In the end, after they throw them food and supplies, the group had parted ways after thanking her by profusely cursing her, her mother, and her future grandchildren. It was classy but Sophia could not deny she deserved it.
She had pulled one over the lot of them and they could not do shit about it.
She had tried to convince them but failed. And she saw a potential threat to her continued survival and had acted on it. It had been dirty and she felt like shit about it. But she was deeply aware she was not charismatic enough to take the lead of that group. And she could not afford to follow the lead of some fool who did not know shit about anything.
Stella and that giant guy already had a wrap on the group. She wished them well and sincerely hoped to never see them again. Otherwise, she would have some explaining to do and that particular conversation would turn sour quickly.
Now, all she needed was to convince Paolo to get along with her plan.
Which was currently managing his own guilt with something that looked like cornflakes.
"So, what do you wanna do now?" She asked, turning the table to better convince the lad afterward.
"Dunno." He simply responded. "You tell me."
"We don't have any Fighter to protect us anymore." She stated, laying the ground for her argument.
"I am aware. Your point?" He asked, still going after the cereals with a vengeance.
"I know you want to dive deep into the library. And I think we should take turns. The library is all yours until you go to sleep if you are in the mood. But I can also use a sparring partner for close combat."
"I see what you get out of it. But what's in for me exactly?" He asked pragmatically, disappointed that he already finished all the cornflakes in the box.
"The same way, I'm trying to pick magic for my secondary class. Close combat is your weakness. You could try to aim for Fighter as your secondary." She tried to persuade him.
"So I can protect you until you have no need of poor gullible Paolo? Just like you did the others?" He retorted.
Touché.
"So you can protect yourself." She stated back. "Think about it: with or without me, there is no one else to protect you but yourself. You don't have to trust me. I made an offer. You do what you will with it. Until then, I'm going to do exactly what I told the others: train in archery and read books."
And so she stood up and left him to his self-pity feast.
★☆★
They did not exchange a word for two days. When he finally went to sleep, she locked herself up in the library. Once he woke up, she went to sleep. And from the moment she woke up and until he went back to sleep once again, she trained her archery until her hands bled. Her entire body was sore from overexertion, but she kept cramming the picture book until her mind was in the same state afterwards.
And to make matters worse, she was so tired that her sleep was restless making her feel even worse once she woke up. But she had a goal and no distraction left in her way. For all the modern comfort the resting zone offered, the place had no television, no computer, no music, no game. Only pretty brown monochrome walls covered in patterns that seem to follow no rhyme or reason.
Sometimes, when Paolo was sound asleep, she would allow herself to cry, safe behind the walls of the library.
And when she did not feel like studying, she would write down page after page of inconsequential things about everything she missed. Her family. Her friends. She never wrote down anything important, for fear it could somehow be used against her, or against them. But the small things? Who possibly cared?
Horrible things she had told her parents and now regretted. That cat she had held a grudge for peeing in her plate after she took pity and fed him. Some crush she had let go without ever talking to them. That time she had sent her brother to the hospital after he scared her and never said she was sorry. Many anecdotes good or bad, but mostly bad all things considered. Bittersweet memories that were now under the bridge.
Yet, she could only ever delay her studying for so long. And she was now capable of reading and writing kindergarten-level sentences.
Boat-Come-Home. Sky-Be-Blue. Time-For-Dinner.
She was still struggling with longer sentences, correct pronouns, and disambiguation between be or have in this language. For example, this language said "have sleep" instead of "being sleepy" but said something along the line of "have [been/will] sleep" to say "I have slept" or "I will go to sleep", leaving it to context to understand which one it is. Otherwise said, differentiating the past tense from the future was another sore point of that language, so far as she could tell.
"You made any progress?" Paolo asked, startling her.
She had not heard him open the door, so of course, she latched out on him:
"So that's the first thing you are going to say? No hello. No sorry for the silence treatment. Smooth and straight to business, aren't you? Well, I'm fine, thank you. I have read the entire damn book already if that's what you wanna know. It's all yours. I have yet to memorize all of it but I was playing with making a few sentences when you barged in."
"Okay." He held his hand up. "Sorry for the lack of tact and for troubling your peace and quiet. I will try again after you get some sleep. You look awful, by the way."
"Thanks." She barked before storming out.
"You look awful, gna-gna-gna." She imitated while going on with her sleeping routine. "I should have let the idiot leave with all the others. What the hell was I thinking?"
★☆★
"Good Morning. Or Good Evening. Not entirely sure. Did you sleep well?" Paolo greeted her awkwardly the first chance he got after she woke up.
Or more like ambushed her in the kitchen as soon as she got inside.
"Hi. I hate you. Thank you for asking." She replied while clumsily trying to make herself some breakfast.
"You are a nasty piece of work, you know that?" He replied playfully which somehow managed to get through her.
"You're welcome." She retorted with a smile.
"I have been thinking...." He finally said but never finished his sentence.
"In the last three days? I dare hope so." She teased him back. "Although I wish you could think a little faster. I'm busy, you know? Some range targets to mercilessly slaughter and training dummies to stab to the death. Real serious business."
"Well to be perfectly honest...nevermind... I see how much effort you are putting into this and I know I won't make it without you. Can you please consider having me as your training and studying partner? I can't promise I will ever hold up to your expectations. But I'm tired of being weak."
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That was... a lot more than she expected already. But she was clearly not going to say no.
"Okay. First. Let's talk." She pushed aside the remains of her breakfast and looked at him intently.
He took the hint and sat on the opposite side.
"I need to know precisely what you can and can't do. Your cantrip and spell. What sport you were practicing before all this. Any prior fighting experience you might have. Whatever progress you might have made with your quarterstaff and how you are holding up with a knife" Sophia summarized pragmatically, expecting the worse.
And Paolo did leave her hanging for quite some time as he pondered the questions before responding all at once:
"My cantrip and spell are garbage. I got shocking grasp, a touch-based lightning cantrip, and longstrider a ritual, long-term, multi-target spell to marginally improve their speed. The only sport I was practicing regularly was horseriding. My only fighting experience was being at the receiving hand of bullies. I have no idea what to do with my staff besides swinging it menacingly. And I never touch a kitchen knife in my life. Be honest. How fucked up am I?"
And so she went into analysis mode and responded in the same fashion.
"Your spell and cantrip might not be good by Wizard standard. Instead of fighting at long range, shocking grasp is the right tool to give you an advantage in close-quarter or wrestling range. And longstrider is your ticket to get you accepted back in any team we might encounter. Don't underestimate or undersell the value of speed. If I can kill even one more enemy because of that buff, that's one enemy less to give you trouble. And its usefulness is multiplied by the number of targets you can buff. Horseriding must have taught you a thing or two about balance, which is lesson number one of any martial art. Everything else is unfortunate but I was expecting worse."
"Really?" He asked, disbelieving at her actual reaction.
"Man, get your shit together already" She snapped back. "I'm just telling you that you are not crap. It's hardly a compliment. Now get your arse to the training room."
★☆★
She had spent the first few hours teaching him how to fall. Pushing him around and making him lose balance to teach him how to recover and get back. She also had demonstrated plenty of time, making good use of his superior strength overpowering hers. She controlled her fall and protected her head. She rolled. She did all that while dropping and recovering her daggers to show him how to prevent stabbing himself by accident. And then, when he finally had enough, she smoothly transitioned to the next lesson.
"Okay, take your staff. I will take my daggers and we will do some sparing. Then I will lend you one Dagger and we will do a one-on-one."
He nodded and steeled himself, ready to take a beating.
"I'm a nasty sentient monster. I have daggers. I'm shorter, weaker but faster than you. If I get too close, you can completely overpower me with brute strength. But if I don't get close enough, you can hit me but I can't fight back. I should be an easy target. But you are still going to lose. Try to hold on as long as you possibly can."
And so he sprang into action exactly as she did. And already, the difference was notable. In that short amount of time, he had learned to stab and swing properly. Which was almost enough to hold her back. But she still wriggled her way to the close-combat range. If four days earlier someone told her she would be teaching anyone how to fight, exchanging blow for blow, she would have told them they were crazy. But here she was.
It must have to be something going on with the rewiring of her brain, but every past fighting experience she ever had somehow connected to help her come up with her own version of mixed martial art. It was nothing fancy. But it worked for her. And unfortunately could not be replicated for Paolo.
He was tall. She was not. He was a man. She was not.
What she had over him however were speed, sharp motor control, and instinct. He was sluggish and clumsy in comparison. But this sparing did help her a lot. Now, she had a good idea of exactly what the remedial package had done to her, aside from turning her into a cold-blood sociopath, that is.
Was she even the same person? She thought she was. Permanence of self and all that. Yet, she was undeniably different than she used to be. Rougher around the edge. She also gained assurance. And though she was still capable of remorse, she was now doing things she never thought she would.
'A nasty piece of work' Paolo had called her earlier that day. She was still chewing around that particular reality check
Once she went for the kill, he defended himself with shocking grasp.
'Holy fucking shit, that hurt.' She recoiled for the umpteenth time that day. She knew she was perfectly fine. But her muscles and nerves were screaming blue murder at her each time she got zapped.
She had been absolutely true in her evaluation of that cantrip. At close range, it was pure gold. Granted he could react fast enough to activate it without getting hurt himself.
She stopped her daggers right under his ribs and let him realise he was 'dead.'
"Shit!" He exclaimed, "What did I do wrong this time?"
"Nothing. I'm recovering from shocking grasp faster than before. You could not possibly anticipate that. But now, that's something you might have to account for in prolonged fights."
"You are just too good at this." He complained, still huffing and puffing.
"That's true. And thanks." She winked at him and gave him a break.
Unlike him, she liked breaking a sweat and embraced the pain like an old friend. Before her injury, she expected to get a scholarship because of her medals rather than her smart. Then, she had to cram like crazy to still get her sponsorship. And now? Her injury was gone. And physically speaking, she felt better than ever.
★☆★
Later that 'evening', she had let Paolo study with her and decided to take that chance to quiz each other and get better.
There were plenty of paper and pens in the furniture to do so. It tested their writing skill and then, each other ability to recognise the logogram they had drawn. It was a pretty good exercise.
"This one?" She asked showing her paper.
"Forest. And that one?" He asked in return.
She hesitated a moment before remembering it: "A baby."
"I really thought I would get you with that one."
"Nice try. I have a good one too."
And Paolo kept staring at the paper before admitting. "I have no idea."
"That's the symbol for waterwell."
"You are pulling my leg, right?"
"Nope. Look. Water. And Hole. Someone must have thought it was clever to combine the two symbols into one. Arguably, it is also doubling for the meaning of 'source,' including magic ones."
"How do you know that?" Paolo asked, certain that the last bit of trivia did not come from the picture book.
"I started reading some of those books. I encounter it in the form of [magical - hot - waterwell]. Let me tell you it took me quite some time to understand they meant a magical hot spot"
"What the hell were you reading?" He asked, completely bespelled from the moment she said the magic word.
"Magical Me by Gilderoy Lockhart." She joked.
"Okay. Now I'm sure you are pulling my leg. Pretty Please?"
"Alright. The title translates as 'Blood of the Ancestors.' But they should have called it 'Sorcery for Dummies'"
"And so?" He asked, practically vibrating on his chair from excitement.
"I did not get through the potion recipe part yet." She admitted, as disappointed as he was.
"And how does the subject related to magical hot-spot, exactly?" He inquired, not quite yet defeated yet.
"Well, allegedly, all magic relates to those, one way or another. A lot of people/creatures/monsters/demons thought it was a good idea to monopolize one such source and got so attuned to it that it affected them in their blood. Hence the bloodline thing. Not sure how some humans happen to be related to an Elemental, Dragon, Archfey, Infernal, and so on, but apparently, it happens all the time and the book did not explain that part."
"So you want to make a potion to know if you are blood-related to one such baddie?" Paolo reformulated.
Well. She wanted the power. But unfortunately, the knowledge of its origin came along with it.
"In a way, yes. That's exactly what that potion is doing."
"And you want magic that badly?"
"Yes." She replied impulsively without thinking. "No. I'm not sure. It's complicated. But it's already pretty grey and that's the lesser evil option. Consorting with demons is hardly better. It's not like I have that many options."
"If there is another option, I'm sure we will find it." He promised her.
But she was fairly certain she knew most if not all her options already. She had already frantically perused her entire accreditation level for anything related to magic and did not find even a hint of anything new. Sound like that Cleric from the third wave was surprisingly well-informed as there were still many things they had mentioned she had not found already, even knowing it was there, waiting to be found.
At least, she was well ahead of her self-imposed objective. She had given herself 10 days to get a grasp on that language. And within 5 days, and with the help of the system, she was already getting really close to achieving it already. And like every knowledge, the more she learned, the more she was realising the depth of her ignorance. But that was a tomorrow problem. Right now, she was enjoying Paolo's company and, hopefully, helping him make some progress and get back some of the self-confidence he was sorely missing.