One Last System

"Wake up!" the pathfinder shouted. While just his voice would suffice, he still kicked me in the gut for good measure.

"I'm awake!" Faced with the brutal treatment, I was quick to assume my obedient self. The courtesy of my life on earth, something that I thought I had left behind already.

"The sun is up already. We don't have the time for you to slack off," the man advised before moving on with his own things.

I quickly gathered myself up. It was an easy task, given a complete lack of any possessions. I didn't even need to wash myself... simply because there was no way for me to do it.

"Here," the man rubbed his finger against his ring, only to materialize a simple spear. He then threw it towards me.

"Huh?" I only managed to utter a slight moan of surprise when my body automatically moved on to grab the spear.

Those weren't the reflexes that I worked hard for. It was the instinctive reaction of the swordsman whose skills I consumed. As to how it happened? Why it happened? How could I do it again?

The answer was simple.

I had no fucking idea.

"On guard!" the pathfinder spat, pulling out another spear from his storage ring.

"Excuse me?" I asked in the humblest tone that I could utter. "What are we doing?"

"Consider this me humoring my morals," the man replied with a dark shadow deep in his eyes. "I saw how you reacted to the smallest things yesterday. Those Tuxi fuckers are known for throwing people into the abyss without even telling them a thing," he muttered under his nose before raising his eyes on me. "If you want to survive as a contractor, you need to learn how to fight!"

Not wasting any time, the pathfinder rushed forward. He threw his leading hand towards me, sending the blunt end of his weapon right towards my head.

My body reacted on its own. Rather than grabbing the spear with both of my hands, my left hand let go of the wood. Using my right hand only, I slapped pathfinder's stick out of the way.

"Huh?" The pathfinder shrugged, pulling his spear back. Instead of attacking again, he looked at my face while squinting his eyes.

"Would you rather train with a sword?" he asked after a moment of hesitation. "I'm not as good with a sword as I'm with a spear, but I can see that you are used to it," he said.

Kudos to him for being able to notice something like that.

'Should I?' I hesitated. In theory, I already had some foundation for using the sword, something that could come in handy, judging how wary this man was about my future job.

"No," I replied, shaking my head. I then lowered my eyes and bit my lips. "What I just did was an instinct, not something that I'm used to," I added, refusing to elaborate on the matter any further.

The pathfinder stood a small distance away, looking closely at my face. Ultimately though, he didn't dig deeper into the topic but released a deep sigh instead.

"Fine," he threw, standing in a position. He clearly wasn't going to waste any further words.

That's was also where I encountered the first problem. How I was actually supposed to stand ready for the fight with a spear?

As this was the first weapon I would train with, discounting for the foreign skills of using the sword, I could only make use of what I knew already. That's why I grabbed the spear in both of my hands and took the exact same position that I would do while trying to throw a punch.

"Tch," the pathfinder clicked his tongue right away. "Lower yourself on your knees. You are not trying to fist someone but to stab them. Although light, the spear still has the weight you need to account for in your position," he uttered through his teeth.

For a second, I was confused at where his annoyance was coming from. A single look at his face later, I understood.

This was exactly the same expression that I would see reflected on my turned-off monitor after every session of explaining the basics of the RPG games to a novice.

It was the face of someone annoyed by the newbie mistakes of someone they were teaching, yet rein it in.

"That's better," my guide praised my efforts... when all I did was literally lower my center of mass a little.

'I guess I shouldn't take this change lightly,' I thought, a lightbulb flashing up in my head. If someone who implied to be a spear practitioner would praise something so small, then from the simple, social math, it had to hold immense importance in their eyes.

Just like changing plus to a minus was all about making a single additional line, yet it could change the meaning of the equation entirely.

"Now, bring your blade further out," the pathfinder continued to fix the basics of my posture. "Remember, the greatest advantage of the spear is its distance," he said, a small smirk flourishing on his lips. "You are supposed to poke others with it, not hug it to your chest to gain confidence."

Bit by bit, my position changed. By the end of the first stage of tutoring, I stood in a weird position, one that made me feel the muscles that I never knew existed before. Even though my body was now reinforced by mana, it still caused quite a lot of growing pain.

"That will be all for today," the man said before I could even swing or push my spear a single time today.

"Huh?" I reacted out of surprise, accidentally letting my disappointment out.

I didn't have any hopes of becoming a spear master during a single training, but I was quite curious whether or not my system would pick it up as a skill.

And how could that happen if I didn't swing the spear in the first place?

"Don't act so surprised," the pathfinder said, taking a few steps towards me before nimbly snatching the spear from my hands. "We travel through the day. You can cultivate in the evenings, and I will teach you in the mornings," he announced, moving both the weapons and all the camp utensils back into his storage space.

"Is it a good moment to ask about what that contractor job is for you to be so guarded about it?" I asked, finally getting to one of the most important things.