Chapter 87: Not All Bad

Yanael's so-called training was barbaric, unstructured, spartan, brutal, painful, and torturous.

…But it wasn't all bad. It helped Zach get his head on straight when he was in horrible conditions. He could defend and cast barriers even when he didn't know the difference between up and down. He learned how to take blows that would have otherwise rendered him a trembling, unmoving mess.

He learned how to cast specific barriers that only took up as much space as they needed to block a particular attack. Then, he learned how to take them down before they broke to the attack.

Zach got significantly faster at casting and tearing down his barriers. He also got faster at running since that was the only way he could delay getting hit by Yanael, even if only by a second or two. seaʀᴄh thё NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Another good thing that Yanael's training brought was mental relief. He was too busy dreading and thinking about the upcoming training session that he couldn't even flee from to gnaw his brain smooth with unnecessary thoughts about everything he had to do and all the information he had to gather and sort.

It was a different kind of stress relief from the light-hearted fun he had with Dukiel and Julius.

It replaced one kind of stress and anxiety with another.

It sucked.

Fortunately, he didn't have to withstand it forever since Yanael also mixed in strength training and monster hunting. Zach trained his strength, and Yanael hunted monsters independently. Zach would be safe as long as he stayed on campus. And he was forbidden from leaving campus, so he wouldn't be in danger even if Yanael wasn't by his side.

When Zach started getting better at surviving, Zach and Yanael decided that the major limiting factor was his strength. And there were two ways they could improve it. Lifting weights and killing monsters to level up.

The monsters Anerias lured to the Academy helped, but they weren't enough. If Zach wanted to catch up to and surpass his classmates who could hunt freely, he needed to hunt and kill more monsters.

It seemed like it wasn't as efficient when he was far away from Yanael when she hunted since it took a lot before he leveled up even once.

However, it wasn't like there was a lack of monsters in the forest. Yanael could go wild and drown the forest in blood. A few days later, it would be like she had never been there. Rare and precious monsters didn't pop up as often or come back as quickly as ordinary monsters.

But Zach wasn't looking for materials. He only wanted levels.

While Yanael had a jolly time hunting monsters, Zach used the weights in the training area and tired himself out. He ate. He slept. He joined Nora at the library. He repeated that without counting the days.

He had found a routine that wouldn't break him if he kept it up for too long. It could probably have been more optimized, and his training could have been better. But Zach was happy enough. He was making progress and raising his grades.

Things were calm. Too calm.

Since the swamp Locale, Zach hadn't had a luck-related incident for months. He wasn't sure the trouble Nora caused by wanting access to the library counted. He didn't think it did, so it didn't.

Zach was worried. The longer it was between incidents, the bigger they tended to be.

Nothing much had happened between the field trip and the swamp Locale. He had almost died. He and his friends had gained from that incident, especially his friends. But that was easy to forget when compared to the vivid memories of blood spurting out of his leg and covering it in crimson. The fear Jigak had imprinted on Zach was also still etched high up in his mind.

Zach's survival and Jigak's friendliness aside, it was hard to see the encounter with a Named underworlder as anything but unlucky.

As if to answer Zach's worry, Jarron found out about Yanael leaving campus. Although Zach hadn't left, Yanael apparently counted as an extension of him. Since it was their fault for not specifying, Zach wasn't punished, but Yanael couldn't leave the Academy anymore.

Still, before they were caught, Yanael had picked up three levels for Zach. He was now level seven.

It wasn't much, but he was no longer at the bottom of the class. He had also grown a little stronger from both the levels and the strength training.

At this point, no one in class doubted Zach's hypothesis that leveling up made them stronger.

However, they had noticed that the strength depended on the rank of the familiar.

D-ranks didn't get much stronger with each level. S-ranks did. That was why Zach had noticed it so easily. The difference wasn't much this early, but with each level, the difference in rank grew.

Zach was curious about what would happen if a familiar ranked up. Would the strength of levels the summoner had already acquired increase or would only the levels in the future be affected?

It wasn't something he could answer or find an answer to, but it was interesting. He wondered if Yanael might have the answer, but she couldn't tell him if she did since he didn't have enough authority, much less tell him the actual answer.

She could tell him, however, that since he had enough time to be thinking about such useless questions, he had enough time to train some more.

The training that had already increased after Yanael was forbidden from the forest grew harsher once more, and Zach forgot his question. He even forgot how to think or what his name was.

Once again, another several months had passed, and it was time for Zach's punishment to end. He, Dukiel, and Julius could finally enter the forest again and look for what Jigak had guided Zach toward.

Zach was excited. Dukiel and Julius were worried.

They had a lot of time to think about it and realize that a lot could go wrong. Julius also didn't believe in his lucky streak anymore. Too much time had passed for him to forget about the joy of all the liquid underworld energy he found in the swamp Locale.

And Dukiel hadn't made much progress in getting stronger. He wasn't confident about their chances of success if they ran into something powerful, even with Zach and Yanael.

Still, they had made too many preparations to chicken out. As soon as they could, they got permission and headed out. Jarron's words that they would have to repeat a year all on their own dime if they came back late were firmly imprinted on the insides of their eyelids.

They would not be late this time.