(Alice POV)

"Alice... I don't think... I can make it... please... tell my mom... I love her..."(Fari)

"Please endure a little more Fari... our hope is are almost here..."(Alice)

"Alice... is right... endure...this agony... for a moment..."(Rine)

"...."(Lapis)

This was the everyday conversation of four poor souls dying in the middle of Sweet Blood. Ever since we started our training, we would be one foot near the grave. At first, we thought we could endure the intense training and even get used to it in a month, how naive we were.

Fari was forced to endure the sadist pummeling of the witch while being forcefully recovered by Rine every time she was knocked out, because of this she wasn't allowed to escape from the hellish training. Not only that, she was forced to stay alert at every moment as the witch would strike her the moment she lowered her guard. Thanks to that Fari developed some kind of trauma, causing her to react to every single move around her.

Rine on the other side has been studying so much that she was barely able to sleep, each time I saw her room I was astonished by the increasing amount of books. The amount of medicine she had done until now was so much that she always had the smell of herbs on her body, sadly this wasn't the end of her busy life.

Whenever she wasn't studying or mixing medicine, you could see her training her combat and recovery skills together with Fari. Luckily the witch was a little softer with her, but it wasn't because she was a support class, it was because the witch needed her to have enough energy to heal Fari.

The training of Lapis wasn't soft either, aside from studying the theory behind the magical devices she was forced to learn how to forge. Forging is a demanding task that drained a lot of physical strength and endurance, and for a little bookworm girl with barely any physical strength, you could imagine her suffering, every time she went to bed I could see her squirming and barely able to endure the muscle pain... that is if she was in her room.

Every evening Lapis is picked up by the witch and thrown into the forest with a distress signal and a list of items and objectives. If she somehow manage to finish the list then she was allowed to return to her room and sleep, but if she couldn't complete the list then she would be picked up by the witch the next morning. In other words, only after completing the list, Lapis could sleep.

And finally, my training consisted of two simple tasks, fighting the masked instructor and hunting chaos monsters. It would be so simple if it wasn't for the essence of the tasks. It took me one day to find that the damned instructor is even worse than the witch, she didn't have the sadist attitude of the witch but instead, she was merciless.

I don't know what kind of genius she is, but every time I train with her feels like I'm on an express trip through hell. Every day she is teaching me how multiple weapons like swords, axes, spears, hammers, scythes, daggers, canes, bows, etc. in other words she is literally teaching me how to use every weapon she knew... by "hitting" my body with them. When the warm-up is over... yeah, that was the warm-up, the real test begins. It's a simple hunt where I'm forced to hunt either mid or high-rank monsters in succession, this hunt would last until the monster or the wave was eliminated. In other words, a nightmare.

I was feeling that my soul was leaving my body when the melodic voice of Olivia brought us back to life.

"Sorry for the delay, here is your order. Also, this meal is from the house, so don't hesitate to enjoy it."(Olivia)

Her sweet words fell upon our soulless ears, when I looked up I saw Olivia leaving with a wink, this made us think she was a saint. With the four of us grateful for Olivia's consideration we looked at the meals and four red beverages in front of us, with each one of them emitting a cloud of white smoke while bubbling. By the way, the free meal that Olivia brought to us was some modified recipes that Azazel shared with her three months ago, thanks to the popularity of the meals we often received some free meals as gratitude.

Feeling that our inner energy was almost gone we immediately ate the food in front of us like it was our last dinner. After regaining a little energy Fari spoke with an unusually frustrated tone.

"But seriously!!! Why is this training so hard?!?! We are going to die at this rhythm!!!"(Fari)

This is one of the rare instances where everyone nodded at her words, this training was so hard to the point it was strange. Even if we were behind in terms of power and skills this training was obviously excessive.

"My training is the hardest!! I can't have a moment of rest without having the principal attacking! And even outside of the training grounds I can't escape as the moment I relax my guard Lady Arcon would strike me from a blind spot!!"(Fari)

"Don't dare to say that! Even if you are attacked at least you can still sleep! Think about being forced to memorize dozens of books and fight the principal every day! I can't even remember when was the last time I slept!"(Rine)

"How you dare to say that!! I must fight every day for my life if I want to get at least an hour of sleep! You don't know the agony of thinking if you are going to be able to sleep again!!"(Lapis)

"Shut up Fari!! At least you weren't forced to train with a merciless demon and hunt waves of chaos monsters every day... ALONE!!"(Alice)

Hearing Fari's complaints made us snap in an instant, our frustration was so much that even the gentle Rine and silent Lapis screamed with all their might. After venting our frustrations we fell in silence before laughing at our childish behavior.

"Well, it doesn't matter who has the hardest training. What matters is we are finally making progress."(Rine)

Rine was right, during these six months, our combat experience grew a lot even though our stars and ranks didn't do it. Although it wasn't a lot at least we have the confidence of winning against more experienced teams.

After causing a commotion (the customers inside of the shop are used to our outburst) we left Sweet Blood, during our return through the capital we heard a couple of women gossiping some interesting news.

"Did you hear that the princess Talia will receive the title of Saint?"(????)

"Yes, they said she had a central role in the recent subjugation of the Prophets."(????)

The words of the women’s made Fari, Lapis, and Rine turn their sight at me. They have been like that ever since they learned about my true identity, as they were very careful to not touch that topic.

"Don't worry, I don't care about them. We only need to become stronger to win in the tournament, right."(Alice)

Luckily it was easy to dismiss their worries because at the next moment Fari tried to pick a fight with a random child... why is she like that? I would have forgotten about this incident in a week but it seemed that fate wasn't going to let this down.

We were just entering the academy while dragging Fari when the witch appeared in front of us with a troubled expression. It was just a simple meeting, yet Fari and Rine raised their guard while Lapis and I looked at her in disgust. We didn't like to see her on our day off, especially after suffering at her hands for half a year.

The witch didn't care about our reaction, as she sighed tiredly.

"I know this is your day off... but please come with me. We are going to have soon a little big trouble."(Fayna)