Jake was truly a genius. Why hadn’t he thought of using Polly earlier? It was such an obvious solution! Sure, he could also have asked Owen, but Polly had been keen on finding some way to help him for a while, and this was such a prime opportunity.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtAfter he had gotten his clothing situation fixed through Polly – partly by cleaning it, partly by buying some new stuff - he headed straight back to a small townhouse that served as housing for Gladiators. Later on, he met back up with Owen and Polly to eat before going home and to bed. When he woke up and opened the door to the small house, he saw his clothes there, neatly packaged by the professional cleaning company.
What? He hadn’t actually made Polly clean them. With her whole young mistress vibe, she clearly never washed her own clothes either, so Jake had asked her where she got her clothes washed and had her escort him there. It was quite the high-end place based on what Jake could gather, specializing in cleaning armor and weapons for the combatants. As they already knew Polly, things went smoothly, and he didn’t even have to pay for anything. Not that there was a way to pay for anything without using Colosseum Points, and not even the Wyrmgod was cruel enough to make people in Challenge Dungeons spend points on not having dirty clothes.
Jake’s third day as a Gladiator was spent practicing with his bow, doing a Show Match, and working a bit on energy control when he was too physically tired to do any more target practice. The Show Match in question was versus some weird six-legged mammal creature that had died from just a few good kicks to the head.
The fourth day and onwards was very much the same as time passed. Archery practice was the name of the game, and he quickly got into a routine. Others would likely get bored doing the same things over and over again, but Jake had always been good at hyper-focusing on tasks until his body physically told him to stop. When that happened, he would just switch to working on something that took brain power instead until he was wrung out mentally too.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmWhat rest he did need, he got through sleeping or during his rendezvous with Owen and Polly as they went out to eat, or Jake watched one of Owen’s matches. Speaking of Owen, he pretty quickly also reached Gladiator rank, with even Polly beginning to do some matches after finding herself inspired by Jake and Owen. She still had a long way to go, but she did at least begin to win some matches after learning some basic melee fighting along with her magic.
Jake wasn’t exactly surprised when she turned out to be pretty good at both. Her stats were clearly not ordinary; the only real problem was her lack of actual practice and fighting experience. Polly wasn’t going to become a Gladiator or anything like that before Jake left, but she could definitely get a few more promotions.
Everyone slowly got stronger, and soon, around nine entire weeks had passed since Jake had become a Gladiator, with nothing that exciting happening during this time. Jake just did one match every day, and as he slowly made progress, he realized that his