I secretly thought to myself, “Maybe it’s because Edward Bennett asked this middle-aged man to help me? But what use could these seven basic moves, so simple that even a three-year-old could understand them, possibly have? Teaching a few moves from military boxing would be more useful than this.”

I muttered a few complaints to myself. After I’d mostly recovered my strength, I walked back to my wall. Although I didn’t believe these seven ordinary moves could be anything special, when I stood in front of the wall, I still couldn’t help but try them out: left straight punch, right straight punch, left elbow strike, right elbow strike, front kick, side kick, spinning kick.

Very quickly, I discovered that these seven attack moves were indeed much more effective than random flailing. As my proficiency improved, after a few hours, I could almost chip away a bit of health every ten attacks.

I’d always had a knack for fighting. Once I got familiar with these seven moves, I could instinctively combine them in various ways, turning them into a continuous string of attacks.

Just as I was getting excited, pounding away, people started finishing this training task one after another.

The first to finish was the middle-aged man who had taught me the seven moves. The second through fifth were a group of foreigners who looked more like beasts than humans, one of whom was a burly Black man. With my meager knowledge of anthropology, there was no way I could tell from their appearances whether these guys were American, British, French, Russian, or maybe Italian. To me, all white people looked the same, and all Black people looked the same. So who ranked in what order meant nothing to me. What mattered more was the lunch that would come later.

Unfortunately, just as the wall in front of me finally dropped below nine thousand health points, Instructor’s voice calling for lunch rang out.

Chapter 8: Hotel Service

The Instructor, who had disappeared earlier, now appeared before us pushing a cart full of black bread. He said harshly, “Anyone who hasn’t finished the training gets no lunch. You, you, and you—can eat.”

Instructor was clearly not someone to be fooled. He easily called out the names of those who had completed the task. Even though Instructor hadn’t been present earlier, he didn’t make a single mistake.

I licked my lips, suddenly feeling both exhausted and ravenous. Even though that cart of black bread looked absolutely unappetizing, I couldn’t help but swallow. I was new here and had no intention of rebelling, but it was obvious that someone was unhappy with Instructor’s arrangement. The blond foreigner next to me gave a sneering laugh and said, “Instructor, I was just a little short of finishing the task, and I’m really hungry. I think I deserve a lunch.”

The absurdly strong Instructor shot him a cold glance, then swept his eyes over the group of fierce, unruly men, and said in a tone colder than ice, “Then I’ll give you another option: if you can block one punch from me, you can have lunch. Anyone else interested can also try this pre-meal appetizer.”

The blond foreigner grinned, baring his teeth, and took up a fighting stance. Just from his posture and the lightness of his footwork, it was clear he was a skilled fighter.

Instructor paid him no mind and asked calmly, “Are you ready?”

The blond foreigner shouted, “Waiting for you to make your move, Instructor!”

What happened next, I will never forget for the rest of my life.

Instructor suddenly transformed into a berserker, moving at a speed beyond human limits. With a quick step and a punch, he smashed his fist—big as a casserole—into the blond foreigner’s face. Then everyone saw his head explode like a watermelon, red and white everywhere...

With just one punch, Instructor silenced this group of devilish brutes completely. As if he’d done something trivial, he said calmly, “Eat!”

At that moment, the blond foreigner, still standing upright, suddenly collapsed to the ground with a thud. He didn’t even need to gasp his last breath—he was dead on the spot.

Lunch was an uneventful interlude...

Not long after, I realized that idiots bold enough to challenge Instructor showed up every few days.

And the fate of these idiots... was always just as uneventful.

There were about seventy or eighty of us in this batch—of course, that’s after subtracting the ten unlucky ones who died in the morning, the unfortunate blond foreigner just now, and those who were seriously injured. But only eleven people who completed the morning’s training were eligible for lunch.

This casualty rate also made me understand why Edward Bennett said the chance of walking out of this place alive was one in ten. And this was just half a day, and already nearly a tenth had died.

After lunch, Instructor casually reset the numbers on the wall, told everyone to keep smashing the wall, and then strolled away.