Third Week

"Congratulations, you have completed your second week of training. Today we will begin your final week of training."

We were once again at Feilo Forest for our training. We knew that Reizo had planned something, so we need to keep our eyes peeled and prepare ourselves for anything.

Reizo didn't restrict us from summoning monsters or reduce our skill usages, so that means he's going to make us fight something different.

"Do you see anything?" Serith asked. There were no signs of any monsters right now, but we kept hearing soft rumbling nearby for the past few minutes. It grew louder and louder by the second, and we can feel the ground shaking below us.

When it got really loud, we knew that it was an incoming monster from the ground.

The ground below us erupted. Brown crocodile monsters emerged and tried to crush us with their large gaping jaws. We quickly jumped to avoid getting eaten.

I've never read about these monsters so I have no idea what they are. Saliza and Serith summoned a radive above them and grabbed onto their legs to prevent them from falling.

I can't summon C rank monsters so I ended up falling. One of the crocodiles leapt into the air to bite me. I panicked and threw my sword into its mouth, hoping that it would choke on it. Instead, the crocodile shattered my sword with its jaws.

Saliza saw the crocodile that was inches away from me and jumped down from her radive to save me. She slammed her axe onto the crocodile to stop it from biting me and grabbed my arm.

Her radive flew down and picked both of us up. "Do you know what those monsters are?" She asked.

"Not a clue, but they are most likely C rank monsters."

There were seven crocodiles in total. They watched us fly away and went back underground.

"So this is what training is going to be like this week? Do we just fight more C rank monsters? If that's the case then this week's training should be easy."

While I want to believe what Saliza just said, I don't think it'll be that easy. Reizo has already seen us deal with C rank monsters with ease so he definitely won't try to make training harder by simply adding a few more C rank monsters. There has to be something about these monsters.

After flying for a few minutes, we decided to land on a nearby tree before Saliza's radive goes into cooldown. I signalled Serith and pointed at the tree we were going to land on so that he would also land there. We sat on a branch and looked around for the crocodiles.

We couldn't figure out where they are since they were hiding underground. I summoned a grus rat and threw it on the ground to see if the crocodiles will react to it. Jaws emerged under my rat and crushed it. A crocodile came out from underground to scope out the area.

It noticed us sitting on a tree and dug back down. Soon after, four of them emerged near the tree that we were on and started biting the tree to bring it down.

The tree was beginning to topple over and we had to jump. Serith noticed that the other three crocodiles were missing. He saw what happened to my rat the moment it touched the ground and realized what the other three crocodiles were doing.

Serith summoned a doruso below us. The second the doruso hit the ground, it was attacked by the other three crocodiles. We ran from the crocodiles while they were busy ripping the doruso apart.

The crocodiles chased us after the doruso disappeared. Their speed allowed them to catch up to us, so we were forced to fight them.

Two of them lunged at us while the others dug underground. Saliza and Serith fought the two crocodiles while I kept an eye out for the others. The ground below us kept rumbling so I couldn't let my guard down.

Saliza and Serith were winning against the two crocodiles. Saliza even killed one of them.

Suddenly, the ground below us began crumbling. The other crocodiles had created a pit below us and hollowed the ground so that we would fall into the pit where we couldn't escape from them.

Saliza and Serith summoned a radive above them, but two crocodiles jumped out of the ground and crushed the radives with their jaws. These crocodiles already knew how we could escape from them and prepared a way to prevent us from running.

Before we fell, I quickly summoned a vintac at the edge of the pit. When we fell, vines from the vintac grabbed us and pulled us back up.

One of the crocodiles dug into the walls and tried to stop us from going back up. My vintac threw us onto the ground before it was destroyed by the crocodile.

The crocodile called out to its comrades and got into a defensive stance. The crocodile kept avoiding or blocking our attacks while making sure that we don't try to run from it. It was trying to keep us in the area for another attempt at making us fall into a pit.

The ground was rumbling below us once again, and since I already know what to expect, I began preparing a spell. The other crocodiles were going to make another pit below us, so I don't have to worry about any surprise attacks from them.

The moment the ground below us crumbled, I unleashed my spell and used all my mana to fire an energy blast into the pit. The unsuspecting crocodiles below us couldn't react in time to my beam and died to it. One of the crocodiles managed to survive the attack but it was severely injured.

As for us, we had to quickly figure out a way to get out of the pit or break our fall since the pit the crocodiles made is deep enough to injure us if we fell into it. Serith and Saliza's radive summon is still on cooldown as well as my vintac summon.

Serith stuck his sword into the side of the pit and stopped himself from falling down. Saliza grabbed his leg and I grabbed her leg. Our combined weight was causing the sword to loosen.

The injured crocodile got up after my attack and watched as the sword slowly loosened, waiting for its chance to rip us apart when we fall.

We currently couldn't summon anything that could stop the crocodile after falling down this pit and using spells would take too long. None of us have a long-ranged skill registered into our weapons. There has to be a solution to all this.

"Hey Zeigel, your bracelet is glowing!" Saliza said. I checked my levels and found out that as a result of killing those crocodiles, I leveled up to lv29. Not only that, but I'm not far from level 30. I just need a little more exp.

The crocodile at the bottom of the pit is injured, if I got one good hit in, I could kill it and get to level 30 and summon C rank monsters.

"I need a little more exp to get to lv 30. Lend me your axe." Saliza dropped her axe into my hand.

If I'm unsuccessful in killing the crocodile, then I'm dead. I swapped C rank monsters into my active summon slots and took a deep breath before jumping off the wall.

As I approached the crocodile, I lifted the axe above my head to strike it. The crocodile waited for me to get near before avoiding my attack by swiftly rolling to the side.

My attack missed and my leg broke from the fall. The crocodile lunged at me with its jaws wide open. I couldn't move myself to avoid the crocodile since one of my legs is broken, but I had prepared something for this.

I wasn't sure if I could kill the crocodile before hitting the ground, so with the small amount of mana I regenerated, I prepared a spell before jumping off the wall.

I used the spell to create a small blast of air below me. It wasn't enough to send me flying out of the pit, but it was enough to propel my body slightly above the crocodile.

I brought the axe down onto the crocodile's head to kill it. I hit it a second time after landing just to be safe. My bracelet glowed, signifying that I am now lv30.

I summoned a radive and got on it. I flew over to where Saliza and Serith were hanging and let them grab onto the legs of the radive before flying out of the pit.

The last crocodile saw us flying out of the pit and began digging to escape from us. My radive grabbed its tail to prevent it from going underground while Serith stabbed it to death.

"Alright, that should be the last of them." I counted the crocodiles to make sure that we did kill seven in total. "Now that that's over, can someone heal my broken leg."

Normally I would be screaming in pain and crying on the floor if I stubbed my toe, but somehow I was able to tolerate the pain of having a broken leg. It's really painful but still bearable. Maybe the defense stat also increases pain tolerance.

Serith rushed over and began healing my leg. While he was doing that, I began wondering what Reizo will be planning. He's well aware that we could easily overpower C rank monsters at our level, but despite that, he's still making us fight C rank monsters. Yet

somehow this training session wasn't that easy.

"All done. Try moving your leg." I got off my radive and took a few steps. My leg seemed normal and I didn't feel any pain so it was fully healed.

"Wait a second. Should we have waited for Reizo to dismiss us before healing so that we wouldn't lose a skill usage?" Serith asked.

"You three can leave now, and I also won't count that as a skill usage." Reizo once again was standing behind us.

He dragged the corpse of that last crocodile we killed to the pit and jumped into it. We were surprised at what he just did and went to check if he's alright.

He was perfectly fine and didn't suffer any injuries from the fall. Reizo grabbed the rest of the crocodiles by the tail and jumped out of the pit with a single leap.

"Why are you guys still here? If you want to scan the terrachus then hurry it up and leave."

We scanned the monster and went back to the headquarters to have our lunch and prepare for the next training session.

*Scan completed, C rank monster added.*