บท 16: Master Rank 1

"Yup, I give up."

Lily groaned as she slumped down into a puddle of her own sweat, trying to catch her breath but only winced from the contact her hands made with the floor. She looked at them only to see deep-red spots on the palm of her hands, and wondered if she would have to worry about calluses later.

It had been around perhaps five hours of intense training for the both of them, and five hours of swinging her kitchen knife, and yet whenever she found herself even so much as nearing half of a breakthrough like when she saw some sort of silvery aura starting to coat her knife, something kept kicking her back. And just like that, five hours of hard-work went down the drain with her basically forgetting how she even did that in the first place.

She leaned against the wall, basically running nearly on fumes now before she looked to her left only to see that Arthur was doing some sort of light experiment, in which he was materializing multiple orbs of light around him that surprisingly didn't shine as much, before he tried to combine those same orbs into one orb of light, one by one.

Only for him to fail when his football-sized orb of light exploded with a loud snap when he tried to fuse the fifth orb of light into it.

"FUCK!" Arthur swore loudly to the point even Lily was surprised. He got off on the couch and punched the air multiple times. "Every freaking time! I got one ball - Great! Two balls- Great! But suddenly at the fifth, I can't anymore? Actually, what the fuck?!"

Lily whistled. She hadn't seen her brother gone on a swearing trip ever since the great pizza debacle of January. "That bad, huh?"

Hearing Lily's voice, he turned to her and only then realized that he had lost composure. Coughing a couple times, he replied, "Yeah. Sorry you had to see that."

"Nah," Lily said, before giving a thumbs up and an exhausted groan. "I get it. I'm stuck, myself. I can't seem to get this mysterious silvery energy thing to condense around my swor-I mean, knife. Huh, weird I almost said sword."

Arthur shook his head. "Same. For me, I'm trying to focus on quality over quantity but every time I try to combine my orbs of light, it just freaking pops like a balloon again, and again, and again!"

"Guess we've hit a wall," Lily replied.

Arthur sighed. "Guess we have." He looked to the puddle of sweat under his little sister and said, "Ew. You're definitely cleaning that mess by the way." And then, he proceeded to sit beside his little sister.

"Also, you stink," Arthur noted with a nod.

"Ugh, stop smelling me weirdo," Lily responded with a scowl, before getting serious. "Do you think we're getting a little too ahead of ourselves?"

"What's this all of a sudden?" Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're giving up already."

"No, just. . .a little tired," Lily said. "Before you asked if it was weird how there were no complications at all despite how fast we were progressing. I guess we know the answer now."

At that, Arthur bonked his little sister on the head. And before she could say anything, he looked at her in the eyes and said, "You deserve that. Also, you're doing that habit of giving up mid-way whenever something doesn't go your way again."

Lily blushed and tried to protest. "I have no such habits!"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Look, Lil, it's no surprise that we've hit a wall. But that doesn't mean we're now suddenly cursed or doomed. Dude, We're literally gods right now - woah that's weird to say - but it's safe to say we're probably one of the luckiest people in the world right now."

"Hold on, I'm not done yet," Arthur quickly added when he saw Lily's mouth open.

"I understand that it's frustrating when we're suddenly hit with a roadblock after progressing so quickly. Hell, I literally just threw a tantrum a few moments ago but we need to focus. We can curse and give up all we want, but that doesn't stop the system from evolving the world which is happening in. . . .eight hours now."

"Basically, what I'm trying to say is," Arthur smiled. "You're giving up already, chumpkeleton?"

Lily hated that. She hated that name because it reminded her of how skinny and weak she'd been as a kid, when all she could do was watch how her older brother did all the work while she just fed on his hard work like a leech. And, she hated how her brother never really knew why she hated that name so much, and more importantly, she hated herself for falling for such an easy bait.

Suddenly, the fire in Lily's eyes lit up. "Hell no, I'm not giving up!"

Hearing Lily's words, Arthur's smile lit up before going down when he heard Lily say "And, never call me chumpkeleton again," with the most serious look on her face.

Arthur gulped. "Okay, okay. Anyway, I've had some thoughts on why we've not been able to have any breakthroughs recently."

"Oh yeah?" Lily asked. "And, what's that?"

"Maybe we're just tired?" Arthur said with the blankest look on his face.

". . ."

"Shit." Lily cursed. It all made sense to her now, perhaps due to the effect of her [Divine Wisdom] or perhaps simply due to the fact that she had focused so much on her training that she forgot that simple fact.

"I mean think about it," Arthur said. "We've been training for nearly ten hours right? Wait no, the better question would be that we've been training for nearly ten hours and yet, only now, we're starting to feel tired."

"What did you have on your endurance again, bro?"

"I'm pretty sure I had a C, two ranks above yours I think," Arthur replied, scrolling down his status screen. "Maybe that's why I'm only just tired while you're absolutely exhausted?"

"But my endurance rank is D now though?"

". . ."

"We really need to take a break."

***