“You need to carry yourself like a true daughter of Vaughan!”

Stark Vaughan, the current head of the House of Vaughan said before he drew his weapons back as Ver tumbled back onto the ground once again. The Kraken’s tendril caught her fall, but it didn’t save her from the frustration at being bested by Stark once again.

“One more!” Ver said quickly with her usual quiet voice before brushing back her dark blonde hair and tying it even tighter than before. Surely this tension stemming from the base of her scalp will help her deflect the next barrage of shots.

“We shall train as much as you’d fancy,” Stark replied, spinning around as his old brown training uniform flapped in the wind. He swirled around his blade as a sharp whooshing sound filled the room, and Ver charged forward again.

On her left, she held the Water Weaving sword that she obtained from the defeat of Nana Kata and his band of swordsmen back at the Infinite Academy, and on her right, she drew the Sky Splitting Sword that she obtained from defeating the group of mercenaries as lead by Skylar Ray.

With two legendary weapons in hand and the Kraken’s purple shells tightly wrapped around her body as her protective armor, Ver swung forward as the duel swords swiped from both sides.

“Too obvious,” Stark commented, stepping forward into the opening right as the blades were about to make contact with the side of his body, and in a single movement, he rebounded the thin body of his sword enhanced by his wave before knocking both swords back in a snappy sequence of quick hits.

Then, the sharpened tip pinned against Ver’s chest piece, shoving her back before Stark quickly drew it back and unleashed a second attack towards Ver’s face as the Kraken quickly formed a helmet around her face.

“He really is playing with you, little one!” The Kraken, or Shra’Ahk as it liked to be called now sounded amused before it quickly dispelled the helmet as Stark stood back with a smile on his face and his mouth about to unleash more taunting words.

“Shut it!” Ver said both to the Kraken and Stark at the same time as the latter raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side, “Sorry. I was talking to…you know who.”

“Right.” Stark pretended to understand, but he gave up trying to think about all of the intricate and ridiculous Wave powers the current generation of Wave users have. From different elemental Manifests to straight-up monsters and demons and such, he had seen way too many strange things during his training days at the Sky Guardian Corp to care anymore.

Because at the end of the day, nothing compared to raw skill.

“You may come again,” Stark said as Ver launched herself forward, using her Perfect Synchrony to give her an extra boost of speed as Stark rapidly expanded out his Wave sensing abilities, covering the entire practice field at once as Ver’s presence sliced through it, leaving behind a violent wake.

With her Water Weaving Sword whipping forward like a snake, she then cocked back the Sky Splitting Sword before rapidly expanding it and accompanying the smaller and faster attack with a far larger and overwhelming one.

Trapped in between a snake and a massive blade, she then accelerated both weapons inward, fully intent on completely crushing her opponent. Stark had his eyes opened up wide as his intense focus seemed to have pushed his eyeballs outward like the bulging ones of fish.

Through his mouth, a thin breath leaked out as he also readied himself.

“A snack!” Kraken clearly noticed the exact same thing that Ver did, and its excited voice filled her mind.

“Let’s eat him up!” Ver said when Stark’s body suddenly flickered as he lightly tapped his foot down, creating an illusion of levitation as the body of the Water Weaving Sword passed straight under him. With Ver looking up, he scraped his foot against the body of the Water Weaving Sword and tapped it downward.

Then, he used the initial push to propel himself forward as the massive Sky Splitting Sword neared its travel and slammed against him.

At the instant before the massive blade’s body makes contact, Stark raised his knee, timing Ver’s attack before kneeing up against the side of her Sky Splitting Sword and causing it to torque within her hand. Ver felt a strain in her wrist, and she hurried to change her stance when Stark pointed his sword downward, allowing Ver’s momentum to run herself into Stark’s attack.

The tip of the Wave-enhanced sword clashed against Ver’s armor as the metal screamed before Stark’s sword folded up into a metallic ball upon the impact, and he vaulted over Ver’s shoulders before landing firmly on the ground behind her and rolling forward.

By the time he returned to his feet, he had already drawn another weapon in preparation for another round as Ver fell face-first onto the ground. After masterfully managing the close-quarter spacing with the sword, Stark now switched over to the longer ranged spears with his own Wave enhancing the weapon's integrity.

“It’s not over!” Ver shouted with her hands defiantly raised off the ground before she shoved herself back up, dropping the Water Weaving Sword and holding both hands onto her Sky Splitting Sword. She rapidly shrank its body, planting it straight down to the ground before expanding it again and using that as a propelling force to send her flying towards Stark.

Then, her blade slashed through the air as Stark moved ahead to intercept it with his spear. However, right before it impacted the tip of the spear, Ver performed a twist while injecting a shot of Wave into her sword, causing it to expand and knock aside Stark’s spear as she rammed into his body.

However, the hit felt lighter than Ver had predicted, as Stark had already preemptively fallen backward to reduce the impact. Clipping the spear against the massive Sky Splitting Sword, Ver rapidly shrunk everything once again and obtained yet another burst of speed from the Kraken’s tendrils striking the ground behind her.

"You are going down now!" Ver shouted. With the Sky Splitting Sword now the size of a dagger, she rammed into Stark’s body at last and pinned the sword against his chest.

“I’ve got you!” Ver declared proudly, when she felt something poking against her kidney at the back.

“If you were fighting against someone with far stronger abilities and better weapons, you would have died five times over already.” Stark said so with such a matter-of-fact attitude that Ver couldn't even shout back angrily. He dropped the small blade he was holding onto the ground as Ver stepped back and grunted with frustration, “But against an old-man like me, you can still use your raw power. Not bad.”

“You don't have to make me feel better.” Ver reached a hand and helped Stark up from the ground as her Kraken’s armor retracted back into her right eye and the dark pattern slowly dissipated away.

“When you only wield one of those weapons, you can control it with far more flexibility and nuance.” Stark commented as he fixed up his uniform and slowed his breathing as his chest rose and fell, “But when you tried to force both together, then you look like a kid learning how to eat with chopsticks.”

Ver simply looked at him, and he looked back before blinking with confusion, "Did it not make...sense?"

“I guess...” Ver shrugged.

“It’s just an observation from this old man. For now, I can still hang with you young bloods.” Stark said as the footsteps of the servants came from behind them. Hiding the obvious enjoyment on his face, he took the towels offered to them before stepping out of the training grounds, “Now go clean yourselves up. You still have jobs to do.”

As much as Ver would have liked to hate Stark Vaughan, she couldn’t deny his skill. She learned from her mother about Stark’s past within the Vaughan family, as he was one of the semi-finalists of the last Ethereal Tournament through his skill alone. And if not for his weapons breaking on him in the final exchange, he would have made it onto the next round.

Then, instead of becoming the head of the Vaughan family according to the wishes of the elders and his parents, he instead decided to try to join the Sky Guardian Corp to further hone his skills. That lead to a lot of turmoil between him and the Vaughan family, to the point of him being disowned at one point.

However, his younger brother, and Ver’s father, happily accepted the responsibility of being the Head of Vaughan family all the way until his death at the hands of Grega family’s assassins just recently.

During the transition period, the seniors of the Vaughan family were struggling to find a suitable successor, when Stark returned from his unsuccessful endeavor to join the Sky Guardian Corp after fifteen years straight of constant trying. The furthest place he had been were as the Corp reserves, but he wasn’t satisfied with being stuck in one place career-wise, so he made the call to return home.

Even the weakest Sky Guardian Corp trainee will instantly became one of the strongest Wave users within any country the moment they stepped foot onto its soil, and Stark was no different.

As strict and stringent as he was, he quickly warmed up to Ver after realizing that she was the only person remotely strong enough to spar with him within the family. In fact, parts of Ver’s quietly rebellious attitude reminded him of his younger self, and he often found it amusing to make Ver frustrated by her own lack of skills before showing her hints of where she could take her potential next.

Regardless of Ver’s pasts, so long as she was a daughter of the Vaughan family, then Stark was responsibility for her. And through her eyes, he clearly saw someone who wanted his position.

“He kicked your ass again today.” The Kraken joked as Ver stood in the shower and allowed the warm water to wash away the slime left behind from the Kraken’s armor, “I have been telling you it’s far too hard to control multiple legendary weapons at once.”

“Then what about Nana Kata’s saying?” Ver muttered as streams of water escaped into her open mouth, “Someone must have assembled all eleven of the Legendary Weapons at once? How could have possible wielded something so dynamic and extreme...”

“Perhaps what he muttered was nothing but an rumor from a long long time ago.” The Kraken said, “With all that is going on in this world, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was just something that was made up.”

“We shall see…” Ver said, turning down the water pressure slowly as her dark blonde hair ran down her shoulders, “But for now, it’s probably a good idea to only stick with one sword at a time. Plus, it's not like we are just going to find legendary weapons lying everywhere, are we?"

"That seemed to have been the case so far, no?"

Stepping out and getting changed into her instructor’s uniform, she then taught a class of enthusiatic teens basic combat and Wave ability control for the rest of the morning while her mother sat on the side and watched.

After the lesson, she ran passed her before giving her a kiss on the forehead and ran out of the building.

Training the younger generation of Vaughan kids alone wouldn’t have satisfied Ver, and she spent her afternoons in the hangout place of the Guild of Mercenaries. With her Token, she had been able to access the information boards, or as she liked to refer to as rumor boards, used by the High Humans, which allowed her to keep a tap on suspected PORA activities too.

“Alleged PORA activity in the Ethereal Realm.” One of the notices said, “Bounty of five thousand units for full investigation.”

Ver scanned around the room, and only one other bounty hunter sat and ate quietly in the corner at this time. She strolled towards the board and peeled away the cover page.

“PORA will likely interfere with the next Ethereal Conference of Forty Houses. Reward will be offered for the capture of PORA agents and/or proof of interference.”

The Conference occur every other year, and this year’s one is the last one before the Ethreal Tournament itself.

“Looks like it’s time we give them a call.” Ver murmured, turning her palm over as a single piece of a special Kraken shell emerged in the palm of her hand, and she pressed on it lightly, “It’s been long enough.”