‘How hard is it to learn a technique?’

It wasn’t just a silly question, but also, as my father would call it, a Dumb Question. A question about as meaningful as ‘how many lengths of string are in a stack?’ Unlike levelling techniques, learning techniques was a mysterious, arcane process with rules like the wind; witnessed, but never seen. There was the student, the lesson and the medium of the lesson. Each played a factor, but what governed their efficacy was hidden. Level and class were factors. So was age. The exact relationship, however, was unknown. There were no tables of percentage chance, nor experience bar. Some believed there were hidden numbers that governed it. Others believed each person had a fated final build. Ultimately, without invoking mysticism, the answer boiled down to ‘it depends’.

What I’m trying to say is, what took me three full weeks, Charlie managed to learn in ten minutes.

Maybe I should back up.

As I arrived at The Spot, Mona and Charlie were chomping at the bit to get going. Mona, more obviously—the slouch she held as she waited, the way she mouthed “Finally” when she spotted me, she wasn’t exactly trying to hide it—but Charlie also looked more than a little fidget-y, though his worried frown told a different story.

There was however, another matter that needed addressing.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Jack?”

“Saw him on the way, he said not to wait for him,” Charlie explained. Curious. Jack didn’t have the responsibilities that Mona or I did. But then, if he had things to do...I knew exactly how annoying it was to have people asking after you while there was work to be done.

And also how annoying it was when you wanted to be left alone in general.

“Good riddance,” Mona declared with a disdainful toss of her ponytail, “If he’d come, all he’d have done would’ve been bitch the whole time.”

She met my concerned look with a roll of her eyes.

“Back me up on this, Charlie,” she declared, which he reluctantly did.

“Yeah...You haven’t had to put up with—” he hesitated, as he remembered what he was referring to.

“Go on,” I prompted, lips tightly pursed. Honestly, I didn’t care that much about it being brought up, but sentiment made me want to see him squirm. Both of them, really, but I didn’t expect to get anything out of Mona.

“I mean—y’know, he’s been—”

“He’s been an insufferable prat,” Mona finished for him, pointedly ignoring my umbrage, “Regardless of circumstance, what he was doing, what he was saying, it was all unhelpful garbage and, now that we aren’t bound to stick with him by any arbitrary code, I’m happy to be rid of him until he calms the hell down.”

I didn’t sigh. Instead, I gave what I hoped was a nonchalant shrug. It was true, I hadn’t been there and I didn’t want to escalate this, even if it chafed. Mona, of course, had already shifted her attention.

“And now that we’re all here, you need to figure out what you’re going to do about a weapon,” she declared, punctuated by a hard poke to Charlie’s arm.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m fine with just staying on the sidelines and watching today, I can figure it out—”

He stopped.

Before him, presented hilt first, was a weapon. A long, curved blade with a cheap, guardless hilt. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, I’d almost have said he stared at it in silent horror.

I chuckled.

“I mean, if you don’t want it, you don’t have to—”

“NO! No, it’s not—I mean, don’t you need a weapon for yourself?” he said, even as he gingerly accepted the Training Katana, held only with his fingertips as though he expected it to suddenly turn into a sword-shaped mass of spiders at any second.

“I’d sooner fight barefisted, even if I didn’t already have an alternative,” I answered, voice calm and nonchalant. Accidentally triggering an ‘I couldn’t possibly accept this’ would do no-one any good whatsoever.

Good thing I had a trump card.

“Thankfully…” I pulled my wand from the Aether, twirling it around my fingers maybe a little giddily, “Mr Adamite was kind enough to give me something far more to my taste. No reason to hoard it away in my inventory, y’know?”

Charlie just stared at me, with eyes wide, his mouth a thin, almost flat line. Maybe I was underestimating how shocking it might be to be given a weapon. Rather than address that, I hurried after Mona who’d already vanished from the alley. We both caught up with her before long. Mona seemed oddly bent on heckling Charlie the whole time. It was a curious thing.

That sort of pointed attitude continued once we were there.

“Now that we all have a weapon, we’ll be all fighting our own battles today, yeah?” Mona asked, the vague antagonism in her voice promising that the question was strictly rhetorical. Charlie hesitated, before nodding vigorously.

“Yeah, we’ll all go off and do our own thing, I think,” he supported, as I wondered who’d died and made Mona leader. “Unless you object, Leo?”

I probably should have, but it was already two against one.

Deciding to actually show off the techniques was a last minute thing I only barely remembered.

“Hang on, before we go, let me show you the basic techniques so you can muse on them,” I said, motioning for Charlie to watch. He threw me back the blade...which I hadn’t even thought about when I said. Thankfully, he’d realised before I embarrassed myself.

“Draw Stance.”

It really was an awful feeling. The blade felt...jittery? I could feel it as an extension of myself and it almost felt like it was shuddering in my hands. Like the slightest of motions would see it erupt from its sheath. It was all I could stand, to hold the blade for just long enough for the glow to appear. Soon as I had the visual, I cancelled the ability. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlie nod thoughtfully.

“Okay, now, Clean Cut.”

Now drawn, I put the blade at my hip again, and pulled it across in a horizontal cut.

“And lastly, Savage Cut.”

This time, the blade swept upward, as I did little more than straighten my arm. Both actions were meant to be performed out of Draw Stance, but even just that had left me a little short of breath. I looked to see how Charlie was reacting.

He seemed to be looking right past me.

“Charlie?” I waved at him, which seemed to jolt him out of his thoughts.

“Oh, sorry, can you show me the last two again?”

“Yeah, gimme a sec.”

After letting my stamina regenerate for a few minutes, I repeated both and that was all he needed, apparently. As I passed them back, he ran through all three.

“Draw Stance,”—blade held sheathed on the hip—“Clean Cut,”—fast, horizontal slash—“Draw Stance,”—blade sheathed again—“Savage Cut,”—upward slash—“Yeah, I think I got it.”

I threw him a thumbs up and stomped down on the kernel of bitterness I felt. It was...wrong. That was the correct analysis of the scenario. It was wrong. Even if the gulf between how it’d felt for me and how it’d felt for him was as massive as it was, it was a matter of people having different strengths. I had my Alchemy and probably other stuff. I didn’t exactly have a list of accomplishments to compare between us.

...

Okay, it still stung a little. No amount of counting my own blessings would fix that.

“Anything else?” Mona asked testily.

“Yeah, I brought these,” I said, as I retrieved the EXP Boosters from my bag, offering them each a potion.

Neither of them were as enthusiastic as I had hoped.

“Eeeh, really?” Mona folded her arms, as she watched the proffered vial of blue liquid with narrowed eyes, leaned back as if trying to stay away from it.

“They don’t taste that bad, y’know.”

“There’s just not much point, Leo,” Charlie explained, “How about you save them until we’re a little higher level and fighting things that give more experience, if it’ll make y—y’know, a difference once the experience we’re getting is higher.”

My gut-reaction was to say something along the lines of, ‘I’m not forcing you to drink them.’ In fact, I almost went and said that out loud, until I realised how passive aggressive it’d sound. I sculled as we all went our separate ways, grimacing as I did. The consistency of a syrup, but bitter and sour. Blegh.

You gained the buff ‘EXP Gain +20%’ (20 min)!

Today, the Hunting Ground was awash in monsters. It was mostly still slimes, but I could spot glimpses of coarse, brown fur scurrying around.The monster known as the ‘Rat’ was a far cry from its rodent counterpart, though no less of a pest. For one, they were larger. Far larger. The size of a small dog. The red pits in place of eyes were similarly unmistakeable. The bane of scullery maids and inn owners.

Really, they looked more dangerous than they were.

Drawing a bead on one, I activated Sneak and casually followed it, as it scurried here and there, aping the actions of its original. There was little consideration for actual stealth; my attention was primarily occupied by my inventory.

Eventually, I pulled out the box.

Time had bleached its labelling and filed down its corners to reveal the cheap hardboard beneath. That’s what my father had told me it was made out of, at least. It was apparently more efficient than actual wood. My father’s stories had always painted his homeland as a bizarre place.

Within lay the real weapon I’d be using.

As someone still without any sort of Magic Mastery, one might think the wand I held was little more than a fancily decorated stick. It was true, I didn’t have any spells that might be considered conventionally useful. Of the six entries in my spellbook, four of them, ‘Aerate’, ‘Ignite’, ‘Quench’ and ‘Catalyse’, were crafting actions that couldn’t even function with Glyphwork as Rank 0 spells.

‘Salve’ was slightly more useful.

Salve Rank 1 Spell — Civillian Grade

Restores 5 Health to a single target within [10 Sq.]. Emergency: Spend 20% of Mana to self-cast upon inflicting damage on self.

Very slightly.

It didn’t scale and its healing was miniscule. It was for patching minor burns and little more. I had assigned it to the spell-word ‘☿’ anyway, mostly for the sake of it. The only really useful spell likely looked even more innocuous on the surface.

Evoke Crystal I Rank 1 Spell — Civillian Grade

Activates a Rank 1 Spell Crystal.

That spell, I assigned to 🜔.

Within, there was an assortment of ten crystals, held in worn, yellowing foam. Each contained a replicated spell that a novice alchemist might reasonably require in the execution of their craft. The important one today was a clear, colorless crystal which wasn’t quite as scratched or foggy as the others. It was common enough that they’d included it, but procedures that began by inflicting damage to a reagent were few and far between. It wasn’t strong— Impact had a set base damage of 10 with no way to improve it—and it couldn’t reach further than two and a half meters, but it was good enough for wiping out rats.

I focused and pointed my wand.

🜔

Your Evoke Crystal — Impact did 6 Damage!

Assaulted from out of nowhere by what had been described to me as ‘force without direction’, the Rat seemed to fold in on itself briefly, before righting itself almost immediately and rounding on me with an angry squeak.

In the space between instants, I erased the last glyph with a twirl of the wand, and levelled it at the rat again.

🜔

Your Evoke Crystal — Impact did 6 Damage!

There was a surprised squeak, a barely visible pulse of whiteness to the air as the monster turned back into aether, and it was already over.

You gained 3 EXP!