A Witch Among Us

You go to a chemical class.

Just doing that immensely boring stuff.

And then… a girl would look at the rest of the class.

With having her mouth sealed.

Sealed!

Think Mr. Anderson from Matrix here.

Just not being able to speak.

I stopped training since I thought I can't make much difference anyway and the first part is done but… this is too much.

So there's a witch in class. Awesome.

In the very opposite way of 'awesome' actually.

Apparently one of the female students for cheerleader club audition also had her hands aflame two days ago.

And… that made me glad my goal was not to outshine any other girl in here and I started training later that day my "Luck against dark forces".

<Improve chances to not be targeted by dark spells, rituals, abilities, or being the target of any dark creature who would wish harm to you. It does not improve the resistance - rather, the probability of it happening>

<Upon completion of stage 1, your luck in this way will increase by 10%. This skill is not effective until then>

So I won't be like all of the mob characters dying by the droves!

So… I definitely did not see Willow and Xanders going down to the floor by someone with a supernatural ability.... Not. And I did not hear her name was Amy.

Just went further away, doing my business.

I may be a coward, or I may know my present limits. Unlike them, I can get consistently stronger.

So it may me go after the local Gandalf in the library.

"Mr. Giles, I have finished the Iliad."

"How was it?"

"Well… it is, yet it's not exactly what I wanted to read. I mean, I am more interested in the perspective of the ordinary soldier, so to speak."

"What do you mean?"

"It goes like this - what was the deciding factor these ordinary soldiers were able to survive the battlefield where everyone was stronger than them?"

"You mean the ordinary soldiers… hm, I think… the enemies at that time wanted a challenge. So that's why you see Achilleus dueling Hector and the like instead of just killing the enemies by the hundreds."

"But… what if the strong enemies wanted no honor like that?"

"I guess… it would be 'being a part of the whole'. Just imagine it - Achilleus would dive into the enemy formation, but they would close on him - assuming they were really brave - and would tire him out and limit his mobility which would make him vulnerable to Hector. So he would not be able to fully utilize his abnormal strength and would still save his strength for the stronger enemies."

"Huh…"

"I recommend reading the 'Art of War' by Sun Tzu. It's a great book for these purposes."

"Oh thank you, I will just take that then."

And then I got it - I need to have 'foundation'. If I had to run, I would need to run faster than others. If I needed to carry someone to safety, I need to be able to run while carrying someone. It goes on and on.

I need to be at least 50% stronger than the average person.

So, I designed for myself "One-punch man" training. Just without going bald… or indestructible for that purpose.

Or even invincible.

OK, so it's not that similar to his training actually.

But the case is that I started running every morning and putting myself into shape.

And ditched - mentally - most of my classes to think about the most effective way of using a skill for that.

Do I train holy energy to nourish my body? Or do I want to just be stronger? In which sense? Agility? Dexterity? Endurance?

The answer was endurance - the basic option, and I think the best one, is to achieve speed above average by using my body, but run longer than others.

So I came up with <Holy Endurance>.

And after trying different details - yes, I noticed I can just "propose" a skill and see how long it would take and the effect… I came up with what every MOBA game back in my life used.

Cooldown.

It makes my skill significantly stronger, at the cost of the boost lasting only temporarily.

So I set the cooldown to 6 hours and length to 10 minutes - since that time should be the deciding factor between success and failure. And then I would be either home or at school.

The info was like this:

<Ability to exert your best effort for 10 minutes without getting tired>

Simple. Effective. Plan for another week.