"Do 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 air squats, and a 10 km run." Akriel instructed Noy.

Noy looked at him in confusion for a moment before he realized he was serious. He started doing those as fast as possible but soon got tired out.

Akriel didn't let him rest and again ordered him to continue doing it without any moment for distraction.

After a few hours of training, Noy's muscles were sore and his breath was ragged, but he continued doing it. After completing a full set, Akriel stopped him, "Good job. Now go do it all over again." Noy quietly went back.

Ten hours of repetitively doing the same training over and over again later Akriel finally ordered, "Now stop and go take some rest."

Akriel gave some fruits to Noy, "Eat these, you need nutrition to grow big and healthy."

Noy ate the fruits happily.

"I think this is enough training for today."Akriel smiled, "You did well."

Noy smiled too.

"But we still have one more step to complete your training for today," Akriel informed Noy.

He looked worried, "What's that?"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to put you through anything painful..."

Noy sighed with relief and relaxed.

"Remember how I mentioned earlier that you are also going to train in magic? Well here is the book containing basic spells of all elements."

Akriel showed him the book that he took out from thin air, "This book has every basic spell written inside. Just go through it for now."

Noy opened the book to find hundreds of pages filled with spells description and how to conjure them.

"Go ahead and learn something, just don't get stuck on one spell, memorize it all if you can. You can take it slow to memorize them."

Noy nodded and began reading from the beginning of the book.

***

It was a month after the day they met Akriel. Noy became stronger physically as well as mentally. After doing the same training over and over again every day, he could now do more than 200 pushups and 200 situps and could run 10km easily. His body was now a little bigger and stronger than ever.

"Your basic training is done," said Akriel, "now it's time to start your real training."

Noy looked nervous again, "Real training huh... what does that mean?"

Akriel smiled at him, "Well, this is the part where you'll really start learning some attacks and magic."

Noy looked relieved, "Really?! I am so happy! This is finally happening!"

Akriel laughed, "Don't be so excited yet, there are still so many things you have to train in and learn."

He then took out a wooden chained dagger from the air like the book and handed it to Noy, "Here, hold this."

Noy took it carefully and held it by its handle.

“Now randomly slice the air with the handle to get the feel of it. Since it's short, you should mostly stab with it when handling by the handle.”

He sliced the air as told for a few hours and he finally got the hang of it.

“Since you know the basics now, let’s get to the using chain for attack part. Now attack this dummy while standing there and you should enhance and shrink it like how you did previously when channeling mana to land the attack with the dagger."

Akriel made a wooden dummy almost the size of an adult and placed it around 3 meters away from Noy.

A couple of tries in and he couldn’t land the attack on the dummy but after an hour, he finally grazed the dummy with his enhanced chained dagger.

"There are many combos that you can do with the chained dagger. But you will naturally learn it while fighting for real. For now, just keep practicing. You should practice so much that the weapon should feel like an extension of your body part.

Moving to the next training, you should now practice defense."

Noy looked surprised, "Defense? Aren't those the most boring things to train?"

Akriel shook his head, "Not at all. If you master defense, you'll become an excellent fighter. It would be impossible to defeat someone who is good at defense. And you have to learn everything about it.”

He put some magic into the dummy and it began attacking Noy, “Defend yourself barehanded.”

Noy threw the chained dagger and moved his arm to block the attack but he was unsuccessful. It hit his stomach and continued attacking Noy.

After a min, Noy lied flat on the ground, all beaten up by the dummy with bruises all over his body.

Huff Huff

“This is hard.”

“You really don’t know how to defend yourself; you should use your whole body not just your arm. And don’t try to just block the attack, you should dodge as well; go sideways, roll or jump. That’s the basis of the defense.”

“Okay again get up and defend yourself.”

The dummy moved again and attacked Noy.

This time he managed to block some attacks but not all of them. After 3 min, he was again beaten up to the ground.

The process of getting beaten up and defending again continued for a whole day.

Akriel smiled, "You're doing very well. Keep it up and you'll be able to defend yourself well someday."

***

Akriel's training of Noy began in earnest. He taught him basic attack strategies and magic. Noy learned to defend himself and to use basic magic. He practiced attacking during the day and spent nights reading the book of spells. Every day his body would feel sore before sleeping and the cycle repeated.

Noy worked hard under Akriel's guidance and grew stronger with each passing day. His muscle strength increased tremendously and he became capable of running long distances with ease. His mind became sharper and he developed a keen intuition.

He also improved his mental abilities and developed powerful concentration.

His magical powers also reached new heights. He could sense his surroundings and sense the presence of others around him. He could cast basic spells albeit slowly but he was improving day by day.

Noy was amazed at his own development and couldn't believe how much he had changed in such a short period of time. He felt empowered and invigorated, ready to face any challenges that came his way.

***

Noy has been training for over 3 years now. There has never been a moment of rest for him. All he did for those years was train, eat, sleep, and repeat without room for anything else. Every day he would get some kind of bruise and would bathe himself with a basic water spell.

He seemed to have gotten a lot better but his growth has stagnated now after training for so long.

One day Noy was doing his daily training when Akriel approached, "Only training inside won't help you. Go out and fight monsters outside. You will learn more from the experience of fighting yourself.”

Noy nodded.

“And always remember, all the medium and higher magic spells are formed from basic spells. So, in theory, you should be able to create higher spells if you put your mind to it."

Akriel gave Noy a new chained dagger and started walking away before Noy could respond.

“He has a point; the best way to improve is by actually trying.” Noy thought.

He made up his mind to go out there, “I should at least kill some monsters. Maybe I’ll try mapping out the area while over there.”

He then followed the familiar path and went outside. There was the forest that he had been to before, but there were no wolves. This relieved him as he didn't want to fight many different wolves at the same time. He didn't think he could handle it. However, if it was a one-on-one, then he was confident he could beat it. He wasn't the same person that ran away from wolves 3 years ago.

He started mapping out the terrain by leaving marks on the trees and rocks, then proceeded to move straight.

While running, a huge web shot toward him.

He sensed it and narrowly dodged it. "What's that?"

A huge figure emerged from the shadow.

The first thing Noy noticed was that it had very long scaled legs with a hardened body. The second thing he saw was that it had six eyes arranged in two groups. One group focused directly ahead of it while another looked down the left side at an angle towards Noy's right arm. It reminded him of the spiders he'd seen described by his sister when they discussed their hatred for all things. If anything could be said about those monsters was that it was weak to fire and had venomous bites.

Noy used his abilities to try to get around the webbing, then quickly jumped away from it once he was through. After that, he ran straight forward while using a flame spell to melt the webs with the force of the flames.

He attacked with his dagger at close range but it didn't have any effect. Its leg moved toward him to crush him but he quickly jumped back to a distance.

“Watersplash!” It didn’t affect the spider-like nothing had hit it.

“Fireball!” He aimed it towards its head.

It blocked the fireball with two of its leg crossed together. This further confirmed that it is definitely weak to fire.

Angered, it continuously shot out webs to catch Noy. Unfazed, he ran straight forward to it while using fireballs to melt the webs. But the spider was faster than him. It launched itself into the air and landed right next to Noy as if it had been waiting for that exact moment.

"Let's see how you like this!" Noy shouted. "Firestorm!"

He pointed at the spider with his hand held high, then threw the firestorm towards it.

It hit the spider square on its head, causing it to drop its legs and fall over. However, it didn't die instantly. It turned its body upside down and used its legs to trap Noy in place. When it did that, his chained daggers flew out of his hands.

Noy felt helpless as the spider slowly pulled him towards it. He had no choice but to sit there and wait for the spider to kill him. At least he wasn't hurt yet though. He had to remain calm and think of something to do.

As he waited, he gazed at the spider's face and realized that the spider's mouth opened up wide. It was trying to bite him with its poisonous fang. This was a critical moment when he knew he needed to strike back at the spider or else he would die. He looked back to his training to see if he could use anything then all of a sudden an idea came to his mind.

"Umbra!"

At the sound of the name, Noy felt something inside him awaken. He used it to activate his ability and at the same time tried channeling light energy onto his left hand. A white glow covered both of his hands. He looked at the spider and felt his power grow stronger. Then he formed a fist and punched the spider's mouth with full force.

Its mouth burst open and the spider shook with pain before it finally stopped moving.

Umbra was the fighting technique that he learned from Akriel. It gathered the light energy from within. This would result in the attack being magical, not physical. This was why it worked against the spider and the dagger didn't work.

Noy felt like he was finally getting stronger. Surely enough, the real-life experience was what he really needed.

It was the first monster that he killed and he felt proud of it. His newfound confidence in himself grew even more. But this was not the time to relax as monsters could reach him anytime and he needed to rest as that fight exhausted him greatly.

He hid beneath a tree and used conceal magic on himself. It was not perfect but something was better than nothing. He took out the fruit that he had in his pocket and ate it along with the water from his bottle. Then he proceeded to rest himself for a while before making any move again.