Soul of the Warrior

"Hah," Aeriella sighed, lowering her sword. Blood dripped from the tip, dribbling on the ground. It wasn't just her sword that was stained red, her opponent's sword likewise dripped her blood.

Lugius lifted his sword and rested it on the back of his shoulders as he appraised Aeriella. She had nicks and cuts across her arms and legs, but only a few jabs in her torso. None of her vital spots had even a scratch. She had gotten better over the past week of constant sparring with Lugius, seeing a steady uptick in not only her Skill Level but her actual application.

But she was still frustrated. Lugius, for all of his prowess, was not as Skilled as Reivyn. Sure, Reivyn hadn't managed to nick her at all in their duel, but she also wasn't suppressing her Stats to a standard to match his. She only suppressed hers to an approximation of what she thought his Stats were.

Another ridiculous anomaly of his, she thought. I've never heard of a Tier 2 Classer having Stats to match an upper Tier 3. Not even the most powerful Bloodlines that I've heard of are that powerful.

"Is there something the matter, My Liege Lady?" Lugius inquired.

If there was something wrong with his teaching, then this wasn't a valuable opportunity for him, it was a nightmare. Aeriella shook her head.

"No, you're perfectly adequate," she answered. "My Skills are increasing at a fast pace. Faster, even, than they have in a very long time. It's just that after so much sparring with you, I can tell that you're not as good as my opponent(man)."

Lugius sucked in a breath at that statement. It was one thing for Aeriella to meet a contemporary that had a higher Skill Level than she did. It was something else entirely to meet someone with a higher Skill Level than the chief instructor of her Martial training.

"Well, to be fair, My Liege Lady, Swords isn't my main combat Skill. Pugilist is my number one, and Axes are my second."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing you. Your Swords Skill is perfectly fine for my training. It's just... I don't know how to say it. I wanted something closer to what he could throw at me.

"It doesn't matter. We'll continue after a short break."

"Yes, My Liege Lady."

Aeriella walked to the side of the training ground, pulling out a water skin to quench her thirst. The cuts and scrapes on her body stung with her sweat, and she needed to rehydrate often. The heat of the desert was brutal when she was pushing her training. She was used to a much more temperate climate.

The Runic Spell is getting close to completion. I'll need to execute the other plan soon, as well. Sparring with Lugius isn't the only way I can increase my Skill Levels.

Aeriella subconsciously had a small smile on her lips as she thought about the immediate future and what it would bring.

"Sit up straight," Kefira said from behind Reivyn. "You don't have to be stiff, but your posture needs to be clear. If you hunch, then your meridians will move with your body, and they could be harder to distinguish in your inner mind. Once you've fully mastered the technique, though, and you have a perfect grasp on the placement of the meridians, then you can exercise in any way you want."

Reivyn was sitting in the lotus position, hands on his knees and eyes closed. Kefira was kneeling behind him, whispering into his ear a different way to circulate his Mana to increase his Affinities.

Before, he had just moved the Mana as a ball throughout the meridians permeating his body over and over again, soaking his meridians and flesh and bones in the attuned Mana to increase his Affinity Level. Kefira had scoffed at such a method, declaring it to be the lowest of the low.

Apparently, there were many different methods to circulate one's Mana for Affinity training. The most common method in the higher Tier Regions wasn't to follow the exact path of one's meridians. Kefira had explained that that was more for the System to add Stats from Leveling and Bloodlines than it was for attuning one's body to an Affinity. Instead of running the Mana through every single tiny channel, which a lot of them were dead ends and required one to split off a portion from their central Mana ball, one would only follow the most rudimentary path through the body.

It might seem counterintuitive to do so, but Kefira had explained that the attuned Mana would naturally spread from the Meridians, soaking the body in the Affinity and that the minuscule speed increase of following 100% of the pathway was far outweighed by an increase in the number of rotations one could achieve by shortening the path.

She had offered to teach him the method of her own family. Reivyn didn't balk or try to talk her out of it, and he had simply agreed.

"Ok, now let's begin," Kefira said, reaching around Reivyn to place both of her hands on his stomach. "Actually, wait. I think you should take your shirt off."

Kefira once more removed her hands and leaned back. Reivyn turned his head to look at her face, a mischievous grin on her lips.

"Oh, yeah? You think that's necessary?" Reivyn quirked an eyebrow.

"Mhm, absolutely," Kefira winked.

Reivyn shrugged and simply took his shirt off without preamble. He resumed his posture, and after a silent moment, he felt Kefira's hands return to his stomach.

"Ok. What you're going to do is to start off exactly the same way you would with the method I taught you previously, but instead of imagining your Mana as a solid ball radiating light and warmth out to the surroundings of your body, imagine it as a ball of yarn. The yarn is as thin as you can possibly make it, and it must still have the same properties of seeping its power out around it.

"Start here," Kefira pressed with her index finger directly in the center of his core and held her hand there.

It didn't take Reivyn long to manipulate his Mana into the ball of yarn that Kefira had described. He nodded his head that he was ready to go once he had it down.

"Now, unspool the yarn, leaving it anchored in your core. Follow my hand, moving at the same speed I do."

Kefira kept her left hand in place on his core, and then she started tracing Reivyn's internal meridians on the outside of his body with her right hand. She had watched him perform his exercise enough times, and with her Mana Sense and Sight Skills, she was able to pinpoint the path he moved his Mana. Having a different Bloodline and a Combat Class as his first foundational Class, his pathways were different enough from her own that she wouldn't have been able to guide him this way if she hadn't carefully watched him.

Her hand traced his body with a slow, deliberate speed. Reivyn matched the speed, unspooling the yarn and keeping the thread taught between the anchor and the ball. The ball of yarn reached the first major point in his meridians where it split off into several different dead-end paths, and Kefira's finger paused for a moment.

"Circle the ball of yarn several times in place, and imagine looping it around to create a knot."

Reivyn followed the instructions, and then Kefira's hand resumed its journey. The two of them traced his main meridian path, one on the outside and one on the inside, all the way around, stopping at several junctures to create a knot. They did this until they had moved all the way back to his core where they made one final knot.

"Now, the next step is to lay a second track down next to the first. You might think that you need to follow the exact same path and strengthen the string that you have in place throughout your body, but that would be a mistake. You need to make a second, separate line.

"We don't really know the exact reasoning behind how or why it works this way, but doing multiple lines next to each other creates a better benefit than simply strengthening the one line you've made. The second trick is after you've made a separate knot next to the ones at your junctures, you need to make a third knot that encompasses the two of them.

"Again, we don't know why it works better. We've just found after countless generations of trial and error that it has the best effect."

Reivyn nodded his head and once again followed her hand with his Mana yarn ball. Kefira suddenly tightened her grip around him with her arms as she leaned forward into him, pressing herself against his back tightly. She obviously wasn't wearing armor in this setting, nor was she wearing anything that greatly restricted her, either. Reivyn felt beads of sweat form on his head as he fought to maintain his concentration.

"Sorry, my legs were getting tired," Kefira whispered into his ear.

"Uh huh," Reivyn didn't have the mental capacity to say anything else in the situation.

They continued the exercise, and Reivyn's mind almost began to wander as Kefira seemed to unconsciously sway side to side ever so slightly on his back.

"Concentrate," Kefira half giggled, half scolded. Reivyn just gritted his teeth as he continued to unspool the yarn.

After the third revolution was completed, Kefira stopped tracing his body and allowed Reivyn to continue moving the ball on his own. She kept a careful watch on his speed with her senses, though, occasionally telling him to slow down or speed up just a little to maintain the perfect pace.

Reivyn did notice that she hadn't moved her body away from his, though. He didn't mind, even though it made it a lot harder to concentrate.

After eight full rotations, Kefira told him to stop.

"Woman, were you trying to make me fail?" Reivyn rounded on Kefira.

Kefira backed up, lifting a hand to hide her smile as she laughed at him.

"Of course not," she denied, "but you of all people should know that one gets better results by struggling. I was helping you."

"Uh huh, some help. What now?"

"That's the end of the first lesson," she said.

"Just the first?" Reivyn asked. Kefira nodded.

"Yeah, if you do more than eight rotations with this method, then you start getting diminishing returns, and the time spent doesn't equal the benefit. It makes more sense to stop, take a break, and then start over from the beginning with a different Affinity to work on. You can still choose to work on the same Affinity for the next session, but, again, there will be diminishing returns.

"A good rule of thumb to go by is the rule of three. Do two different Affinities before returning to the first to get the absolute maximum benefit out of the exercise."

"And what's the second lesson?" Reivyn asked.

"The second lesson is blending and splicing other Affinities into the yarn. You can't change the affinity of the Mana while doing the exercise, so you have to build your yarn ball with the perfect-sized string for each rotation. This will take many attempts to get just right, but the benefit is worth the effort.

"The next step of the method is to lay four different lines of Affinities down, and then double them up on the last four rotations. You'll lose a little bit of efficiency from not focusing on one main Affinity, but it's not as much as you would think. The overall speed of increasing all of your Affinities will double, and the most basic method I just showed you is probably about four times as effective as the common way of doing things.

"Do you see now why I said the way you were doing it before was the lowest of the low? The way I train my Affinities, and the way you'll be doing it soon, is ten times faster, at least."

"I can see that. I'll be catching up to you in my proficiency in no time."

"Hah! Keep dreaming. I'm a magical prodigy."

"Oh yeah? Well, I never did tell you that out of my initial Stats and Skills, my Mental Stats and Mana Skills were higher than my Physical ones. I simply got forced into a Martial Class at the beginning, though I probably would have chosen one anyway if I had the choice.

"What's your highest Tier Affinity, and what's your highest Level?" Reivyn asked.

"My highest Tier would be the Tier 4 Space/Time at Level 16, and my highest Level would be the Tier 3 Emptiness at Level 53. What about you?"

"Wait. Space/Time? Not Space and Time?"

"Correct. I haven't met anyone who knows any more than I do about it, but from what I've gathered, Space and Time are basically one Affinity; however, the System also imposes a hard separation between the two. Anyone who gets Space-related Affinities, regardless of if it's Space itself or not, is generally precluded from gaining Time-related Affinities, and vice versa.

"I've heard of legends where extreme Transcendents are able to unlock the other side, but as far as I know, people think it's just a myth."

"And yet you have it."

"And yet I have it."

"Hmm... well, my highest Tier Affinity is the Tier 4 Eternal at Level 4, and my highest Level would be the Tier 3 Light and Darkness Affinities, both at Level 49."

Kefira stared him in the eye for a second, not making any sound or movement.

"You know, you don't have to keep secrets from me. I wouldn't reveal them to anyone. If you don't want to tell me the truth, you could just say that."

Reivyn could detect that there was a bit of genuine hurt in Kefira's voice as she said that. He shook his head before taking her hands in his.

"It's not that," he said. "It's more like I don't really consider the other Affinities to be my own at this point. It's true, I do have two Tier 5 Affinities, but I got them in a weird way, and I've been told that it's basically impossible to work on them until I've reached Level 100 or higher in a whole lot of other Affinities before I'm even supposed to be able to acquire them."

"You have the Realm Mana," it was a statement, not a question. "But wait, you said you have two Tier 5 Affinities?"

"Veridical... and Abyss," Reivyn confirmed.

Kefira once more stared at him for a moment. Reivyn held his breath, waiting for her reaction.

"That's... interesting. I didn't know that was possible. I know about the Veridical Affinity, of course. There's even more than one Archmage in Wispan who have it unlocked, but Abyss Affinity..." Kefira shrugged. "Well, whatever.

"Thank you for trusting me with that information."

Kefira placed her hands on either side of Reivyn's face and leaned in to give him a kiss. They held the position for several minutes before breaking away once again.

"Yeah, that's one of my biggest secrets," Reivyn said.

"Only one of," Kefira rolled her eyes. "Of course it is.

"But you weren't lying when you said you might catch up to me. It all depends on how fast you can break through to Level 50 in your Light and Darkness Affinities. You still have a way to go before you can compete with me in the Tier 4 Affinities, though." Kefira stuck her tongue out.

"Yeah, I've fallen way behind," Reivyn said, scratching the back of his head. "I haven't worked on my Affinities in three years."

"Shut up!" Kefira threw a pillow at his head. Reivyn didn't avoid it, and it bounced off of his face. "I think I'm going to throw up. That's how disgusting you are right now.

"Three years! You haven't worked on them for three years?! It's not fair. Life isn't fair."

Reivyn laughed and leaned forward to wrap Kefira up in a hug.

"Get your hands off of me! I'm mad at you," Kefira huffed, folding her arms and refusing to return the hug. "Three years.

"I've worked my butt off every day, never giving myself a break from doing at least a little training. Even when you were 'missing' and I was worried sick about you, I never failed to do at least a little bit of training. And you tell me you haven't trained your Affinities in three years!

"Which one of us is the magical prodigy?"

"Come on, it's not that bad," Reivyn tried to console her.

"You think I'm joking?" Kefira glared at him. "Do you think I've been telling a silly joke when I've said I'm a magical prodigy? No. I've been told my whole life that I'm the most talented Caster that's been seen in thousands of years, regardless of which Region or empire you look.

"And then you show up and sweep me off my feet and take my breath away in more ways than one. I feel like I've been punched in the gut."

"Kefira," Reivyn grabbed her hands and stared at her face until she looked back into his eyes. "There's more to talent than Affinity Levels."

"I know," Kefira took a deep breath. "And I'm not actually mad about it, either. It's just... my entire worldview just came crumbling down. Your Swords Skill is around the Master level, right?"

"Technically."

Kefira paused, her mouth open. She narrowed her eyes at Reivyn.

"We'll address that answer later." Kefira recovered herself once more. "Anyway. Imagine working for years to achieve the Master level in Swords, and then someone around your age shows up with a Transcendent Skill Level."

"You mean like my dad?" Reivyn teased.

"Gah!" Kefira balled up her fist and hit Reivyn on the chest to emphasize each word. "You. Are. So. Hateful. Sometimes."

Reivyn captured her hand in his once more, throwing his head back and laughing.

"Sorry, sorry. I couldn't resist. My dad is more than twice as old as I am, so he's not exactly around my age.'"

"Didn't you say he was in his early to mid-thirties?" Reivyn nodded his head. "Man, your whole family is something else."

"Yeah, they're not bad."

Kefira rolled her eyes once more as Reivyn pulled her into another hug. She sighed and leaned her weight against him.

Reivyn witnessed the soldiers of his company mop up the remaining enemy soldiers on the battlefield. Smoke billowed from charred craters, and bodies littered the ground everywhere. A group of combat medics was tending to the wounded from Reivyn's side, and he could see a couple of bodies covered in white cloth off to the side.

The resistance the enemy put up had increasingly gotten tougher and tougher. No longer were they exclusively hordes of raving lunatics with "1's" branded on their heads. They ran into just as many "2's" and a large amount of "3's" as well. They still had the overwhelming advantage in the quality of soldiers, but the enemy had the numbers.

It felt like they were hardly making a dent in the combat effectiveness of the invaders. Counter to what one would expect, it seemed that taking out huge numbers of those of lower standing in the opposing army had caused the effectiveness of their soldiers to go up as they bolstered their ranks with the higher branded numbers.

Reivyn stood stone-faced, not letting any emotion show, though he felt saddened at each loss of life his soldiers suffered.

The time for tears is after the battle, Reivyn couldn't remember where he had heard that saying from, but it was apt.

Lieutenant Jek came walking over, and Reivyn turned his head and indicated for the man to give his report.

"Sir, there's a small group of the rescued civilians that insist on meeting you," Jek said.

"Oh yeah? Did they say what about?" Reivyn asked.

"No, sir. They simply said they would like to meet with someone who could make decisions. I figured you weren't doing anything..."

"That's alright," Reivyn nodded. "I'll meet with them. Lead the way."

Jek turned about and led Reivyn toward the rescued civilians. There was a clear distinction between most of the civilians and a group of about fifteen or so who stood slightly apart from the rest. A young man stood in front, clearly elected the voice of the small group.

"You're the one in charge?" The man eyed Reivyn up and down. He didn't have a hostile tone in his voice, and the look on his face was one of curiosity.

"That's me," Reivyn confirmed. "Provisional Captain Reivyn, the Company Commander. What I can do for you?"

"We want to fight," the man said, determination on his face.

Reivyn stared the man in the eye, and he didn't see any fear or wavering in them. He glanced around the others, and he saw similar expressions and stances.

"Do you have Combat Classes?" Reivyn asked.

"Each of us has a semi-Combat Class," the young man nodded.

"Semi-Combat Class?" Reivyn directed his question to Jek.

"Oh, that means it's a Lifestyle or Support type Class that, when used in a certain way, can be an effective Combat Class."

"I see," Reivyn said. He turned back to the young man. "And what Class do you have?"

"I'm a Metal Blacksmith. I have my Mana Skills unlocked, and I dare say that my Hammer Skills will be higher than any of the soldiers you have in your platoons. I've seen that you have squads in each of them that are equipped with such implements."

"Mhm," Reivyn stroked his chin in thought. He turned to a young woman who was standing closest to the man speaking for the group. "And you?"

"I'm a Flame Dancer," the girl replied. She was taller than most of the other civilians, with blonde hair and a lithe body. "Normally, my Class is one of support. I can light the fire in one's heart and boost their capabilities. If I pair my Skills with a weapon, though, it translates almost directly to combat. And I have a lot of training with the sword."

"I see. That's two of you with an elemental designation to your Class. How many of you have your Mana Skills unlocked?"

"We all do," the young man answered. "That's one of the reasons why we stepped forward."

"Ok. Jek, get the particulars from each person. You know what information is relevant," Reivyn instructed his officer. He turned back to the young man and the group of civilians. "I can't promise that I can guarantee a spot for all of you, but we do have other civilians in our camp. Even if I can't get you a spot as a volunteer, I'm sure I can find something for all of you to do.

"After we vet you, of course."

"Of course," the young man nodded.

"What's your name?" Reivyn asked.

"I'm Gauis," the man held out his hand, and Reivyn shook it. His grip was strong and firm.

"I'm Rayha," the dancer said.

"Good. As long as everything checks out, welcome aboard."

Gauis nodded his head, and Reivyn saw Rayha give a small smile out of the corner of his eye before he turned to head back to his position.