Painful year

Everyday, I was awake by 6:00 and ran at least eleven kilometers by 10:00, just to get experience. Not to mention other quests I had to do. The first three weeks were torcher, and not only that, I was only level 7 by then. It was going to be almost completely impossible to level up 993 times. I didn't wanna die early though, so I kept doing the quests Bruce and Thomas gave me.

I'm glad I kept taking their quests, because I got insanely ripped. Like, ripped. I had a full on six-pack now. The size of my muscles were at most as large as a cantaloupe. My pecs were now slightly more visible, where before, all you could see was flat chest and rib cage. The difference was uncanny.

And this all happened in a month. If a month's training could do this, then I couldn't wait to see how much stronger I could get. Within the time I level up, I did some work on my stats.

When I hit level 5, a new stat bar appeared called stamina, which must've been gained during running. Which meant that there were more that could be gained, like endurance or health. It really depends on how I train during the time of leveling up. Bruce told me that the system works different for everybody, so there wasn't any records I could study from, much less learn.

By the time I was level twenty, I had three more stat moves: health, range, and endurance, like how I'd expected. Even though I was level twenty, the training was only seven weeks in, which to me seemed kinda slow to get to level 1,000.

Strangely enough as well, I gained a couple of new moves, which I'll reveal pretty soon. But that isn't the point, when I was eleven weeks into training, a new quest came up.

"Daily quest(s):

Daily Quest: 'Awake'

Wake up before 7:00 a.m.

Reward: +20 exp.

Daily Quest: 'Endurance'

Run 5 or more miles.

Reward: +20 exp.

Quest: 'Will to Fight'

Defeat five kashiro.

Reward: +70 exp."

The quest to beat up the kashiro beasts had puzzled me that day, and I honestly wondered what it could do. When I told Thomas, he wasn't surprised. Instead, he just responded with:

"Go do that then. My life is on the line along with yours kid. If that's the way you wanna level up, then go do that. It won't take long, considering your strength now."

If you want to know what the kashiro are, then let me explain to you. These beasts were like wolves on this planet, except they didn't have any fur and had sharp metal teeth, with a jaw made of steel. They stood at about four feet tall and about 3 feet wide. They had ferocious white eyes and translucent blue skin, so transparent you could see the thick white blood and its organs underneath. It was an ugly but strong animal.

Defeating one was hard enough, but to beat five? That was gonna be a lot of blood spilt, whether it's mine or the kashiro's.

I ventured off into the forest, searching for the kashiro. To my surprise, I barely had ran a mile when I spotted five of them in one spot, standing there, as if they were NPCs. They were just standing there in an open dirt area, waiting for something. Maybe it was food, or maybe it was me. I wouldn't know. As soon as I made a noise though, one of them darted directly towards me. Then another. And another. Pretty soon, they were all coming at me from about thirty feet away.

"Heh," I mumbled. "Those things don't even know they're dead already."

"Move 'Flash Slice' has been activated," my watch announced.

At my single command, they all split in two, right down the center of their jaws. Ever since I learnt quick lash as a skill, I've been able to keep upgrading it every time I level up. Speaking of leveling up, at this point I had made it to level 147, which was starting to get better and a little bit easier to do. When I returned, Thomas was ready to teach me Kabai.

"Kid, I'm honestly surprised that you have made it at least this far. I expected you to be at most level thirty by now, but you're more than what is expected. Bruce! We're going to train."

"But it's noon, which means it's time for Andrew to lea—"

"See ya Bruce!"

We heard Bruce mumbling to himself in silent anger as we walked to the arena to train the art of Kabai.

When we arrived, there was no one there, which was honestly quite peculiar if ya ask me. Instead, thin, tall metal poles took the people's places.

"Andrew."

"Yeah?"

"I want you to climb each of these poles and stand on the top until you fall."

At first I thought he was joking, but no one was laughing. Thomas wanted me to climb each pole, stand at the top of each one and try not to fall? Over and over? I thought it was complete bull, but everything I had done so far resulted in something good happening, so I gave it a shot.

Wasn't I a wrong one.

Each time I stood at the top, I lost my balance. Over and over on each one. The best I could stay up there for was at most twenty seconds. I mean, the poles were not even three inches in diameter. It felt like I was trying to stand on a basketball and bounce along with it, like a pogostick. Except I wasn't jumping.

On the last attempt, I had finally been able to outnumber my best time.

I was impressed with myself for even holding that long, but Thomas didn't approve.

"You sucked ass. Not tryna be rude, but you did. The reason is because you weren't using your emotions to concentrate. The reason I told you to climb these poles was because I wanted you to see what it would be like balancing normally. Now, lemme show you what you can do with concentrating your emotions into one, single energy."

Thomas closed his eyes, and just like the first time I saw him use the Kabai, the air around him seemed to become darker. All of a sudden, he darted toward a pole. I was afraid he was going to land smack dab in the middle of it, and was about to warn him, when he did something... awesome.

Thomas stuck his foot out and ran up the fifteen foot pole, as if he were a bug crawling up a wall. He never lost speed, even when reaching the top. The moment his foot felt even a little bit of the top, Thomas front flipped up and off the pole, landing on the ground with a soft 'thump'.

'Was that how he had used his daggers the other day to slash my cheeks without me seeing?' I thought. 'That has to be the only explanation! He had to have used emotions to suck himself to that pole!'

"The key, Andrew, is to utilize every ounce of your body, including your emotions. In some cases, emotions can take control of someone, but Kabai focuses on the opposite. We use our emotions to power us," Thomas said, reassuring my thoughts. "Now, I want you to try balancing again. This time though, focus on using your joy to stabilize yourself on top."

Once again, I had climbed to the top of the pole, but this time, I was gonna use Thomas's advice. I carefully stood up on one foot, closed my eyes, and thought about all the happiness my life had gone up to at this moment. My roomates smiling as we watched 'Shrek' in the living room of our dorm, playing dodgeball with my somewhat of friends I had in gym, and other school based things. I didn't really have a home, so school was the next best thing for me.

I focused on all of these things, and was surprised to find myself still perfectly balanced on the pole. It had been at least two minutes, but I wasn't going to stop there. I kept thinking of memories that were happy to me, until eventually, I had ran out. I fell off the pole and crashed into the ground with a giant thud.

"Good work kid. I think today you had enough of combat training. Go work with Bruce for the rest of the day."

------------

It was now the last day before I had my fight with Ziya. My improvements? Many. Powers? A lot. Skills? Plenty. Confidence? Zero.

My stats had definitely improved since week eleven as well.

Again, I had gained more stat skills. I could now improve my balance, range, endurance, stamina, and other stuff with just the tap of a finger. I could also store stuff in my watch, which now had the 'Inventory' cosmetic gained and selected to be used. At first, I took cosmetics lightly, but I now realize that they were useful. Even though the max I could put on was three, it was still useful in sticky situations.

My body had also stayed the same from last time, but power was now flowing through its veins. I had powerful stats now, more than the finger on my hands and toes. With the training of Thomas and Bruce, I was now level 798. I could now stop time for at the least of thirty seconds. Even after so much time, I still had managed to only increase my main ability by a few seconds. Still, it was enough time to whoop someone in battle.

I was breathing heavily after the fifteen kilometer run, when Jarun came running over to me. He had grown quite a bit, and it surprised me last year when Bruce had told me Jarun was only two years younger than me, it was just that beast people age differently. Plus it didn't help that Jaguer rotated faster than earth, causing everyone there to age faster.

"Hey Andrew! It's getting late, wanna go hang out?" Jarun said. I couldn't refuse that smile of his, so I eventually gave in.

"Ah, what the hell. Why not? I was just finishing up some training for tomorrow. Let's go grab somethin' to eat."

The cold air nipped at my nose. Even though it was June, we were still miles away from the nearest star. Just because we rotated faster didn't mean Jaguer didn't revolve around the star faster. I tugged on the coat Bruce had pulled from one of his portals tighter onto my shoulders. The weather here almost replicated earth's, which shouldn't surprise me since there are many planets we haven't discovered that are just like earth. For example, scientists discovered that Mars was actually a planet that was habitable thousands of years ago, but gravity had pulled apart its atmosphere, making it unable to live on.

We walked for a long time, chatting with each other about the good stuff and laughing. In the middle of my sentence about the king's feast last year, Jarun interrupted me.

"Hey! We should go get Ziya and hang out with her before tomorrow!"

His statement startled me, but I started to silently giggle. "Hang out with Ziya?"

"Yeah!"

I mean, the thought wasn't a bad idea, but Ziya was one of those kind of people who only listened to what they wanted to hear. So all she was gonna do was block out what we were saying, but I didn't care. I smiled, then laughed to myself.

"I guess we could try. After all, it's my last night here, right?"