Quest Training

The next morning, Locus was already at the guild when the sun had just begun rising.

Just like the two days before, the guild was full of adventurers who were all looking for a new mission.

Locus looked around and was relieved to see that the group from the bar yesterday were not there.

The question was: Where was Genken?

Neither did he stand in line, nor was he sitting at any of the tables.

"Maybe he isn't here yet? After all, I am pretty early."

Since Locus was now officially an adventurer, he figured that he deserved to sit at one of the tables.

Still, it was very crowded, and it seemed as though there was only one empty table in the guild's corner, with a long bench behind it.

Locus decided to sit down on a stool.

Just when he took a deep breath and tried to relax, Genken appeared at the other side of the table, as if he had been laying on the bench.

"Ah, you're early."

His face was relaxed and a little sleepy.

Locus, on the other hand, almost got a heart attack.

"WHERE DID YOU COME FROM???"

Genken was as calm as humanly possible.

"Oh, I arrived a little early. That's why I decided to sleep a little until you'd arrive."

Locus tried to calm down.

"So what do we do now that we're both here?"

"Well, it looks like the sun still hasn't fully risen, so I'm just going to sleep again until it has."

He laid back down while Locus just looked at him in utter confusion.

"But we're both here, so why should we delay whatever we'll do?"

Genken closed his eyes.

"Lesson one: Don't be early if there's no benefit for you. Use your time wisely instead of having to wait around."

Locus was still stunned.

"So I'm supposed to wait here and do nothing?"

Genken took a deep breath as if he were about to perform a difficult task.

"Didn't you listen to what I just said? You should do the opposite and use your time.

Although... Since you are already here, you could just sit around and call it the first part of your training."

Yesterday, Genken seemed like he knew a lot about fighting, and Locus had been in desperate need of a teacher, but now Locus got the impression that his decision on who to choose as a teacher had been too rash.

Nevertheless, after a few minutes had passed, the sun had almost risen. Locus turned to Genken

"Can we start now?"

He used an annoyed voice so that Genken's mood would suffer under his actions.

But Genken just opened his eyes, looked out of the window, said "I still got a few minutes.", and laid back down.

Locus couldn't take waiting around any longer. After all, he had a Mastermind to crush.

"WOULD YOU START TEACHING ALREADY?! I'VE GOT A GOAL TO ACCOMPLISH!"

Genken sighted.

"Fine. Go to the counter and take the easiest offensive job you can find while I go back to sleep."

Locus was incredibly irritated by Genken, but at least he had something other to do than sit at a table and wait.

He got up and went to the billboard.

"The easiest job I can find? Why?"

But there was just one easy way to find out. After careful consideration, Locus took one of the papers from the board and registered the quest as accepted. Then he slammed it on the table, which caused the sleepy Genken to look up.

"Here, I have to hunt a boar for someone."

The area was filled with them, and they were quite delicious, so this was just barely harder than an everyday task

"Great. You'll do the mission, and I'll watch. Then we'll take another job, and I'll tell you what to do better."

"And why do I have to work for that? Can't we just do this without taking a quest?"

Now Genken looked annoyed. He took another deep breath.

"Lesson two: If you can kill two birds with one stone, don't burden yourself with picking up a second stone to do it separately. Use the time you saved to sleep instead."

Locus look changed from annoyed back to confused.

"What I mean is: You'll do quests and training anyway. So why not combine them and do both at the same time? Then there is nothing you have to do besides training. I call it 'Quest Training'."

"Why do you have to talk in such complicated ways?"

Locus didn't overthink many of his actions.

"Yesterday, I got the impression that you don't overthink many of your actions. We'll train your mind to change that."

"What? What made you think that?"

Just when the words left Locus' mouth, he felt the touch of a strong hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, remember me? You broke my knife."

Locus turned around just to see the group of people from yesterday's encounter at the bar.

Genken smiled.

"Try guessing."