Nora and I chatted for a while; mainly about inane gossip from around her neighborhood. She was a fantastic storyteller, and I found myself captivated by the tales of neighborhood intrigue she spun. My favorite story was about her neighbor’s revenge against her husband. She found out he’d slept with the neighborhood [Headwoman] in order to win a property dispute. As payback, she’d used her prodigious strength as a [Blacksmith] to nail her husband to the [Headwoman’s] front door by his clothes.

  Apparently, the man hung there for half a day until the [Headwoman] came back from a meeting with an important merchant house.

  Nora eventually ran out of stories after one about an [Actress] who’d pushed another down the stairs to take her role.

  While I was content to sit in silence with her. Nora kept glancing out towards the dance floor before she would look back to me, trying to find the courage to ask me something.

  “Something on you mind?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I just don’t know if it’s my place to ask.” She gave me a weak smile and shrugged.

  “I won’t answer if it isn’t.” I said.

  “You said something yesterday, after Matt stopped the spar between you and Ellen. Was that true?”

  “About the sparring rules back home?” Nora nodded. “It is. I’m not sure when they were first implemented, but I’ve always trained under them.”

  “And when did you start training, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  I gave her an apologetic half-shrug. That information was too close to revealing Order secrets for me to feel comfortable answering.

  “Okay.” Nora said and thought through what she wanted to ask next. “Can I ask why you train that way?”

  I thought about that for a moment. While our sparring traditions were involved in some secrets, they tied heavily into our fundamental religious beliefs, and spreading those was half of the reason I’d left the forest.

  “There are a couple reasons, and while I can’t tell you everything, I can tell you the foundational beliefs behind it.”

  I waited to see if Nora was interested, and she prompted me to continue with a quick nodding of head.

  “We believe that everything in life operates around a cycle of four concepts; Renewal, Growth, Decay, and Stagnation. If it helps, you can think of the concepts like the seasons.”

  The season analogy was one often taught to children, because it was easier to understand, and slowly over the centuries Ylena and her children’s domains had expanded to include the seasons in response.

  “I’m not sure how to phrase this next part in the Trade Tongue, but think of it like this. A pious and ideal person gives everything they have in everything they do. A truly pious person does nothing in half-measures, whether it’s baking, going through ledgers, teaching, praying, or combat.”

  “Okay… but how does that relate to sparring, though?” Nora asked. I could tell that she had already made some connections, but wanted me to explain fully.

  “The problem is, when you give combat everything you have, it results in either your death or the death of your opponent. Sparring is a half-measure meant to teach and hone our fighters. So, to pay off the spiritual debt they accrue to Decay and Stagnation with the half-measure; we spar until our bodies can physically take no more.”

  Nora’s eyes had gone wide, but she nodded along.

  “And then the cycle continues because [Healers] give you Renewal?” She guessed

  “That’s right.” I smiled at her, glad that I’d explained it well enough.

  “Don’t people die? I mean, there’s no way your [Healers] can get to everyone in time if all the losers are maimed?” She asked, apprehensively.

  “They do, but such is life. Decay will take its due no matter what we do.”

  Nora looked at me with a mix of calculation and something else I couldn’t identify. She chewed on her lip and cast a glance towards the dance floor. I followed her gaze and saw Mika and Ellen next to one another. I said nothing as Nora and I watched Mika whisper something in Ellen’s ear before she went off to go get them some drinks.

  “Mika!” Nora called over the music. “Come join us!”

  There was a shout of agreement and I shuffled over to allow the [Mage] I’d met yesterday to sit down. Mika gave me a level glance before he sat, and the well-worn wooden bench creaked dangerously under our combined weight. He wore casual if well-made clothing, different from the outfit he’d worn while we played siege.

  “How’s it going?” He asked Nora. “I’ve barely seen you all program.”

  “You know how it is. How’s your mom been?” she asked.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Mika cast a sidelong look at me before he answered.

  “She’s been alright. Still sore, though. The leg’s too broken to heal outright and there’s no chance she’s gonna pay the ten platinum to have a private [Healer] fix it.”

  Nora smiled fondly at that.

  “Hey, have you met Bran before? I’ve kind of latched onto him this program.”

  Mika raised his eyebrows at Nora and tried to nod in my direction without me noticing. She gave back another nod that was less subtle than Mika’s, but that only made his eyebrows climb higher.

  “I have yeah, we were on the same sparring team for the last round yesterday.” He said before he turned to me. “What’d you do to piqué her interest?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I changed the subject.

  “I’ve never seen constructs like the ones you used yesterday. Is it some kind of family skill?”

  Mika’s eyes lit up, and although he tried to suppress it, a small smile danced across his features.

  “Kinda, they’re just sculptures I’ve animated with curses. If all goes well, the System will accept what I’m doing as a skill once it’s fully developed.”

  “Impressive.”

  If what Mika said was true and he developed his own technique, then it was more than impressive. It was extraordinary. Getting the System to accept something you’ve created into its archives was a monumental task. To get it accepted as a new skill was another thing entirely. The System was picky about its skills, after all.

  “Pretty sure animated statue is just another word for golem.” An unfamiliar voice interjected.

  I turned from Mika to see Ellen seat herself next to Nora, a mug of ale in each hand. When she turned to look at me, her eyes narrowed into a glare before she flinched slightly and leveled her gaze at Nora.

  “Thanks El,” Mika said, grabbing a mug. “I mean, I guess you could call them that, but they aren’t really golems. I still have to control everything manually. True golems can self-operate.”

  “Still seems like golems to me.” She said back with a smile.

  Seated next to each other, I noticed that while Nora and Ellen had vaguely similar features, the two women were complete opposites. While Nora wasn’t small, she had a softness to her that Ellen lacked. Built on a foundation of whipcord muscle and stone; everything about her, down to the way Ellen casually flexed her calloused hands, screamed that she’d trained for combat.

  “Nor, you’re practically attached to tree stump here at the hip. What’s got you so interested?”

  I bristled at the insult, but let it go quickly. I’d leveled a greater one at her yesterday and could swallow a single barb in the face of that.

  “He’s from the cult!” Nora replied.

  “So?” Ellen asked.

  “What do you mean ‘so’? Only a single person ever comes into town from the cult, and even then, she only goes to Alisa or your uncle. Of course I’m interested.”

  It was slightly disappointing to hear she’d only hung out with me because of my origin. Yet, when I asked myself if I could fault her for it, I realized I couldn’t. What else would she have been interested in me for? We’d only just met.

  Ellen looked me over, and when she looked back at Nora, I could see her dislike for me warring with something else. Nora looked back at her insistently, some silent communication passing between the two. Eventually, Ellen gave her an approving nod.

  “Learn anything interesting?” she asked with a sidelong glance towards me.

  I bristled at being treated like an object, but stayed where I was. I liked Nora from what little I’d seen of her so far, and I wasn’t too proud to admit to myself that I was curious about how she perceived me.

  “We haven’t talked much abut his home, but what I have learned has been… enlightening.” She seemed briefly unsure of how to phrase something before her eyes lit up and she spoke.

  “Bran’s a dad!”

  “He is?” Mika asked, interest piqued, and I noticed Ellen stare at me as well.

  Rather than answer for me, Nora looked at me and motioned for me to tell them more.

  “Helena just passed seven months when I left the forest.”

  “Pretty young then, eh?” Mika asked.

  “She is.”

  “I remember when my little cousin was that age.” Ellen said with a distant smile. “I thought he was bad then. Just wait a couple months, they get way worse.”

  ~***~

  I spent the rest of the mixer with Nora, Mika, and Ellen. There were a couple of moments when the tension between Ellen and I shown through, but Nora always herded the conversation along. Turns out the three of them were childhood friends.

  Mika had acted as the lynchpin of their group growing up since the Hillhome family was wealthy enough to deal with Ellen’s, but they weren’t nobles and still had a lot of dealing with common families, which was how he met Nora.

  When we parted ways for the evening, it was after we’d all agreed to sit together during tomorrow’s debriefing. Apparently, Nora skipped out on them yesterday to sit with me. I left the Guild Hall with a smile on my face and walked back to the Widow’s Mark.

  Shadows cast from the warm glow of an open doorway danced across the paved road as I walked through one of Woodsedge’s more cramped districts. Three people huddled around the back door to a brickwork building. The warm glow from the [Baker’s] oven cast enough light on their faces for me to see how young each of them were. None of them looked older than twenty and one of them, a small boy, looked young enough to be unawakened.

  Though I’d read about them before, I’d never actually seen a [Beggar]. We drafted anyone caught begging and sent them to one of the war fronts deeper in the Emerald Ocean. So they could learn the skills required to fend for yourself. Why a city would have [Beggars] was easy for me to understand, but what shocked me about the people huddled around the back door was their youth. How could a ruler fail so totally that children had to beg for food and coin?

  ~***~

  The indistinct murmur of conversation and the smell of dinner welcomed me as I stepped through the front door of the Widow’s Mark. Most of the tables were already served, so I saddled up to my seat at the bar, hoping to grab something to eat.

  “Hey Widow, anything left from dinner?” I asked.

  “You’re too late, I’m afraid.” She said back with a gentle smile as she washed out one of her mugs. “I can give you some travel rations. Got plenty of those.”

  Coin purse a couple of copper lighter. I went back up to my room. The sight of my desk painted in hues of red and orange by the dying light of sunset greeted me as I stepped through the door. By the time I finished eating, the sun had set, and only the stubby tallow candle on the wardrobe illuminated the room.

  I settled down onto the bed and activated Beginner’s Shield Art with the mana I had automatically replenished during the day. That now familiar feeling of having your mana stripped away from your core, while no less unpleasant, was just a minor annoyance once you got used to it.

  Rather than watch as the Trainer formed from streams of mana, I stretched. When I looked up, the Trainer was ready for me. A shield already formed on my arm. Without me noticing, a longsword held languidly in a middle guard, manifested in the Trainer’s hands.

  As soon as I settled into the ready position it’d drilled into me, I braced for it to attack. Instead, the Trainer just held its guard and watched me. I kept my position for a few minutes, but after neither of us moved, I went to stand.

  The Trainer shook its head and casually waved me back down with its left hand. Apparently, we were still doing the stance training. It just wouldn’t be next to me while we did so.

  Once another ten minutes passed, the Trainer rose slightly to advance cautiously towards me. It circled, and I turned to follow. As it paced, the Trainer lashed out at me with the tip of its sword. The attacks were quick but lacked any of the power I knew it held.

  As it circled, the Trainer sped up. Like always, its attacks started weak. Not that they weren’t dangerous. Every time the Trainer stabbed or slashed at me, the move was designed to find the gaps in my defense. To punish me for mistakes without being fatal. I made none, however, and every time the Trainer whipped its sword forward, it met the face or rim of my shield.

  I hadn’t noticed it before when the Trainer just used its fists and feet, but now that it had a sword, I had to notice that no matter what it did, nothing damaged the shield I used. The wood never scored or cut and the metal of the boss and rim never scratched, let alone dented.

  As it circled me and got faster, the attacks got stronger as well. Each blow almost forced my arm out of position, and each follow through was designed to kill me if it had. It was only the knowledge that you couldn’t experience true death in a skill that allowed me to remain calm despite the onslaught.

  That didn’t mean the Trainer wasn’t a deadly opponent who could run me through. The difference was that no matter the injury I suffered in my soul space, my body on the material plane would remain uninjured. As its swordplay got better, and the attacks stronger, the Trainer wove in kicks and attacks with its off-hand.

  I blocked a cleave that forced the tip of the sword into the earth and dodged out of the way of a kick that would’ve reversed my knee.

  Somehow, I avoided any major injuries for the entire session, but by the end, my soul’s avatar was nothing but a dripping mass of cuts and fresh wounds.

  When I came back to in my bed at the Widow’s Mark a System notification quietly waited for my acknowledgement.

  Congratulations! Through your efforts you have advanced your skill “Beginner’s Shield Art” to (5/10)!

  The move to actual weapons must have been a step forward, and now that I was halfway through the skill, I’d reached the point where my trainer’s had always suggested I consider my next skill selection.