Chapter 20 - 20 Friends

Chapter 20: Chapter 20 Friends

It was hard to believe that the others would be doing better than them. Regardless, Javier and Ruth began to warm up while Raiden just sat down to relax. He would warm up during the duels and save some energy for later. He still had work and training to do.

When the instructor arrived, he nodded in satisfaction, as everyone was there and wanted to try their hardest.

"All right, the duels will start in five minutes. Who will go first?" The instructor asked.

"I will," Raiden stepped forward and then said it.

"All right, who wants to duel Raiden?"

A lot of the kids raised their hands, around eighty percent of them. Raiden felt like shrugging since he was so popular... All those kids had faced him before, but they never won, and now they wanted their revenge.

In the end, the kids decided to use the best ones against Raiden, just like he had expected. They won against Ruth and Javier a few times, but leaving Raiden undefeated would be too much, so such a tactic was necessary.

When the five minutes, Raiden stepped forward, and then his first adversary did the same. It was a red-headed boy who was one of the oldest kids in the class. He seriously looked for some reason... he also had a spear.

The adversary moved to mirror Raiden's posture and stance as if he was planning to use the same power against him... Raiden knew that he shouldn't expect much from an eight years old boy, but that was certainly something funny to see in any case that worked for Raiden well.

"Start," the instructor declared.

Both of them stepped forward while thrusting their weapons forward. Raiden has a hard time not using a trick. Still, the weapons collided, and the

Also, it looked like her trump card was her ability to read the movements of the enemies; she didn't get hit a single time because of that. Raiden wondered who she learned that from... regardless, thanks to that as well, she took a while to actually attack. Raiden could imagine her hesitating to kill people with a bow if one day she had to.

"You three passed the test; you can show up on the next level tomorrow," the instructor declared.

Raiden was expecting something else, like some tips and warnings. Still, that instructor really apparently disliked the sound of his own voice.

Javier and Ruth felt relieved since they were finally going to be around kids of the same age. Still, Raiden wasn't interested in making more friends. He was going to pass through that level as well like a storm... His plan was to teach the sixth level of the tower of mastery in two years and graduate from it. He could only live in a hurry after suddenly waking up in a new body when he was already ten years old.

"From tomorrow onwards, you will work with me," Raiden declared. "It will be only in the afternoon, and you will be able to do that between the training sessions, so things will be as efficient as they can be."

"You mean as hardcore as you want to be," Javier furrowed his eyebrows.

"What about your job of helping the other healers?" Ruth asked. "Are we going to spend the whole afternoon training?"

"They said that they will be fine if I just keep selling them my high-quality medicine," Raiden explained. "And yes, we will train the whole afternoon. If you two don't manage to do that and get used to it. Then, graduating from the next level will be impossible. Remember, from the fifth level onward, we will train during half of the afternoon as well, and you can tell that those guys on the fifth level are way above us."

"It feels like we are in an endless loop, training to get stronger and get stronger to train even more," Javier shrugged.

"At least we have the option to choose now," Raiden said.

That ended the conversation. Raiden noticed that he tended to end their talk with some serious, heavy words. He felt that it was fine since it was a reminder of what happened before... kids tend to forget some things faster, even if they experienced hell for who knows how long.

When he was having dinner with his family that day, Raiden told everyone that he reached the fourth level of the tower of mastery. They were quite surprised since it didn't take even six months. They probably would have their mouths hanging open if he told them about his plans of graduating when he was just twelve or thirteen. That would be easy if he exploited his system, but Raiden also wanted it slow down for now to see if Javier and Ruth could keep up with him and continue to train hard. They were ten years younger than him mentally, but they were his friends.