The crack of wood on wood rang again and again beneath the morning sun.
Jaka lunged forward, sweat flinging from his brow, his wooden sword slicing through the air toward Ra Kuti's side. But with a casual flick of the wrist, the old swordsman deflected it. Jaka pivoted, slashing upward—blocked. A third swing, angled low—dodged with nothing but a quiet half-step that sent Jaka stumbling past him.
"Too slow," Ra Kuti said, calm but cutting. "Too predictable."
Jaka gritted his teeth, reset his stance, and attacked again. And again. And again.
He hated how graceful Ra Kuti was. The man moved like water—no wasted motion, no flair, just pure purpose.
For the past week, Jaka had been swinging like a madman in the heat and dust of the training yard, and he had yet to land even the lightest touch on the old warrior.
It was maddening.
It was humiliating.
And it was familiar.
Because deep down, he knew exactly what was happening.
"I can see it," he thought bitterly. "I know where the opening is—I built this damn game! I wrote the combat AI! I designed how enemies shift their weight before striking, how they telegraph patterns—"
But his body couldn't follow.
His feet dragged milliseconds behind his thoughts. His arms hesitated at the last instant. His balance teetered when it should have flowed. He could see victory—frame by frame in his mind—but he couldn't reach it.
It was like watching someone else play the game he'd built. Perfectly. Effortlessly.
Jaka slammed the tip of his wooden sword into the dry ground, panting. "How," he gasped, "are you still reading me like a book?"
Ra Kuti didn't answer. He stood there, weapon lowered, gaze neutral—like a statue carved by wind and time. His posture was relaxed, yet somehow full of coiled danger.
Jaka wiped sweat from his face and sighed. "This is so unfair."
But that day, something shifted.
A breeze passed through the yard, and in that moment, Jaka noticed it—a slight redistribution of weight in Ra Kuti's stance.
Minute.
Almost invisible.
But to Jaka's trained designer mind, it was a flag. A signal. A frame he had coded a thousand times in a thousand enemy types.
He didn't think.
He reacted.
Instead of lunging directly, he feinted left. Then, with a short roll to the right, he came up just enough to tap Ra Kuti's shoulder with the tip of his wooden blade.
The sound was soft.
The hit was weak.
But it landed.
Jaka froze mid-motion, eyes wide. "I—I did it?"
Ra Kuti blinked once. Then gave the faintest nod. "You did."
Jaka blinked back. For a moment, disbelief held him still—then joy surged through his body like a lightning strike.
"I did it!" he yelled, practically dancing in place. "FINALLY!"
But before he could spin into a victory cartwheel, Ra Kuti lowered his sword and said flatly, "Don't celebrate too soon."
Jaka stopped mid-hop. "Huh?"
"I've been matching your skills, physical capabilities and techniques, Jaka."
"…What?"
Ra Kuti looked at him, eyes steady. "If I moved the way I usually do—even at a fraction of my speed—you wouldn't have touched me. Your skills, physical and technical… are still far from what's needed."
The joy on Jaka's face dimmed, replaced by a flicker of confusion. "Then why…"
"Because," Ra Kuti said, "you must learn how to win because you're already know how to lose."
He stepped forward, tapping his own shoulder where Jaka had landed the strike.
"A student who only loses gains nothing but frustration. But a student who learns to see openings—who lands even one hit—gains clarit and confidence."
His eyes bore into Jaka's. "I don't train you to break your spirit. I train you to raise it."
Jaka swallowed hard. The words hit deeper than he expected. "So… you've been holding back that much?"
Ra Kuti's lips curled into a rare, subtle smirk. "Of course. But today, you earned that hit. You reach your limits today. Tomorrow you will start to break them."
His words pierced deeper than any blade. They motivated Jaka in a way he never could seem to do for his own team back when they were building the game.
Jaka came home dragging his limbs like a scarecrow recently fired from its post. He collapsed onto the bamboo bed with a groan, muscles trembling, vision slightly blurry, soul halfway to Nirvana.
"If this doesn't give me a stat boost…" he mumbled to the ceiling, "I swear I'm filing a complaint with the Divine Office. Oh, wait—I am the Divine Office."
With trembling fingers, he summoned the familiar glow of his Status Screen.
Status Update (After Two Weeks Training)
Core Attributes:
Strength: A (75/100)
Agility: S (11/100)
Dexterity: S (7/100)
Intellect: A (69/100)
Endurance: A (46/100)
Charisma: H (3/100)
Weapon Proficiency:
Blunt: E (97/100)
Blade: D (9/100)
Polearm: F (87/100)
Throwing: F (97/100)
Bow: E (12/100)
He stared at the screen.
Then—
"WAHAHAHAHAHA!! S-RANK!! I HIT S-RANK!!"
He rolled back and forth on the floor like a possessed chicken skewer, laughing uncontrollably.
"S-Rank! TWO OF THEM! This is insane!"
Then… he paused.
"Wait…"
His smile faltered.
"This is like… getting accepted into the elite class of level one… but still failing all your subjects."
He sat up slowly, eyes still on the screen. "Even with this… I still can't touch Ra Kuti."
His eyes narrowed.
"…He's probably tagged as a high-level NPC if the system followed my old scrapped world-building notes. That anomaly is a Dharmaputra. I still don't know how high that ranks in this timeline, but one thing's clear—he's very strong."
He sighed long and loud, collapsing again onto the bed.
Still. It was progress.
Real progress.
He thought back to when he was four—mimicking martial arts from old VHS tapes.
At seven, punching trees with sticks because he thought grit was literal.
At nine, fighting angry chickens in the backyard with a toy sword because they "looked evil."
A decade of pain, splinters, bruises, and self-training that devoured his savings like a cursed gacha machine… and all it ever got him was a slow trickle of generated points.
Now, two weeks under Ra Kuti?
He was breaking the curve.
If training under a low-level master could generate 3x more than solo grinding, then a high-level one like Ra Kuti was a multiplier on steroids.
"Hell yeah, I knew this would work."
His eyes drifted to the Royalty Camp's direction—the one where Ra Kuti would sit with bitter tea, looking like a monk who'd seen the rise and fall of empires and just wanted silence.
"Two weeks with that anomaly… and I'm not just stronger. I'm better."
He looked down at his hands, clenching them slowly, a crooked grin forming on his lips.
"Maybe all this time… I was just a self-taught training dummy."
Ra Kuti's voice echoed in his head again:
"You can learn from losing. But a few small wins keep your spirit alive. If I got even slightly serious… you'd have been knocked out on day one."
Jaka smirked, then laughed softly.
"So this is the difference… between self-training for ten years and training under a high-level NPC with secret S-tier AI coding."
He lifted a trembling thumbs-up toward the open window and the starry sky beyond.
"Thank you, Mister Anomaly. Please don't hit harder tomorrow…"
He yawned, eyes heavy, and leaned back against the bed frame. The Status Screen floated above him like a cosmic scoreboard, flickering gently in the twilight.
"I'll wait to level up… when Strength and Endurance hit S-rank. Gotta make the panel look clean. Can't go half-assed now."
With a weary but satisfied smile, Jaka closed his eyes and slipped into sleep—sore, sorely outmatched, and completely content.
Above him, the Status Screen pulsed gently.
A silent banner of failure.
And triumph.