I want to just drift through life in Type-Moon.

Then, he seemed to see something on Yue Zhengling's face, and his eyes lit up: "What? You figured it out so quickly?"

Le Zhengling scratched her face sheepishly and sighed, "I guess so... After all, you've made it so clear, why should I keep being stubborn?"

Merlin looked at this kindred spirit who was stubbornly unwilling to admit defeat but was sometimes very straightforward, and suddenly had the illusion of seeing Mordred from the past.

Hmm, this guy and Lord Mordred seem to get along quite well. Thinking this to himself, he felt an urge to bring the two of them together.

Merlin noted down the idea and looked at Yue Zhengling with a smile. He had originally thought he would have to use Cathy Parluge as bait to make him submit, but he didn't expect him to understand so quickly. So the plan would have to be slightly adjusted, and he would use Cathy Parluge to motivate him to take action.

Merlin nodded with satisfaction. "That's good, that's good. Without further ado, let's begin! There's a reward for completing the training!"

Le Zhengling replied in a perfunctory tone devoid of any expectation, "Okay, okay..."

“Really, I’ll let you touch Fou after you finish training.” Merlin pushed the white cat standing next to him forward with his foot.

"Great!" Upon hearing this reward, Yue Zhengling looked at Fufu with wide eyes, his whole body brimming with energy!

Fearless, Fufu yawned, curled her tail, and walked to the side, knowing exactly what Merlin's training entailed.

"Before we begin, I'd like to ask, what are you going to teach me?"

Almost captivated by the adorable white creature, Yue Zhengling struggled to pull her gaze away, only to see Merlin take out his wand.

"Oh my~ Of course I'll teach you what I'm best at~"

Upon hearing these words, Yue Zhengling had a bad feeling.

Merlin gave a reassuring smile, and then—

He drew his sword from his wand.

“Here, take this…” The magician from Avalon handed him the sword with a smile.

Le Zhengling wore a look of utter despair, staring at this shameless guy with dead fish eyes.

"Huh? What's wrong? We can't start without picking up the sword~" The other person unknowingly weighed the sword in their hand.

"Ah~ Don't you like this sword? But it's already the best sword in all of Avalon. If you want something better, you'll have to ask other fairies to help forge it~"

"No, no, no, that's not what I meant. I meant... why did you give me a sword?" Yue Zhengling asked with a pained expression.

"Huh? How can I teach you swordsmanship without a sword?" Merlin asked, puzzled.

"...I'm a soul now, right?" He took a deep breath, suppressing his surging urge to complain.

"Yeah, so what?"

"Practicing swordsmanship requires physical training, right? I don't even have a physical body anymore, only a soul left. Logically speaking, shouldn't all my magic circuits be activated in this state? Shouldn't I be learning magic then?!"

Merlin was taken aback after hearing this, clearly not having considered the question. He stroked his chin, thought for a few seconds, and then said with a look of sudden realization, "That makes sense. Then let's learn magic."

Upon hearing his words, Yue Zhengling's anger level instantly dropped.

"Here, take it." The magician of Avalon smiled and handed the sword to him again.

"Paji!"

Le Zhengling felt as if she could hear the fuse of her rationality snapping. "What the hell are you doing! Didn't you say you'd teach me magic?!"

Merlin shrugged and said, "Yeah, but how can I teach you magic if you don't pick up a sword? You know, all the magic in my school is performed with a sword."

"Very good...very powerful!" Le Zhengling was so shocked by this answer that she no longer had the mood to be angry.

He took the sword from Merlin's hand in a fit of despair and examined it closely.

This sword was quite heavy. As a chef, Yue Zhengling had a good eye for knives, and the blade of this sword was undoubtedly sharper than any kitchen knife he had ever used.

The sword's blade was like a mirror, clearly reflecting his face. Moreover, this sword was quite special—Merlin was clearly a Western magician, but this sword looked very much like an Eastern sword, or more precisely, very much like a Chinese sword.

The blade, the hilt, the blood-stained guard, and even the tassel at the end all gave him an unusually familiar feeling.

But that's not the point. The point is that when I was playing the game back then, I always wondered why Merlin's sword didn't fall down even though it was stuck upside down. This question has finally been answered!

The blood shield is actually a clip! And the sword sheath of the Hidden Sword is actually a model of the Tower of the End! Merlin, how idle do you have to carve your staff like this!

Le Zhengling stared speechlessly at the white-haired man opposite him, a very subtle sense of respect rising within him—a respect for a craftsman.

"Hmm, very good. Let's test your reflexes and the limits of your strength in your current state." With that, he turned his staff upside down and assumed a gun-grip stance.

At this moment, Yue Zhengling discovered a secret he had never known before—Merlin's staff had a sharp golden spearhead at the bottom!

"Being a monk is just a side job for you, isn't it? You're actually a martial monk who's proficient in all kinds of martial arts, aren't you!"

Seeing Merlin's incredibly skilled gun-holding posture, Yue Zhengling finally couldn't help but complain.

"Haha, you know a little bit about everything once you've lived long enough, don't worry about it." The other party chuckled, then suddenly thrust forward.

A streak of light flashed before his eyes in an instant. Before the ambushed Le Zhengling could react, the tip of the spear grazed his face and pierced his ear.

“Hey, you’re one of us, so please be serious, or—it will hurt a lot.” Merlin squinted and said with a seemingly nonchalant but serious smile.

"You...are you serious?" Yue Zhengling looked at him, her face pale, and said incredulously.

"Of course I'm serious, and let me correct you on one point: don't think that just because we're tea enthusiasts I'll go easy on you, because your current personality is absolutely terrible..."

Merlin sheathed his gun and assumed a fighting stance again. "Let me correct your completely non-aggressive nature..."

Hearing Merlin's words, which were definitely not a joke, Yue Zhengling finally took it seriously. He knew that his mentality had always been problematic, but he did not think there was anything wrong with it.

Everyone has a different outlook on life. His outlook is to go with the flow, but many people would see it as just getting by.

He hates change, but sometimes people are forced to change. Like before, reality shattered his ordinary life, and in order to survive, he had to fight for his life.

Just like now, in order to become a salted fish in the future, he has to work hard to overcome the difficulties first.

Chapter 71 Merlin's Classroom - The Puppet Chapter

With his sword hanging naturally, Yue Zhengling had no intention of retaliating. After all, the difference in their skill levels was too great, and he was not used to the feel of this sword. Swinging it carelessly would affect his overall posture.

He decided to focus on dodging, and the gun's attack methods were mainly thrusting and sweeping. He felt that as long as he could see the attack route and the crisscrossing sweeping attacks, he could avoid them.

However, two hours later, the badly injured Yue Zhengling was lying on the ground.

Merlin stood beside him, looking down at him with a puzzled expression. "Why didn't you fight back?"

“I don’t think I, as an ordinary person, can effectively retaliate against you…” Yue Zhengling closed her eyes, refusing to look at him.

"Indeed, correcting your mindset is more important than developing your abilities."

Merlin paused his wand, and flowers bloomed all over the earth, while Yue Zhengling's wounds healed more quickly.

In fact, Yue Zhengling was also glad that Merlin did not use Chinese spear techniques, because there are significant differences between Western and Eastern spear techniques.

Merlin's wand didn't have the red tassel of a Chinese spear, so his vision wasn't obstructed; otherwise, Yue Zhengling's injuries wouldn't have been so minor.

Moreover, he didn't know that picking up a gun would affect his luck stat, and he always felt that Merlin's aim was terrible, that even an amateur like him could easily avoid it.

Thinking of this, a series of spearmen flashed through Le Zhengling's mind, among whom a blue figure stood out. So he made a decision: I will never be a spearman in my life!

However, dreams are often grand, but reality is often harsh.

He had no idea that at some point in the future, he would be forced to take up a gun twice and receive instruction from two masters of different schools of thought.

"It seems the curriculum needs to be changed." Merlin looked speechlessly at Yue Zhengling, who was lying on the ground and refusing to get up, pondering something.

"Besides, it seems that this sword of mine is not suitable for you. Let's have someone make one specially for you first. I think you'll be more motivated to use a sword that is uniquely yours."

As he spoke, Merlin gestured to Fou, who nodded in understanding and then turned and ran toward the distant lake.

"Alright, I've figured out your current situation from the test just now. First, your intuition is up to par, your agility is up to par, your defense is down to par, and your attack is extremely poor. But judging from how many times you rotated your wrist, your attack ability isn't actually that low, is it?"

During the test just now, Merlin saw that Yue Zhengling's hand holding the sword rotated many times. If an attack were launched based on that movement, although it might not actually hurt him, it would still be quite lethal in the outside world.

"...Don't underestimate doctors and cooks, they both wield knives." Yue Zhengling said this out of the blue, but he thought Merlin would understand.

"So that's how it is. You're a chef... No wonder your swings were so direct." Merlin recalled Yue Zhengling's attack prediction lines and indeed found that they were all depicted as unusually direct slashes.

This offensive method was remarkably similar to the offensive methods of the British knights of yesteryear, so Merlin incorporated this into his teaching.

"Alright! Now for the real training, get up." Merlin tapped his head with his wand, signaling him to stand up.

"Huh? Again... I'm too tired..." Yue Zhengling turned around, her back to Merlin, showing no intention of getting up.

"Young man, you really are lazy~ But it's okay, I think you'll get up in a little while."

Merlin didn't force him; he simply walked up to the clay figure the man had sculpted and inserted the rainbow-colored card into it.

Upon hearing Merlin's words, Yue Zhengling, feeling a sense of foreboding, sat up and watched Merlin's every move.

When he saw Merlin insert the rainbow card into the clay doll, and the doll emitted a yellow light and then grew bigger and bigger, Yue Zhengling couldn't help but exclaim, "Impure World Reincarnation?!"

However, he soon realized he was wrong. The clay figure eventually turned into something very familiar to him—the one he saw every week at the Mad Training Grounds.

"Hey, hey, hey, what the hell is that Earth Puppet? Merlin, didn't you say you didn't know anything about magic? How come you can just conjure something like this so easily?"

Le Zhengling immediately stood up, his mind filled with alarm bells.

"Huh? Oh, you mean this?" Merlin patted the clay golem that was two heads taller than him. "I didn't create this. It's something that materialized based on the concept that you remember most vividly and that is closest to the properties of clay."

Upon hearing this, Yue Zhengling froze, then, recalling Merlin's earlier action of inserting the card, he exclaimed in shock, "Could that card be—?"

"Yes, that card was made based on your memories. Well, let me be clear, I don't know what that card will transform into. I only provided the physical form and magic power; I can't control anything else."

Merlin looked at him with a smile, "But I didn't expect you to conjure up this kind of standardized puppet. It seems you really have a lot of interesting things in your memory."

After saying that, he took two steps back. "Alright, I need to go prepare other things. You should play with it for a while, oh no, I mean practice with it first."

Upon hearing this, Yue Zhengling's expression changed drastically.

Sure enough, just as Merlin took two steps back and before he could finish speaking, the Earth Puppet unleashed a punch at Yue Zhengling with a speed that was completely inconsistent with its appearance.

The whooshing sound of the punch seemed to tell him how powerful it was. Unable to dodge in time, Yue Zhengling crossed his hands to protect his head and pressed his body down, using the height difference to avoid the blow.

However, the puppet was much smarter than he had imagined. As he crouched down, it delivered an uppercut with its other hand, hitting him squarely.

"boom!"

"Goo!"

The two sounds were made almost simultaneously: one was the sound of the puppet hitting Le Zhengling, and the other was Le Zhengling's groan of pain.

He was sent flying five meters by the blow and fell to the ground. The puppet did not pursue him but stood quietly in place.

"Merlin, you bastard! You want to kill me?!" Le Zhengling shouted as he propped himself up and looked at Merlin not far away.

"Ah, I'm so sorry~ I misadjusted the magic output." Merlin patted his head and walked behind the puppet.

"At least you have a conscience." Le Zhengling stood up and was about to walk back.

"I originally thought I could send you flying ten meters, but it seems I reduced the magic output. Hmm, it's fine now, you guys continue~" Merlin patted the puppet again, and the puppet's eyes glowed red as it ran towards Yue Zhengling.

The person who heard Merlin's words didn't even look at him and turned to run away.

Chapter 72 Merlin's Classroom - Attack Arc

Watching the two beings chasing and fleeing, Merlin withdrew his gaze and said softly, "Don't blame me, this is to help you master your current soul form. Without this method, you don't know when you'll truly adapt to this body."

After saying that, he gazed in the direction Fou had left, "I hope everything goes well."

Two hours later, Yue Zhengling, who had been circling around with the Earth Puppet, stopped.

When he first started running away, he discovered that this thing only had high instantaneous acceleration—that's right, it accelerated by punching and pushing off the ground—but its normal running speed wasn't as fast as his.

Moreover, as it ran, chunks of mud kept falling from the earth golem, and as it fell, it became tattered and eventually collapsed.

The rainbow card in the pile of dirt flew away towards the distant tower with a "whoosh," but the sharp-eyed man noticed that something else was buried in the dirt.

Dig away the pile of soil that had almost disappeared, and find an orange object inside.

Le Zhengling stared intently at the eight-linked double crystal in his hand, wondering if he was dreaming.

"Brother, am I actually playing a game?" He picked up the object and examined it closely.

"Oh, so that puppet left behind something so interesting." Suddenly, a familiar voice rang out from behind him again.

Le Zhengling was startled and stiffly turned his head. Merlin stood there quietly with a smile on his face.

"No, no, no, don't look like that~ Today's training is over, and this afternoon I'll teach you magic as you wish~ I'll teach you all the magic I know." Merlin patted his chest shamelessly, as if he knew a lot of magic.

"Oh, by the way, is this thing you have useful?" Merlin asked, looking at the eight-linked double crystal in Yue Zhengling's hand.

Le Zhengling shook his head. "You want this eight-linked double crystal?"

"Oh ho, so this thing is called an octet crystal." Merlin looked at the high-density earth element crystal with great interest.