Amanda's party was doing incredibly well. It certainly helped that Amanda already had knowledge of the blade, but Ausar was getting slowly better as well.
The other parties began to complain that they had to be cheating, but I saw their training, it was simple hard work.
Amanda was able to get them to know how to fight using human restrictions.
Celios stopped trying to leap into an attack and learnt how to simply go quickly.
Ausar had less and less openings each time he charged Amanda.
Amy got brave enough to get close to her opponents, and she started teaching them archery as well.
Within a week, we could all see a change in the two gods.
Celios was humble since his defeat by Rose, but now he was talking with Amanda and Amy as equals.
Ausar also seemed to help more, and since he was the fastest one, he decided to act as spiked bait.
The team was able to destroy a goblin village easily now.
I was talking to Ausar when I asked.
"What exactly made you better?"
"I think it was the fact that both Amanda and Amy showed, not only no fear, but no reverence. They treated me like an adventurer, and I feel that that is what allowed me to get better. I now know that there is a problem, so now I'm working to fix it."
When the other gods heard what Ausar said, they seemed to be conflicted.
Some, like Silith, agreed that there was a vanity problem that they needed to fix.
Others, like Nala, said that since they were gods, then they should be vain.
Both groups turned to Ausar and Celios, but they were shocked to see the duo eating with Amy and Amanda.
It was almost comical how they reacted.
Then they complained to me.
"Dallel, they aren't listening to us."
"We are gods, we should be getting more respect."
That caused them confusion.
"What do you mean, incorrect?"
"For now, until your training is done, don't consider yourselves gods, consider yourselves regular adventurers and get stronger like an adventurer would."
"But how could we deny our nature?!"
"Don't. Just don't act like being a god gives you a free pass to life."
They gaped at me like I said something they never even considered.
"Then how does Kala do it?"
"Remember, not only did Purity have to live as a dragon, but we also found out she was a reincarnation of a human. So, she already knew how to live."
They considered this, then decided to try it.
They still had a lot of trouble getting over themselves.
I sighed; this was annoying.
"In the past week, we've had our share of both victories and losses."
"Let's recount where we failed and can do better."
"I failed during the goblin raid. I tried to kill the leader and I didn't account for how many you all would have to face, ruining our formation and nearly getting Amy killed. I can do better by creating a stable plan with flex points before battle."
"I failed during the dungeon. I panicked and tried to use my sword like a bow and ended up dropping it, making Celios have to cover for me, nearly crippling Ausar and killing Amanda. I could do better by keeping track of which weapon I'm holding."
"I failed during the tiger subjugation. I set out alone and ended up being torn apart, this led you three to have to fight alone and made me useless for the main fight. I can do better by coordinating and remaining in the group."
"I failed during the goblin raid, as well. I tried to leap towards the group and ended up falling and getting impaled on one of their spears. This prevented me from fighting properly and made you guys have to rescue me before we could win. I could do better in the future by only jumping in order to dodge and focusing my attacks to low attacks."
"Alright, so we all know how to improve, so let's do so."
We all nodded and went off to train in the woods again.
We could easily do 1000 reps, so I bumped it up to 2000.
We ran a 20k, and we did it remaining in formation.
Our ranks had become E in a week. Multiple adventurers were saying that we escalated very quickly.
After the run we had dinner and went to sleep.
In one month, we would be ready to join the tournament.