Mocked at Level 1, I Became the Spear God

Chapter 5: The Man Who Stayed in the Yard

Seven-thirty the next morning, and Suite 3001 was almost full.

Nate wasn't the only one who'd gotten the bug. The Vigil had its hooks in everybody now, and showing up early to play a video game and get paid for it beat the hell out of showing up early to anything else. If they'd just drop the gold coin demand, the room would've been downright cheerful.

Nate dropped into station fifty, strapped on the helmet, and dropped.

* * *

He opened his eyes in the training yard. Wade wasn't online yet. The yard was nearly empty—maybe a handful of players knocking on dummies, which only made the crowds out by the rabbit fields look worse by comparison.

He steadied himself, took up the wooden spear, and started drilling.

Same basics as yesterday. The proficiency crept slower now, but the spear in his hand felt different. Familiar. Like a tool he'd used for years instead of two afternoons. He couldn't wait until it felt like an extension of his arm, the way Wade's did.

*Clang. Clang.*

**Perfect Strike. Proficiency +1.**

The little pop-up kept him going.

"Hah!" A familiar laugh from behind him. "You're an early bird, brother Wren."

Nate stopped and turned. Wade Granger was walking over, spear slung easy over one shoulder, looking like he'd been born standing up. "Morning, Wade. Just got in. Was running yesterday's forms through my head."

"Good. I'll walk you through the last two moves today—then I've gotta push my own level. I'm eyeing that village board."

"You'd climb it easy, man. You're already better than half the teams out there."

Wade waved it off, but he looked pleased. The truth was, a guy two days in with Basic Spearplay already at Lv4—that was an edge no rented squad could buy. And it'd only widen as the hired grinders fell off the pace.

"Tell you what I really want," Wade said. "One of those Bronze items. Watch." He hefted his own spear and stepped toward a dummy.

"HAH!"

He leapt and the spear came down like an executioner's axe, leaving a clean white score line dead across the dummy's chest.

"Vertical chop. Comes down the middle for the face, or you can bend it to the skull, or the shoulder." He did it again—and right as the head of the spear would've split the dummy's head, his arm flexed and the tip whipped sideways, cracking the dummy across the shoulder and dumping it on its ass.

*Crack.*

Nate had seen the game's own chop move—it was just a straight, stiff overhead. This was alive.

"Chop comes from up high, power in the arm," Wade said. "But you keep it flexible—flip between head and shoulder on the fly. Your turn."

"Right." Nate gripped the shaft, hopped, and brought the spear down with everything he had.

*Bang.*

He'd put too much into it. The spearhead sailed past the dummy entirely and the shaft slammed into its body like a club.

Nate scratched the back of his neck and reset. He tried again. And again. The more he forced it, the worse it got—his first day's spearwork suddenly looked like a museum piece.

"Stop, stop, stop." Wade held up a hand. "Power in the arm doesn't mean throw your whole body at it. You've got to pull the strike, keep something in reserve—empty on the outside, full on the inside. Right now you're wide open the second you commit. A real opponent just steps inside and takes your head off."

Wade coached him through it again and again. Slowly, the vertical chop stopped whiffing or overshooting.

While he drilled, Wade worked his own forms nearby, half his attention on Nate. Multitasking like it was nothing. Watching the kid improve, he had to admit—this one had something. He'd never say it out loud, but he suspected Wren's talent wasn't just the game's soft-start muscle memory. Some of it was real.

By midday, Wade had walked him through the chop and the horizontal sweep. New moves meant Perfect Strikes were rare, so the proficiency crawled. He was still a couple hundred points short of Lv3.

Nate didn't care. There was a solid, heavy satisfaction in it—knowing his hands were getting better by the hour—that he'd never felt selling widgets over a phone.

"Chop and sweep are yours now," Wade said. "Just drill them. One last thing, and it's the most important move in spear work—block. The parry."

His own skill was already maxed out for practical purposes. The numbers wouldn't move much more; he wanted to hand the kid the final piece and then go level up himself.

"Block's the simplest thing there is, and the one that keeps you alive," Wade said. "Front hand loose as a tube, back hand locked as a wrench. Spin the back hand left or right, and the spearhead traces a half-circle—enough to push anything off-line. Rule: the spear never leaves your hip, and the power lands on the tip."

He switched the dummy over to attack mode. One of them lifted a spear and drove it straight at Wade.

Wade stepped in, front hand forward, back hand twisted, and the spearhead whirled a half-circle. *Crack*—the dummy's weapon skidded aside, leaving its chest wide open. Wade drove straight through its heart. One smooth motion, offense and defense as a single beat.

Nate just stared. "That's filthy, Wade."

"Pfft. Party tricks. Keep at it, you'll get there." Though privately Wade thought: it took him three years to reach that kind of ease. This kid might actually beat him to it in the game.

Nate switched his own dummies to attack mode and started getting hit. Over and over, the wooden spears rapped into him.

Wade watched him take his lumps and remembered his grandfather beating the forms into him with a stick when he was a boy. Some things didn't change.

After an hour, Nate stopped just eating it. He started deflecting. Sometimes, rarely, he even poked back.

"Alright," Wade said. "I've met maybe one or two people with your patience. I'm gonna head out—take some quests, start leveling. Don't want to fall too far behind."

Nate knew Wade didn't need to leave. The guy had stayed on purpose, to coach him. He wasn't great at saying it, but he felt it. This wasn't nothing.

"Thanks for sticking with me these days, Wade. Whenever you need something—anything—you say the word. I'll move."

Wade laughed. "That's all I needed to hear. I didn't teach you this to collect. It's just not every day you find someone who loves the spear and has the patience for it. Go on. I'll see you out there."

He shouldered his spear and walked out.

* * *

The yard filled up after that—players who couldn't win a mob out in the fields came here to kill time. Most of them grinded their basic skill up one level and bailed. Real mastery was a slow, boring slog, and nuts like the two of them were rare.

Nate was the only one in the whole yard drilling offensive forms with the dummies set to attack, trading blows back and forth. He could feel the other players watching—envious, he figured.

He let it go to his head for about one second.

*Thwack.*

A dummy's spear caught him in the side and launched him.

The onlookers did the mental math. Dude just gets his ass beat all day. Masoch much.

Nate was used to it by then. He picked himself up, unembarrassed, and went right back in.

From the afternoon on, he mixed every form together—chop, sweep, thrust, block—treating the dummies like a real duel. The proficiency crept slower, but the back-and-forth of offense and defense felt alive in a way the repetition hadn't. Before he knew it, the afternoon was gone.

He opened his sheet.

**Basic Spearplay Lv3 (+1). Proficiency: 158 / 10000.**

Ten thousand to the next level. He felt a flicker of temptation—was this worth three more days?—then stomped it out. Wade's forms were still settling; this was exactly when you consolidated. The company metrics could wait.

* * *

Down in the office, Grant Reid had logged off too. He was flipping through Brittany's tally. Fifty employees under him, and exactly one—somebody named Wren—shared his starter village. He'd been hoping for three or four he could stack together to power-level his own way up the boards. One guy wasn't a squad.

"Brittany, keep an eye on this Wren. What level is he? How does he play?"

"On it, Mr. Reid."

Nate pulled his helmet off and rolled his stiff neck. The dive helmets weren't heavy, but wearing them for hours was murder on the spine. A full dive capsule would've been nice.

"Nate." The guy in the next station swiveled over. "What level you at now?"

They'd talked that morning. Jake—fresh out of college, same school as Cassie, talked his way in because he heard a girl from his class was hiring gamers.

"Still haven leveled up," Nate said.

"Right, right, it's brutal out there—guys like you can't even win a mob. Me, though? I was the best gamer my whole class. I'm already halfway to level three. Hit it tomorrow, easy." He tossed Nate a smug little look.

Nate just smiled back and said nothing.

Brittany posted the evening numbers on the big screen in the hall. Most people were level two. A few were sitting at eighty percent toward it. Everybody, that was, except Nate—level one, one percent.

He looked up at the bottom of the board, found his own name sitting dead last, and almost laughed.