It took three days to get Becca to stop calling me master. That, I was pleased to find, was the most difficult part of training her.
While Becca obviously could not benefit from the insane and bizarre side effect of my ki imbalance, she could benefit from my temporal transmigration, or whatever I was going to call this traveling through time. Together with the rest of the party, Becca and I had been side by side for decades training and fighting. And even when we would go off for special solo training, even if it lasted a year or two, we were so tight nit that it was like we hadn’t been gone at all. That was now (in a most unusual way) paying dividends for Becca because I knew, to an extent, what worked for her and what could be discarded.
Old Becca has explained it to me a decade ago: The reason she faired so poorly in our early years in Dorflich was because she lacked great respect for her Masters. This is not to say she had no respect; there was some, but it was, at best, described as begrudging. And for all that the Masters in Dorflich had been hard trainers, Becca thrived in hostile environments: the harder you pushed against her, the harder she could push you (and thus herself). As young as we were during our time in Dorflich, Becca failed to realize what she was missing to effectively train.
It wasn’t until later in life after we had traveled for many years that both pieces clicked for her. She had found a real hard ass of a Master who was more than willing show to Becca just how strong she was and just how weak Becca was in comparison. And then she took an absolute pleasure in running Becca through a training regimen from hell. The former solved the first problem, and the second the latter. This time around, I had—inadvertently—already established myself to her as a great power and while I disdained the title master, it was clear that she had great respect for me. And the latter was easy enough once you recognized the issue.
Of course, this only took her so far in her previous life and would so here as well. The highest levels of spiritualism would require a level of self-study and commitment that simply couldn’t be provided by a strong Master training you. Though Masters could provide some guidance, a mature self-discipline was needed to truly move forward.
This was unfortunately an intensively individualistic process and for all that we were close in the last life, I didn’t really understand how this worked for Becca, let alone for my other teammates. I mean, we had of course talked about it, but there was simply too much left inexpressible. I didn’t even know how I would explain my growth at those stages. I knew how, and I could do so again this life, but the language didn’t have the words to explain it.
Nonetheless, we were far from those stages for Becca. Nonetheless, since my training regime was based on what I knew from old Becca, my incredibly intensive and personalized training regime would be extremely effective. Nonetheless, with so much being spoon-fed to her, I realized I would need to work into the sequence independence, self-determination, and problem solving. It would set me back years if my training regime exhausted itself and then Becca plateaued because she couldn’t move herself forward.
For the first two days, we focused solely on the most basic of exercises, both physical and spiritual, though I would push them to unreasonable extremes. In part, I needed to gauge what her current strengths were and, in part, I needed her to adapt to the grueling training that would follow. Oh, and of course, I left the weights charged at a hundred kilograms. The same day that I had given her the weights, we walked back to the City together. As we parted, I made sure to reiterate that she had to leave the weights on all the time, even when she slept. When I met her the next day at the Western Gate, she still looked tired, and when I inquired, repeatedly, she begrudgingly replied that even the smallest movements, like breathing, her laborious. To myself, I acknowledged that she had neither the Second Step to rely on nor the inexplicable muscle growth from my ki imbalance. To her, I simply suggested that if she had the energy to complain, then I probably needed to add a few kilograms. It was crueler than I cared to be but I knew that it would be for her best.
On the third day, we began to enter into a routine. We would run the six kilometers or so to the gorge, “rest” while we made our way inside, then sprint across the valley to the training area. I would then set up agility and obstacle courses which Becca would have to run through repeatedly. The boulders themselves would come into play, though I also carved up a log into a number of cylindrical markers I could move about to reshape the course. While the weights she wore were also continuously improving her strength and speed, I also found several rocks ranging about twenty kilograms which I had Becca alternatively pick up, carry, or throw.
And that was all only before morning bell.
Until noon bell, we would then go through spiritual exercises. Several would focus purely on strength. Sometimes I would just have her use a fireball spiritual technique until she had exhausted her ki. Other times I would have her try and build the fireball to a larger size before firing. And I even once tried to get her to boil away one of the small waterfalls that flowed into the valley, though this did little more than get her soaking wet.
Other exercises would focus on control. She was already rather good at the floating leaves technique, so I quickly pushed her to floating water technique. This backfired a bit, and was not terribly effective. After some experimentation, I created a slow burning fist sized fireball of gray ki, which I then handed over to her. Subject to her aura’s protection, the fire would still damage her, but the “liquid” nature of the gray ki like this was similar in nature to the balls of water that would usually be used. There were only a few incidents before she learned the control needed to keep the fireball hovering stably. From there, I had her start moving the fireball or dividing it into smaller balls, or both at the same time.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
At noon bell, we would break for a lunch. Although Becca always packed her own lunch, she hadn’t quite grasped how much energy this new routine consumed and she never quite had enough. After the second time I caught she was still hungry after lunch, I started packing extra food under the excuse that I needed to make sure she was eating well. Despite some initial embarrassment, Becca eventually relented and was quick to compliment and then eat my cooking. By this time of the year, we had already had several early crops of fresh fruits and vegetables. Given how cheap bread and meat were in Dorflich and how poor students tended to be, the inclusion of these food groups in my meals was a small luxury for her.
After lunch, we would spend our time in weapons training. As Becca was a brawler, this would of course be her fists. Throughout our earlier sparring, Becca has never worn a pair of gauntlets, but only some leather wraps. When I finally asked about this during our training, she explained that she had never owned a pair before. This surprised me, though given the nature of her fighting style, owning a pair was not strictly necessary for training.
With that, I would then spend an half bell running her through her forms, having her punch and kick at the air. Eventually, I crafted a soft shield of hide and hay which I used to absorb her punches and kicks as she went through the routines. This ended up being a mistake and after only a few days, I decided just to let her hit me: She couldn’t break my aura even undefended, and it was significantly more realistic on her part.
After a short break, we would then spar. I still did so unarmed as this was primarily meant to be training for Becca, but now that she had gotten the rust off of my form and I no longer needed to conceal my power, I stopped holding myself back. While I made sure not to immediately defeat her every round, I had complete control over every fight and the sparring proved incredibly difficult for her. Typically, though, I would allow her to continue the fight until she made a major mistake and then I would initiate a take down, which she invariably failed to counter. For lesser mistakes, a quick, painful strike was enough of a training response and, given what I knew about Becca, one of the faster ways for her to learn what not to do.
About two weeks in, I started working in some more advanced training. One of the first things I did was to show her a new technique she hadn’t known yet. Actually, given that I didn’t have the fire affinity, it wasn’t a technique I had used myself much, but rather was something that Becca had learned shortly before we left Dorflich in my previous life. Indeed, once she mastered it, the technique because a staple of hers for well over a decade.
That Becca was learning it a few years early was just me speeding up the process.
For all that I did not have an affinity with fire, I nonetheless was a strong spiritualist and could invoke both fire and earth attuned ki if I needed to, even without spiritual techniques. Nonetheless, it was both uncomfortable and inefficient, and went through the effort of doing so solely to teach Becca the spiritual technique.
It did however leave me with an interesting decision. In my previous life, I had initial begun as a spiritualist in the water affinity, and had trained that for many years. Almost twenty years in, I had felt a degree of mastery over the affinity, and while I had yet more to learn, my progress has noticeably slowed. And so, like many other highly skilled spiritualists, I had begun training a second affinity, this time in air and by the time of my… death, I had just about mastered that affinity as well.
While I still had far to go to reestablish my full strength and control over my ki, I now had to ask myself whether I should begin the long road of mastering a third affinity. I had rarely heard of spiritualists in my previous life who had learned two affinities fast enough to spare the time to learn the third—even among prodigies—but with this reset, I was essentially given a whole second life in which to train.
Despite the unusualness of my situation, the obvious answer seemed yes, though whether to wait a while longer, and which affinity to train were still unknowns. Nonetheless, now that the topic had come up, I knew that I would revisit it again soon.
Our sparring would last up until afternoon bell, at which point we would spend a half bell meditating or working on spiritualism before calling it for the day. We started with Becca’s aura, though given that she was a close in brawler, her aura was already rather developed and after some time, I considered her to be proficient in the First Step of Spiritualism.
With that resolved, we then began to work on Becca’s use of ki to enhance her speed and strength, the Second Step of Spiritualism. After the first day, it was clear that she had only just started to practice the Second Step before my arrival and her success was incredibly limited. Nonetheless, after spending an evening or two reminiscing through old memories, I soon found that I could glean some insights into the Second Step from the many conversations I had had with old Becca. These in turn I shared with new Becca.
As we worked through these insights one by one and each revelation clicked, her success was outstanding. She went from successfully invoking the Second Step once in seven, then once in four, and then twice in five. I had thought my growth in strength both physical and spiritual was absurd—but I did seem to benefit from some side effects of traveling to the past. And in some respect it wasn’t simply growth, but the reclamation of spiritual strength once gained then lost.
Becca on the other hand was 18, with all the problems that that age posed to being a spiritualist. I didn’t know how many of these insights I’d ultimately be able to provide, and yet as far as I could tell, Becca had made nearly two years of progress in just two weeks.
Damn.