Chapter 96 Work And Reward

I was awoken by the sound of nothing in particular.

As my eyes slowly adjusted to the light, I stretched my arms, getting out of bed. I made my way outside and noticed that it was a little brighter than usual. I guess I must have woken up pretty late. The chilly wind was quite an effective wake-up call, forcing my body to quickly circulate blood and sharpen my mind. My Residential Heater Scout Minion quickly made its way over to warm up the area.

I had a quick look at all of my Minions. They were simply standing around, doing nothing in particular. From what I could see, there weren't any major losses, it was just like all the previous nights. Seeing this, I sent them off on their expeditions, as I grabbed my [Fine Logger's Axe] out of my inventory.

My Minions began making their way out of the settlement, to collect resources during the day. I had fine-tuned my groups so that each group had more than enough escorts for each resource-collecting Minion. Yesterday, I took very few casualties during the day, meaning my escort system was quite effective.

With everything set up, I walked over to a tree and began cutting at its trunk. Just based on the fight I watched the previous day, basically, all of the highest-ranking humans were quite skilled at sword fighting. I guess it was just the nature of this place. My swordplay was quite lacking in comparison to theirs.

Part of the issue was my lack of experience with a weapon. Since I've been able to rely on my Minions for most of my resource collection and combat, I've needed to fight personally a lot less. This resulted in my hand-to-hand combat ability being significantly worse than many of the other people here.

With that motivation in mind, I swung my axe, smashing into the trunk of the tree.

[+8 wood]

[+7 wood]

[+8 wood]

[+1 coal]

Actually, now that I thought about it again, it would probably be more effective if I directly trained my swordplay with one of my Minions. It'd probably be a lot more direct training than cutting down trees. The amount of wood and other resources I got from chopping trees was pretty much insignificant, which meant I didn't really have any reason to do so.

I called back one of my Warrior Minions to spar with me. They were probably the best I had in terms of sword skill. I decided to craft a simple [Wooden Sword], so I wouldn't accidentally destroy my Minions, especially since the Warrior Minions were so expensive.

As I walked over to me, I wasn't really sure how to train with it. It didn't have a 'spar' command, so if I wanted to fight it, I'd likely have to set myself as a target. I could always cancel the command at any time so I'd never really been in much danger, but it felt a little awkward having it see me as an enemy.

I raised my [Wooden sword] and prepared to fight it.

Once it got within range, I swung my sword, only for my attack to be blocked by it. Several splinters of wood snapped off of the [Wooden Sword] during the contact.

Yikes, I should probably use a better weapon.

I quickly cancelled the attack order on my Warrior Minion so I could craft a better weapon. I decided on a simple [Steel Sword] to replace my [Wood Sword]. I wanted a weapon which wouldn't just degrade during the fight.

With my new sword, I ordered the Warrior Minion to attack me once again.

I got into the best defensive posture I could and watched the movement of its blade. As it swung its sword at me, I deflected the attack, using the momentum to close the distance between us. I tried to land a hit on it but it quickly recovered its position and blocked my attack. We traded several blows before I managed to outmanoeuvre it and land a hit.

My [Steel Sword] smashed into the metallic-like exoskeleton of the Minion and caused it to smash into the ground. Upon further inspection, it seemed like it hadn't taken any physical damage, only sustaining 'damage' within my system.

Even though I could freely use it as a training partner, it wasn't really technically capable enough to effectively spar with me. It was more like a doll for me to just trade hits with. I would need to practice on real human opponents if I wanted to improve my technique.

The main thing was that I had never had any actual sword training before, in the form of kendo or fencing or other sword-like sports. As I result, my technique was as amature as it gets. Most of the fights I'd been in were won using Mayuri's ability and just swinging the sword. I'd like to practice in a way where I'd actually be able to learn techniques.

However, at the moment, it didn't seem very possible.

I decided to just train my arms with my Warrior Minion for the time being. I did want to get used to using [Mayuri-Luc-Ei] and especially [Tengen-Ko-Rin], which was a different type of sword. I practised with my Warrior Minion, blocking its attacks and countering with my own. We fought each other for several hours before my arms were finally starting to seriously fatigue.

I cancelled his attack orders and I took a seat on the ground to catch my breath.

It might be worthwhile to increase my EPS further so I didn't get overtaken in the last few days. There were 6 more days before the end of Killer Winter and 5 more before we received our Rank Rewards. I was still pretty curious as to what the [Shadow Realisors] did.

Now that I thought about it, there was someone named Tom Afford on the Global Rankings.

,m I had definitely heard that name before.

Also, judging by the last name, it was possible that he was related to Chloe.

I wonder what the connection was between everyone.

I might ask her about it when she gets back...

???

[A new species has been introduced into The Apocalypse]

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