Forty days passed after Dean returned from the dungeon.
The first day had been almost entirely wasted on sleep. He LITERALLY didn’t wake for nearly a full day.
None of his servants disturbed him. By all means, no maid and no butler came to his room.
When Dean finally opened his eyes, sunlight was already pouring through the windows.
For a moment, he simply stared at the ceiling.
Dean slowly sat up. His fatique
His body still felt sore, but the injuries he had suffered during the dungeon were finally beginning to fade.
His broken rib no longer caused unbearable pain whenever he breathed. After all Aphrodite literally healed it.
He stretched for a second right there.
"Forty days," he muttered afterwords.
That was how long he had decided to give himself. Forty days to improve, forty days without another dungeon. Forty days to turn the knowledge he had gathered into something useful.
And he intended to use every one of them.
His training began with the basics.
Physical conditioning came first.
Dean spent the early mornings running through the castle grounds, performing exercises, practicing footwork, and strengthening his body.
He quickly discovered that having enormous amounts of power did not automatically mean he understood how to use his body properly.
His movements were inefficient. Not so much but there were rooms to be improved.
His balance was occasionally terrible.
His reactions were good, but his technique lacked refinement.
So he worked on it every morning and every afternoon.
Sometimes until his muscles were so exhausted that he could barely climb the stairs afterward.
He wasn’t trying to become stronger overnight. He wanted control.
That distinction changed everything. Once his body had adjusted, Dean began learning spear arts.
The Spear of Dawn was still an extraordinary weapon, but Dean had realized something important during his dungeon examination.
Holding a powerful weapon wasn’t the same as knowing how to wield it.
So he began from the beginning.
Stance, grip, distance, thrusts, sweeps, rotations, recovery.
He practiced the same movements hundreds of times until they stopped feeling like movements he had to consciously remember.
The spear gradually became an extension of his body.
His attacks became faster.
His footwork became cleaner.
His ability to change direction improved dramatically.
He learned how to use the length of the weapon to control distance, how to redirect an opponent’s attack, and how to turn a failed thrust into another strike.
Eventually, Dean began adding his own variations.
The Spear of Dawn responded surprisingly well.
Its holy energy flowed through the techniques naturally, allowing him to create combinations that weren’t part of the traditional spear forms he had been taught.
By the end of the first few weeks, Dean was no longer simply holding the spear.
He was beginning to understand it.
But he didn’t stop there.
Swordsmanship came next.
At first, Dean wanted to learn another weapon but honestly he mainly wanted to defend himself perfectly against one.
And because of that he wanted to learn how to hold a sword.
Then he actually trained with one.
He understood immediately A spear taught him distance and a sword taught him control at close range.
The movements were tighter. The footwork was different. There was less room for error.
Dean practiced cuts until his arms ached.
He learned how to shift between offense and defense without wasting movement. He studied different guards, practiced parries, and learned how to exploit openings.
Unlike the spear, the sword demanded that he remain close to his opponent.
That forced Dean to improve his reflexes. There were days when he hated the training and surely there were days when he wanted to throw the sword across the room.
But every time he considered stopping, he remembered the dungeon.
He remembered being chased by something stronger than him. He remembered solving puzzles while trying not to die.
Strength alone hadn’t saved him. Adaptability had.
So he continued.
Cooking came afterward. After all, although he can get someone to cook for him, even inside a dungeon, what if there was a dungeon about cooking yourself?
When Harry said he was in a dungeon like that before and MANY people died inside of it, Dean literally stressed himself to DEATH.
So yeah...he needed to learn this as well.
Dean’s first attempt was disastrous. He stared at the plate in front of him. Then at the servant standing nearby. Then back at the food.
"Is this supposed to be edible?" he asked, he wasn’t expecting a real answer.
The servant hesitated.
"Technically, my lord." she said.
Dean sighed.
"That’s not reassuring." he replied the servant’s words.
The kitchen became his next training ground.
Unlike combat, cooking didn’t reward brute force.
Temperature mattered. Timing mattered. Measurements mattered and even something as simple as cutting vegetables required consistency.
Dean burned several meals.
He oversalted others.
One attempt resulted in something so unpleasant that he refused to acknowledge it as food.
It was so bad even Percival who was being the ’test subject’ almost fainted because of the taste of it.
Everyone could tell that the ghost Percival, who could level up this castle from the ground, literally half-fainted.
But slowly, things improved.
He learned how different ingredients behaved.
He learned how to balance flavors, and he learned how to prepare meat properly.
Eventually, he managed to cook an actual meal that he could eat without regretting his decisions.
Dean stared at the finished dish. A small smile appeared.
"I made this." he said. He almost looked like a kid.
The servant nodded.
"You did, my lord." she replied. She was with him in this long journey and honestly she finally
Dean took a bite.
He paused and then said "That’s actually good."
It was a small achievement.
But Dean found himself strangely proud of it.
Smithery was the final discipline that he wanted to get into.
And perhaps the hardest but...Harry also said that this was necessary.
The forge was completely different from everything Dean had learned before. There were no enemies, like literally.
There was no cutting...not ’’literally’’ but yeah there wasn’t something alive, you didn’t have food ingridients and such.
It was dead matter and a person who beats and forging it.
No opponen. No obvious victory. Only metal, heat, timing, and patience.
Dean learned how to prepare the furnace. How to heat metal without ruining it. How to hammer with controlled force. How to shape a piece gradually rather than trying to accomplish everything at once. His first attempts looked terrible.
His second attempts looked slightly less terrible.
By the third week, he could produce something that at least resembled a usable piece of metalwork.
Dean wiped sweat from his forehead.
The forge’s heat surrounded him. His hands were covered in soot. The hammer rested against his shoulder. He looked at the rough piece of metal he had just finished shaping.
It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t particularly impressive.
But it was his, and that was enough.
The forty days passed faster than Dean expected.
His body became stronger. His spear technique became sharper. His swordsmanship developed into something he could rely upon. His cooking stopped being a danger to everyone within the castle, and his smithery had reached the point where he could actually create basic equipment without destroying the material.
He still was bad but at least now he wasn’t destroying EVERY meterial he holds or works with.
And THAT was a point he wanted to reach.
Most importantly, Dean had developed something he hadn’t possessed before.
[Discipline]
He no longer trained because he felt like it.
He trained because it had become part of his routine. Morning belonged to physical conditioning. The spear occupied a portion of his afternoons. Swordsmanship followed. Cooking became something he practiced whenever he wanted a break from combat and the forge claimed his evenings.
For a person who lived his life working like slave, for the first time it felt free and the discipline came from it made him feel good instead of making him feel horrible.
This was beyond what he imagined and thought.
He reviewed what he had learned, he considered what he had done wrong, he planned what to improve tomorrow.
On the fortieth evening, Dean stood alone inside the castle’s training hall.
The Spear of Dawn rested against his shoulder.
A sword hung at his waist. It wasn’t like a good or higher grade sword but it was enough.
His hands still carried faint traces of black soot from the forge. He worked so often the traces weren’t gone yet, despite him washing his hand A LOT of times.
Behind him sat a meal he had prepared himself. Well it was in a box. He made Boeuf Bourguignon.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was good.
Dean looked at everything he had accomplished during those forty days.
Then he smiled.
"Not bad." he said to himself.
He had entered the dungeon trying to survive and he had left it with a Summon-Contract.
Now, forty days later, he was beginning to understand something far more important.
Power wasn’t simply something he possessed.
It was something he could learn to use and god knows he was VERY good at it now.
Dean turned toward Percival and said outloud:
"Let’s see what this 40 days of training with you did, my dear follower."
Percival smiled and with that the duel before the next dungeon began.
He stepped forward.
The spear moved.
And this time, there was no hesitation.
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