“Ow,” Amelia groaned.

Logan knew she was fine. It was just the shock of falling over that made her complain reflexively. He wasn’t hurt either, but he could feel his body caught up in a tangle of limbs.

Logan opened his eyes and immediately blushed. Their faces were almost touching they were so close. With her body on top of his, they were in quite a scandalous position.

Amelia quickly stood up. She looked like she didn’t know whether to run away or apologise, so Logan broke the tension first. They had finally started talking again and he didn’t want to ruin that.

He held his hand out. “A little help, please?”

She hauled him up, both of them feeling a little shy. They were so embarrassed that neither of them dared to look at the other. That was why it took Logan a few seconds to realise they hadn’t let go of each other’s hands. They stayed like that before Logan fed her a stream of power from the egg.

“This?” Amelia said, looking up at him.

“You seemed tired.”

Amelia blushed and looked away. She suddenly let go of Logan’s hand, filling him with disappointment. But instead of running off to breakfast, she grabbed her shield and walked back onto the field.

“Well?” She asked, glancing back at him. “Are you done training? Or maybe you’re scared I might hit you this time?”

“I’m more scared of you accidentally dropping that shield on my foot than purposefully hitting me.”

Amelia raised an eyebrow before charging at Logan while he was still walking into the clearing. He used Celerity to back away. It wasn’t enough, so the moment her shield crashed down on him, he also used Flash Step and a new technique called Evade. It felt like diving out from under a crystal wall that was about to fall on him.

“Get back here, you damn worm!”

Logan did as she asked. He suddenly spun around before she was ready and used Flash Step to barge into her, his shoulder slamming into the shield. She tried to use Shield Bash, her new intermediate technique, but she had no time to react. That left her to shove it into him with raw strength, which he easily pivoted around thanks to Evade.

Amelia tried to pull her shield back when she suddenly noticed a fist sailing towards the side of her head. Logan had used the momentum of his pivot to boost the power of his fist. There was no time to raise her shield, and she had even less time to use a technique. That left her to try and roll with the punch as she dived to the ground.

Logan’s fist grazed Amelia’s face, but it didn’t connect properly. When she came out of her roll, there was no bruise or mark, her complexion flawless besides being a little flushed from the exercise. It was just a normal punch, after all. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, instead aiming to mix things up. Running away all the time wouldn’t be a proper mock battle if he continued doing so.

It would be a hunt.

They continued to spar for some time after that. Logan got a few taps in here and there while Amelia got a similar number of grazes with her shield. Neither of them were injured from the fight, but Logan eventually won the second round of their sparring match.

Amelia got lucky, attacking him at the perfect moment. Or maybe she was just a genius. Her shield came down on Logan’s mid-section like a ton of bricks, leaving him no time to evade. That was why he used Shattering Strike with his bare hand to try and ablate some of the force.

Fist and shield met with a thunderous bang, and Logan felt a few of his fingers break from the impact. He was definitely on the losing side of the battle, but that didn’t mean she had won the war. Amelia stumbled back and cried out in pain. The vibrations had pierced through her shield and struck the forearm.

While it didn’t break anything, the pain had certainly rattled her quite a bit. On the other hand, Logan could shrug off his injuries thanks to his advanced mental cultivation. That was why he used his broken hand to grab the lip of her shield and wrench it aside. With his other hand, he grabbed her free arm and kicked out her feet from under her.

The battle ended a few seconds later with Logan holding Amelia as she tried, and failed, to turn things around.

After one last attempt to escape, her arms went limp. “Alright, I concede.”

“Looks like I won round two,” He said, standing up and offering his hand. “You’re going to have to try harder.”

Amelia just shrugged and took the help. “They say that an idiot’s luck always comes in twos.”

“I must not be an idiot then because I’m pretty sure I won the last time we sparred as well. That’s technically three in a row, right?”

“There’s no way that counts!”

Logan healed himself and sent some golden mist to heal her, but they seemed to forget to let go of each other’s hand again. Of course, that only lasted a few seconds before they prepared for another round. To Amelia’s chagrin, she lost the third and fourth match, Logan managing to grapple her into submission with a different hold each time.

The reasons for her loss were simple. First, Logan had superior cultivation and was stronger due to being further along in his manual. Second, he had learned more intermediate movement techniques than her. And last of all, he was more familiar with his concepts than her.

Two were over the halfway mark and the third was close, allowing him to slowly merge them. Unfortunately, Logan’s progress had stalled out for multiple reasons. His insufficient understanding of elasticity would eventually sort itself out. It was still at 43%, which was only a week or two of training away from reaching 50%.

However, that was just a speed bump on his road to perfection. The real issue was learning a master-level technique. His progress had slowed to a crawl without any sign of starting again. Not even perfecting his concepts would help, the issue being something else entirely.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on what that could be. Logan had mixed things up to try and loosen the bottleneck. A few ideas had brought him closer to the truth, the best one being to fuse three concepts before he tried to learn a master-level technique.

They were the perfect fusion of three concepts, working seamlessly as if they were never separate in the first place. As such, Logan had decided to use three intermediate techniques to more or less cheat his way there, each one using a different combination of concepts. He would have far more opportunities that way since techniques were based on concepts, not the other way around.

Rebound was a defensive technique that relied on vibration to ablate the force of an impact. By fusing it into Flash Step, which used rotation as its base, it would focus more on sudden dodging. This worked by directing vibrations inside the body to empower the legs, allowing its user to generate an even greater burst of speed.

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The next two, however, were very different. Celerity was a technique that used elasticity to increase running efficiency. By merging Flash Step into it, the technique would boost the user’s speed and become more efficient. This was due to Flash Step’s ability to generate force through rotation. It was a comprehensive upgrade that kept Celerity’s purpose the same since the technique was still useful.

Lastly, there was Evade. It was the fusion of Rebound and Celerity, but because it diverged too much from the originals, the System gave it a new name. It still functioned similarly to Rebound, allowing the user to redirect the body’s vibrations. Only now, he could use the impact of an enemy’s attack to roll with the blow and move past it, ablating most of the damage while getting out of the way.

Rebound on its own could only transform that energy into movement, but it couldn’t reduce an impact or help the user avoid it. Logan still had to take the blow. Evade fixed that, allowing him to reduce all damage that he sustained. That sounded ridiculous, but it actually wasn’t that great in real combat.

First of all, slicing attacks didn’t cause many vibrations. Logan’s robes could handle most of the damage anyway, so that wasn’t much of an issue. Instead, Evade mainly reduced the damage caused by direct impacts, such as a punch or hammer blow. They would also still injure him. The difference now was that he could shift himself out of the way more easily, reducing a lethal blow to one that only broke a few bones.

That was excellent in the right situation, but what made it truly valuable was that it could be layered with Flash Step. Logan had used those two while sparring with Amelia in hopes of inspiring him. All he required now was more experience to attain mastery. The constant practice was great, but sparring and real battles would push Logan’s comprehension to new heights, finally allowing him to merge the three intermediate concepts into one at the master level.

These three techniques were a complete trifecta of concepts. Rotation, vibration, and elasticity merged into three different pairs. All Logan needed was one final push to fuse them into one whole. However, there was a lot to improve upon before he learned a master-level technique.

On their sixth bout, the sparring started to become less effective. Amelia’s Shield Bash was becoming more terrifying with each passing minute. It was like a mountain threatening to fall on him, and thanks to it being a master-level technique, it had almost no weaknesses he could exploit.

He couldn’t imagine how deadly it would become when she could use the whole move. Amelia’s movements were explosive, fast, and overwhelmingly powerful. Logan would be thrown around the clearing if she could actually use the technique. Instead, he was running circles around her while she tried and slowly succeeded in merging her three concepts.

She would eventually get to that point, but Logan was improving faster than her. They were both in the early stages of merging their concepts. Since he had decided to use three similar techniques to gain experience, he would inevitably progress faster in the early stages. Amelia would improve much faster in the latter half since her master-level Shield Bash was a genuine combination rather than the raw and unfocused concepts he was trying to aimlessly fuse.

Of course, that wouldn’t be a problem if he simply purchased and attempted to learn a master technique once his progress slowed.

Right now, however, Logan was soundly beating Amelia. The gaps between his usage of Evade and Flash Step were growing shorter, Celerity was becoming even easier to use, and Flash Step was growing much more explosive. He could almost move as quickly as Amelia when she used Leap, and that technique couldn’t be used frequently due to its strain on the body.

Logan was running circles around her, so he eventually decided to stop sparring. They were late for breakfast now, and he was gaining almost nothing from the lack of pressure. With an Evade and a gentle push on the edge of her shield, he stepped around Amelia and grabbed her arm. With her shield locked in place, he then got behind her and grabbed her other arm, arresting the shield across her chest.

Logan had her beat for the sixth time in a row.

He felt like he should get a medal for how difficult it was, but when Amelia gave up, he felt her lean against him. Her body was soft, and her flowery perfume tickled his nose.

Logan was about to release his grip when Tom stormed out of the brush. “What the hell are you doing, you pervert? Get the hell away from her!”

They both turned to their right, Logan releasing Amelia’s arm.

Tom pulled out his sword and rushed over, but Amelia put herself between them before he could make a stupid mistake. “We were sparring, idiot. Put that thing away before someone teaches you how to use it.”

“Don’t defend him! That freak was purposely copping a feel.”

Logan blushed, but only because Amelia had glanced at him demurely. He hadn’t done anything intentionally. At most, he had put her in that joint lock for less than a handful of seconds. No one with an ounce of reason or intelligence would claim he was taking advantage of her.

Then again, they were arguing with Tom.

“We were just sparring, alright?” Amelia said, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. “I appreciate that you’re standing up for me, but it’s not like I’m letting him get away with something I don’t like. I didn’t feel uncomfortable or put upon in our fights, so there’s no need for you to get offended in my stead.”

Before Tom could blow up, Amelia grabbed Logan’s hand and pulled him towards the campgrounds.

“We’re going to grab breakfast,” Amelia said, not looking back.

After disappearing into the forest, Logan could’ve sworn that he heard Tom furiously hacking away at a tree.

***

The next few days were more of the same. Logan trained in the mornings, travelled north in the afternoons, and did a few different things in the evenings to push himself along. His schedule hadn’t really changed, yet those three days were a thousand times better than the previous three.

Every morning, Logan trained alone for the first half before sparring with Amelia in the second. They chatted while they moved north, and when the day was done, they shared a drink together and spoke for an hour or two every evening before going off to continue training. He hadn’t realised how much he enjoyed their time together until they stopped talking. Now that he could appreciate it though, he made sure to enjoy every minute.

They spoke about all sorts of things. A lot of it focused on themselves, but most of their discussions were about growing training. Amelia had already comprehended the Goddess nearly a week ago, and now that she had a lot more time to focus on her meditations, she comprehended the first set of flowers in under a week. Despite having only a fraction of the time available, she was still faster than him.

Logan was in total awe, making her embarrassed whenever he showered her with praise.

She wasn’t the only one growing. Logan had gotten stuck at another bottleneck nearly two weeks ago, but after reconciling with Amelia, the barrier stopping him from comprehending the fourth set of flowers practically disappeared overnight. It turned out that his stress and worries had been slowing down his growth.

Logan always thought that the fear of his imminent demise would spur on his latent potential, but now he began to believe that a calm and empty heart was needed to comprehend the Heavenly Laws. If only that state was easy to come by. Logan had known something like that since he had comprehended the third set of flowers, but that didn’t mean he could suddenly reach a zen-like state, especially not when all of that drama had gone down with Stephanie.