Rupegia Ch. 02: Second Day

"Wolf Ryder."

Now that I've said it again, I think that I've made a mistake. This name certainly doesn't suit me. My parents were right, my original name was better.

He taps his chest with a closed fist and replies, "I'm Toga. You make the first move, and I will start attacking after a while."

So I start my session. I rush and attack, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Because the skill system takes over some of my movements I'm at least confident that I know how to slash and thrust.

Toga effortlessly blocks, parries, and dodges my attacks. It feels like I'm a child throwing a tantrum while he holds me back by simply holding my head. Then he starts attacking and in three strikes my sword falls out of my hand.

"Well, your technique is a mess, who taught you the sword?" He questions with a deep frown.

"Self-taught," I answer meekly.

"Mystery solved," he responds and laughs out loud. "You know how to attack, but you're lacking a 'flow,' so it's easy to find openings to counter, which means that the first thing you should learn is how to defend yourself. Now, what sort of training do you want?"

"How many types of training are there?" I reflexively ask back.

He sighs softly and gives me an odd look. "Depends on what job you want. Adventuring warriors want any 'Physical' skills that they can get their hands on, and their role in a fight depends on which skills they have an affinity for; soldiers train to have a balanced selection of weapon and defensive skills like [Block] and [Parry]," -he scans my body up and down- "but they need 'Stats' more than they need skills, which you're lacking; and knights train mostly their weapon skill and other enhancement skills like [Muscle Explosion] and [Enhanced Strength] since they use enchanted weapons and wear heavy armor, so they don't need defensive skills as much. Archers have it easy, though, since all they need is [Bow Use] until they're high level."

"I want to work as an adventurer," I immediately confess.

Then he smiles a bit creepily. "I see. So, do you want to train the proper way, or the easy way?" And his words give me a chill.

I know what's coming. It's going to be painful, but this is an opportunity to see what true sword fighting is like, and what kind of man or boy would say no to that?

"The... proper way," I weakly answer, starting to waver.

He grins evilly and commands, "Then defend yourself like your life depends on it, because it does."

Then he beats me up.

--

My body is bruised and bloody. I didn't imagine that a blunt wooden sword could make such a cut. Toga crushed me and he's barely out of breath. He's certainly a scary man. Did I choose the worst instructor by any chance?

While I'm sprawled on the ground, Toga calls for someone. Another instructor comes by and touches my arm, then he starts singing something like a prayer.

"[Heal]," he softly sings after finishing the strophe, then my body suddenly hurts a lot less, the bruises return to normal color, and the cuts stop bleeding then close up, all in just a few seconds.

This is [Light Magic], and it's much faster than my [Regeneration] spell.

Oh wait, was that a chant? Do people normally need to sing something so that the spell activates? I don't know anything about that, but it's a common trope in video games to balance magic, and they make it so that powerful magic takes a long time to chant.

I get up and notice there's a small number of people watching me, and quite a few of them are grinning, then embarrassment fills my heart and makes me blush.

What's so funny?

"Good job surviving, boy," one of the grinning men praises me half-ironically.

I fail to hold back a small smile. They're making fun of me for getting beaten up, but I just can't deny it must've been a spectacle.

Toga stops in front of me, and I notice a hint of kindness in his tone as he reports, "Your body is weak and your technique is poor, but you got enough 'Willpower' to withstand the training. Keep coming and you'll be a proper swordsman in due time."

I had noticed people greet each other with a clear nod, so I mimic that and politely state, "Thank you for the session, teacher. I'm very tired now, so I'm going to retire."

I'm not sure what's the etiquette when dealing with the instructors here, so I just call him "teacher" instead of saying his name.

"Goodbye," he calmly replies with a nod.

I turn around and wash my face in the fountain, then I leave. Now I'm just going to pass by the hunters guild for a quick look.

--

Near the entrance, I notice something I had ignored the first time I came here due to nervousness. On one of the walls, there are two large black boards where I can see something written in white. The first board is named "Notable Hunts," and it displays a magically scrolling list of hunter names with monster names next to them, and I get a chill when I see my name with "Gray Berserker'' right next to it. The second board is named "Confirmed Kills,'' and it displays a list of the hunter names coupled with the number of monsters they've killed that scrolls much faster than the first one.

I walk towards the notice board and see that most of the notes there are about the prices for the bounties or corpses of the common kills around here, like the goblins, Dragolites, or monsters from the dungeons, while the rest are bounties on specific monsters sighted. Some contain a rough drawing, but they all contain the name, the last seen location, a short description of the monster, and a threat level.

From what I understood by reading monster books, the threat level goes from 0 to 10, the numbers have the following meaning: 0 = harmless, 1 = capable of killing a child, 2 = capable of killing an untrained adult, 3 = capable of killing the common soldier, 4 = capable of killing a soldier squad, 5 = capable of killing a knight squad, 6 = capable of killing veteran hunters, 7 = capable of killing a soldiers company (100 men), 8 = capable of killing a division (10,000 men), 9 = capable of destroying a fortress, 10 = unkillable.

Why are knights ranked lower than veteran hunters? Is it a matter of specialization? I see that there's a permanent bounty on the Grey Berserker, and his threat level is four. Dragolites are threat level one and Mossy Fangpines are threat level two.

When I decide to leave, I notice that there are a few people looking at me, then I recognize that at least two of them were here in the morning when I sold the bear.

Do these people do nothing besides sit here and drink?

It's probably what Sonny said: other parties will be interested in me since I killed a Grey Berserker all by myself. It doesn't matter that it was half-dead, they don't know that.

I decide to quickly leave and go back to the inn to rest.

--

Dinner is a red bean paste with minced meat and spices to put on the bread. Feels like it's spiced with paprika and cumin, so now it only needs some spicy pepper for it to be just like chilli.

After dinner and a bath, I go back to my room and reflect upon today. I look at my skills and see that they all have two numbers on their level separated by a "plus" sign. [Sword Use], [Dodge], [Parry], and [Block] all have a 1 on the right side of the plus while the rest have a 0.

The fuck?

I try to manipulate my skills, but only the number on the left of the plus sign changes, and I seemingly can't remove the skills with the 1 on the right side.

Did I "learn" these skills? Does this mean that trained skills are different from the ones assigned with the system?

I guess this also means that I can't learn [Parry], then remove the skill, then learn it again, and repeat as a way to accumulate skill points.

No exploits in this game eh? Mine not included.

This is how my skills are right now:

--

['Wolf Ryder Skill Report']

['Physical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sword Use: 5+1 | Dodge: 2+1 | Parry: 0+1]

[Block: 0+1]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Mana Efficiency: 3+0 | Mana Recovery: 3+0 | Electric Magic: 4+0]

[Nature Magic: 5+0]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level]

[Andraste Language: 10+0]

--

['Info']

[Name: Wolf Ryder | Age: 18 | Race: Human]

[HP: 100 | MP: 110 | Magic Power: 180]

[Level: 5]

['Stats']

[Strength: 8 | Endurance: 8 | Dexterity: 9]

[Speed: 10 | Intelligence: 20 | Wisdom: 15]

[Willpower: 11 | Charisma: 10 | Piety: 3]

[Perception: 15 | Sanity: 9]

['Other']

[.Status Effects: 'NONE'.]

[.Titles: 'NONE'.]

[.Affiliations: 'NONE'.]

[.Companions: 'NONE'.]

[.Crimes: 'NONE'.]

--

After that, I almost doze off thinking about the Tale of Creation. The name "Reigurando" keeps coming back to my mind, as it reminds me of something, but I just can't put my finger on what.

Then something hits me. The Japanese language lacks some things required for them to pronounce foreign words properly, and their way around it creates an accent that some even find funny. After a while, I've started to notice the patterns in their speech and now it's become easy to understand what foreign word they're trying to say.

The Japanese way of pronouncing the English word "Playground" is "Pureigurando," while RPG, Role-Playing-Game, is pronounced "Arupegi," which is incredibly similar to Rupegia.

Oh, no.

I'm truly stuck in a fantasy video game, and it's made by the Japanese. Then it also hits me that "Demon King'' is a very common trope in Japanese light novels.

I really am an "isekai" protagonist...