POV – Tobias

[Year 2, Day 110… Three days later]

Resting on a tree’s branch, watching the sun rise, I sighed to myself.

We were atop a small valley beside a mountain. The place was surrounded by forest, overall it’s tranquil and relaxing… but, I don’t like it. It is too peaceful. I feel as though my growth has stagnated.

Well, besides learning to control my strength. In order to prevent myself from randomly destroying trees and rocks, I learned to use the bare minimum amount of strength possible.

I still catch myself destroying objects every so often, but that’s from carelessness.

In regards to my new disciples. Neither has officially accepted me as their teacher yet. Annoyingly, Sidney keeps attempting to escape at night. Although, it’s simple to follow her trail and drag her back.

To prevent that, I began creating a barrier around the camp at night that stops her from wondering off. Constantly running a barrier would be mana intensive, thus I programmed the ward to only activate when something attempt to leave the area.

It had a few bugs, which she initially took advantage of to escape. However, I quickly worked out the kinks. It’s become far easier after avoiding the exhausting daily routine of recapturing her.

Besides the trouble with Sidney, I’m still having difficulty creating a cohesive plan to properly train them.

They are too slow and weak. Surviving the tutorial of Hell Difficulty would be impossible with their strength.

For the time being, while we are traveling, I’m having them spar against each other.

Sidney is a prodigy and rapidly learned to counter Bai Xiaobao's attacks. Recently, she’s beginning to win every round.

Bai Xiaobao, though, seems to be having trouble.

I don’t understand. Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Bai Xiaobao clearly has a protagonist aura.

Hmmm… Well, I’ll lead him into a dangerous situation and see if that activates it. At the very least, his protagonist aura should keep him alive.

If it doesn’t, I’ll ask Rin to reload or something.

Speaking of Rin, She has gotten… clingy. Initially, when I received my disciples, Rin avoided intimate actions out of embarrassment.

She got over her embarrassment swiftly and, since a few days ago, Rin decided to begin clinging to me.

…And Rin, being who she is, once she decides something never stops. The past few days have been filled with near constant kisses on the cheek and intimate skin contact.

Honestly, in some ways, it’s wonderful.

Who wouldn’t want a beautiful girl to pine over you? Well, actually… in most cases, I wouldn’t want that.

Though in this situation, where I already love Rin, it’s remarkable.

Although, that doesn’t really change my astonishment of Rin’s actions.

In the first place, it’s completely out of character for Rin to hang out with others. Taking that a massive leap further and aggressively engaging in intimate contact? Unthinkable.

Furthermore, Rin engaging in such intimate acts in front of others… I’m beginning to question whether I’m in a weird alternative reality or been placed under a mental illusion.

All this leads to the major problem of all that intimate contact, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to avoid… reciprocating her affections.

The problem is, that logically and morally, I don’t want to get too intimate.

Would a regular kiss be fine? Actually, maybe not, I don’t want to deter Rin's newfound affection by acting creepy.

I’ll consider it later.

For now, I’ll return to the topic of disciples.

I need to provide my disciples with enough experience and training to survive in the tutorial of Hell Difficulty. Furthermore, they would need to confront even more dangerous circumstances to acquire an ability granting item.

Preferably speaking, they would acquire two such items. The void flower’s petals to grant a limited spatial manipulation ability, while finding another ability granting item for themselves.

Course, I don’t actually expect anything from Bai Xiaobao. It would be a miracle if he decided to bring out an ability granting item for me.

No, I’m betting on Sidney obtaining one for me.

As for Bai Xiaobao, I don’t plan on spending much time on training him. I’ll send him alone into a temple and let dangerous situations train him. There are several on the way to the exit beacon.

Well, the sun’s risen. I should begin training Sidney.

Leaping off the branch, I moved to locate her.

After searching around the camp. I didn’t find her.

The barrier ran out of mana? Ugh… She’s escaped again. She must’ve found another loophole.

I’ll have to fix that later.

Leaning while searching for tracks. She’s gotten better at hiding her tracks. However, she isn’t nearly good enough to escape from my pursuit.

Running at a decent pace while following her trail, I swiftly caught up with her. She was asleep in a tree branch. She’s probably completely exhausted from attempting to escape.

Too bad her extracurricular activities are not a valid excuse to avoid training.

Climbing up toward the branch, I poked her forehead. I spoke up, “Sleeping isn’t an excuse to avoid training. If you don’t get up, I’ll confiscate your escaping privileges.”

That’s right, escaping privileges. Her ability to escape is a privilege I grant to her. Technically speaking, I could simply tie her up and prevent from leaving the camp completely obstructing her ability to escape.

While it’s annoying to have her attempting to escape constantly, it has benefits. Mainly composing of various improvements to my warding abilities by exposing loopholes and a proper motivation for Sidney.

Those combined are beneficial enough to allow it to continue, so long as her escape attempts don’t influence her ability to train.

Plus, it will let me know if Sidney gives up on escaping and returning.

Sidney awoke from the physical interaction and threat, sleepily informing me, “I’m awake.”

Ignoring her sleepiness, I climbed down the branch and stated, “Perfect, get ready for today’s training then.“

After properly awakening, Sidney followed me back to base camp. Once we arrived back at base camp, I examined my ward’s structure.

There doesn’t seem to be a particular problem with the defensive matrix or anything that would cause it to trigger inappropriately. Instead, it seems to have simply run out of mana.

On examination, I realized the problem. While it worked perfectly, the barrier was active for several hours straight causing it to become completely drained. Sidney must’ve leaned against the barrier or something similar to drain it of its mana.

To fix the problem, I readjusted the barrier creation to only create a limited portion of the barrier around the triggered location rather than summoning the entire barrier.

With that done, I was prepared to train Sidney. However, Rin had apparently awoken and interrupted my thought process through a hug from behind.

I absentmindedly stared forward while Rin hugged me from behind. Although, I’m getting used to more intimate contact, I’m still stuck sitting here awkwardly because Rin decided she wanted to hug me.

Trapped through Rin’s hug, I felt my face suddenly turn slightly red in embarrassment. I’d began to notice the comfortable sensation of Rin’s breasts pressing against my back.

“Rin, that’s enough, I have things to do.” Attempting to stop her before my imagination went further.

Unfortunately, Rin elected to ignore me and continued to hug me. The comfortable sensation on my back causing arousal, despite my brain’s refusal.

My disciple, Sidney, seemed to find my current predicament hilarious and barely contained her laughter to a non-audible level.

Attempting to focus on her amusement, instead of Rin, I tugged on Rin’s hands to pry them off and escape.

Barely managing to lift them off, before Rin promptly applied more strength and I became thoroughly trapped in her grasp.

Sitting there, trapped, I realized exactly how weak I am. Along with exactly how comfortable the sensation of Rin’s breasts is.

Giving up struggling, we stayed in that position for several minutes. Several minutes where I was trapped in a hug that was both extremely uncomfortable and awkward, while simultaneously comfortable and pleasant.

When Rin finally decided to let go, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Sidney took the opportunity to verbally jab at me. “Not so pleasant when you’re the one being trapped is it?” before glancing down toward my pants and decided to revise her statement. “Or maybe it is~”

Embarrassed at her declaration, which acknowledged my interest in Rin, I blushed slightly. Still, I refused to let her bother me.

“I would shut up if I were you.” I threatened, motioning for her to stay quiet.

“Or what? You’ll stick your sword in me? With its size, I doubt it would even hurt.” Sidney sarcastically replied, leaving me speechless.

An innuendo? Is she flirting, or outright insulting me? When did she become this aggressive?

I mean, Sidney’s usually more passive aggressive. Since realizing I had no plans of killing her, she hasn’t exactly been afraid of me.

…But outright either insulting me or flirting with me seems out of character.

If this is a mental illusion, whoever is controlling it is doing a horrible job.

Staring at her and said, “You’ve outgrown sparing with Bai Xiaobao, so I just decided. I’ll spar with you.” Smiling slightly, I was slightly lying about the time period the decision was made in but it’s an irrelevant detail.

Picking up two random sticks on the ground, I tossed one toward her.

Since this is supposed to be training, I’ll avoid her strikes and try to move slow enough that she will be able to react.

As she caught the branch midair, I moved forward.

Speaking as I moved, “Monsters won’t wait for you to be ready and neither will I.”

Striking her arm, she dropped her weapon. Realizing I was probably moving to quickly for a beginner to fight, I slowed down considerably but never stopped attacking.

Without a weapon, she dodged for several minutes before utilizing another stick on the ground.

Repeating the process, I knocked the stick out of her hand.

As she learned to dodge my strikes, I gradually sped up.

Sidney really is a prodigy at fighting. If I’d learned half as fast, I probably would’ve had a much easier time in Hell Difficulty.

Once Sidney could dodge the majority of my attacks and keep her weapon with her, I slowed down.

Instead of focusing on speed, I’ll target the weak points in her defense.

We continued training for around two hours, before I realized something odd. Bai Xiaobao had disappeared off somewhere. I hadn’t seen him since last night.

Did he try to escape as well? I didn’t exactly kidnap him, though. If he wants to leave he can.

Ending our current training session. I turned toward Rin, who had been watching us train from the sidelines.

“Where did Bai Xiaobao go?” I inquired aloud, hoping someone knew the answer.

Rin nodded and pointed toward a particular direction in the forest. Somewhat confused, I decided to climb a tree for better view.

Finding the tallest tree in the area, which I promptly climbed.

Hearing a loud rumbling. I glancing about and immediately noticed something strange.

There was a large dust cloud in the distance that was headed straight toward our location. A tree flew into the air from the distance and landed approximately 20 meters away from me.

That’s odd…

Isn’t that the direction that Rin pointed toward.

Bai Xiaobao’s that way?

Above the rumbling, I realized I could hear a faint voice.

It was Bai Xiaobao... screaming for help.

Watching the dust cloud, I felt slightly nauseous.

How can he constantly be causing trouble? I known him for approximately two weeks… Yet, this makes it the third time he’s been chased around in these past few weeks.

Is Bai Xiaobao only a protagonist who can create constant trouble?