Four hours later
"Impressive," Joana said as she looked at Ludwig's performance.
"What do you mean teacher?" Ludwig said as he turned to her. Behind him lay the destroyed forms of the training dummies.
"To think that in merely four hours, you'd already master the full first set of the Imperial Style. Although any other 'Human' would have been drowning in a pool of their own sweat and exhaustion, your stamina looks to be endless," she said.
Ludwig didn't try and explain how as an Undead, he had no sense of exhaustion. In fact it was true that his stamina was endless.
"But the most impressive part, is that you learned in four hours what would take others four months," she said as she looked out the window, "Though it's getting late. And I can't keep you company for long, I'll leave you with this," she said as she handed Ludwig a small booklet.
[You have received Imperial Style Training Manual]
The book looked to be in a rugged state, and worn out.
"This book should teach you all the forms and moves you need to do in order to master the Imperial style until the Advanced Stage," she said.
"Advanced? What stage am I at right now?" Ludwig asked.
"Well, technically, without fighting experience you're barely at the beginner stage, but since you are able to use the forms of the first style, you're at the early stages of intermediate mastery," she said.
"Then what's above the Advanced stage?" Ludwig asked.
"Well, it's Expert, and Master, but those are pretty hard to obtain, usually that takes decades of hard work and not everyone can just get there even with hard work, take me for example, it took me a hundred and ten years just to reach the Master Stage," she said.
"I see, I guess there aren't many that are stronger than you in term of swordsmanship," Ludwig said.
She smiled, "Flattery won't get you anywhere, though I AM strong, I'm not the strongest, not by a longshot, there are many monsters in this world kiddo, and you, you're just a little monster now, grow stronger and show me what you can do!" she said as she turned and left the room.
Ludwig finally was able to have some time for himself and only then did he have the opportunity to see the huge number of notifications that he kept delegating to see for later.
The first one was the one he received when Van Dijk was talking to Joana.
[Eternal Quest!] was the title of this notification.
Ludwig frowned, he hadn't done anything that would warrant his Eternal Quest proccing a new stage. After all, he has yet to gain even a smidgen of true power to even be able to evade Van Dijk's control.
He read through.
[Eternal Quest! (New)]
Chain quest!
First Part Difficulty: F
You have figured out a part of the truth behind the power of Undeath, but your understanding is severely lacking still.
As a servant of Deus Necros, you now know that you can earn power by taking another's life. Your Quest is as follow, in the next six hours, Kill a Human Being. Failure to do so will result in your death!
Completing this Quest will grant you audience with The Inevitable
And you'll gain the title {Apostle of Death} upon satisfying the conditions.
Remaining time 116 minutes.
"What?!" Ludwig panicked, he didn't know that his life was on a timer! And now he barely had two hours left!
But, the quest details, to kill a human being… was that something he could do?
Yet, surprisingly, Ludwig didn't 'feel' anything. It was as if he had no emotion of humans, so it wasn't that difficult of a quest to accept. After all, he had no choice in the matter to agree upon it or no. his only regret is that he took too long to even notice the death timer.
Yet, he thought once more, what could he have done anyway, he wouldn't have been allowed to leave the room until Joana said so, so he was stuck here regardless.
He took a quick glance at the rest of the notifications before he intended to leave the room, lest he'd find another impossible quest that he ignored.
Ludwig had gained 3 more Stamina and Strength points, which converts to 6 more in strength.
He also learned [Complete move set of the Imperial Style, first stage]
This wasn't a skill, or a spell, but it was a Style of fighting. Which he could use in battle, the moves were wide and destructive and had little to no flaws. A good basic swordsmanship that could help anyone in perilous situations to escape death.
And finally, the book, though he wanted to read it right away, he literally didn't have the time to do so.
Ludwig immediately left the small room to find that it was well into the afternoon. Most students were not present. And the school seemed awfully empty.
Ludwig began to panic, he needed to complete his quest, but there didn't seem to be anything he could do right now to achieve completion. Time was ticking.
"Oh! Look who is here! That backstabbing motherfucker!"
Ludwig turned to see a fireball being hurled his way, he barely had the time to both recognize and jump away from the incoming projectile which blasted the door of the room he was training at.
Looking at his opponent, Ludwig realized that somehow, in this weird and strange world, the scenario that happened to him felt awfully too cliché.
After all, he needed to kill someone, and the person that appeared in front of him was someone who Ludwig truly thought he was one of the people who deserved that fate.
That's right, it was the blondie noble from yesterday.
Now, this is what Ludwig would consider a 'Forced' plot material. After all, in all the stories he read, an author usually would throw someone like this guy for him to deal with, and be the first stepping stone. But stuff like that only happens in books of fiction, this was reality. So something more… divine, or sinister was at play here.
Someone was moving the chess pieces, and both Ludwig and the blondie were pawns being used right now.