Chapter 47: A Fifth member
On the way to the club room. Dan had told Novis about why he had run after him the first time. How he was impressed with his running and originally wanted him to join the running team. After realising the misunderstanding between the two. Dan went bright red as he was embarrassed by the situation.
"Why on earth would you think that?" Dan asked.
"Well there were rumours you know, I heard that you had never accepted a girl's confession, so even some of the girls think you might be..."
Dan quickly interrupted Novis before he could finish.
"That's only because I don't care about those things right now. I don't have the time to focus on girls and it wouldn't be fair on them."
"Why join the VSW club then?"
"I've been hopping from club to club for a while now, but none of them interested me. After hearing that you had joined the VSW club I thought about it for a while and thought it would be interesting."
Dan decided to leave out the part of joining because he was chasing after Novis. Novis already had strange thoughts about Dan, and Dan didn't want to come across as an even bigger weirdo.
"So where did you learn to fight like that?" Novis asked.
Novis was really interested, after watching Dan fight even Arthur said that Dan was impressive. Arthur said that Dan had a body gifted to him by the gods. A person who was born with a body to do sport.
"I used to be in the boxing club, but my parents didn't like me being in a sport where I could get hurt."
Novis started to learn a lot about Dan. He found out about all the clubs and feats he had achieved, and all the medals he earned. Hearing all this Novis started to feel a bit down. In all this time Dan had already achieved so much and both of them were the same age.
While Novis had done nothing so far. There was not one medal or trophy in his room for anything. He was never top of his class at anything he was always just above average.
The two of them finally reached the club room and Scarlett and Alex were over the moon to see both of them in the room.
Scarlett ran over and lifted Dan's arm.
"What happened to you?"
Dan's fist was scuffed and red from punching barehanded.
Novis was a bit upset that Scarlett had completely ignored him and ran over to Dan. She was even holding his arm.
"Of course, who wouldn't fall for that pretty boy," Novis said in his head.
Scarlett quickly went over to grab the first aid kit and started tending to Dan's hand.
"What happened to you guys?" Alex asked, "Is everything okay?"
We explained how Mac's goons were outside waiting for Dan and how we handled the situation on the roof.
Alex slammed his fist at the table next to him.
"Dam that Mac."
Scarlett had finished tending to Dan's hand and came over to comfort Alex. Novis was thinking that Scarlett had been tending for everyone but him. Perhaps he should have banged his head on the wall on the way over here. Then maybe she could tend to his needs too.
"How are we meant to find a fifth member if Mac beats up everyone who joins?" Alex complained.
The group thought together for a while on what they could do. They needed to find someone who wasn't afraid of Mac and his gang. Someone like Dan who could handle himself in tough situations. The problem was it was rare to find someone like Dan.
Anyone who was in a club already wouldn't bother risking or joining a club like there's. Unless they owed them a favour.
Then a thought came to Novis's mind.
"I think I have an idea on who our fifth member can be, just leave it to me."
With the incident on the roof, the four of them had no time to play any matches together. All the clubs had already finished and they decided to head home.
Novis stopped by his grandpa's dojo to focus on training. He was currently learning from Arthur how to make his strikes stronger. Novis realised while watching Arthur that he defeated his opponents in one strike.
The game had a standard attack strength per warrior but somehow Arthur was able to surpass that. Not only that, he was doing that while using Novis's body. Which meant in theory Novis should be able to do the same.
Whenever Novis would fight someone it would take him a few slashes even with the same longsword.
When Novis asked Arthur about this, he said this was something he couldn't explain. He had been shown it by his master a long time ago and one day he eventually understood. All Novis could do was watch Arthur and try to replicate him.
After a few hours of training, Novis was beat, and decided to head home. Novis felt like he had made no progress in his training for a while now, he was currently at a standstill. His basic stamina and strength were increasing every day. He had even bought some weights to use at his grandfather's dojo and although it helped, it wasn't bringing him closer to Arthurs level.
All he could do was continue to watch Arthur.
"Hey, do you want to play again. I feel like I need to watch you more closely."
Arthur was pleased and happy to show Novis as many times as he wanted.
Novis hoped into the capsule and switched with Arthur. As soon as Arthur logged into the game many of his fans logged in to watch him play once more.
"It's him, he's finally online again."
"It looks like he's playing a lot more now."
"Is it just me or is he getting better."
Some of the people online had noticed that Arthur swings and attacks were getting faster. They couldn't believe someone so good was actually getting even better at the game.
The reason for this was Novis. When Novis first played the game, Arthur had to rely on the warrior's stats given to him. This was a limit for Arthur. The warrior's stats were set quite low. This was done on purpose in the hope that real athletes would be attracted to the game.
Now Novis body had surpassed that of the warrior in the game Arthur was able to display more and more of his abilities online.
Arthur entered his first match and started his rampage.