Chapter 56 – Let’s start the training

"How can I help you, forest girl?" Asked Paula sitting down on a fallen tree looking onto nothing in particular as if talking to herself.

"I have no business with you rude woman." Sounded the voice from around the forest.

"Then why have you been following us ever since we entered the Labyrinth? If you have no business with me then fuck off. I don't like to be watched." Said Paula.

"I am doing my job, just like you do yours. I don't question your actions, so don't bother me too." Answered the voice.

Paula took out a bottle out of her pocket ring and took a swing from it, while her companions sat around her.

"Doing your job? But not following me. So it is the boy you are surveilling ?"

There was no answer from the voice, which made Paula smirk smugly.

"So what is so special about him for the Dryad family to monitor him?" Asked Paula.

"That is none of your business." Answered dryad's voice from the forest around them.

Paula took another swing from her bottle without saying anything.

*******

Noah felt as if floating through the air falling from the sky at a breakneck speed. His vision was distorting and bending, spiralling around while dividing into double pictures and then tripling. He saw the world as if in kaleidoscope that shattered into smaller and smaller pictures making the world more bizarre. Sounds, smells and feelings changed every second bringing him such combinations as the most delicious smell, the worst in the world taste spiced with extreme painful sound and tightness in the chest that made him suffocate, while his limbs felt as if twisted around. A few moments felt like hours and after an unknown time it all stopped in a moment with a sudden jerk that made him want to throw out his belly.

Noah fell out of the invisible wall at Paula's feet with the feeling of the worst hangover that this world could possibly allow him to achieve.

"How's your first ride boy?" Asked Paula from laying on the ground Noah, that reeked under himself unable to even stand up from his vomit.

"Oh, I see you like it. Here's the thing, noble boy. The Great Tree Labyrinth is made entirely from Dryad Queen's power of dreams. But the further you away from the core the weaker this power. At the center of it where the most evil energy and the strongest monsters inhabit, the walls can tear you apart and throw you out like a big grinder. But here in the lower levels this power is but a hundredth of its full force. Which brings us to a very funny effect. The one you feel right now. These walls can beat off your desire to make shortcuts through them but still leave you alive. It has a kind of a weak spot to it though, a weak spot that humans can exploit if they are desperate enough. The feeling these walls give, you can get used to it. In other words your mental strength grows in resistance to their effect on you."

"Aijajsj." Mumbled Noah.

"Oh, don't worry paralysis and speech loss is just temporary, it'll pass soon. So here's the thing, Noah, there are several methods to become strong. The commoner way and noble way. One is where you take years to strengthen your mind gradually with meditations and understanding of the world around you while you study in your noble schools. And the way where you throw yourself into hell. When faced with these choices nobles choose the easy way. Why would they live through this hell when there is another way. Commoners though…Studying and meditating. They have no luxury to lose time like that. They come here to achieve results in a quickest time to feed their poor families that struggle in this poverty-stricken lands infested with monsters. You want to learn my ways to become a stronger, noble boy? You will have to learn it the commoner way." Said Paula then stood up and grabbed Noah from behind picking him up from the ground.

"Nho…nhou…fait a mofmenh…" Struggled to say Noah.

"As I said, boy. This is a short commoners course. We have no luxury to take time." Said Paula and threw him back where he just came from.

Then the hell began anew.

"You are going to break him, Paula." Said a man sitting near her.

"Nah, they boy has it in him."

"How do you know?"

"He is desperate. I don't know the reason he lied to me about unique skill and not being able to use it. It's clearly just an excuse he made to ask for help. But his desperation, it's real. He struggles for his life. Just like we did when we were first forcefully resettled into these lands after the Labyrinth was just created. Desperation from not enough time. When every day is a day you might not live through if you stop struggling. Something compelled him to move forward ahead of time that running out right behind him. Otherwise he would not ask me for help. No sane guy in this town would. Just like you in your time. You needed power and fast. So does he."

"You like the boy eh?"

"He has the will to struggle, like you all did back then. It's been years since I thought someone for real."

"Jake and Bobby doesn't count?"

"They were just side projects. They never intended to be my students just needed an advice. This boy…is different. Something in him feels unyielding like the dragon. I want to see what it is."

Unknowingly for Noah his passive skill The will of D brought great pain to him.

********

"She will break him! That evil old witch! She has no sense of bounds!" Screamed Miss Louriat at the guild manager in his office.

"What do you expect me to do?" Asked Raimond with a desperate voice.

"STOP HER!" Said Lina slamming the desk. "You are ex-adventurer of the high level and her superior!"

"Miss Louriat. I understand your concern but boy asked her for help, I can't force him from it."

"He did not know what he was getting into!"

*Huuuh. Breathed out loudly guild manager.

"Let's do it this way. When they return I will see how he is doing and if I see that she goes out of frames in her actions, I will intervene."

"Damn it!" Screamed Lina and walked out of the room slamming the door shut behind herself.

"Fuck. What do you expect me to do? Make an enemy of that old vengeful bitch? She was in this guild before we all stoped sucking moms tit." Muttered guild manager rubbing his head from a headache.

********

Noah lay on the ground almost in delirium.but his skills did not allow him to loos consciousness.

"I was right about you, boy, it seems." Said Paula standing above him. "So did you get a feeling of it? We can start training now?"

"What…do you mean start?" Groaned Noah with his face in the mud.

"Oh did you think this was the training already? No, no I just let you get a bit accustomed to it. We will start our training now."

Noah groaned some kind of sound of desperation into the ground.

"You wanted to train magic sense and better body's mana circulation control. Well meditating is the best possible way for that. However when you don't have the skill like mages yet you are still with a system that has more of a magical inclination it becomes quite hard to achieve any result with simply sitting and meditating. That's why we will use this wall to make you meditate inside for hours and hours. Untill you find the feeling of your inner body that people find through meditation.

"Hours?" Groaned Noah.

"Well for today just a few hours would be enough. Don't you think? So then do you know how to meditate or do you want me to teach you?"

"No. I have a method…to meditation."

"Good. Then this will go easier for you."

"Let's go then. Next step is long ride without stop." Said Paul and picked Noah up again. Only this time she did not throw him inside the invisible barrier she slammed him inside the wall making him disappear in it together with half her hand that held him inside.

If previously wall spit him out after just a few moments inside, now that went for a lot longer.

"I have a warning for you rude woman." Said the voice of the dryad from somewhere in the forest. Paula turned her head and looked into the forest.

"Do know the limits. If you feel something unnatural. Stop. Or I will intervene."

"Unnatural how?" Asked Paula but there was no answer.

What is it that you have with these forest girls? Thought Paula feeling Noah's struggles in her outstretched into the invisible wall hand that disappeared as if in empty space at a forearm.

"SYSTEM START THE STORY!" Screamed Noah in his mind that was squeezed by mountain, kicked by donkey and fucked by a bull all in one moment.