I knew from our consultation that Snowy had three Skills. All three were combat Skills, though one was also commonly classified as a utility Skill if someone wanted to be pedantic. [Hunter’s Sagacity], [Monstrous Strength], and [Arcanum of the Blood]. I ignored [Arcanum of the Blood]. Stamina regeneration was all that was relevant to the Skill. It effectively gave her infinite stamina, because of her mana, making the fact it was not actually infinite moot. I wouldn’t be able to test her limits by myself. Reaching Snowy’s limits would take a whole lot more men than just me alone.

Hunter’s Sagacity - Tier 1: 21

A Hunter’s sight is more than detail but encompasses movement, texture, and color.

Passive Effect:

Minor: Far Sight - Focused vision extended by 10%.

Lesser: Movement in your vision is sharper.

Minor: Vision has a broader color range.

Active Trigger Effect:

Magnified distance vision for the next ten seconds.

While it was technically a utility Skill, I looked it up in my Skill Dictionary after our consultation, and it was also a Combat Skill. It made rapid movements clear and sharp, which was vital for technical types of combat involving lots of parries and blocks. Most just used it for hunting, which made sense, it would enhance her vision to something like a cross between an Eagle and a prey animal.

I was still moving towards Snowy, the sand compressing under my feet, as I studied her [Monstrous Strength] Skill. This was the reason she could use a two-handed sword as easily as I would a short sword. Which, while impressive, also had downsides.

Monstrous Strength - Tier 2: 11

Your strength is that of monsters, your power overwhelming.

Passive Effect:

Minor: Your muscles are more potent than average for their size.

Lesser: Your muscles are more efficient than average for their size.

Minor: Your muscles recover from strain quicker.

Minor: Your muscles regenerate from severe damage.

Minor: Less effort is required to gain muscle.

Active Trigger Effect:

A surge of strength that wanes over the next minute.

After Effect:

Your body suffers crippling exhaustion.

[Monstrous Strength] was a tier two evolution of the tier one [Strength] Skill. It gained a minor regeneration effect specific to muscles and an Active trigger effect. The Active effect was less useful than most would assume. Yes, it would allow Snowy to nearly double her strength, but it would almost always be the wrong choice in a fight. There were some monsters with the same Skill, the Cyclops, and Hill Giants, for example. The way to hunt these monsters was to annoy them until they used the Skill then run away. Once the beasts were reduced to exhausted lumps of meat, return and kill them. It would be a bit more challenging to be prepared for Snowy unless she gained a reputation for using the Skill, but the principle would be the same. A minute was a long time in a fight, but battles could be massive, and one person couldn’t slaughter their way across a full field of men in a minute.

This wouldn’t apply to Snowy now, though.

If she could push through the pain of the after-effects, her [Arcanum of the Blood] would allow her to keep fighting. The idea of what she could do on the field of battle with those two effects running in tandem was blood-curdling. Typically, it was the passive effects of a Skill, which made them so useful in combat. The bards might crow on about an Active effect which turned the tide of battle, and they could, but it was often the Passive effects which really did the work.

Idly, I ducked under Snowy’s sideways slice as her shield followed behind to try and bash me with her defense. I had to pivot around her shield, one arm along the guard screaming at me that it was bruised as she tried to drive the metal wrapped wood through me. I continued the movement and tried to spin behind her. My slash at the back of her neck missed as Snowy moved forward as I spun around her shield. I was forced to block her sword as she continued her movement. While I was behind her back, I switched my trailing hand blade from underhand to overhand. My passive manual dexterity bonuses were more than capable of allowing the switch while I focused on dodging. It was good that both blades were in an overhand position since I had to block using an ‘x’ formation and barely managed.

Stepping back out of range, I considered my next move even as my training screamed that I should move forward. It turned out to be a lucky choice since Snowy was expecting me to step in and was already chaining a third attack for close range. A move that came to a stuttering abort as she repositioned herself.

Snowy would be far more deadly with [Swordmanship]. She had practiced with a sword, she knew patterns and how to use her blade, but she lacked the Skill. With it, she would be a terror on the field, without it, she was no better than her practice. Of course, she had more training than I did and wasn’t rusty like I was either. I made a mental note to rotate weapon training back into my Skill practice. There were Skills and skill, and I needed to maintain both. One because it was my life’s blood and purpose, and the other to keep the blood inside me in my new, more treacherous situation.

I wasn’t sure why Snowy was using a long sword and shield as she was. Her forms and combinations were obviously trained with a bastard sword or a short sword, they didn’t transfer correctly to a two-handed weapon. If she had [Swordmanship], she would develop an instinctive understanding of her weapon, and it would help her train even with the awkward combination. Without it, she was intimidating while not being nearly as deadly as she could be.

My wandering mental state was interrupted as Snowy stepped into an attack. Her long sword whirling around and over her head, the wrist work perfect, even if it was an attack designed for a shorter sword. It was only with her massive strength that Snowy was able to wield the weapon as she did. I had to admit to a spurt of terror at the truly insane vision the whistling training sword made as she swung it.

Snowy was using her new [Arcanum of the Blood] Skill, her slow breathing like a bellows as she whipped her weapon around with startling ease. She didn’t use the active version of her [Monstrous Strength] Skill. This made sense; she likely recognized that it was useless in most circumstances and had avoided it ever since. I would have to disabuse her of that idea after this training session. For now, it was all I could do to flee from her blade’s constant arcs. Snowy’s movements drove me around the sands as the sweat dripped down my face.

My [Meditation] Skill allowed me to move ahead of Snowy’s swings and to dart in on occasions in the few moments of hesitation or disruption where her rhythm didn’t perfectly align. That being said, as soon as I was within her reach, her large arcing swings designed to control the field turned into chops and slices. Her attacks then became no more dangerous than anyone with a short sword and a shield. Less so, in fact, with a shortsword, she could have stabbed as well.

At range, Snowy controlled our movements and drove me across the field. Her turns toward her shield side were slightly slower and weaker than when we rotated counterclockwise. In close, Snowy would beat against my defense until I had to retreat. Her shield work was crude compared to her slashing sword, but more than capable of stopping me.

After what felt like hours, I had to step out of the sands. My constant movements and the snappy attacks were exhausting. I was gasping in massive breaths trying to maintain my exertion, but my lips felt numb, and my fingers tingled from lack of breath. It was all I could do to not bend over and then pass out.

Snowy was trying to keep her smug smile hidden but wasn’t succeeding terribly well. I couldn’t wait to explain to her where she had gone wrong and how much more dominating she should have been.

Teacher of Skills has advanced to 20.

Even while gasping, I was grinning wildly. Two skill points in [Teacher of Skills] in roughly a week? I hadn’t had that kind of increase in almost six months back when it had first evolved into a tier two Skill! My skin was sweaty and itching from the drying sweat. I had sand stuck to bits of me, and it itched horribly. My muscles twitched and spasmed with pain and exhaustion. The pain was ramped up to a truly staggering degree because of my [Meditation]. Yet, I would have doubled it in a heartbeat to gain that single Skill increase.

I ignored my body and the waves of pain and tiredness and stared into the distance as I tried to figure out why I was increasing so quickly now. It couldn’t be that I was training others openly, that made no sense. That I was teaching more people might be it, but I wasn’t sure. The only thing I could really think of was that I spent more time training Snowy than I usually spent teaching any single person. We had been working together for a while now, and I had learned her particular way of doing things. I had spent time thinking about what exactly would help her become better at her Skills.

“You all right?” Snowy asked.

I nodded, a grimace plastered across my face even as I was still trying to recover from my efforts. This training showed me why I had passed out from my first use of [Meditation] when we fought the four bandits. [Meditation] focused my mind on whatever I was currently experiencing and amplified it to make it easier to understand. The world appearing to slow down seemed to be a side-effect of this. The ambush had startled me into a shocked state, which protected me from the strains and pains of my quick movements and impacts. Once the shock wore off, a wave of pain from my injuries sent me unconscious. Now, I wasn’t in shock and so every bruise, bump, and strain as I moved my body beyond its means, sent waves of agony through me. If I had to guess, I would say that I was experiencing twice the pain from every injury, and for a subjective period of hours.

Just the stress from the exhaustion was enough to make me want to curl up and avoid the world. If this was how Mages experienced a fight, I could understand why only a select few were willing to commit to combat. [Meditation] had an odd effect on my focus. I felt tightly focused as if I was wearing a horse’s blinders, unable to look away from whatever I was pointed at. At the same time, if something drew my focus at all, it required an effort of will to refocus on my goals. It was like being both hyper-focused and easily distracted at the same time. Every sharp poke and prod of my muscles wanted to pull my attention.

Mason clapped and moved towards us.

I grimaced at the sudden appearance of the Grandmaster. I absolutely detested his Skill. Its ability to draw my attention away, and worse, cause me to find my own reasons to look away, frustrated me to no end. I remembered noticing Mason multiple times during our bout while he leaned against the wall with a casual air. Many of his victims must have had the same sudden realization of his existence right before his dagger slit their throat.

“I can see why the Baron was so impressed with your combat potential, Alexis,” Mason said.

For a second, I was distracted with the unfamiliar name, before I remembered that ‘Alexis’ was Snowy’s name in our language. It was common practice to pick a name with a more familiar sound to it if the name was too difficult to say in our language. I still preferred Snowy, but ‘Alexis’ was a nice enough name, I supposed. ‘Alexis’ sounded like an adorable bunny's name, someone with more fluff in her head than sense. Snowy was like a mountain lion to that bunny.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at his statement, “Oh, you two have no idea.”

Mason seemed interested, but Snowy was wary from my manic grin. The last time I smiled like that, she had spent a full day exhausting herself and then using her Skill. This new training would make that seem like a picnic.

Stretching and trying to work out the kinks that my muscles were trying to curl into with the sudden new demand, I continued to grin while Snowy frowned at me.

“Fine, I know you are so excited to tell me what it is. What is it?” Snowy asked as she relaxed with her sword over her shoulder.

Her casual pose, while I was still so obviously exhausted, was supposed to poke at my male pride. She had probably done that sort of thing before merely in self-defense, but now it just made me chuckle in anticipation.

“Hey, Snowy…” I began with a casual air, letting my words drift away to build the tension before I continued, “…your new Skill helps with stamina use and tiredness, right?” I asked as I moved toward the wall to rest and enjoy the upcoming show.

I could see dread creeping up on her, but she nodded to my question. Mason watched silently without trying to slip away with his Skill, I wondered for a second why he remained visible, but put it out of my mind.

“Doesn’t one of your other Skills have an active effect?” I asked, with a spreading grin.

I phrased it the way I did to avoid sharing the name of her Skill, but I could see that Mason had some hint of what kind of training this would be from his sudden grin. The cussing, something I had never heard from a Baroness-in-waiting, was a balm after my loss.