Chapter 5: A mob is not strong

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*Tack!*

*Tack!*

Two wooden swords clashed against each other repeatedly while letting out small shockwaves after each impact.

*Tack!*

"What's wrong? Put more effort in your swings Sid!"

"Hah... Hah... I'm trying!"

Nael, that was currently sparring against me while using training swords, tried to make me more motivated to fight against him with all I had.

Of course, I acted like I was actually trying, though I was not.

"Put a bit more strength in your arms when you swing, at this rate you won't be able to become a marine!"

"Yes!"

Four years have passed since we had that encounter with the pirate, and I was now 8 years old. After Nael tasted danger for the first time in his life, the will to become stronger inside him ignited and started training nonstop to become strong.

Nael parents, that after hearing what happened with the pirate, and when they saw how Nael was acting, decided to pay Nael a teacher to teach him proper swordsmanship to defend himself, which in turn, made him teach us everything he learned in those lessons.

And since then we have been training and sparring against each other in order to become strong enough for the moment we reach the allowed age to join the marines. Which is at the age of 14 by the way.

*Whack!*

*Thud*

"O-ow...!"

I fell helplessly to the ground after suddenly receiving a direct hit on my legs.

Honestly, Nael had a lot of talent with the sword, and adding that to his incredible perseverance, he was progressing at an incredible pace. The only thing he actually lacked was maybe a bit more of physical strength. But as far as I can predict, right now he could be able to take care of a normal pirate with ease.

As expected of a protagonist...

"Nael! Here..." After the spar ended Arya suddenly appeared besides him and handed him a bottle of water while completely ignoring the tired me.

"Thanks Arya..." Nael smiled gently at her in response.

No water for me huh?

...

As expected of me... my mobness is awesome as ever!

"You really don't have talent for swordsmanship Sid..." One of my Mob companions whispered to me while placing his hand on my shoulder.

However, Nael that managed to hear him immediately refuted his claim.

"Don't say that, the only thing he needs is to put more effort in his training and he will become really strong!" 

"Geh... even if you say that..."

As you heard, since we began training between ourselves I have been acting as if my talent in swordsmanship was extremely low. To the point I made it look like I was only able to learn a few small things in the span of many months of training.

Of course, after they saw how bad I was with the sword, they tried to make me use other ways of combat. Like using slingshots, toy guns, hand-to-hand combat, throwing knifes, and even a stick... However, I just ended up showing a worst result than when using a sword, so in the end I continued training swordsmanship.

Of course, they weren't pushing me to train nor forcing me to become a marine along with them. Instead, it was I that kept acting like I was trying to learn a proper way of combat, so they only were trying to help me become 'Strong'.

"Come on Sid, you need to become strong! No one knows when a pirate will apear in front of us!" Nael clenched his fist in front of his face while trying to encourage me.

"I-I'll try..."

"Well, luckily for now is very unlikely that we will find any pirates making problems in this city, as lately there has been a lot of bounty hunters around capturing any pirates that make ruckus" One of my mob companions said while leaning on a tree.

"How many pirates have been captured during this month by those bounty hunters?" Arya asked curiously.

"Around 18 captains along with their whole crew. Seriously, those guys are really strong to catch an entire crew of pirates by themselves!"

...

Hmm... yeah, those 'Bounty hunters' are actually me.

It may have accidentally happened that I exaggerated a bit on my training sessions and ended up defeating a bit too many pirates while claiming their bounties using different identities.

Which ended up making the people in this city that a lot of bounty hunters were catching the pirates on this island.

Welp, not that this matter was gonna stop me. As the shadow eminence candidate that I am, I'm in serious needs of money.

A power in the shadows must not be poor!

So for all these years I have been saving up all the money I get from the heads of these pirates, and maybe a bit from the treasures they store inside their ships... 

So currently I had approximately 200.000.000 bellys saved. 

Unfortunately, many of the pirates I used for my "Training sessions" didn't have any bounty on their heads, as they were complete mobs, otherwise, I could have a saved a lot more money.

"Alright, we will see each other tomorrow at the same hour" Nael said while packing his things preparing to leave.

"Yeah, see you tomorrow!" The other also started doing the same.

"Bye~"

"See you later!"

As everyone started leaving, I instead walked directly towards the library because I still needed to finish reading an advanced book of machinery.

Why machinery, you ask?

Well, currently I looked just like any mob kid could do. However, in reality I had a lot of weapons hidden right under my clothes, like retractile daggers on my shoes, small needle-guns on both sides of my waist that could be triggered remotely by pressing a button on my chest, a katana that could shrink itself to save space was hanging on my back, and I even had two tasers like gloves that could electrify anyone I punched. All this thanks to the great amount of mechanisms and machinery I could create thanks to the books I read, and the materials I could buy with my money.

Don't ask me how was this amount of weapons under my clothes almost unnoticeable, because I honestly had no clue. Anime world weird logics I think...

I mean, there was even Don Krieg, that for some reason had a huge arsenal of weapons like guns, flamethrowers, Iron nets, bombs, and a needle machine gun, all under his armor! And his armor was not even that big compared to his body...

Of course, I was not planning on setting with just this small mount of weapons hidden in my clothes. My plan was to create a great armor that could have hundreds of hidden weapons ready to take care of almost any kind of enemy, however, first I needed to become a marine in order to start creating this armor.

So for now I had to settle with my [Battle armor 1.0]

However, before I could enter the library to finish the book, a sudden yell entered my ears.

"KYAAAAAAAAAAH!! SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

"Gyahahaha! Scream all you want woman, No one will dare to interrupt me from having fun with your body. I am the great Iron feet Joe, and my bounty has already reached 8 million! Gyahahaha, no one can defeat me in this city!"

Sigh... why do these idiots keep shouting aloud their bounty? Not that I'm complaining though...

I hid my self from anyone that could see me, and as soon as I touched my face, my appearance changed to that of an old man with sheriff like clothes.

Alright!

"It's shadow eminence time"

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