Episode 64- Competition are very good... as long as its healthy. It's what makes one strive to be better.

"What is it?" Dexter interrupted my reading.

"Keep the old man away from Ellis." I said as I looked up from the book.

"Why Ellis?" He asked me.

"I have a few ideas, but I don't want to waste time saying it."

"Fine, but how do you know he is here for Ellis?"

"The eyes never lie Dexter. His eyes occasionally kept looking behind me. Tell me who would usually be behind me when I am outside, for the past few days?" I asked back

Dexter nodded as he too took a guess of why the old man came in to see Ellis.

"See you in the morning."

"Good Night" I replied back

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Dexter walked out of the room and stood still before ordering "Archer, inform those two to keep tailing the old man and never let him out of their sight."

"Yes" Archer replied as he left Dexters' presence. Archer walked towards the room where Titus stayed.

Titus smiled as he cracked his knuckles as he said, "I have been wanting to test my skills against that age-old monster for quite a while now."

"Lord Bloodfist, the orders are not to engage in a fight but to never let him out of your sight." Archer replied in a frustrated voice.

"Don't worry I will do that. But if he tries to run we can use force to keep him under our sights right?"

Archer sighed as he left the room to inform and warn Maximus, hoping at least he will talk some sense into Lord Bloodfist.

"Did he say how long we have to keep track of him?" Maximus asked.

Archer shook his head as Maximus rubbed his forehead. "This is going to be troublesome. It should be ok if he is aware that we are following him right?"

"No orders were given about keeping it silent, so I presume it should be." Archer Replied.

"That's good. We should be able to keep that old man in our sights for a few hours before he up his game." Archer nodded as he went to inform his master of their reply.

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The night was serene and calm. The neon moon set against the black sky amongst the stars gave quite the contrast to the onlookers.

3 People were walking around the massive backyard of Dexter's residence.

"Why are you two snotty brats following me?"

"I am out for stargazing." Replied Maximus.

"He is too scared to go in the dark alone, so he woke me up for the company." Answered Titus.

"If you are going around for star gazing why are you following me?" Albert asked as he looked ticked off.

"Ah, it's because following your route seems to give me a better view of stars. Why are you out here old man?" Maximus questioned Albert

"I drank too much water and I have to leak it out."

"Then why don't you go to the toilet inside the house?"

"I wanted to experience the wild thrill of doing it outside." Albert said with a righteous face.

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"I need privacy."

Maximus and Albert stared at each other while Titus who was standing by the side picking his nose suddenly got annoyed.

"You know what let's all go together. It's more exciting that way and we can have a competition as well, to see who can reach the farthest." Titus said as he flicked the contents from his nose out.

"I will be the judge." Maximus chimed in as soon as Titus finished.

"You seem to have picked none of his good habits and all of his bad habit from staying with him for a few days, muscle brain." Albert said as dodged the booger flying towards him as he remembered a certain person doing the same thing few months ago.

"Are you in or not old man? I have been wanting for a competition for a long time. Either this or we do it the old way." Titus said as he smiled eerily at Albert.

"I am too old for fighting with idiots. Fine even though I have to sacrifice my shame, I will show you, kids, why we the previous generation are much better commandment than you new ones."

Suddenly Albert, Titus and Maximus started running and stopped after reaching a tree. They faced each other seriously as Titus and Albert unhooked their belts.

"The tree will be the starting point whoever can reach the farthest, without moving from their starting position wins." Maximus said looking at the two commandments and wondered where the dignity of a commandment noble went flying off to.

"Ready?" Maximus asked as both commandments tensed and nodded as they readied themselves, by removing their pants.

The serious air around them made anyone who saw them see they were about to do something extremely important.

"Go!"

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Ellis was lying on his bed thinking about his future plans.

He had roughly 3 more weeks to go before he can next access the Game realm. From the information he received, all players of the game realm were forcefully conveyed into the game realm once a month to complete a compulsory mission.

They can stay in the game realm for as long as they like after completing a compulsory mission. But once they have exited the game realm they would have to wait till next month to enter again.

He had at first thought to do a huge amount of easy missions and use the points to increase his accumulation. However, that was not possible due to feeling mentally tired after doing the missions quite some while.

Along with that, now it was not necessary to increase his accumulation using points, as he had experienced the effect of the godly food, cooked by his highness.

Ellis believed that he would already be a rank 2 magi by the time the next entry to game realm became open. So that meant he now had no need to spend points in magi accumulation as the food he ate every day cooked by his highness was self-sufficient, as long as it was from the high levelled ingredients.

Now that left the question what to use his points on. He was thinking of using his points to upgrade his physical or mental capabilities or save up enough to unlock the other two power system.

Then he remembered what Lord Fake had told him 'Each scenario difficulty scales according to your overall strength.'

That meant instead of scenarios getting easier as the more scenarios you complete and upgrade your overall strength, instead, scenarios will always stay the same difficulty. This was proven after he had completed his first scenarios against the butcher and upgraded his physical capability and entered the next scenario.

He had thought it would be much easier, but he was proven wrong as he had to use all his wits just to survive, as his first scenario. This was true until he completed the 10 scenarios. Hence the reason he left the game realm. As he felt too mentally drained from facing extremely arduous scenarios.

So that makes one wonder just how impossibly hard a medium or even a hard scenario could be. This leads to the question of why would Lord Fake put up a scenario such as medium or hard when completing even the easy scenario took everything one person had?

So, this means there has to be something in a scenario that I overlooked that made it much easier to complete than the way I did it? What could it be?

Hmm. Wait. '..difficulty scales according to your overall strength.' According to what Lord Fake said a rank 1 magi will be put up against something that a rank 1 magi can take care of. But what could provide a player with the edge against the scenarios?

It would be skills.

If a rank 1 magi player would face rank 1 enemies then he is obviously going to lose due to the sheer number of enemies, but if that rank 1 magi player had a skill such as fighting style or a movement arts then he could easily outplay his enemies.

If I had the necessary skills and training in fighting then I could have easily taken out the butcher.

This was the reason why I asked Lord Bloodfist to teach me a combat art.

The sword art I am currently practising is called Repelling Sword Art. This is a sword that focuses on knocking the enemies back instead of outright killing them.

Currently there are 3 stages one can achieve in this fighting art. The first stage allows one to push back their foes. The second stage allows one to stun their foes along with pushing them back. The last and final stage allows you to knock your enemies on the floor after stunning and pushing them back.

I chose this sword art due to its usefulness. So far I am incapable of fighting against the strong opponents that might come after his highness or I might encounter in a scenario. But if I am able to push them back or knock them down on the floor then it will give me the chance in the fight I want, to deal with them or run away.

I have been told that usually, it takes 3 months to learn the 1st stage, 6 months for the 2nd stage and 1 year for the 3rd stage.

As I have just started learning this sword art I have not even achieved the first stage. But I have an advantage that no one else who practised this sword art had before. Due to this advantage, I was told by Lord Bloodfist that I would be able to achieve the first stage in half the usual time (6 weeks).

The advantage was Prince Johns' food.

It not only increase accumulation but rejuvenated the body and mind. This let me constantly practise my sword art without the need for much sleep, while healing any wound I incurred in the training and curing my tiredness from training.

I got up from my bed as I decided to carry on my sword arts as I ignored his highness' advice about resting.

30 minutes into my practise I was disturbed by someone knocking on the door.

*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*

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"The winner is Albert." Maximus announced.

"Hahaha, what did I tell you brat about challenging the previous generation of commandment nobles. Hahaha" Laughed Albert

"You cheated using your magi, old man." Said Titus as he pulled up his pants.

"Cheated my ass. You have increased physical capabilities from your status as higher rank award user, so me using my magi just makes it even brat. Hahaha"

"Please put your pants on. Seeing you laugh and boast about your magi in your boxers just makes it weird and disgusting scene to watch." Maximus sighed looking at the dreadful scene in front of him.

"Wait what's that?" Albert suddenly turned serious as he looked at the strange green glow from the tree.

"Old man cast a barrier I will go check it out." Titus said as he walked forwards.

Maximus just stood by the side looking out for anything out of the ordinary, while a blue aura formed around Titus as Albert finished casting a Rank 5 barrier on Titus.

Titus got close to the tree. As soon as he got within 1 meter of it, strange roots from the ground came up and grabbed him.

"I knew it." Maximus said as he looked at Albert who was smiling at him.

"Too late punks. You guys are too young to be playing with me hahaha." Suddenly Maximus felt his vision blur.

"Paralysis pollen. Damn it, where did you hide it old man?" Maximus said as he staggered.

"It will take you guys at least 10 minutes to free yourself, I will be gone by then. So long suckers." Albert said as he pulled up his pants.

"Seriously! You hid it in your boxers?" Those were the last words he said before he fell to the floor, face first.

"Old man come here and fight me like a man!" Screamed Titus as he tried to free himself from the ever-growing restraints of the strange roots.

Ignoring them Albert ran to his objective, Ellis. He reached there to see that the boy was still practising his sword art, through the window.

"Hmm, he has made quite the improvement on the Repelling Sword. Although a strange choice of sword arts to practise." He said as he went up and knocked on the door.