MAZE - The Endless Quest

Hera was doing her best to keep her eyes on the glowing sphere. Still, it was harder than she anticipated. During the first part of the training, she would hit the target, and before finishing her attack, move her eyes to the next one. That felt natural. It came easy with the movement and the flow of the attacks.

Now, having to make a conscious decision of looking at the sphere until it vanished, the rest of the attack felt strange and unnatural. It was a feeling close to wearing someone else's clothes. Even if the way she moved hadn't changed.

She stopped and walked to the edge of the arena, where her water bottle was. Taking a few sips, Hera thought about how Alex explained the concept. Maybe she was overthinking. Maybe she should trust her body more.

Moving back to the middle of the arena, Hera focused on the sphere. She remembered how Mr. Greyson started his attacks. They could hardly be called slashes.  It was more of a fistfight where you focused on missing by a hair. With that, the teacher's face would be really close to his target. Maybe that was the secret, seeing it up close.

Hera believed this was a bad idea. If this was a real fight, positioning her head so close to the enemy would be suicidal. Then again, as Mr. Greyson had said. This wasn't a real fight.

She looked to the sphere and locked her eyes on it. Hera even moved around a bit to make sure she could keep looking at the target while attacking. Feeling she was ready, she lunged.

It took her a few tries but after a while, Hera managed to focus her eyes completely on the target until it vanished. Even doing that, she wasn't able to see any flicker as Alex said. However, this was only her first try. It might take a while before she can identify that.

In the next minutes, the times her eyes left the target became almost nonexistent. Her body started to be comfortable moving like this. Repeating the same attack over and over, Hera even tried to hold the dagger as Mr. Greyson had shown.

During one of those attempts, a few moments before the attack hit, Hera felt an odd heat passing near her. Getting distracted, she looked at the direction the warmth was coming from. To her surprise, the second the dagger hit the sphere, a new one appeared right where she was looking at.

Shocked with the feeling, Hera just stared at the target until it glowed red and vanished.

Taking a step back, Hera prepared another attack, but this time focusing on that warmth. It took her a few tries, but after a while, that feeling returned. This time, Hera was ready and before even finishing the attack, she positioned herself for the follow-up. Hitting the first sphere, she didn't even look at the position of the next one. Slashing with her dagger where she could feel the heat.

For the first time since starting this exercise, she was able to predict where the sphere would appear.

Sadly, she was too excited. Not even trying to hit the third sphere before it disappeared.

With a renewed drive, Hera tackled the exercise with all she got.

Mr. Greyson couldn't help but feel annoyed. To him, this training was just a way to show off the technology to the recruits. There was no real value to it. They should be using the mobile dummies, trying to hit them would give the recruits a good feeling for combat. However, to his unfortunate surprise, all of his students were doing well above his expectations.

He figured the good warriors, like Leo and Tiffany, would be able to hit the second target, maybe the third, but never the fourth. And yet, both of them hit the third sphere at least half the time. Hitting the forth once every five tries or so. Some students like Mark and Bonnie were supposed to barely hit the second target. But somehow, both of them only missed the second attack once in a while. There was even a couple of times they hit the third one.

Blue still had some trouble. Thankfully one of his predictions was right, he wasn't completely out of touch just yet. The girl was struggling to hit the second target, but that was normal for a tank. Her strength would only show in other types of training.

His biggest surprises were Alex and Anaya. Both girls were hitting almost all the targets. He even made a fifth appear for them and they got it. The rest of the class was just slightly above his evaluation. At least until Hera went to talk to Alex. When the girl came back to her arena, her progress became much faster.

Why the hell is a training with dancing lights so goddamn effective?

Mr. Greyson looked at the clock. He still had the recruits for another two hours.

"Fine, let's see if ye all can deal with today's challenge."

The teacher then deactivated the arena, most students slashed the air where their target was. But this time, no one lost their balance.

"Ten-minute break, then ye all will have the challenge for the day."

The recruits once again collapsed on the floor. This time, no one even tried to get up. Not only they were tired from the exercise. It was also really mentally taxing to look for new targets all the time.

Among the Guild instructors, Greyson was one of the most brutal ones. His recruits were not only pushed to the edge but also forced to go past that. He was also extremely careful with their physical condition. It was common for a recruit to have a few visits to the healers before their training was over. The exercises were brutal and having leveled up it wasn't unusual for someone to be reckless and bite more than they can chew. Yet Greyson's recruits seldom needed to see the healers.

Even so, after every graduation, the recruits had fond memories of their instructor. That wasn't the truth for many of Greyson's former students. Only a few of them would think back about the training with a smile. The majority would call him spartan, heartless and even demon.

The two biggest differences between Greyson's way of teaching were what he demanded from the recruits and how he made sure they would always be taken care of during his exercises. Only after an excessively hard test most instructors would give food, water or anything to the recruits. Yet now, Mr. Greyson proceeded to pick all the student's water bottles and refill them. He even had put aside two spare bottles for each.

This unexpected kindness was well received by almost all the recruits.

"Leo? What's wrong?" Hera asked, the man's face was pale and his eyes wide.

"He is being nice. Too nice. That's not good." Blue and Alex stared at him, confused.

"Leo, stop being paranoid." Bonnie said while she stretched her arms.

"No no no, you guys don't understand. My master is a beast with our training. Every time he did something nice for us it was followed by hell. And Mr. Greyson is even worse."

Blue just waved him off. "Yeah yeah, don't try to pull us to your PTSD, the teacher is a nice guy. He recognizes our hard work."

Leo didn't answer, but he was shaking his head.

"The time to rest is over, now for today's challenge."

Mr. Greyson gave a soft smile that made the hair in Hera's neck stand up.

"Ye will do the same thing ye were just doing. Each target ye hit will give ye points. This time, there won't be an ending, each time ye hit a target a new one will show up. The more ye hit the more points ye get. If a target blinks red, ye lose a few points. But don't worry, the bigger the chain the less point ye will lose."

The recruits got up, excited about the challenge. The exercise was doable, and everyone was confident about their chances. Mr. Greyson tapped a few keys in the tablet and the spheres appeared in the middle of the arenas.

Hera felt this was too easy. Last time he made a full combat simulation as the challenge. Why would this time be the same as the exercise? She looked around and saw Mark going to attack his target. The first hit got him a single point, while the second sphere gave two. He even managed to hit the third sphere, that one gave him four points. Giving him a total of seven points. Each successful hit gave double the points of the last one.

When the fourth sphere appeared he wasn't fast enough, and the target blinked red before vanishing. At the same time, a red minus 20 showed up on the screen in front of his arena.

Hera's eyes widened. Twenty points, missing the fourth sphere shaved 20 points from him. They would need to hit at least 5 targets to get a positive score.

"Right, Ah forgot one last thing." Mr. Greyson said before tapping a button on his tablet. In response to his command, all the spheres started to move erratically.  They would glide around for a few seconds and then dart to the other side of the arena, moving up, down and in every direction.

All of the recruits were shocked by the development. Leo was shaking his head. "I knew it. I knew it."

"And remember if ye can't beat the score ye will be running laps after class." Mr. Greyson said in a playful tone.

Hera looked at the screen in front of her arena.

Current Score

0

Target Score

5000

That was too much! How was she supposed to reach 5000 points?

Even if she hit the fourth target she would lose five points. Hitting the fifth would give her eleven points. But that was just a pipe dream, she was already having trouble hitting the third sphere, much less the fifth one.

"Don't worry, Ah know it seems hard. But this time ye all have half an hour extra to reach the goal." Mr. Greyson was clearly taunting them.

Hera held her daggers harder in frustration and dove toward the sphere. It took her three minutes to make any of her attacks connect to the first target. Focusing on that warm feeling she jumped to the next one, but before she reached it, the heat started to move upwards. What confused Hera was the fact that the main body of the warmth was still there, but now there was a trail going up.

When the sphere appeared it jumped up at an extremely high speed. The same direction the heat went, although much faster. Before she could do anything else the sphere blinked red and disappeared.

"Ok, so that also works? But how can I know the speed it's going to move?" Talking to herself Hera was trying to see if there was a way to tell how fast it would move. While she looked for a solution Bonnie let out a loud gasp.

"14? That many?" Many of the recruits turned around and stared at the girl, a few even missed their attacks because of her.

Looking around Bonnie gave an awkward smile. "Sorry, I just realized that if we hit 14 in a row we can reach the goal. But if we can hit 7 our points will be above 100."

Some recruits just grunted at her. They would be lucky to hit three targets, much less seven or fourteen. On the other hand, a few others realized what that meant. They could mess up as much as they wanted, there was a way to get a lot of points at once.

Hera looked at her score.

-39

"14 is too much. Let's start going for the 7."

With a smile, Hera jumped at the target in her arena.