In the 3 hours that Max trained inside the mirror world, he died a total of 154 times against his own self.
In 180 minutes of fighting, he died 154 times averaging just over a minute against himself, which would be lower if one counted all the time wasted in respawn and his sprint back to his opponent.
The fight in the mirror world was an eye opening experience for Max as he realised just how far away he was from being even the best version of himself as a fighter, let alone the best tier3 fighter.
His enemy used the same set of moves that he used, but the enemy's execution of those moves was very different from that of Max's.
Max felt like a new world opened to him when he saw some attacks being used in ways that he had never thought of before as he felt like he had a lot to learn and digest after this session.
For a moment Drax was worried that the constant defeat would make Max lose morale, but he soon realised that Max was a madman and a masochist who chuckled loudly after every defeat as he saw those defeats as fears even he himself was capable of but was yet to learn.
Every defeat made his blood pump faster as he tried to not make the same mistakes as before and ended up making new mistakes to reflect upon.
In the end Drax realised his worries were for naught as although childish, Max had a strong mentality and personality in other fields and was not easily discouraged by small setbacks.
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( At the designated meeting spot )
The rebel city was 250 kilometres from the town where the Garrison was stationed and was about an 18 hours ride on a mount.
As the sun began setting down, the group started their journey on their respective mounts, and although Asiva, Anna and Sebastian each had their dragon's perfectly capable of flight, they chose to ride horses with the rest of the captain's instead of flying while Max rode one of his Netherbeasts.
The group only encountered two monsters on the way and had a smooth journey uptil the rebel city.
A few kilometres outside the city walls, the group camped in the woods as they watered their mounts and took some rest, while Severus scouted the best path of entry.
There were tier 1 and 2 sentries posted all over the walls, however, they were lazy and only on the lookout for any large approaching armies and did not care much about small groups going in or out.
Severus hence found the perfect spot for entering, right in the middle of two sentry posts and began scaling the wall with nothing but two brooms with a javelin-like pointy edge at the ends.
He plunged one into the wall and tested it for weight, before plunging another a bit higher and climbing it.
This way, Severus scaled the whole wall and then threw a secure rope down for the rest of the group to climb up.
The tier 3 captains used the rope and scaled the wall within seconds as their superior strength allowed them to breeze through vertical climbing, however, crossing the second wall was a bit trickier.
The sentry posts between the two walls were impossible to bypass without being noticed and the distance between the two walls was too far away to jump, with the second wall being taller than the first one.
It was here that Anna came to the rescue as she powershot thick ropes across the boundary and the group used them to begin climbing using nothing but their bare hands as the rest of their bodies hung freely below.
It was the middle of the night when the group was crossing between the walls, and should they make the slightest noise it would alert the sentry's underneath and put them in a lot of trouble, hence they needed to be extremely careful to not make any sounds while crossing.
Max felt his heart rise to his throat when he saw one of the sentries walking out of the tent with a steaming hot drinking mug, but thankfully he did not look up to the starry sky and went back inside without noticing the hanging men above.
The task of pulling yourself forward while hanging on nothing but thick ropes was hard, but the tier 3 captains did it easily as the entire group crossed the distance between two walls in under 1 minute before leaping straight down and entering the city in the darkness of the night.
The infiltration mission was successful and the sentries had not raised any alarms meaning that they had entered the area undetected.
The group quickly changed clothes and scattered as they separately made their way towards the ' Wayward Inn ' , a local inn that Severus had scouted prior to the mission and declared as safe for staying.
The inn owner was old and did not pry into things much and was the perfect host for this kind of mission where anonymity was paramount.
For the next one hour the group kept checking into the inn, in intervals of 5-10 mins as they registered as separate entities.
The inn owner being none the wiser was happy that his business was booming as he did not suspect any foul play.
The group was able to settle in for the night in their respective rooms but there was no sleep for the men as the town hall meeting was the following morning.
The most anxious was Sebastian on whose shoulders the entire mission rested, as he mentally prepared the lines he was going to use in the hall the next morning.
Sebastian mentally memorised all the rules of the turtle hermit way and prayed to Kremeth to lend him the power of the cowardice, because he was sure that he would need it the next morning.
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/// A/N - This bonus chapter is sponsored by patron allcat_gaming, please thank him in the comments for this one ///