Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series, Dan Sugralinov [the reader ebook .TXT] 📗

She sat at a table with Crawler. They must have been discussing the future trades at the auction.

I approached, nodded to my friend and hugged the girl. She kept hold of me, kissed me and whispered in my ear:

“Have you decided? Can I move in with you?”

“Not yet. We’ll talk after the Games, okay?”

“Then what about a date in Dis? Tonight?”

“Gladly. Hopefully nothing urgent comes up.”

“Then see you tonight.” Smiling, she went back to the table.

I swapped news with the mage, then jumped straight to the village of Jiri. The Grain of Transformation had finished its work and my stats had changed. Now I could try to pull the Caressing Creeper from the trunk.

The old man sat beneath the once mighty tree in lotus pose, his eyes closed. Without opening them, he muttered:

“You got uglier. I hope that isn’t your only achievement.”

I hadn’t noticed any changes in my appearance, but the NPC knew better. My charisma was reduced, which made me less attractive.

“Master…” I greeted Oyama, bowing my head.

He was silent. Saying nothing more, I approached the tree and took hold of the creeper. I squeezed it and it gave way beneath my grip. I pulled hard.

Crack! The stalk broke and separated from the tree with a squelching sound. The multitude of roots that delving into the tree to suck out its life juices writhed, emitting a piercing scream and squirting out a brown liquid.

Without letting go of the stalk, I walked away from the tree in a spiral, disentangling and pulling the parasite out bit by bit. It was strong, it didn’t tear or break, but that worked to my advantage — a few minutes later, the tree was free. The long creeper hung lifelessly wrapped around my arm. The deep wounds bleeding sap on the trunk slowly drew closed, leaving scars. I heard a sigh of relief in the rustle of the tree’s leaves. Cracking and creaking, it straightened, spreading out its branches.

“You got uglier,” the old man repeated, standing up. “But stronger and faster too, my apprentice.”

“Apprentice?”

“Spirits of the ancestors, why do you punish me?” Supreme Grand Master of Unarmed Combat asked the heavens. “Deaf as well as ugly!”

Chapter 24. Pain Is Just Weakness Screaming

A WISE GRAY OLD MAN watching me train, his eyes closed, occasionally sipping from a cup of permanently hot tea and dropping a comment here and there. That’s roughly how I imagined my tuition with Oyama would go. I was sorely mistaken.

“Oof… Ugh!” I wasn’t making noises deliberately, but with each of the master’s strikes, the air was knocked from my lungs. “Arrrgh!”

I figured out in the first hour of training: it wasn’t going to be easy. This was no ‘Supreme Grand Master of Unarmed Combat Oyama invites you to choose one of the following new moves,’ no simple window with pop-up descriptions of new skills. The old man demanded full concentration and silence. No talking! he snapped, cutting off my questions.

We trained in the shade of the tree rescued from the Caressing Creeper. Oyama attacked as soon as he declared me his apprentice. Of course, he wasn’t hitting me at full strength or using his special moves, but at the same time he wanted me to not hold back, to show him everything I was capable of.

Which was not much, it soon became clear. The old man just dodged my Combos, I couldn’t quite see how. He jumped over Stunning Kick, met my Hammerfists with a solid block that broke my fingers with a crunch. Piercing pain shot through my nerves and my health bar fell sharply. As for what was going on and what this so-called training battle, which seemed more like a child beating, was for, I had stopped asking. All I got in response to my questions was a broken jaw and ribs.

“Does that hurt?” Oyama asked when he heard my suppressed moan, his voice dripping with fake sympathy.

“I’m… used… to it…” I popped my jaw back in, spat out a thick stream of saliva mixed with blood, then gulped from my Bottomless Healing Potion. “I don’t fear pain.”

“Correct. Pain is weakness screaming as it leaves the body!”

Blood and sweat poured from my brow. My certainty that I’d made the right choice had long collapsed before the recognition of one simple fact: from the game’s perspective, my character had made no progress at all. My unarmed combat skill was frozen at the ceiling it reached back in the battle with Ervigot, at level 100 of rank one. For a couple of hours I’d hoped that new skills would appear if I tried to repeat after Oyama, but I got nothing but laughter from the old man. It was a very strange fight. I lost health points, my teacher didn’t. Reflection had no effect on him, and my Resilience seemed to have given up. Maybe because the duel was a training fight and Oyama a friendly character, I didn’t go into combat, but my health still dropped for real.

The sun had dropped past its zenith. Oyama allowed short pauses — a few seconds, no more — only for me to recover my health.

Long after midday, an unfamiliar boy of around ten, dirty, with skinned knees, brought a jug of goat’s milk and some flatbread and bowed respectfully to the master. I stared hungrily, but Oyama didn’t bat an eyelid. Leaving a copy of himself to continue beating me up, he sat down under the tree and began his meal. The boy climbed up onto a tree branch to watch the fight and started dripping mocking commentary:

“Where’d this rookie come from? He fights worse than a training dummy! Why’d you take this scarecrow on, grandpa?”

The old man chuckled into his mustache. Once done eating, he called to the boy, who jumped down from