Livia was sitting on Brunner's porch, looking out over the small field where sparring was usually conducted. She was getting used to the presence of Mr Beard, but it was still distracting beyond compare having a voice in your head. Suppose all I can do is get used to it.

As she noted down how they all matched up, and how it compared to a month earlier, it gave some interesting results. Oscar was still doing well, for being Classless, but there was just no way he could keep up with the rate of improvement Roldy and Kalle went through with the many Skills they could work on. He was more and more delegated to a supporting role, but you couldn't count him out either, he kept coming up with solutions that allowed him to stay in the game despite the way they all got used to his tricks.

Hyde was the quickest to improve though, Harold kept finding him high quality meals despite the rarity in the area. The orchard had some slightly magic animals to supplement it, but they had needed surprisingly few additions. It seemed the [Druid] had some way of sourcing it. With growing size came growing confidence in the mosswolf, but it wasn't just that, it was learning the way humans fought at a surprising rate, and even if he could not put it to full use himself, it taught him to think of ways to put his own body to better use. He started tackling with his hips, spraying the eyes with the unexpected moisture from his back, even working on his tail dexterity. It used to be a real weakness since the humans could just grab on when he was juking, but lately it had kept making them miss, which was obviously deliberate because Hyde gained some advantage out of it every time.

Magic still heavily tipped the scales, but in mundane combat Hyde was starting to catch up.

Of course Brunner was a towering giant above the rest. Despite lacking a combat Class, it was just a matter of the status of his body, it had been channeling magic for so many years that he could push it far beyond any natural limits. He toned it down to spar, of course, but nowadays he had to actually watch himself and even worked up a real sweat when having to deal with Roldy and Kalle wielding their full Skillset.

Mr Beard was still hung up on the events of yesterday however, luckily Livia had just finished writing when he interrupted this time.

[I just don't see how it is possible, was this tree why all those towns were raided so early on, or had this project been destroyed before that? But if he spread it all over Doc Forrest.]

"You guys never found out about this?"

[They held this kind of thing secret and did not trust the leadership enough for Humanity to even know to defend them? I have to believe someone must have known, at some point.]

"Did you have any relationship with Zisle, or knowledge of the [Druids] there then?"

[Not that I recall. If they had access to this type of resource... They were always hostile to Humans we thought. This period in Human history may be worse off than we anticipated, this peace rests on some grim foundation, of that much I'm beginning to be sure.]

"Why're you always being so ominous, can't you just explain what you mean?"

[I must consider this more first. I do do not wish to taint your thinking before even I am sure of my assessment.]

Kalle had been working like an animal after he finally leveled and was able to recover from his development of the 3rd [Wailing Bolt]. Oscar had been a lifesaver, because if Roldy was the one who was with him every step of the way he would always see what Kalle was working on and prepare accordingly. It made it that much harder to close the gap and get a win, and Kalle felt like he needed a win.

Despite both being casters, they were far from the kind who had a Spell for every occasion, they both expected to need to actually fight a lot, and have their magic supplement that. [Telekinetic Push] was an obvious such Skill. Sure, you could use it to flip book pages and bring your toast to the table in the morning, real mage stuff. But you could also push knees in, shove feet and just be nasty with it. He'd broken Roldy's nose more than twice, and even if he had regenerative magic, it hurt like a bitch in the moment and made it all the harder to see through the tears or focus on your next move and when you might be able to fit a heal in. Not to mention breath, if it happened early on and Kalle managed to keep the pressure up.

Learning to fight with that and the occasional low percentage [Mind Blast] had been his focus, but lately he'd been working on something else. What he'd realized was how even [Esper's Balm] could be useful in combat, certainly to remove shock and the like from himself, but also to just read the emotions in the air. It was subtle, but after starting to learn from Sten he'd realized that traditional fighters did something very similar.

Every feint Roldy threw seemed transparent, every strike that was thrown disguised as one technique and ending up another, a mere waste of energy. He was starting to get a sense for the very deception itself, its uniquely flavoured energy.

On this day it finally clicked.