Now that the match was over, Gold got up and walked over to her master as he left the field. “Oh, hello, Jinwoo.” Gerald said in Korean. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Nor I you. I don’t know of many mage types who practice swordsmanship.”
Gerald laughed. “Actually, the guild master also practices down here sometimes, and that’s a better fight than this.”
Jinwoo was surprised at this. “But he’s a Special Authority mage. What would he need to learn to use a sword for?”
Gerald shrugged. “You never know when you’ll need a blade, kid. You’re a combat type, so you will always need one, unless you go the blunt weapon route, but even a mage can use one when they are running low on mana or need to fight close up. I’m learning to do so, so that I’m not at a disadvantage when an enemy manages to get too close.” Jinwoo nodded. “So, have you ever trained down here?” Jinwoo shook his head. “In that case, follow me.” He turned around and walked back to his former opponent. “Hey, Joseph. Let me introduce you to someone.” He motioned to Jinwoo. “This is Sung Jinwoo, He’s an E rank hunter. I met him earlier today when he came to my store.”
“Sung Jinwoo?” Joseph asked. “I’m Joseph Hienlich, vice guild master.”
“Oh,” he said, realizing who he was talking to before bowing. “It’s a pleasure to meet you sir.”
“Well, Gerald found someone with manners this time.” he said, looking at Gerald. “So, what’s you specialty?”
Jinwoo shrugged. “I don’t really have one. I’m a close combat type, but not sure what direction to take my training in.”
“Well, what were your aptitudes when you joined the guild? That might tell us where your powers or talents are trying to lead you.”
“Straight tens across all five stats, sir. And only ten magic power, too.”
Joseph looked a bit confused. “Exactly mundane average in all stats and barely E rank?” Jinwoo nodded. “Interesting. Haven’t heard of that happening before. A tendency will probably show up after you train, though, as you’ll realize what you have more of a talent for. Three questions, then. Whose style did you prefer in our battle?”
“Your’s, sir.” Jinwoo instantly responded. Avoiding damage while looking for openings seemed much smarter than constantly attacking to keep your enemy from being able to attack. The second seemed more like what you would do once you got desperate, and used far more stamina.
“You aren’t just saying that to get on my good side, are you, kid?” Jinwoo shook his head and explained his reasoning, and Joseph nodded. “Pretty good reasons. Okay, question two. Do you have any weapon experience?”
“Well, I did use a dagger in a few dungeon runs, but that was most because it’s the cheapest weapon available.”
Joseph nodded again. “Okay, then, question three. Do you have any special skills or powers?”
Jinwoo shook his head. “No, sir.”
“In that case, for now, I’ll train you in daggers. If we find out that you have a talent for something else, we can train you for it, but even if you do end up a axe man, a dagger makes a good backup.”
With that he got one of the training daggers from the rack at the side of the field and gave it to Jinwoo. After explaining how to hold it in both forward and reverse grip, he lead Jinwoo to a training dummy and showed him how to stab with both grips, how to parry with both grips, and three basic dodges. He then turned on the dummy.
It immediately started moving and Jinwoo realized that it wasn’t just a dumb target to swing at. It was a robot. “Don’t worry kid. At this setting it’s only as fast and strong as a ten year old. It’s body is covered in C rank leather, so you won’t be able to damage it, so just try to land as many and as good of a hit as you can for the next five minutes. Oh, and don’t get hit.
The robot swung slowly at Jinwoo and he dodged. It kept doing so and, while Jinwoo was easily able to dodge, he didn’t see any obvious openings. He kept dodging and, when he thought he saw an opening, he stabbed. This left him open and the robot’s arm smacked him in the head, causing him to miss. Still, he kept going until his head started bleeding from the continuous strikes.
“You need to learn to protect your head, kid.” said Gerald, before waving his hand at Jinwoo. Golden light settled on the cut on his head, and it closed. Jinwoo thanked him and Gerald gave him a few pointers before saying goodbye. The Guild had a C rank healer on standby down here at the moment, so he didn’t need to remain.
Jinwoo continued until most of the others had left, then looked at his phone. 21:37. Had he really stayed here that long?” He was sore all over from all of the movement, so he decided to call it a night. The field was technically open until 22:00, but he wanted to get home, as Jinah would be home alone. He had the C rank healer restore him, though that only got rid of the minor injuries he had received from the robot and the muscle pain, not the exhaustion, and then went home.
Even as tired as he was, he ran the 800 meters to his apartment building, then went inside. When he got there, though, he found Jinah and Keiko sitting on the couch playing some sort of fighting game on an old game console. That’s right. It was Saturday, so they didn’t need to go to bed at a reasonable time. “Hey Jinwoo.” Jinah said. “We didn’t leave any chicken for you.”
“That’s fine, I’ll figure something out.” he said. “What are you playing?”
“Some old fighting game. Street Brawlers, I think. Keiko has a few old game systems. Do you mind if she stays here tonight?”
“Not really, just don’t stay up all night.” He started towards his room, then remembered something. “Oh, do you want to go see mom tomorrow morning or some time afternoon?”
“Morning’s good.” she said. “Do you mind if Keiko comes with us?”
Jinwoo shook his head. “No, she can come if she wants.” Maybe she could start going to the hospital with Jinah instead of him. That way he can work on getting in shape and learning to fight so he could earn more for the family.
Jinwoo left long enough to buy some snacks from the convenience store on the ground floor and came back, ate, and went to bed. The next morning the girls got ready and the three of them went to the hospital together. After Jinah was hooked up to the machine, Jinwoo told them that he was going out for a few hours, but would be back before the procedure was over.
“It’s fine, big bro.” said Jinah. “Now that she knows what’s going on, Keiko can handle everything. You just go and have your fun. I’ll see you at home.” Keiko agreed to do that, as well, adding that she would take Jinah out to eat afterwords.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Jinwoo nodded and left, running a loop down the main road before returning and heading to the building beside the hospital, where the guild hall was located. They had been built beside each other in case a guild member needed emergency medical attention. He was breathing heavily, but wasn’t completely worn out like yesterday.
When he got downstairs he didn’t see anyone he recognized, but picked up a dagger from the weapon rack and walked over to the training robot. The weapons they had here were all confiscated from dead goblins or orcs, so they weren’t the best quality, but they were magical equipment. Any overstock of weapons would be sent to the crafters, who would melt them down and use the magical steel in them to make higher quality weapons, the only source of the material being the few dungeons where the enemies used weapons or the occasional deposit of magical iron.
In fact, most of the daggers and short swords here had come from just one stagnant gate. One hundred and fifty kilometers from here, just south of the Penguin area, there was a D ranked gate that contained goblins as its main enemy. Near the entrance and occasionally just outside the entrance were normal goblins, but as one got deeper inside they would start running into higher ranked goblins, with the dungeon boss, an upper D rank Goblin warlord, being at the back. Of course, the dungeon owner didn’t want anyone to kill him so, before the boss chamber, they had a wall constructed out of native materials and a large wooden door they brought in from the fire swap. About every month the materials of the dungeon would regenerate and a team could enter to clear everything. Everything gate-ward of the wall was valid for harvest, and the teams that went inside would follow the standard procedure of a high ranked gate anywhere else in the world. They would send in a strike team to kill everything that was hostile, a gathering team to collect everything they killed, then a mining team to gather all of the mana crystals and ores that had regenerated during that time.
During these raids the dungeon boss would send out disposable troops to exterminate the invaders, but they would rarely succeed in killing any of them. Meanwhile, the boss would sit in his chamber with his four generals to protect him and make plans, plans which would let him kick these humans out of his home permanently.
---
Goblin Boss’s perspective:
When his cave had originally been connected to this strange place, It had ordered him to kill humans. But there were none here, so he tried to build up the strength of his clan. The outside was too cold, however, and there was nothing to eat. He was forced to have his men grow what mushrooms they could down here just so that they didn’t starve, while only occasionally sending out a scout to look for another food source. The only ones they managed to find, most of the scouts freezing to death as he didn’t have the means to have warm clothing made for them, were a few flightless birds. The birds, however, were far stronger than them and, even when he sent his generals out to hunt for a young and far weaker one, all of the generals he sent were killed.
Then the humans arrived. He decided to use them as a food source after killing them, and sent everything he had to attack. But they failed. The humans left only a few of his men and women alive and tied him up before mining all of the valuable materials inside, the same materials that had made him want to claim this cave several years ago. In exchange, his men had only managed to kill three of the humans, a fourth being seriously injured. After they were done, a group of them came in and started building a wall with an archway in the middle of it, then attached a thick door to it. After that they closed the door and left.
The chief got the message. Only the inside of this chamber was his. The rest was theirs. Once they left and one of the survivors untied him, however, he told them to spread out through the cave and grow as many mushrooms as possible to feed the tribe. All areas of the cave that were moist enough were seeded with mushroom spores, and all of the men constantly visited the females any time one of them could become pregnant. They needed to increase their numbers as quickly as possible and goblins could reproduce quickly and grow up in only eight days if they had enough food.
Three generations later, however, the Humans returned. This time only two of them died, with most of the goblins, including the new General, dying. Thankfully he was able to keep most of the women here in his chambers, so they could repopulate the caves quickly.
The humans continued to come back about every three generations, killing and harvesting the minerals which seemed to want to grow their numbers as well. The humans occasionally lost a person to traps or ambushes, but that grew rarer and rarer as time passed. Eventually the goblins had enough females that the least attractive of them could be allowed to live in the outer section with the men, with only the most beautiful ones remaining here with him. Still, the humans would come occasionally to slaughter and steal, and he would lose most of his people. And every time the voice telling him to kill them grew stronger.
---
Jinwoo stopped his daydreaming about the possibility of getting to help in that dungeon and turned the robot down to its first setting before turning it on. Its movements appeared slower that yesterday, like he could somewhat track them, and he was more easily able to dodge them. Eventually he adjusted to the movement and was able to dodge all of its blows.
During the training he had seen several times when it had left multiple openings. ‘If I had multiple weapons, couldn’t I attack twice?’ he thought. He paused the robot and went to get another dagger, then returned and reactivated it. Using two daggers took a bit of getting used to, but after an hour or so he was able to know when to attack with either his left or right arm and when to attack with both at the same time.
A healer came by to help him recover and he briefly thought about going to pick up his sister, then remembered that her friend had said she would handle it. He drank some water and returned to the robot. Now that he had gotten used to the lowest setting he turned it up to setting number two. The robot started moving much faster, more like how a normal person would move and Jinwoo was hit several times before he was able to start blocking, and several more before he learned to dodge.
The D rank healer had to fix his injuries a few more times before he was able to properly dodge and occasionally strike back, though he rarely landed a proper blow. The man couldn’t deal with serious injuries, but the bruises, occasional twisted or dislocated joint, and the muscle pain from the workout were possible for him to treat. Eventually Jinwoo stopped the robot and sat down on a bench to catch his breath. The healer came over to treat him once more, switching between the two dozen or so people using the gym, and Jinwoo realized how tired and hungry he was. He looked at his phone and realized that it was 14:07 and he had skipped breakfast.
He went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant, demolished a massive bowl of pho to load up on carbohydrates, the started running. He was able to push himself to complete two whole loops around the main road, and returned to the guild. Back in the gym the healer treated his sore muscles and he went back over to the robot. Joseph had come in a few minutes ago, and when he saw Jinwoo practicing he walked over.
Jinwoo dodged out of the way of the robot’s arm and ducked to stab at the robot’s stomach, only to have the robot knock his arm to the side with his other arm. Jinwoo gripped the blade tighter so that he wouldn’t lose it and stabbed with the other hand, scoring a hit on the robot’s side.
“Not bad.” said Joseph.
“Pause Robot.” said Jinwoo and it relaxed before stopping its movements. “Mr. Joseph.” he said with a slight bow. “How can I help you.”
“I just came over to see how you are doing. Two daggers, now? You seem to have a talent for daggers. Maybe you’re a speed class. Assassin or something similar.”
Jinwoo nodded. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Joseph hook his head. “Yesterday you said the setting one was equal to an older child. What about setting two?”
“Average adult.” he responded. “Ten in all stats, just like you when you got here, where it was five at setting one. Of course, a robot doesn’t have intelligence, and its durability and stamina are basically infinite, running out only if someone uses a C rank attack to break its defenses and damage it, or stopping when the mana crystal powering it wears out, but its strength, agility, and perception are all set to human average.”
“So, I assume the stats double with each number on the dial?” Jinwoo inferred, and Joseph nodded. “Then I have a long way to go. If I remember the guild’s assessment test instructions, twenty in all stats is roughly average for an E rank, with forty being an upper E or the lowest D rank. So I need to work my way up to beating at least setting 4 before fighting E ranked monsters if I want to be safe.” While your stats could go higher, and some people had a stat at almost twice their rank’s Upper level, based on their Hunter type, those were the averages of all mages and fighters in the guild, and only varied by a point or two as you went up the ranks.
“Yes, ideally you would want to be there. Not sure how easy it will be to reach that point for you, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually if you practice enough.” Jinwoo nodded and, after Joseph gave him a few pointers, went back to practice.
