hold up the ceiling, the outer walls translucent but glowing a faint purple.

Under her feet, there's a purple circle with swirl intricacies. In front of her face, there's a holographic podium with a circle, an astrological chart of sorts. Mizuki places her palm in its center and it churns, soon vaporising into the air.

Mizuki stands on guard, eyes darting around as she watches cultists glitch into view.

Her heart picks up pace and she then realises...

She has absolutely no idea about any of the enemies she has to expect in the game.

Muttering a prayer under her breath, she drops and slides between two of the men, stabbing them both at the back of their necks. She finds it difficult to pull her blades out, having to kick them down so she can yank them back into her grip properly.

A couple more spawn on top of the handful there already are and she struggles to avoid their hits. She's lucky they aren't carrying any weapons but having a horde of men cloaked in black, ashen skin, and purple-glowing fists running towards her like zombies don't put her at much comfort.

She tries her hardest to keep her breathing steady, slicing at any man who dares to get too close. She does great for the first few bits, even gaining a rhythm when she's knocked, hard, by one of the cultists.

She falls to the ground, a black gash left burned on the skin of her forearm. Struggling to lift her arm whilst holding herself up, Mizuki finds that she has no way out of this.

But true to most other occasions, Hinata doesn't hesitate to wait for the worst and wields his sword, cutting the cultist's head off cleanly. It lets out a disappointed howl before falling, blood spurting out of its neck. Mizuki turns green in the face as she stumbles away from the corpse, cold blood now staining her pale skin.

[Training Mode cleared!]

"Ah, I messed up."

[Achievement Unlocked: Fight for my Way - Clear one battle in Training Mode]

[x5000 gold coins and 150 EXP received]

She holds the skirt of her dress, scrunching her nose at the gory sight. "You need to build up your strength and agility. Those are the main two you'll need to put up a good fight."

"What else is there?"

"Health points but that can only be built with potions and better armour, all that."

"How can I do better?"

"First off, there's better equipment and armour. There's also food buffs and of course, practice. Doing increasingly harder levels of training will help you," Hinata counts on his fingers. Mizuki nods silently and obediently, taking notes in her head. Hinata is impressed at how well she's taking the criticism, his expression softening into a sympathetic one. "You will get better."

Mizuki doesn't let the encouragement settle. She acknowledges it and hopes she won't remember it again, knowing he's only going to take himself back with another snarky comment. "I'm going to practice more," she pouts. As she's about to commence the training once again, Hinata interjects, "You shouldn't outdo yourself."

"And if I don't, will you ever stop criticising me?" she meets his eye, commenting bitterly. "No," he responds straightforwardly, coldly with not much care about her choices. Dismissing his presence, Mizuki follows her gut, starting the training. Unfortunately for Mizuki, once there's a start, there's no stop.