I gripped the wooden blade a little harder than I should've.

  My body ached with pain, multiple strikes from my opponent compounding into an agony I was forced to endure. If I didn’t have control over my mana I might’ve had to suffer the bruises for more than a few hours. As it stood, the hematomas didn't have shit on me. Still, it didn’t stop the strikes from hurting.

  But I wouldn’t give up, couldn’t give up.

  Not if I wanted to be strong, not if I wanted to survive the end of the world.

  In that moment, it took every ounce of skill I could manage to survive a child. Across from me Xae stood unharmed, smiling something that was too sharp for any kind of expression of kindness.

  “You’re fun!” Xae laughed. “All these other idiots give up with only a light beating, but you! You keep getting back up, over and over and over.”

  I pointed my blade at Xae, breath coming out as painful rasps with all the strikes to my ribs. “What can I say? I’m a bit of a badass,” I said, taking a step closer to the mongrel that delivered so much suffering. I thought I’d outclass the apprentices in duels, considering their focus on hunting rather than skill, while I was trained by a soldier. I was generally correct, the apprentices were weak, at least against other people.

  Then Xae shattered any notion of confidence I’d built by dramatically outclassing me, to the point where it was genuinely kind of funny. Too bad laughing hurt.

  It was Isidro all over again, except in the form of a juvenile jackass. The girl was a genuine prodigy, and I could see why Loklan took her on. She’d make for an insane hunter if the future was kind enough.

  Xae smiled at me, and in a fluid motion she took a step forward, bringing her blade up in a light swing.

  I parried the blow, but I could tell it wasn’t meant to truly be dangerous. Xae followed the strike with another, then another. Each from different angles, pointed at where my defences were weakest, but just slow enough where I could block. Fuck. we’d gotten to this point now.

  I might not have been willing to give up, but I didn’t have a say if Xae started treating it like a game. Once I was sufficiently beaten, Xae always did this charade in an attempt that I assumed was meant to act as proper training. All it really accomplished was to piss me off.

  Being treated with mercy by a child was grating. I could use mana and even the playing field but…no.

  I needed skill, not just brute force. Not every obstacle could be smashed through, at least not yet. That being said, mending my fatigue didn’t count as brute strength since it just made me a target for pain for longer than otherwise.

  I was starting to get a deeper understanding for the word mend, for both fatigue and healing. The deeper my understanding the more effective the mana, and my understanding grew the more I used it. Which was how experience worked, not knowledge, but mana didn’t seem to give a fuck, feeding me more as time passed.

  To mend was to bring something damaged back to pristine condition, it was to sacrifice in service, it was—

  Not the time to be thinking about such things.

  Xae might’ve been my superior by far, but she couldn’t maintain a prolonged engagement like I could.

  An overhead came down, aiming for my skull. It was slow. I brought my own weapon up, swiping it out of the way.

  I followed with a diagonal slash at Xae’s shoulder, but the girl moved just out of range, leaving the strike to hit nothing but air. Xae propelled herself forward holding her blade close before pushing it out into a stab that slammed into my sternum.

  My breath escaped violently from my lungs, getting me gasping for air as Xae struck my knee. I was forced to kneel, and barely dodged a blow aimed at my chin. I growled and sprung forward, clashing practice swords against one another. I bared my teeth like a rabid animal as Xae revelled in the violence with a wide smile.

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  Then Xae’s weight shifted, causing me to lose my balance, and the pommel of Xae’s weapon struck me in the temple, hard enough that I crumbled to the ground.

  I wobbled to my feet, prepared to keep fighting.

  Xae held up a hand. “That’s enough, still want you to be able to hunt, unfortunately. Besides, with how fast you heal we’ll be raring to go come tomorrow! I can hardly wait already.”

  I scowled, heaving a few breaths…but pointed my blade to the floor. It was humiliating, but this was how our fights always ended, with Xae putting a stop to it with barely a scratch. I got exactly one strike this time, and I was suspicious that it was based on luck.

  “What? Don’t want to keep going? How very un-sadisty of you,” I said, bringing a hand to my nose and straightening it out with a painful crack.

  “Pain gets old after a while,” Xae shrugged. “Especially if I’m the only one delivering it. Your determination is great! We just need your skill to match it and then the real fun can start.”

  “How exciting,” I grumbled.

  Xae nodded enthusiastically and shouldered her blade, tilting her head to the rack. I sighed and walked over alongside the girl, putting our borrowed weapons in their place. There were quite a few, even though not many really bothered to practice their swordsmanship.

  Before Xae it was Aira that’d train me, but admittedly? That woman didn’t know how to fight a person. All her defensive tactics involved dodging, which worked just fine against a beast that’d shatter her blade, but with an opponent that had a blade? That was a great way to present multiple openings.

  Not that I was better than Aira, just that the woman's focus made fighting her much easier than the literal child beside me.

  How ironic.

  “Where’d you learn how to fight?” I asked as we walked down to the main hall of the guild, going to grab a post ass-beating meal. Well, Xae delivered the ass beating so…I didn’t know.

  We were just going to eat. There, much easier.

  “I wonder how many times you’ve asked,” Xae mused. “But nope! Still not telling. I like my secrets kept secret, maybe if you manage to beat me I’ll tell you.”

  “That’ll come soon enough,” I said.

  Xae let out a slight chuckle. “Sure it will, miss ‘prodigy’. Every time we fight, I wonder how you managed to kill a rat-bear, maybe you’ll tell me the truth if I tell you my little secret, hmmm?”

  “What I’ve already said is the truth,” I said, holding back any expression of surprise.

  “Sure.”

  The two of us grabbed our meals and went to eat at an empty table. The hunters guild wasn’t the most full thing in the world. The tavern area wasn’t exclusive to hunters, but the prices were so ridiculous for meat you didn’t collect yourself that it drove away most of the population. I imagined that was by design.

  It worked wonders, since most tables had free spots, and a few were even empty. On the flip side that meant I hadn’t tasted monster meat yet because fuck paying full price for that. Absolutely ridiculous.

  There were rumors of the effects monster meat had on the body, but they were just rumors. Although it wouldn’t be surprising if they were true. Monster meat took much longer to rot than normal meat, going a full month in some cases without any preservatives needed.

  Pretty insane, so it wasn't like there wasn’t merit to the idea that it could do something. But considering most hunters that subsisted off a monster diet didn’t seem all that different from normal people…other than the conditioning needed for the job and essence gained, obviously.

  Well, it detracted from the idea in my mind.

  I took a bite of my boar, chewing through it violently as Xae did the same. The two of us were just sitting and devouring our meals. The silence was nice.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t last, as an elk-man sat across from me on the table with arms crossed.

  “I can see today hasn’t been all that different from the usual,” Loklan said as he examined my bruised everything.

  “To be fair,” Xae said, mouth full of food. “Some of those bruises were from a scuffle she got into yesterday.”

  “I heard,” Loklan grunted, reaching out and grabbing Xae’s mug of water. The girl squawked indignantly but didn't do anything to the antlered giant before them.

  He took a swig, then let out a sigh. “I wonder how the populace will think of you, the rat-slayer, with the news that you're the type to beat slum children into the ground.”

  “One of them hurt my friend,” I said. “And the others refused to back down.”

  “So you should’ve done the smart thing and let it be,” Loklan said.

  I looked him straight in his yellow eyes. “No”

  “You’re doing no favours for your reputation, girl.” Loklan sighed.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yeah!” Xae cheered. “We don’t give a fuck!”

  Loklan shook his head, and handed the girl her mug.

  “Fine. But don’t blame me when people start to get hostile.”

  I grunted and went back to my meal.