SSS-Rank Engineer: Only I Can Create Legendary Weapons

They all woke up late the next day. Percy woke up much later, dragged from his sleeping bag by Flynn, who couldn't start the training she wanted without him.

After Philip's visit last night, Percy spent an extraordinary amount of time trying and failing at sleeping. There was always the feeling of something standing over him or just out of sight. But alas, Flynn didn't care about his nightmares.

They started the morning with a bucket of cold water to the face. This was George's bright idea to wake them up fully. Putting aside his desire to strangle the man, Percy explained the morning routine to Flynn.

It would start with a two-mile jog, then a couple push-ups and other exercises. Only after all of that was done could they start combat training.

"I don't know if I can hold a sword after all that," Flynn said nervously. "Shouldn't we do less before?"

Percy shrugged, pointing at Thalos, who was helping rebuild the kitchen wall that he blew up last night.

"My dad made the routine. Basically, you can't train till your body is strong enough to handle all that."

Flynn gulped then nodded. Honestly, she was excited to be tested so thoroughly. She trained with her dad, but had never heard of the interesting training methods Percy was teaching her about. It had to be a special technique developed by his noble family.

It would be foolish to turn down an opportunity to learn from a family with so much experience and knowledge!

Meanwhile, Percy was just thinking about how he'd rather not work out today.

His legs already felt numb after using Fighting spirit to push his body to the limit. It was similar to what happened to his eyes the first time he used Fighting spirit to enhance his visual acuity.

A dull burning pain, similar to what you would feel after a workout. Maybe it was a sign that he would only get stronger and stronger the more he pushed his body to the limit. But right now it was just extra incentive to not jog.

"I did a lot of moving yesterday with my Fighting spirit," Percy explained. "Maybe we should take it easy today."

Suddenly, Thalos called from far away, his voice loud and clear to everyone around.

"Get to work, Percy. You can only gain more by pushing past the pain. Make sure you go through the combat forms today too. You didn't do them two days ago, so you owe me."

Flynn grinned wildly as Thalos' voice faded. Her siblings all around them snickering between themselves as she pulled him up.

"Come on, let's go. I don't know how long a mile is without you either way."

They jogged down the road, past the rolling fields of wheat and into the untamed green stretches of land. The air was still cool and pleasant despite it almost being eleven o'clock. The road was smooth too, not many slopes or uneven footing.

On any other day this would be a good jog. But today his legs burned like he ran a five km marathon before coming here. He wasn't sweating much, but his form sucked, and he was wasting a lot of energy.

Normally he should be alert, watching his surroundings and, you know, constantly checking for suspicious spirit signs. But right now he couldn't be arsed to even raise his head as he pushed forward.

This was unknown territory, House Eurides or some random monster could attack at any moment. Especially here with no protection and a lack of eyewitnesses.

He was being a bit paranoid though. This town didn't have an adventurer's guild but they still made sure to patrol for monsters. There could be more beasts deeper into the forests but not this close to the road.

He raised a hand and wheezed to Flynn who had easily outpaced his tired legs.

"Hey… that's one mile, let's turn back for the second."

Flynn raised a suspicious eyebrow, walking closer to him.

"Are you sure that's one mile?"

"Didn't you say you don't know how long a mile is? Why are you questioning my measurement of distance?"

"Well I don't see any tools, how do I know this was actually one mile?"

He rose from his hunched position, glaring at her, and pointed at a tree a couple meters away. There was an X symbol carved into the bark of the tree.

"Thalos left that mark, maybe yesterday, to help me know how far I needed to go for a mile."

Understanding flickered through Flynn's amber eyes, she nodded carefully.

"Sorry for doubting you."

"You thought I was trying to shorten the jog to make things easier for myself right?" he asked, turning around and trying to rise into another jog. "My dad knows how long it'll take us to jog a mile, I can't fake it even if I wanted to."

As they jogged back towards the Basker house, Flynn asked a lot of questions about push-ups and all the other training methods he taught Lecetes and Thalos.

At first he seemed a bit crazy, especially when it came to weights and resistance training, because he didn't know the complete science behind these. But they tested and analyzed the effects of the training and fully adopted them just weeks later.

Nowadays Thalos was the one that decided how many push-ups he needed to do or how long he was to run. But he understood enough to explain the benefits of the training to Flynn.

"Ten push-ups first," Percy explained as they got back to the house. "Then we rest and start another set."

They began a long series of upper-body exercises that Thalos had planned for him to do today, gathering the attention of all the other Ramlos children.

"What are they doing?"

"Looks so weird. Haha, look at Flynn's face, she looks like a ripe tomato."

"This kind of looks like a waste of time. They should just lift rocks like Dad."

Soon they were done with all the sets and slumped against the ground. Flynn looked marginally tired, brushing back bright red hair as it stuck to her sweaty forehead. Percy on the other hand looked like it was his final days on earth.

They were both lying in the grass, side by side, taking a short break before they practiced combat forms.

"I thought this would be easy after the jog," Flynn exhaled. "But I'm so finished, man. My arms and shoulders hurt so much. Can I heal myself?"

If he had the strength in his legs, he would kick her. But for now he settled on reprimanding.

"You see me here, half dead, gasping for air. And you, who is barely winded, is asking that? No you cannot heal yourself. No pain, no gain. Let's start the sword forms, the faster we get this done, the sooner we can rest."

They both dragged themselves to their feet and picked up the wooden swords that Thalos brought with him.

"The first form is a full power slash into a stop. Bring down your sword with full intent to slash then stop at the last second."

This took them about thirty minutes with their weak arms. The rules were you keep slashing until you can do it twenty times in a row.

"The second form we'll be going over is a riposte. But since this is your first time, you do it by yourself.

That was to make sure she didn't jab him in the chest by mistake while they practiced. They cycled through the other five basic forms but they could be summed up to:

First cut, full power and speed slash. Second cut, defensive maneuver. Third cut, unorthodox attack to catch the opponent off guard. Fourth cut, striking after an evasive maneuver. Fifth cut, a flurry of strikes to force back an opponent.

Once he was done, Percy started walking towards the house. First he needed a bath and then a short nap. When he woke up he would go into the city.

"Where are you going?" Flynn asked after catching up to him. "I mean after the bath obviously. Are you going into town soon, my siblings want to go?"

He had the strange desire to hide inside after hearing that, but decided to just go with them and ditch them once he was in the city.

"Yeah, I'll go with you. I want to find out more about the Stormsword and why he's in Yarol."