Chapter 30: Hellish Training

The Training Room was huge and had dummies, punching bags, martial arts wooden dummies and all the things needed for training, the walls of the room were made of some strong metal-like material to withstand heavy blows and there was a stage built on the end of the room to observe the training more clearly.

According to Catalie, this room was just a training room specially designed for physical combat and there were also other rooms, that were especially used for spell casting training as well as more complex training regiments.

There were 58 male 47 female 27 children in the elven camp yet the ones joined in Don's army were only 47,25 male and 22 female including Amaryll.

With Arrora, Knight, and Elrond Don now had a 50 member army but except Knight, he knew without training others could only act as cannon fodder on the battlefield, because of that and nobody around to train them Don and Knight themselves involved in personally training the elves.

"Alright everyone, gather around" Don jumped on the stage and looked down at the elves gathering before him, only Knight and Arrora stood beside him as Arwen, Elrond and Amaryll were on the front of the crowd while Amaryll shivering and avoiding eye contact with Don while he spoke.

"You all are weak as ants not even a single Apprentice level magi among you" Don decided to give them a harsh reality check before starting the training.

The elves didn't seem like being called ants but they couldn't voice their disagreement because the battle between him and Dragon King was etched into their memories, even though he was beaten he actually fought for some time, they wouldn't even have the guts or strength to last a second.

"A little magical fox can kill the current you much less a bandit or human"

As he said Knight beside him had a good chuckle over that which was further embarrassed the elves.

"The training here will be like hell and this is the last chance to retreat from the hell you are going to walk into"

Even though he was saying that the elves didn't back off, the elves before him had a determination to fight, noticing nobody had backed off Don and Knight were a little happy.

"Good, now I want you to remember the day you faced the bandits, how you were beaten and captured like animals" at the moment he said that many of the elves started to tremble but some of them clenched their fists in anger.

"You are all weak" Don said and looked at the elves for a moment.

"But you are also born with nimble bodies"

The elves may be helpless in physical strength but they were quick in movement or action because of the environment they were born in and lived.

"So your training will have two parts, first you'll do physical exercises to increase your overall strength" As he said that Knight became very happy for some reason and grinned an evil smile looking at the elves.

"Then you'll be trained at what you can do best" he paused for a moment and said

"Archery"

In a blink of an eye, a week went by.

Uncle Dior traveled and explored most of the rooms and facilities in the castle with Catalie except for the training room.

After Don started the training he wanted to check it out but when he got closer to the training room and peeked at the room, he was shocked at the scene that welcomed him, there was blood and sweat everywhere as well as broken arrows, bows.

The only sound he heard in the room was an evil laughing sound of Knight along with the cries of his fellow elves. At the moment he saw that he knew why Arwen and Amaryll were shouting in their sleep.

At the moment, Don was standing under a tree with a branch in his hands before him, lay down on the ground was Arrora and some feet away from her was the sword Don gave her.

Catalie was looking at the half-elf with pitiful eyes, there were red marks on her body caused by the stick of branch Don was holding.

"Stand up pick up the sword" Don said but there was nothing in his voice no mercy nor pitifulness.

Arrora never thought her training going to be this devilish when Don broke a branch of the tree to train her sword arts on the first day of her training,

At the moment she felt like she was being underestimated. But soon she got to know the reality, she couldn't even land a hit on him using her sword but with the simple stick, he beat her like a dog for a week.

"I told you I'm not going to be gentle with you because you are a woman"

Don said and looked at the struggling half-elf on the ground.

"Don't underestimate me!!" Arrora gritted her teeth and gathered all of her strength to stand up, at this point all she wanted was to hit him at least once.

"Brother, your training is too merciless " Catalie said as Arrora finally stood up and picked the sword to fight again.

Don didn't mind Catalie,

"You are fighting using the sword, not with the sword, treat the sword as an extension of your arm" just when he said that Arrora leaped towards him to attack but Don just simply dodged the attack and landed a hit on her back.

"Don't be impulsive and emotions control your movements" this time he didn't wait for her to attack but he made the move and hit her again.

"Your stance, your movements are all wrong, you are trying to mimic my movements but you are a woman" Arrora got angry every time he said 'woman' as she thought it as he mocking her or underestimating her.

"Your body shape influences you" he hit her hips with his stick, Arrora couldn't stand after being hit by him again because she was very tired and exhausted. Seeing her falling on the ground, Don didn't continue further as he started to walk away while he said one last thing before leaving her.

"Anyone can wield a sword and kill but not anyone can be a swordsman"

Eventually, Don reached the throne room and sat on his throne as Knight came to him and sat on his own seat beside Don.

"Knight, how is training?" Don asked yawing Knight.

"Yeah although they are weak they are quiet hard working...from tomorrow I'll start training them using the Asura Archer Book"

It's the same Asura Archer Book that Elrond trained with, the book had 10 volumes in total, anyone can master the techniques described in the book till the volume 4 if they put enough hard work but after volume four they need battle energy and higher cultivation level to progress further.

Another month passed away like a wind.

*****************************

"Arya wake up!! wake up!!" Benedict shaking the sleepy Arya violently, Arya slowly opened her blanket and rubbed her eyes to see her teacher.

Even in this darkness, Arya was able to see the excitement on Benedict's face in the moonlight.

"Teacher, what are you doing?" Arya asked Benedict in an exhausted voice because she was tired searching for the mysterious energy in the outer lands.

"Arya the detected its picked up the energy signature again its… it's coming from that direction" he showed the device which was making some weird noise and flickering. When Arya witnessed the device's doing her sleepiness disappeared in a second as she too couldn't hold her excitement, her eyes started to sparkle with excitement.

"Oh my god! What is this energy?" Arya shouted in shock and surprise.

"Soon we'll find it come on let's go now" Benedict urged Arya to pack her belongings but Benedict didn't have to tell her because she already rolled up her blanket and put on her glasses to get going.

"Teacher I'll go notice Ronan and his group about this"

After a few moments, Arya walked towards a group who was sitting around the campfire and drinking, there were six of them one had a long beard and a long deep cut on his face he was well built, beside him were three men and two women.

One of the three men was a bold paper-thin old man, the other two men beside the old man were two young men one had long brown hair while the other had short spiky black hair. They were chatting and laughing with two red-haired women in black mage robes.

"Miss Arya I thought you were sleeping?" the long-bearded man said when he saw Arya walking towards them carrying her backpack.

"I was Mr.Ronan but we have to go now" Arya said to the bearded man, the man was surprised as he said.

"In the middle of the night? Where?"

Arya pointed the far away distance, if Uncle Dior was here he would find that she's pointing towards the direction of the castle of Dragon King.

"I won't urge you if it's not important Mr.Ronan but we have to go like now"

Arya said and stared at them to get moving as Ronan sighed and stood up.

"Alright you are the boss, let's go team" Ronan said to his teammates.

***************************

(two days after)

"Brother what are they doing there?" Catalie asked Don looking at the projection of the group of people roaming near their territory.

Don was not worried about this group, his face didn't show any emotion like always because he knew without his permission nobody could step into this dimension but what bothered him was how did they find come closer to the place where the entrance to the dimension located.

Arwen, Amaryll, Arrora all of them could see the projection, the group of people just battled with the mid master level python, one of the women in the group was injured by the python as she was clutching her bleeding abdomen while a bearded man angrily arguing with a man and a girl wearing glasses.

"You!! Where the hell did you bring us?" Ronan never thought this job would become like this, the more they walked in the direction Arya showed them, the more ominous and freakier the forest became.

They only had little rest past two days as they were rushed to this hell of a place, the tall giant trees, the poisonous plants and all sorts of insects and magical beasts filled this location.

The group fought many beasts in their adventures but never faced any beasts in a place like this, normally they would defeat even a peak master level beast with their superior coordination as a team but this time the thick forest had disrupted their teamwork and the python was in its home ground so it had the most advantage and ambushed them.

What's worse was the injured member of his adventure party is the healer, the python obviously knew about this as it targeted her first. After a long battle, they finally killed the python but the team was exhausted and injured, simply this job was gone way out of their payment.

"You...You knew about the risks in this job" Arya had a bad feeling when she saw the face of Ronan as something bad was going to happen.

"Hell I didn't know you bring us to this ominous place, look at us! We are in the middle of nowhere and my team was nearly killed by that bloody python"

"Im...I'm sorry" Arya said.

"Sorry!! You're sorry?!! Bitch you're going to pay for all the troubles you put us through" as he was saying Arya saw the bald old man come beside Ronan and whispered something into his ears.

"What you want?" Benedict asked Ronan who now had a devilish grin on his face.

"No much just a couple of thousand gold coins more than we bargained, let's just say five thousand"

Ronan said but he was staring top to bottom at Arya.

"What!?" both Benedict and Arya shouted at the same time when they heard Ronan.

"You going to pay with gold or" Ronan paused and licked his lips

"Pay us using Ms. Arya"

"I was hoping for a different kind of villains but it turns out they were just another group of run of the mill scumbags" Knight said from beside Don looking at the projection and his face was full of disappointment.

"Let's wait and see how our trainees deal with them"