Chapter 36

We made our way down all 8 floors. I watched all the shops go by as we glided down on the moving stairs.

On the bottom floor there was a large crowd around a storefront that took up almost a quarter of the floorspace. Rei motioned us towards it.

"This way. It'll be a few silver, but trust me it's worth it. I've been in here a few times."

We walked through the crowd of people and got into a small line forming right outside the entrance.

There was a large sign over the glass door.

"Vice City Mall Training Center"

The line moved forward slowly for about 10 minutes until a middle aged man greeted us at the door.

"Just the 3 of you? What level training room, and how long are you going to need?"

Rei spoke up.

"30 minutes in a D Class Room. We'll rent 3 pairs of Sim gear too."

"That'll be 10 silver for the room, 3 extra for the sim gear."

My eye brow raised. That's pretty pricey. What kind of training room is this?

I reached into my item box to grab some silver for my cut, but Rei immediately gave me a look.

"Don't worry about it. Pace Guild will cover this one, it's for training."

She winked at me and handed the man 13 silver.

He nodded and let us through.

"4th room on the left. Timer starts once ya open the door."

We walked through a narrow hallway and towards the room.

Rei opened the door and we walked in.

She shut the door and a large clock on the wall started counting down 30 minutes.

It was a large room with high ceilings. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all white and I could hear the hum of a mana shield.

There was a small rack with combat suits on it. Rei picked one up and started putting it on over her clothing, it magically tightened to fit her body.

"You guys too, put em' on."

Maria and I followed her lead and put on the suits.

All of a sudden I saw blue text hovering over Rei and Maria's heads.

[100/100]

[100/100]

I saw Maria staring over my head as well. There must be numbers above mine too. I looked at Rei.

"What is this?"

She grinned.

"It's Vice City training gear. Pricey tech, let's use it while we have the time. Don't hold back, this gear is graded up to high B Class attacks. You couldn't kill someone in one if you tried."

I looked at her in confusion.

"W-What do you mean?"

She smirked. Then her whole body started to glow with a yellow light.

"This is what I mean."

Her body glowed so bright I could hardly see anything else in the room. It was blinding me.

The room started to fill with static and my eyes went wide as I saw large thunderbolts protruding from Rei's body.

*ZAPPPPPPPPP*

A huge bolt of electricity came flying towards me faster than my eyes could see.

"AAAAAGHHHH"

It hit me with a direct hit. It was more painful than I was expecting it to be. I dropped to my knees and Maria shrieked.

"He's at 0! 0 out of 100!! Rei how could you do tha-"

"Just give it a second Maria, watch."

A small red text appeared at the lower left corner of my vision.

[1 death logged]

Restart? [YES][NO]

I chose [YES] and an animation of my health bar rose from 0/100 to 100/100 in front of my eyes.

"T-This is a simulation?"

Rei laughed.

"Yes, but also no."

Maria and I both looked at her with confused looks on our faces.

"The suits absorb the magic energy from attacks. It will simulate the damage and show you what percentage of your health would have been taken. They're a great tool for training. It allows higher ranked hunters to go all out and not worry about hurting their training partners."

Maria and I both looked down at our suits in awe.

It is pretty cool. I knew the capital was going to have some cool new tech, but I didn't know stuff like this was so available to the public.

Maria spoke up.

"Alright Jay. Let's Spar!"

She started to glow a light blue color and took out her sword.

I returned the favor with a grin and took out my own sword. I decided not to use my fire just yet, I don't think it would be fair against Maria.

She engulfed her sword in a blue and white crystalizing mist. I was impressed, her ability to handle her ice skill has definitely improved.

Maria's level is much lower than mine so her movements were easy to track.

"CLANGGG"

I blocked her sword's hits with simple defense tactics. She handled her sword well, and her swordplay looked cool but she couldn't land a hit due to the huge difference in out stats.

After 10 or so attacks Maria looked up at me with a grin.

"Come on Jay!!! You're a D Class! I know you can do more than that, don't you want to test out your new sword??"

Maria glowed even brighter now and her sword started to grow in size.

"CLANGGGG"

We struck blades again, this time the ice from her sword crept towards my own. As I backed away the ice on my blade kept expanding.

It was slowly making its way down the blade towards my hand.

Maria looked proud of herself and gave me a smirk.

The ice touched my right hand and it was much colder than I expected it to be.

Moments later I saw the simulated bar in the bottom left of my vision start to change.

[97/100]

The ice kept moving up my right arm, it was starting to hurt a bit. I couldn't move my hand at all.

[93/100]

Maria's skill is very neat. It probably works extremely well on lower level monsters. If I was fighting her seriously she would never have managed to get a hit on me.

"What are ya gonna do now Jay? I think you got a little too cocky!"

I grinned.

"Oh yeah?"

I decided it was time to get a little serious, I activated my fire magic. It started as a slow crackle, but erupted into a dark red fire ball surrounding my body.

Her ice melted off my hand and I immediately regained mobility.

I smirked as I saw Maria's eyes go wide.

I sprinted towards her with my blade pointing straight ahead.

I was moving much faster than she could react to at her current level.

Moments later I ran behind her and started to swing my sword. I stopped my flaming blade millimeters from her neck.

"I think it's you that got a little too cocky."

I could see Rei in the corner of my vision. She watched us with her arms crossed. She was just enjoying the show.

Maria finally spoke up.

"Y-You win. You're right."

I took my blade away from her and we both stood at ease.

"I think we're all at differing skill levels, it'd be hard to train with each other."

Rei walked over to us.

"You're right, I just wanted to try on this gear again. We can't do much actual training in here. It's more for the experience, I just thou-"

Maria Interrupted her abruptly.

"Hey Jay! You never told me you had a magic skill too!?!? I thought you were just a swordsman, when were you going to tell me? Huhhh?"

I laughed.

"Well you know now."

"Hmmmm. I guess so."

Maria pouted and puffed out her cheeks. I could tell she wasn't actually mad.

Rei chimed in.

"I knew, it was the only thing written in your file. I was curious if you were going to show us or not."

I gave Rei a side eye, but in a friendly way.

"Lets make use of our time in here. We only have 20 minutes left. Lets 2v1. Maria and me vs. you."

Rei grinned.

"Sure, you asked for it."

Maria smiled. She liked the idea.

*ZAPPPPPP*

"AGGGGHHHH"

"....."

"....."

[0/100]

[2 deaths logged]

Restart? [YES][NO]

I chose [YES] and got to my feet.

"Okay.... Go a little easy on us. We're trying to have some fun here."

Maria nodded as she stood up as well.

"Yaah come onnnnn."

Rei just nodded in agreement.

She was enjoying this a little too much.

We spent the next 20 minutes getting zapped to death over and over not landing a single hit on Rei.

[16 deaths logged]

Restart? [YES][NO]

[YES].

We got to test out our new gear, and simulated deaths weren't as bad as they sound.

I heard a loud beeping sound and looked up to see where it was coming from.

[00:00]

The clock on the wall had counted down to zero and the door swung open.

Our time was up. We took our Sim suits off and walked out the door with smiles across all of our faces. I turned to Rei.

"That was actually really fun. I'm glad you brought us in there, despite fake killing me 16 times..."

She laughed.

"No problem, I'm glad you liked it. How about you Maria?"

She nodded.

"Yeah. It was a bit scary at first, but I liked it."

We walked out of the storefront and Rei thanked the guard that let us in.

We stood in the center of the mall. I looked up through the structure straight at the sky and watched the white clouds pass by for a while.

"Gurggleeee"

My stomach made a loud sound.

"All that dying made me hungry."

Maria giggled and Rei smiled while pointing towards the direction we came from.

"There are some really good food shops by the main trading center next to the train station. Let's go check it out, I'm pretty hungry too."

We all nodded in agreement and started walking off towards the main market area.

Rei took us off in a direction we hadn't walked through before.

The smell of spices filled my nose. As we walked deeper into the food vendor portion of the market I saw hundreds of booths and thousands of people eating all kinds of food.

It was filled with every type of food I could imagine. The aromas were hypnotizing. Rei led the way, I followed.

"I know a really good place, we're almost there."

Moments later we approached a small restaurant and were seated almost immediately. The three of us sat around a circular table with a fire in the center part.

The smell of meats and spices filled the air.

A waitress came by and we ordered almost half the menu to share, it all looked so good.

Less than 10 minutes later our food started coming.

The restaurant brought out many types of exotic meats and let us cook it ourselves on the grill area in front of us.

There were all types of appetizers and side dishes available too. Bowls of soup, noodle dishes, all kinds of bread, exotic fruits and vegetables, and dishes I couldn't even name.

We dug in.

It was the best meal I've had in a long time, maybe the best meal I've ever had...

After 20 minutes went by and the initial dopamine rush died down I started to settle back into reality.

For a moment it was just me and my food.

Rei spoke up.

"I knew you would like this place. I come by every time I'm in the capital."

Maria and I both nodded with our mouths full.

"When we're done and take the time to digest, maybe we can check out some of the capital's public dungeons."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Are there a lot of dungeons around here?"

Rei smiled.

"More than you could imagine. The more populated a city is, the more often dungeons spawns. The Capital is covered with them."

"Let's do it. I'd love to check them out."

"Cool, we'll check some out later today."

I nodded and went back to searing a large piece of meat.

My mind started wandering though.

It's odd that more dungeons spawn where there are large populations of people. I wonder why that is?

I'll find out sooner or later. I can't wait to see what kind of monsters there are in the capital.

I thought this would be a calm day off, but it seems like a hunter's life always falls back to diving into dungeons.