Six months passed after Miriam first showed her squires the footwork for her sword style. One day she brought both of them to the lake at her mansion. Both squires were given snorkels so that they could breathe underwater. After wearing weighted vests both of them were made to stand in water such that their heads were submerged. Next Miriam asked both of them to go through basic sword forms and some of her own sword forms that she had demonstrated beforehand. The two of them were close enough that doing any movement made by one of them created turbulent flow in the water which affected the other's movement. This way it was as if they were facing multiple opponents making random and unpredictable movements. Days became weeks as both of them slowly started to develop their preferences. The princess who used a large sword chose a compact sword style which aimed to make the smallest movements to get inside the opponent's defence while gaining momentum by using the flowing style to land heavy strikes. Max, on the other hand, chose a more technical and defensive sword style which included outmanoeuvring the opponent and using their momentum to land slashes and cuts in the gaps of their defence. He chose a one-handed longsword and shield as his primary style. He and the princess developed styles that countered each other so Miriam had them duel multiple times, most resulting in draws. Reina and Max came to know each other better through these duels and became friends. They often shared stories of their childhood and experiences of the capital.

Max's POV

I am learning the basics of magic from Nyx for the past six months now. On the first day, Nyx produced three balls of magic. They were black, white and orange coloured. Nyx told me that it was to check my affinities for the three kinds of magic. The white one was for origin magic. As soon as I came near the white ball, it ran away from me as if it was repelled by me. Nyx explained that I have no aptitude for origin magic and should give up on it. Although it hurt a little to be told that I will never be able to perform the same magic as other humans, I was not going to let this get me down. So I moved on to the next which was the orange one. It was augmentation magic. As I came near, the ball got attracted to me and began rolling across my palm. Nyx explained that it means that I have an average aptitude for augmentation magic and should be able to perform it with enough practice. Lastly, as I came near the black ball, it had a reaction that was the complete opposite of the white ball. It raced towards me and got absorbed into my body. I felt a peculiar feeling in my body. Nyx told me to follow the feeling as it passed through my body. The magic coursed through my entire body starting from the top of my head to my toes and then it returned to where my heart was. After fooling around with the sensation for a couple of hours, I was able to concentrate the feeling on the top of my palm and produce a similar but pea-sized black ball. Seeing this Nyx praised me and told that I had beyond excellent aptitude for domain magic. I felt a wave of elation and ecstasy upon hearing that I had not been abandoned by magic. But at that time didn't completely comprehend how excellent my aptitude for domain magic actually was as I had never experienced it myself.

In the beginning, Nyx taught me about special meditation techniques to connect with my astral body. Even though I had no previous experiences in this field, I was able to grasp it after 2 months. The change in my perspective was enormous after I did unlock my astral body. It was like the creation of an extra sense. I was so disoriented that I had to feign illness for an entire week just to get used to the extrasensory information that my brain was getting bombarded with. Nyx explained that all living beings with suitably developed consciousness are connected in a sort of web of collective consciousness that connects us to one another. This is why people with high perception as sometimes able to guess the feeling of other people even without saying anything. Nyx told me that it is not hard to get information from the 'web' which she called Akashvani. The difficulties rose while processing it. The knowledge is always fuzzy with a lot of noise added in. To condition the brain for processing the knowledge, Nyx taught me divination spells. The conventional knowledge in the human world about divination spells was that they were strange spells used by mystics to know about the future and the past. Nyx told me that divination spells were nothing fancy like that. They acted as a filter, editor, compiler and finally simulator to make sense of existing knowledge and predict future events based on different possibilities. I quickly picked up these spells with the help of Nyx. Turns out that contracting Nyx had its own benefits. Like contracting with elementals increase one's affinity to one of the elements, contracting Arachne increases a person's consciousness power and also strengthens the astral body. Due to Nyx being an existence like the Elemental Emperors, my consciousness was the strongest in the Mortal plane.

Next, Nyx taught me self defence from mental magic. For this Nyx told me that I had to consolidate my consciousness and create my mental domain and then create defensive measures. She told me that cutting myself off from Akashvani or brute defence was not effective. I had to learn to accept mental probes and then capture it in my domain where I was omnipotent. Instead of fighting the probe, I have to create 'stories' and 'mazes' that confuse the probes long enough for the probe to dissipate. After weeks of imagination what I came up with looked something like this -

Each island had its own stories and mazes. Even my memories were fragmented and spread all over the islands. This way only I knew their location. In the beginning, creating layers in my consciousness felt tedious and unnatural to me. But Nyx told me that creating one's mental domain was essential for mental magic and that all my efforts would bring fruits soon. By the time I completed my domain, even Nyx was shocked by the complexity and the details. She told me that even her own domain was not this complex or vivid. I too was shocked by my imaginative capabilities. I vaguely remembered learning about such fantastical landscapes described in 'Xianxia' stories but I was not sure where I had heard such stories. Anyway, the results of creating my domain were truly immense. Firstly, I got a photographic memory. Even though I had a pretty good memory earlier, my recall capability was not unlimited. But now I could stow away all the data I received and then recall them whenever I wanted without placing burdens on my short term memory. Next, I could freely access the Akashvani without the fear of getting probed by other strong spirits like Nyx.

In the last month, Nyx began teaching me empathy and telemetry. Nyx told me that living and non-living entities have thoughts attached to them. Telemetry accesses thoughts attached to non-living entities due to their interactions with sentient creatures while empathy accesses the thought continuously generated by living beings. Most thoughts are not in the form of sentences or legible words. It is a combination of words, images, feelings or even colours. Nyx suggested that the best way to get used to reading intentions was during my duels. I started by reading through the feints that Reina tried to make and even force fake intents to make feints of my own without moving a single muscle. Of course, I did it in moderation in order to hide my capabilities form others. Recently Reina has begun to open to me and we sometimes speak to each other about our pasts. She seems to be a decent person to be around. She is very devoted to her duties to the Empire and is hard-working and diligent. I look forward to being friends with her.