For the rest of the week before the mission, Nirou and Laska settled into a routine trying to make the best use of their time. Right after breakfast, the two would head out to the training area to the side of the house. There, they would practice swordsmanship until the sun was high in the sky and the hottest part of the day was imminent.

"I'm still too far beyond you for us to match in a standard spar." Laska told Nirou on the first day of their practice. "So for now we'll do some asymmetrical training. I'll hold my sword out, and you try to hit with your own. My goal is to avoid every one of your attacks, and yours is to hit me even once. If you actually manage to do that, then this training can be considered more than a success."

The training began, with Laska holding her rapier out in the air unassumingly as she waited for an attack. Nirou drew his sword, and started with a normal swipe in her direction. His attack was with far less effort than he could have mustered, a sentiment Laska reflected by merely lowering her arm slightly to avoid it entirely. Nirou swung his blade back and forth a few times, eventually with more force in order to embarrass himself a little less, but Laska moved her sword out of the way each time with minimal effort.

"Neither of us are going to get anything out of this if you keep on like that." Laska sighed. She was not even slightly winded, contrary to Nirou who was panting a bit already. "You're standing stock still. You're changing direction going back and forth, and losing all your momentum every time. Try using some footwork! Close in and attack from some different angles! In a swordfight the single most important thing you need to be able to do is make an attack that the enemy won't be prepared for. Go for a feint, make them spend their guard somewhere else and leave your true target open. That's how you use this weapon."

Nirou could understand the objective here, he had played some fighting games and the principle existed there too. Too bad he had never been very good at them. Regardless, he started putting in effort with his whole body. Stepping forward as he attacked, carrying momentum from one attack to the next, attacking from above, below, and diagonals. He didn't get close to actually hitting of course, but Laska was forced to put more effort into her own movements at least.

After many hours of exerting himself, Nirou would flop down on the grass next to the training area in order to catch his breath enough to make the trip back up the stairs into the house. Laska would also take a seat to rest, though she was of course not nearly as tired. The humidity didn't make things any better, and neither did the bugs buzzing around. However as Nirou wiped the sweat from his forehead, the bugs reminded him of something he hadn't thought about. Looking over the exposed parts of his skin, he couldn't see a single mosquito bite. He couldn't remember feeling one at all since he got here, which he considered quite strange. They had been in the tropics this whole time.

"Hey... Laska." he calls out to his sparring partner, as he finishes steadying his breathing. "Do you guys not have mosquitoes in this world or something? I haven't been bitten once."

"Mosquito? The word sounds familiar..." the girl rolls the word around in her head for a bit before finding what she was looking for. "Oh! You mean a flying insect that sucks your blood. No, they don't exist anymore. They used to, but they were made extinct by a seven star spell centuries ago."

Laska cleared her throat and began recanting the tale. "The story goes that a man from Eastern Anjdrahm was so lucky as to recieve a seven star spell as a gift that allowed him to make one type of creature completely extinct. Well he was naturally told by his friends to use it on the Beastmen, but he then he thought 'What if it only works on one type of Beastman? Which kind should I choose? Lion Beastmen? Tiger Beastmen? Bear Beastmen?' And while he was so caught up in thought, he kept getting bitten by the mosquitoes relentlessly. He got so irritated that he thought 'These bugs have caused me more trouble than Beastmen ever have!', and he wiped them out with the spell then and there. He spent the rest of his life being yelled at 'Why didn't you kill the Beastmen?', though apparently he was happy enough to be rid of the mosquitoes."

Nirou was a bit taken back by how much had just been revealed. Not only do mosquitoes not exist here, they were wiped out by an extinction spell that some guy randomly received. What other kinds of absurdly dangerous gifts were people getting?

"Well... that's likely ended up being a really good thing." Nirou decides to tap into his one asset once again, his otherworldly knowledge. "Mosquitoes are one of the greatest carriers of disease you'll ever find. Was there less talk of plagues after that compared to before? No mosquitoes should mean millions of malaria deaths don't happen."

"Huh? They carried disease?" Laska puts her hand on her chin and goes into pondering mode again. "Well it was a long time ago, so I can't be completely certain. But you may be right. Thinking back on the stories about plagues that I know, more of them are from before that time than after. If what you say is true, then it would make sense. Are other animals also carriers of disease? I can assume other insects that bite would be, ticks and the like."

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"Uh, yeah. Those are the main ones." Nirou replies. He considers going in depth on exactly what it means for an animal to be a vector of disease, but Laska would probably ask him every little detail. He was far too tired to go into germs and all that at the moment, so he decided to keep it simple for now. No doubt he would have many opportunites to cover the topic later. "You've got to watch out for fleas that get carried on rats and stuff like that. There are also some diseases carried by livestock that can be transferred to humans." 

"Fascinating. The idea of rats making one sick has been thrown around before, but we don't really have any way to know. However if you're the one telling me this, I believe it completely. It may just be that ridding this world of mosquitoes has done more good than any other single thing. It seems strange to think that despite how much good it's done, it's possible no one has really taken notice. Then again... Millions, you say... Someone keeping track of populations may have made the link. If anyone is privy, then it's likely to be someone at the Imperial Academy of Medicine. There's quite a bit that they don't bother letting anyone else know."

Nirou tucked the fact that there was an Imperial Academy of Medicine away in the back of his head as his thoughts drifed back to the story for a moment. If anything that anyone in this world would have called a mosquito died by that spell, that means it probably covered hundreds of species. It just might have wiped out all Beastmen if he so chose. There didn't really seem to be any way to know the reach of all these magic effects for sure without testing them.

"Speaking of things people don't know, we should be getting back inside for your script lessons." Laska broke Nirou's train of thought as she stood up. "I trust you've recuperated enough to make the trek back up the staircase?"

As was usual for the afternoons, Nirou and Laska would return inside and have a nice lunch before hitting the books. Nirou still had a very long way to go to be able to read, and they might as well put the time that they spent inside escaping the heat to good use. It was mainly memorization, with Laska telling him the meanings of characters and then testing his ability to recognize them. Naturally, grinding vocab was slow going, but over the course of the week Nirou became able to parse simple sentences fairly well on his own.

Naturally during the course of this learning, certain unforeseen issues came to light.

"Hey Laska, how do you write your name?" Nirou asked, as he combed over the characters he had been given to practice. He brought it up because he realized that he would have trouble recognizing which of these characters are used for names. He doesn't actually know the language he's speaking, it's just translated for him automatically. He can learn the all the meanings, but not know the sounds. In which case, he won't be able to recognize names. Obviously a problem, so he turns to Laska for help.

"Hmm. You've only just started memorizing characters, I didn't want to force you to take on too much at once." she says, considering her options. "But I suppose it couldn't hurt. You're bright enough, it should be fine."

What Laska writes out is many times more confusing than any of the characters Nirou had been memorizing. She drew three figures clockwise in a circle, then two on opposite ends of a second circle, and kept going until there were six circles of varying numbers of shapes.

"Las-ka-dia-Zysc-Vold-bend. Like this. Some of the sounds are approximations, there are letters for fifty different sounds, but it's still not enough to cover everything." Laska explains to the confused Nirou. "This is called Secondscript. The Firstblood created it to write foreign names, since they didn't want people taking names from Firstspeech and they needed a way to write them. Your name can be written in this way too, let me just sound it out... Ni-ro-Tet-su-ga-wa. A lot of short sounds in your name, aren't there?"

Nirou stared at what was supposedly his name. There were a few questions he could ask, such as 'Who's the idiot that decided to write clockwise?', but he decided against it. So this was a whole other script he had to learn to be able to read anything that referred to most proper names. Great. After thinking for a bit, he realized that he could also theoretically work backwards with this script to figure out how Firstspeech words are actually pronounced. However, he immediately filed the thought under 'Worst Idea I've Ever Had'. It would require him to learn how to speak a language that he was literally prevented from hearing with magic, for basically no benefit. So forget that.

A single week wasn't enough to make much appreciable progress, but Nirou wasn't that worried. Slowly and steadly, he was managing to remember more with each passing day. He could even keep up the study while they were travelling to the site of their mission, so he expected to be able to keep consistently learning until he finally got it.

With sword training one half of the day and reading lessons the other, the week eventually drew to a close. On the morning of their scheduled departure, no sooner than breakfast was finished, there was a knock on the door. The General opened it to reveal a familiar face.

"Good morning, sir!" Rashen stood at attention in the doorway. "Here to pick up my two new subordinates! You kids ready?"

"The Captain seems to be brimming with enthusiasm." Shilan chuckles, as he stands aside. "Good luck, everyone. Remember not to do anything too rash. You two have to watch out for your own safety first, leave prioritizing the mission to the professionals for now."

"I don't have any intention of doing something that may impede my ability to seek my goals later." Laska replies, heading out the door with Nirou in tow. "I have my own priorities before anything else."

Nirou couldn't help but think of the fact that him being here at all was the result of a reckless move that could have done her in. While she may not have the intention to, she seems like the kind to get in over her head anyway. Maybe she's bad at gauging how much trouble things actually are.

As they said their farewells to the family for now, Nirou internally decided that he should do his part to keep Laska from going overboard. This mission was probably not going to be the time for it.