Training Room (Kat)

Now that I am done checking all of my messages, I decided to try something that has been bothering me for a while now. I know I have a new skill named Mind Poison, but I don't exactly remember how I got it. My guess is when my previous teammate, Gaby, was killed due to my poison, but then again I was unconscious so how did I ended up absorbing her skill?

Without much thought, I think 'search' and the transparent floating window page in front of me turned into a giant search bar.

"I need to test my new skill, so let's try to rent a training room I could use" I said out loud without even thinking. But to my surprise, the search tool reacted to my voice and starting to search for an empty training room for me to rent.

When it listed several training rooms available, honestly I have no idea which to choose. But seeing the points needed to rent, I can deduce that the more expensive it is, the more value you will get out of the training room. My points are not exactly what I call a lot, so I just choose a random mid-priced training room that cost me 50 tower points for a day (24 hours). With a quick calculation, it means the training room will cost me about 2 tower points per hour, which is not too bad. After it gave me a code, I immediately changed into something suitable for training and head out to the tube.

I pressed #9950 for the destination as instructed by the system, indicating the code to my training room. Again, I heard a robotic voice [Heading to training room #9950 in 3…2…1…] and I can feel I am being transported to somewhere as I felt both my body and my surrounding being wrapped around this strange energy.

The door covering the tube opened, and lo and behold, I am now standing in front of a lush forest. No, scratch that, I am now in a huge room that the tower simulate to looked like a lush forest. I cast glance at the blurry ceiling that looked like the sky, but if you look closer, anyone can see it has an edge and a sharp corner, indicating this is just a simulation training room. I took a big breath and walk out of the tube and directly into this forest-looking simulation training room.

"Well, I have 24 hours, so I better make good use of this" I mumbled, still in awe of this cutting edge technology showed by Arcadia Tower

Soon, I can hear a small rustle here and there, indicating that the training has begun. I put myself in a laser focus mode and immediately cast my poison bomb as a test. Soon enough, some of the animal looking creature drop one by one. While I am not sure what kind of animals are they from afar, they do not look humanoid thus when they dropped, I assumed the animals died from poison bomb are the ones on the weaker side. Unexpectedly, I do not get a kill notification from the world system, which surprised me.

'It is because this is just a simulation? Then what benefit do we get if this is indeed just an expensive simulation?,' I think to myself trying to justify myself after choosing a more expensive training room instead of the cheapest ones which cost only 10 tower points per day. I make another quick calculations, seems like 0,5 tower points per hour is plenty enough for training purpose if it does not benefit me in any other way.

As I walk closer to those I have killed, I can not find their bodies like it somehow disappeared out if nowhere into thin air. Instead, what I have in front of me now is a bunch of pouches with what looked like gold in it.

"Huh? The monsters here…. they give item drops instead?" I said out loud in disbelief. I immediately pick up all the gold pouches lying there even though no one is there to snatch it from me. I check inside the pouches, I squirmed because they are indeed real gold. 'How can this be?' I think to myself wondering if it is also an illusion.

After I recovered from the shock, my mind starting to turn its' gear. The monsters here surprisingly give item drops, which I am happy to receive, but this do not mean a good advantage for me. Since their body disappeared and the system will not count it as my kill, I am no longer able to absorb their skills.

'I need to refrain from using my poisons. I want their drops, but gold and riches means nothing if I have no power. This is a training room, I need a way to really train my skills, not improve my wealth', As I think of this, I started to plan how to maximize my benefits in this training room.

When I find another monsters around me, I think of my other skill 'Mind poison' which I have yet to try. Thinking that it might have better use here than my poisons, I activate my mind poison skill towards those monster who once again looked unlike any animals I have ever seen on earth. Soon enough, one of them starting to lunge toward the other and start fighting among themselves.

'Oh? this might be more useful than I thought?,' I think as I watch the monster fighting each other silently. I realized that the mind poison is not lethal enough and will not lead to death, but the one affected will show symptoms of depression and paranoia, which is why it can lead to infighting within the group.

Once they killed their opponents, the ones that died drop their items and disappeared. The ones survived, most probably affected, will start looking for more opponents to kill due to its' own paranoia. After the affected monsters left to find other preys, I walk to the place where the items dropped. When I pick up those drops, I realized this time they are not gold pouches, instead they are filled with various gems, jewels, small weapons, to occasionally-exist-but-rare findings like tower points in form of unopened pouches.

'The drops are now varied, is it depending on the monster type or just higher level monsters give variety of drops?' I think to myself, decided to wait and experiment more on this.

I walk ahead and follow the trails left by the previous monsters who are still looking for their next preys. It was not difficult as they are not exactly trying to cover their trails, or just in general not exactly smarter than human. I stopped on my tracks several time to pick up the item drops in front of me, thinking that I might have hit the jack pot with this skill.

Even though I was not able to see what kind of monsters they killed, their item drops always varies, so I suspect that the higher rank the monsters are, the more variety the items they drop. After I inspect the item drops that varies from gems to jewels, I noticed that their quality is now increasingly better than before.

'Does this mean not only the drops become more varied, their quality also much higher?' I think giddily. I can not suppress my excitement when I stop on my tracks again and saw several mind-poison affected animal-looking monsters are fighting a single humanoid monster.

I stood there in silence, sort of half hiding myself in the thick forest, knowing that this is my chance on watching the monsters fight. Not any ordinary fight but a fight to death between animal-looking monster and a powerful humanoid monster.

Well, technically not exactly human-like, but it got a pair of long legs and arms beside it and the body of a unnaturally huge male human. The face though? Not so much of a human looking but I would say it's fair if we called it humanoid monster, after all the word monster is still attached to it.

The humanoid monster is outnumbered, but its' greatest strength is its' mind. It seems smarter than the animal-like monsters since it can counter their attacks in a calculated way. It is also swift enough although its' unnaturally huge body must have been heavy. Its' dodge left and right, but no matter how good you are at dodging, one can not avoid the attacks of several mad-craze monster who are only thinking of killing and also are not afraid of dying.

'I wonder if I could mind poison the humanoid monster as well' I think while seeing how strong the monsters are. I immediately release my mind poison skill, targeting the humanoid monster.

In it's weaken state, it should work, but what I did not consider is that they are in the middle of a life and death fight. As soon as the humanoid monster is affected, it immediately show symptoms of a mad-craze monster. Powered by its' craze, madness, and paranoia, it suddenly looked like it gained more strength.

Soon enough, the animal-looking monsters started to be pushed back one by one and defeated. It showed a clear picture of the survival of the fittest where the stronger ones survive while the weak does not. It does not matter your number or being outnumbered, as long as there is a little helping hand, the power can be put to good use and made use of in any opportunities.

The animal-looking monsters soon dropped dead and starting to pile up. Not long after, piles of pouches emerges and confirmed their deaths. While there are not exactly many of them, but a single humanoid monster who is able to fight 7 or 8 of the animal-like monster is scary if you think about it.

'How strong do you have to be to fight like that?' I asked myself while I still stood there on silence, waiting for the humanoid monster to move away before I can snatch those pouches they dropped. To my surprise, an unexpected thing happened. What I did not expect to happen is that instead of leaving, the humanoid monster also dropped to its' knee and starting to fall down, dying.

'No way…' I think, but deep inside I have already excited about what kind of pouch will such strong monster bring after it died. After I confirmed there is no more living being alive there, I walk towards the pouches. More accurately, you can say I specially walking towards the pouch that the humanoid monster dropped.

When I picked it up, my eyes widen as I thought my eyes have failed me. I was seeing something unbelievable and also should not even be here, but here we are, with a pure white crystal clear gem- the most valuable magical gem in the whole world, and one of the most sought after item not only for the towers but also craftsmen and blacksmiths alike.