Last night ended odd, the enhanced soldier reached proper molting size but didn't, she just stopped growing, she must have had something inside that needed more time to grow properly. Now that it was morning she seemed to have been waiting for us to wake up, both of us, at least it seemed the tiredness from Victoria's growth was wearing off and she was awake only a few minutes after I was. As soon as the larva saw she was awake they started their molt, and once she was dried off and her antenna were working, mother and daughter engaged in some high speed antenna wiggling. I had gotten a lot better at telepathy since I started, but Victoria and the kids were born with it so it was natural while I had to learn it.

Victoria turned towards me with a smile "she's a smart one, she has four Int like Fighter did. So she's also going to need a name, let's see..." she looked back towards the soldier "how about Christina?" The soldier, tentatively named, wiggled something that must have been a question because Victoria responded "yes, it is really fancy sounding name for a soldier, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve it."

That seemed to be the end of the argument because she turned and wiggled to me "Hello king, me Christina, queen said have special job?"

Hmm, she needs to relax "At ease Christina, I know being formal with us is what your instincts say to do, but I want you to be less so with us, we are your mother and father first, queen and king second." 

She looked uncomfortable for a couple seconds before stiffly communicating "I try... father."

Good enough, "okay, I'll bring her up and get started on some practice, unless you needed something else, Victoria?"

"Hmmm, no, I don't need anything else at the moment, thanks for asking though. I already have plenty to do down here right now between dirt control practice, chess practice, and wood carving." She said before she waved us off as I led Christina to the surface.

Once outside I told her to fight me, she was scared she would hurt me at first but I demonstrated that I had power coat so she would be hard pressed to hurt me, especially since she currently lacked the sharp spikes on her arms the full sized soldiers used as their primary weapon. She did her best but my stats alone let me handle her, at first, she rapidly improved in skill, her punches coming a little faster and more accurate with each attempt. This eventually hit a plateau though, her skill leveling off a bit below what it would take to overcome the gap in stats. I asked her if she knew why she stopped getting faster, and she said it was because she didn't know how to, it seemed her instincts only helped her gain basic competence in battle instead of a guide to be a master.

I needed to slow myself down so we can do this properly, not just try and go slowly but actually forced to go slower. I walked over to the ditch and pulled up dirt before I had it harden around my body, a sort of weighted dirt armor. It took quite a bit of dirt before it overwhelmed my stats and actually slowed me down, which was fine. The next round of sparring went a lot better in that I had to actually work to dodge and she had a chance to hit me, we trained like that for about an hour before she needed to eat because she wasn't an adult yet. She grew a few centimeters while eating her brunch and that translated to a slight increase in ability to fight since her reach was suddenly a bit longer.

I wont claim to be a master of fighting, but I knew some basic concepts that could be applied to her style, it was just far too straightforward by itself. It seemed focused on an overwhelming blitz that had very little room to defend, in a battle between sister soldiers the winner would be chosen from almost pure luck with both of them like that. I started incorporating counters into my defense, just slaps on the arms when she overcommitted to an attack, but I also explained how her sisters will be the same way, putting everything into an attack with no way to mitigate a counter. It was odd how hard it was to convince her to stop doing that, but from how she explained it, her body demanded putting down a threat as hard and fast as possible, those instincts were fine for grunts but not elites.

Lunch time once again gave her a few more centimeters, I still couldn't really hit her before she finished growing and her body gained armor, but breaking bad habits as early as possible is always a good idea. It was a bit after that that she finally started checking her blows so she could avoid counters, that chipping away at an enemy with weaker hits was an okay way to do it. Speaking of chipping away, my dirt shell was starting to break from getting hit repeatedly, I quietly turned on dirt control and repaired what I could but I couldn't do much while trying to avoid getting hit some more. I also decided to kick on power coat and was pleased that it properly treated my shell as armor as the blue field of defense appeared over it on my arm.

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I had to carefully make sure it stayed blue because even a light tap with the red field could seriously hurt her. It was kinda amazing how once her overcommitment issue was sorted she once again started getting a lot better really fast, it felt like a switch was thrown in her mind and her style started morphing into something better than "hit it until it dies". I would not be surprised if soon she was the one teaching me how to fight, talking about it mid battle was rather easy because we could talk mentally instead of needing to use our mouths which were busy breathing somewhat heavily due to exertion. She thought it was because of her extra intelligence, that overcoming the faint bloodlust inherent in the first style took a mental effort that just having one extra point allowed her to do.

Well, she didn't really say that, she just sent me a stream of thoughts and concepts that I eventually interpreted like that. It was a good theory though, after she ranked up I would see if the regular soldiers could have their styles morph or if they had a mental block. After she had a mid afternoon meal we stopped practice and I just had her watch me go to town on tree with the attack effect of power coat, hopefully she would be able to apply some of the the moves to her power strike once she unlocked it. I made sure she understood she could ask questions during the demonstration for anything in particular she wanted to see, unsurprisingly she asked for a five claw strike, and various angles to strike with a forearm.

It was during those arm strikes that I got a new insight with dirt magic, the dirt shell over my forearms had started auto repairing, I had forgotten I turned it on to repair it a little and it just kept going by itself. As expected that still didn't level it up one more time, what the hell did that thing need to get better? Anyway, after the demonstration we went back to some light sparing, she had already incorporated some of the moves I did to the tree. I always feel surprised by these kids, they seemed to have such a hard time with a lot of things, but then they are like rocket scientists at their profession. She didn't know what a rocket scientist was but she got the idea I was complimenting how she was so good at learning fighting techniques.

Soon enough we had to stop for dinner, if I had to guess she would probably finish growing when we had breakfast tomorrow. We headed back down to the main chamber where I finally dropped my shell on the floor for her to sleep on, a little magic turning it rather soft for a pile of dirt. Victoria was happy to report she figured out how to hold two separate balls of dirt at the same time and thinks she managed to feel that level up feeling I told her about. It was a good thing I had gotten over my squeamishness about doing lewd things in front of the kids so I could show how happy I was for her, I mean, it wasn't like we were corrupting the youth since they literally didn't have the organs to try and copy us.

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Breakfast time proved I guessed right, Christina had an extra large one and then started molting. While she was drying off I went and retrieved my sand bowl and put it next to the dirt piles Victoria was using to practice her dirt control. Looking Christina over I noticed she looked different from the other soldiers, and i don't mean just in how she carried herself, her armor was slightly different. As we were heading up I stopped another soldier and had them stand next to eachother to compare. It was subtle but if I had to describe it I would say Christina's shell was twisted towards deflection instead of absorption like the normal soldier. Things like the centerline of her chest was jutting out more and led to more angled armor so a blow would more likely glance off as opposed to trying to be stronger than the blow.

Asking about it she said she gained a "nymph trained" trait when she molted, it didn't list any bonus or negative. Only thing it could mean is we trained hard enough in her middle stage that the system acknowledged it, but it wasn't anything particularly impressive. Guiding her through the boxes she confirmed it was referred to as a common trait, the minimum was probably just her breaking free of the aggressive style, maybe if I figured out a way to train her more without hurting her she could have gained a higher tier version of it. Regardless, we could train more seriously now that I could punch her without accidentally caving in her chest. I pulled up a new dirt shell armor and got into position, her first punch was faster then she ever threw before and I barely twisted enough to turn it into a glancing blow.

Seemed her physical stats were actually lower while in her child stage and she was only now working at full power. After only a couple minutes I came to the conclusion that she was now purely better than me at hand-to-hand combat, which is understandable, I was a normal guy and she was literally born for battle. But I wondered how well she could do if I cheated by using magical support, I dropped my shell and attached five spheres of dirt to my control, one of them passive only and four active. This resulted in an actual fight, my dirt was both weapon and shield, the passive ball moving to deflect things when I thought of it and my active controled spheres effectively let me have more arms to counter her extra arms and extend my reach.

We only fought like that until she was exhausted, she may have more skill but her vitality was still lower than mine so she was tired first. It may have been very low power but it really helped her see how magic can equalize differences in power and ability. Once she had rested long enough it was time to find something to kill, she needed levels to unlock her powers and trained with them, and the only way for her to gain levels was murder. Finding one wasn't too hard, in fact it was weirdly easy, are they spawning faster? Anyway, killing was simple enough, she just jumped on it's back, grabbed hold of it's head with her upper arms and twisted until it stopped moving. I am really glad she firmly loved her daddy, because that looked horrifying.