Chapter 37: Ruffians
Soren tripped Luna over her feet, held her hand, and threw her over his shoulders.
"I win." With a smug smile on his face, he offered Luna a hand to help her, but she slapped his hands away.
"How long do I have to keep training?!" Luna drops her sword on the ground.
"Among the 4 of us, you are the only one who sucked the most in physical combat; I'm not supposed to be hearing a complaint from you." Lucian said and kept his focus on Marta; he was sparring with her.
"At this point, someone should just kill me." Luna grumbled under her breath. She was tired of constantly getting her ass kicked by Soren. Luna felt more annoyed because Soren was clearly getting a kick out of her poor combat skills.
"I don't mind killing you." Marta said in a serious tone, and then she glanced at Lucian and added, "That's if you are still interested in dying, of course."
Luna rolled her eyes; when Marta had joined the team, she had thought that a female companion would be pleasant because then she would have someone she could talk girly stuff with, but Marta most times either gave her the cold shoulder, ignored her, or acted rude. She was nice at times, but Luna didn't understand her bipolar personality. If Luna paid close attention to Marta, she would understand that Marta was only nice when Lucian was watching.
"Good job. You improve again." Lucian smiled at Marta. Pleased with her sword skill, the only one he was worried about if they face the beast again was Luna.
"Thank you." Marta's cheek turns red, feeling proud of herself for the little compliment.
"I understand why Lucian and Soren can fight; they are boys, no different from ruffians."
Soren raises a brow at Luna's words, feeling offended.
"But why are you so good with all this?" Luna continues, asking Marta.
Marta frowned, hating how Luna's words insulted Lucian. "It has been almost a year since we have been trapped in Hlasked. Why are you so bad at this?" She asked in irritation, but if Marta was being honest, the time spent in another world wasn't the only thing that contributed to her ability to fight.
Luna grinds her teeth in anger.
"Caius," Marta's voice was filled with anger at the remembrance of her former captain, who was no different from a tyrant that ruled over his teammates with violence and lust, and since he never considered Marta as a girl, he treated her like the other guys, forcing them into brutal training where they had to learn how to be strong for his team or die trying. "I learned how to fight from him; it was hard, and I hated his training." A dark look covers Marta's face. "But I had no choice."
Lucian placed a gentle hand on Marta's shoulder. "It's over now. Remember, Luna saved you."
Before Marta could argue that Lucian was her survivor, he turned away and started speaking to Luna about her awful skills, which only irritated Marta even more.
"Okay!" Luna pushed Lucian away and brought her hands to her ear. "I've had enough of your meaningless yapping. Just because I'm still a learner doesn't mean that I'm going to remain weak forever. Besides, with my hidden skills, it's easy for me to put my opponent down."
"Have you forgotten about the dungeon king?" Lucian asked, annoyed. "Your hidden skills couldn't do anything to him."
"He's a different kind of beast; my skills have nothing to do with him. Besides, you also couldn't do anything about him."
"Stop nagging like a lazy old hag, Luna." Lucian said, and Marta and Soren chuckled. While Soren tried to hide his, Marta was very open about hers. "If you don't train and improve yourself, your skills are as good as useless against a strong opponent."
"We have been training and running, Lucian!" Luna was angry and embarrassed by Lucian's words, "How long are we going to continue running away? Staining ourselves with beast blood just so that those dumb brothers won't be able to find us. I say that we should stand our ground and fight; it won't be the first time we have faced an opponent stronger than us before." Luna clenched her fist.
'It's true that we can't continue running forever. Those brothers won't stop until they find us.' Lucian thought. For a while he didn't understand the reason why he hesitated to fight until he looked at the face of each of his teammates and realized that he didn't want to make a decision that would put his teammate in danger. Being a captain was hard. If his only teammate was just Luna, he would have long attacked the Achiloq brothers without feeling like he was putting the lives of others in too much danger. The growth in numbers in the Lucian team had given him a sense of responsibility.
Lucian remembers his first battle with Achiloq, its weak spot, and how he killed the beast. He mentally slapped himself as he realized that the two brothers weren't invincible; even though they were S-rank beasts, their true nature remained the same along with their weakness.
"Is something wrong, Captain?" Marta asked.
"Luna is right. We need to fight, and we are going to," confidence filled Lucian's voice.
Soren came closer to Lucian. "Sounds like you have a plan."
Lucian nodded and told them of his first battle with Achiloq; he wasn't the only one that had forgotten about the beast's weak spot that was close to its neck, Luna too. "We are not going to train and wait around for the beast to find us; we are going to find them."
However, Lucian didn't know how the beast had used beast magic to locate him; as long as it could be done, Lucian was confident that he could also locate them as well.
Lucian sat down alone while the others continued to train. He focused on his growing mana core that had been within him since the game started and focused on separating beast magic from other magic. If he could grasp what beast magic felt like through the help of his imagination, then maybe he could also train his eyes to see it.