Ball of Nothing

The next few days in the dream reality, the sounds of Freya's scolding and Truen's groans could be heard. While the elf couldn't die in the dream space, he could feel his spirit faltering with every death he experienced.

Freya was merciless when it came to duelling. She didn't give the elf any handicaps and threw God-tiered spells after God-tiered spells without pause. As there was no mana limitation in the dream space, getting tired and running out of stamina was out of the question.

"Star Shower!"

Meteor rocks materialised in a sea of fire above the cornered elf and hurtled towards him at an astonishing rate. Despite the looming threat of death, Truen kept his cool. After the sixtieth death or so, the prospect of dying and pain didn't faze him much any longer. It wasn't that he was unafraid of dying, he simply grew numb to the idea of it.

"Shadow replacement," the elf whispered and turned into a wisp of darkness just before the devastating meteors landed.

Freya nodded in approval but didn't let him rest. "Blazing Light, erase that shadow!"

As if he'd been waiting for this moment, Truen countered without missing a beat. "Phoenix! Rise and be reborn from your ashes!"

With the elf's wits and improved reaction, the battle concluded with a draw. Freya was satisfied. For the first two days, Truen was getting his elven butt handed to him and had to be slapped to consciousness several times by the goddess. He only showed signs of improvement by imitating the goddess on the third day after forgetting his fear of dying. Freya was mildly impressed by Truen's ability to adapt quickly.

They rested briefly after every duel and Freya would give him some pointers. Watching Truen develop his battle sense as a truly satisfying journey. Once the elf discarded his fears and focussed on growing his strengths, he transformed from a lamb into a lion overnight.

Freya was glad that Zero had such a dedicated person to protect him at his side. Although she knew that they wouldn't be able to spare Zero from the clutches of the cruel world, they could hold it back for long enough until Zero was ready to learn about the truth. Kindness was one of Zero's strengths but it could also be a double-edged sword used against him. Nobody wanted Zero to lose that kindness. To the gods and goddesses who had lived for too long and seen the ugliness of this world, Zero was like a tiny flower budding in the middle of a wasteland.

Truen and Freya rested for a while, mentally exhausted from their duel. With Truen's significant improvement, Freya was now ready to introduce the next part of her training. Although Truen had only grasped the basics, she was confident that he could refine his magic combat abilities by himself.

"We will move on to basic combat abilities next. Of course, there are many kinds of combat skills and it isn't possible to cover everything in such a short time. I'll be teaching you the most basic skills required for a bow user. Normally, archers need to train on their accuracy but with Sureshot, you only need to worry about being able to shoot it."

Truen sat up straight. Freya handed him a dream replica of Sureshot. He had some arrows in his inventory but Freya refused to replicate those.

"Use magic to create arrows. They're more useful than normal arrows. Depending on the enemy you are fighting, you can manipulate the effects of each arrow you shoot."

The elf frowned. "Isn't casting magic enough? What's the difference between a magic arrow and a normal spell?"

Freya grinned. "There was a reason why we gave you a bow. Magic is limited by a radius. Out of a certain radius, the caster is unable to do anything. Sureshot is different. It allows magic to follow the target, ignoring the radius rule."

Truen's eyes nearly fell out of their sockets when he heard Freya's explanation. Isn't such overpowered abilities considered cheating?!

"As awesome as it sounds, it would be useless if you can't draw it fast enough. There will be many challenging situations that might require you to draw a bow with hands, without hands, on water or even in the air. That said, we will only practice drawing the bow normally today. Over the next few days, I will introduce more challenging situations for you to get familiarised with."

As uncanny as it sounded, Truen didn't doubt Freya's words. A normal adventurer would probably not find himself in those situations but Treun believed that travelling with Zero made anything possible.

Once they rested enough, Freya started barking orders again.

"Butt out! Chest straight. Don't relax that arm, do you want it to break when you shoot?"