Dysfunctional - An Assassin's Guide to Reincarnating in Another World

Chapter 12 - Sparring Partner

A month had passed since our run-in with Misen Ragiu, and things had been pretty uneventful.

Our classes were normal and boring, there were no more random mock tournaments or whatever, Quests were off-limits for us first-years until after the mid-year exams, which meant I was still working part-time jobs to make money.

I had been training by sneaking out of the walls almost every night, but my progress was rather...slow. I was finally starting to get the hang of moving around freely while using Lightning Boost, but I could only properly keep it under control at a x1.5 level boost.

I should be able to double my speed by the time the tournament begins, but I doubt that would be enough, I need to progress faster. I spent some nights training, and other nights testing out the results, I had continuously gone back to the Goblin cave, and while killing those puny monsters was definitely becoming a lot easier for me, they really weren't great opponents to indicate how much I had improved.

But as far as monster hotspots go, the Goblin caves are the closest to the area where I live in the Rustlands, all the other spots where monsters appear are too far for me to get to and then get back from before morning, and it was a lot harder to sneak back in after the sun comes up.

I desperately needed to find something strong to fight, that was the fastest way for me to improve without losing effectiveness.

Right now though, I was low on options.

As for the others, I didn't really know.

Rai and Persia were probably busy training too, they both seemed pretty exhausted during classes, not to mention that I could definitely see overall improvements in them during our combat and Elemental Magic classes, despite the apparent fatigue. Key and Azyl seemed to have no intention of changing their minds regarding the tournament.

On another note, I'd found out something pretty interesting, the current first years only totalled twenty students, which was thanks to the difficulty level of our entrance exam administrator. But the designated exam administrator changes every year, and generally an instructor can't be the exam administrator for at least four years after doing it once. And with all the other instructors who've been administrators for the entrance exam, a lot more applicants tended to pass.

To put it into perspective, there were currently around seventy second year students and over fifty third year students at the Academy, while we first years just numbered twenty.

I suppose the lack of quantity was made up for with a higher level of quality, at least on average.

The other groups in our class weren't bothering us as much as they had during the first week, which was probably thanks to how we did during the mock tournament.

...but a few of them had gotten worse.

Arg and Lamasa were giving us more grief than before, especially towards Persia, who had defeated both of them in the mock tournament. Well, technically she lost to Arg, but you know how that went. I could also constantly feel bloodthirsty stares on me from Gela, and whenever I'd look, she'd flash me a sadistic smirk that sent chills down my spine. I wasn't an easy person to intimidate, but she seriously creeped me out.

Thankfully, today's a weekend, so I don't have to deal with that right now. Instead, I was hauling a sack of flour for my part time job at a bakery. The pay wasn't great, but the owner let me eat any buns or pastries that got burnt or misshapen, so I got to save money on food. Not a bad deal.

Right now the bakery had run out of flour, so I'd been sent to buy another large sack, and was currently on my way back.

"Kuro, is that you?" Greeted a familiar voice.