The Idle System (A LitRPG series Book 7): Family Page 2

  “When we arrived in this kingdom, the king knew who I was and personally came to recruit me. Not in the normal army, but in a special force to target the beasts around the land.

  “That’s where I’ve been for the last few years—fighting beasts to push them away from villages on the outskirts of the claimed territory.

  “When the king recruited me, I did three things. First, I made sure your mother found a secluded place to give birth to you and live in peace for a while. Second, I made a deal with Isabel and the rest, stating that their services would only be welcomed until I returned. That means in the next few days, they will be returning to their families.

  “The last thing I did was get the king to make and sign that badge you’re wearing. The badge is a little special, but only for the knights of the kingdom. You can also go to the capital and use that badge to get an audience with the king, but don’t ever do that unless it’s a life or death situation. It can only be used once.”

  John weaved the story of the Adventurers’ Guild as well as the Rogue, Sword, Anti-assassin, and Death sects by calling them different families within the kingdom.

  What he told her was mostly true, but on a smaller scale. The unedited version of the story would be told once she turned twenty-one, to show her how dangerous the universe really was.

  Chapter 3: Perspective

  Kelly took the golden eagle badge off of her shirt and turned it around to look at the signature. After a few minutes of silence, she gave a small nod. “I want to learn how to fight. Mom has been teaching me how to read and write, but I’ve learned it all, so I’ve been bored recently.”

  Sarah smiled. “I’ve only taught you one of the languages used in this world. There’s a few more.”

  She wanted to teach Kelly all the languages she knew but didn’t quite know how to explain why two kingdoms would use more than twenty different languages.

  John had guessed what was going through Sarah’s mind and tried to explain. “Both kingdoms are a combination of small countries which have their own language, culture, and customs.

  “They are in the process of simplifying it to a single, common language, but if you ever decide to travel when you’re older, you might need to know all of them to avoid trouble.”

  “I also want you to be immune to the most common poisons found in this world. Unfortunately, the only way to do that is to expose you to the poisons. This way your body will produce antitoxins against the harmful substances.”

  Kelly stared at Sarah with her tiny brow arched with uncertainty.

  “Your mother is a doctor and knows all about the poisons. We’ve even used this method on ourselves to become immune to the poisons as well—you’re not an experiment.”

  John stood up and stretched a little before motioning her to follow him. “Come with me. We’ll start your training with martial arts while your mother gathers the necessary plants. When we’re done training, you can start learning one of the new languages for a while.”

  John walked out of the house and waited for Kelly. It took less than a minute for her to trot through the door and stand by his side.

  “Don’t we need some type of equipment to train?” Kelly asked, looking around the area.

  “Maybe for more advanced martial arts,” John answered.

  John knelt down and picked Kelly up before placing her on his shoulders.

  “We’re going into the jungle for a while and your little legs won’t let you run fast enough, so hold on tight,” John advised, walking towards the jungle.

  After he felt Kelly wrap her arms around his forehead, he started running.

  “AHHH!”

  He didn’t use any kind of Life Power and only used a small amount of strength in his legs, but he still caused Kelly to scream for the first minute.

  When they were half a mile in, he stopped running. There was a small area about forty feet in diameter in front of him that had only a single, small tree in the middle. The grass was short, and there were no bushes or vines at all in that area.

  Perfect. John carefully put Kelly down on the ground.

  “Before I show you anything, I have a question for you. What do you think is the most important thing to have while fighting?”

  Kelly lowered her head, deep in thought. “Courage?” she indecisively responded.

  John shook his head. “While that helps in a lot of cases, it isn’t the most critical component for winning a fight. The most important thing is composure, followed by footwork.

  “Without composure, you’ll panic and make mistakes, making your training useless. Keeping your composure will allow you to calmly focus on the essentials: attacking, defending, and even escaping. Footwork is essential for all of these. Without it, you can’t put your weight into an attack, you’ll lose balance after blocking, and you’ll trip while fleeing.

  “For the first few days, we’re going to focus on your stances. You’ll need proper blocking techniques before you learn to fight.”

  As John moved his hands and legs, he looked at Kelly. “Copy my movements. This is a basic stance that allows you to switch from attack to defence easily.”

  Kelly copied the few stances John showed her and he taught her how to twist her ankles to properly accommodate the turns that her body would make when attacking and defending.

  It took an hour for her to be comfortable with all the different motions, and during that time, John showed her a few kicking and punching moves to go along with the footwork she practiced. When that was done, he decided to switch things up.

  “The main parts of the body we attack with are the hands, feet, knees, elbows, and head; however, they’re not the only things.”

  He went to stand next to the small tree in the middle of the area and positioned himself into a wide stance. After steadying himself, John swung his hips into the tree but stopped just before his hip touched the tree. He couldn’t control his strength yet and the sight of a tree flying into the air might have given Kelly a heart attack.

  John turned his head to Kelly and smiled. “If somebody was attacking me at this close of a range, it would be best for me to use a hip attack to create enough space for me to use another part of my body to defend myself. It catches people off guard and can cause them to lose balance which is fatal in a fight.”

  Like John hoped, Kelly found amusement in what he did. He knew that even if someone loves doing something, they also need to have fun doing it to improve. He knew that if he trained Kelly in a strict manner, she could come to hate martial arts. Such an unenjoyable experience could lead her to having results that weren’t what she wanted for the effort and time she put into training. If that were to happen, she could potentially quit training altogether.

  With that in mind, they spent the next hour training and goofing around. When they were done, John knelt down and told Kelly to climb on his shoulders. Once she had a solid grip on him, he took off running further into the jungle, but this time Kelly didn’t scream. John figured she had gotten used to it, or maybe she was just too tired to scream.

  A few miles into the jungle, John came to a steep cliff that was about sixty feet in height. As he began to climb the cliff, Kelly tightened her grip on him and squeezed her eyes shut. Before she knew it, they were at the top and she was amazed that it only took him a few minutes to complete the feat.

  At the top of the cliff, the strong sunlight shone on their faces and they could feel the heat coming off the ground. All their eyes could see for miles was a sea of trees in different shades of green and brown. A large mountain pierced into the clouds in the far distance.

  John stood at the edge with Kelly still on his shoulders. “When you’ve trained your body to the extreme like your mother and I have, things like this cliff, and even that mountain, will feel like nothing to you. In fact, climbing such a cliff by yourself should only be a small goal of yours. You might be able to accomplish it after five years, if you work hard.”

  John held on to her tiny feet. Althoug
h he knew he could save her if she were to fall, he didn’t want to take that risk.

  Looking at the top of the trees, John asked, “What do you see?”

  The sun was high in the sky and the weather was clear, letting her see further. From this new, spectacular view, Kelly could see everything for miles. Shielding her eyes with her hands, she replied, “Nature, beauty, and peace.”

  John chuckled at her innocence. “I see an ancient battlefield that’s still being fought on, even to this day. It’s not that your view is wrong, Kelly. It’s simply that our experiences in life are completely different.

  “I’ve only started teaching you the basics. Those techniques we worked on earlier have been passed down for hundreds of years through masters who have tested and perfected the process. They’re the best no matter who trains with them.

  “Later on, I’ll be teaching you different martial arts which haven’t had many people working on them. That means that what may work for me, might not work for you. You’ll need to alter the technique to suit you and your fighting style.”

  Kelly looked down at the top of John’s head and opened her mouth to ask what he meant. A tingling sensation came from her stomach as she caught sight of the sheer drop below John’s feet. Her hands and legs, which were relaxed, tightened up around John.

  Is she scared of heights? Before she could even panic, John took a few steps back and continued speaking.

  “Every tree, every vine, and every blade of grass are at war with one another. They need to conquer the space for their roots, so that they can grow taller than the rest and absorb the most sunlight for survival.

  “The same applies to humans. We hunt animals and grow crops for food, but if ever there’s not enough food to sustain life, humans will fight to the death to steal food from each other to survive.

  “I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. In the future you’ll meet people and even call some of them your friends, but you need to be prepared to fight when your survival is at risk—even against friends.”

  The pair remained silent as they watched a flock of birds fly overhead. Noticing the sun drift down to the horizon, John broke the silence.

  “It’s time to go. You’ve got a language class to attend, and if we’re late, your mother might just kill me.”

  “Mom’s that strong?” Kelly asked with a cute giggle.

  “Let me put it this way; If the king knew about your mother, he would’ve paid any price to hire us both instead of accepting my meagre demands.”

  In his Scan, he saw Kelly’s eyes widen and her mouth drop open. Her adorable face in a state of shock almost caused him to burst into laughter.

  John proceeded to climb down the cliff. He noticed Kelly was much more relaxed than when he stood at the cliff’s edge. Once he climbed down, he made his way home with Kelly still on his shoulders.

  Chapter 4: Retaining

  The next morning, John woke up to find Sarah and Kelly sitting at the kitchen table.

  Kelly wasn’t feeling 100% because of the miniscule poison Sarah had given her the night prior, so John decided to let her rest for the day. Today was also the day that Isabel and the others were leaving, so Kelly was feeling a little down because of that.

  John and Sarah planned to let Kelly stay with Isabel for most of the day, but they were standing firm on putting them into their Storage Space later on.

  Since creating the puppets back on the Sword Sect’s private planet, we haven’t done anything resembling chores. When they’re gone, those chores will become ours once more.

  John lowered his head. Sigh.

  Knowing that Kelly was going to be occupied for the day, John decided to practice controlling his strength.

  He said goodbye to Sarah and Kelly before heading off into the jungle. As soon as he was out of view, he increased his speed and made his way to the spot where he and Kelly had trained the day before.

  The first thing he did was cut down a large tree a few metres away from him. He then used his threads to keep the tree in the air to prevent it from making noise as it toppled over. Afterwards, he chopped it into small chunks with his threads that were transformed into swords.

  Using his wood and metal elements, John created a single-blade axe.

  Placing a single piece of wood on top of the freshly-cut tree stump, John slowly lowered the axe onto its surface. It went straight through the piece of wood, but not because of the blade’s sharpness. John had used too much strength and the entire block exploded from the inside, causing wood chips to fly everywhere.

  Again!

  A few hours worth of practice, and he could control his strength enough to let the axe cut the pieces of wood.

  The next step was to speed up this action while using the same amount of strength. The goal was to be able to chop the wood like a normal mortal who didn’t make blocks of wood explode on impact.

  His first attempt at speeding up a little ended in a major failure. John had failed to stop the swing in time.

  However, he underestimated his own body. The strike caused a small earthquake for a few miles due to John creating a sunken area with a two-mile radius around him. The ground had sunken in by a dozen feet at least.

  He quickly used the earth element to make sure the tremors didn’t reach back home where Kelly was. She would get suspicious if earthquakes started to happen all the time.

  Using his earth and wood elements, he fixed the entire area. He had to use the wood element to grow the entire tree again because he ran out of pieces to practice.

  Once again he tried to swing it as fast and as strong as a normal mortal. This time, the speed and strength he used in the collision didn’t just make a cut, he hit the stump below. It caused the ground around him to sink in almost an inch, and the stump to sink in over a foot while exploding from the middle.

  Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table watching Isabel and Kelly when she noticed what was going on. In her Scan, she couldn’t see John because of the Hide option, but she could see the axe swinging at the pieces of wood and the aftermath, too. She held back a snort as she muffled a bout of laughter.

  After John fixed the area once more, he tried again and again, causing loud booms. The sound got quieter the more he practiced and after only a few more hours, he had perfected it.

  After he fixed up the area around him and made the tree grow again, John stood in front of it.

  The last time I tested my strength on a tree, I was still a mortal and had only gained a bit of strength after coming to this universe. If I can use my strength to recreate the kind of damage I did back then, then I can master controlling my strength.

  John did a simple punch, expecting to create only a small hole after finishing his training. His expectations fell flat as the tree was blasted apart and what was left of it began to fall to the ground. John used his threads to move the tree back to its original position before using the wood element to fix it.

  Don’t tell me I’ve got to practice every movement to gain control of my strength! I was hoping to master a few things like swinging an axe like a mortal which, supposedly, would help me control my strength in other movements. Am I wrong?

  He tried again. This time, he tried going as slow as possible, but when his punch landed, the tree started tilting. The roots underneath him came up from the ground as the tree pulled them along with it as it started to fall.

  John quickly grabbed it and pulled it back before fixing the area once more. He tried again and again until eventually he gained control of his strength while punching. It took only an hour for him to mimic the same actions he did when he was mortal while only causing a small dent in the tree.

  The experience of swinging an axe while using less strength did help him gain control of his strength while punching, but they were still different motions which used different muscles and his body had to get used to the new movements with less strength.

  After he figured out what he had to do, he continued doing different exerci
ses to gain control of his strength regardless of the action he was doing.

  He started jumping using as little strength as possible. The first time caused him to jump to a height of a few trees’ length added together, but after half an hour of constant jumping, he got it down to only a few feet like a normal mortal.

  He began doing small dashes and the experience of jumping constantly while trying to control the strength did help, but he still dashed through a few trees the first time.

  Next, he tried doing a simple side kick, something he had done thousands of times. Thanks to the jumping and dashes training, he only caused the tree to explode a few times before getting the hang of it.

  When he mastered more movements to the point that he could pass as a mortal, he used the earth and wood elements to clean everything up. He made sure the ground and all of the trees were how they were before he began his training. Realising it was getting late, he made his way home again.

  * * *

  When John arrived back at the house, Kelly and Isabel were saying their goodbyes. Kelly was hugging Isabel’s legs and Isabel was stroking Kelly’s hair while smiling.

  He wasn’t certain if Kelly was truly feeling sad or if she was putting on an act, but he genuinely felt sorry for having to separate them.

  Logan, Evan, Nathan, Kyle, and Cody were standing further away in a group.

  Sarah saw John emerge from the jungle and walked up to him. “The others have already said their goodbyes to Kelly,” she whispered. “I knew Isabel would take the longest, so I made her go last.”

  “When they’re finished, I’ll order them all to start walking into the jungle,” John whispered back. “After Kelly loses sight of them, and when I’m in the clear, I’ll go and put them all in the Storage Space.”

  Sarah nodded and the two of them waited forty-five minutes for the pair to finish saying goodbye.

  When it was over, Kelly stood on the deck as she watched Isabel walk to John and Sarah. John smiled at Isabel and spoke loud enough for Kelly to overhear him. “Thank you for all you’ve done these past few years. I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart that all of you helped protect my family while I was away.