"Are you sure this is the right time to pick up something new?" Eugene asked. He started calmly walking closer to Lucas.

Lucas didn't bother answering. His full focus went into watching the [Warrior]'s approach and making sure he was ready for it. The extra caution did not fail him as Eugene charged forward the moment it was clear Lucas would not be distracted. He came in slower this time--if the very limit of what Lucas could respond to without relying on at least one of his active Skills could be called slow.

Eugene closed the distance and struck out with a short thrust, his hands spread out far on the spear's shaft. Lucas let the weapon slide along his left sword's metal blade and countered with an attempted slash of the wooden sword. The slash never connected as Eugene quickly retracted his thrust and went in for another, forcing Lucas to duck out of the way.

He managed to avoid a direct hit, but the blunt spear-point still clipped him in the shoulder. Eugene let him retreat from there, to Lucas's intense gratitude. As he backed up, he clutched at his shoulder with sword still in hand and shook it out. It hurt, but it was nothing worse than a bruise that [Rapid Regeneration] could easily fix up in a minute. No healing was required.

That was all the reprieve Lucas was allowed, apparently. Eugene came in with a flurry of strikes and put him hard at work to block each one. They were lighter than even the strike that clipped his shoulder, but they were also much faster in exchange. One came in from high, on the left, followed by two from straight on. Lucas tried to circle around to make it more difficult for his opponent to advance, but such a simple trick was not enough to give as experience a spearman as Eugene difficulty. He followed along with hardly a moment's pause in the flurry of strikes.

Low, center thrust. Block.

Sweeping strike from the right. Dodge back.

Two thrusts and an overhead swing. Block both and take a single step to the side, guide the swing to the ground and lock it.

Lucas swung his second sword down hard toward the immobile spear shaft, trying to shatter Eugene's weapon and level the playing field a bit. However, in all that rush of exchanged strikes, it seemed like Lucas had become to fixated on his opponent's weapon and forgot about the [Warrior] behind it. Eugene stepped forward a delivered a single jab of his fist to Lucas's side--one hard enough to send him stumbling back and interrupting the swing of his sword.

"Urgguhuh," Lucas groaned and clutched his side. "Did you have to hit so hard? I swear a rib nearly broke."

"You have healing magic," Eugene simply replied.

"Doesn't mean I like pain," Lucas muttered. He didn't offer up any other complain, though, as he walked off the pain. [Rapid Regeneration] would take care of this one just as well as his last injury--maybe a little slower, to be fully accurate--but he seriously considered using [Arclight Renewal] to get over with sooner. But no, he needed the levels, so he chose to let the injury fade naturally.

Eugene hadn't restarted their exchange just yet, so Lucas took the time to catch his breath and look through his new System notifications.

[*ding [Aspirant of the Storm] has reached level 30-31! You have 60 free stats!]

[*ding [Accelerant Frame] has reached level 12-13!]

[*ding [Tempest Fighting] has reached level 26-29!]

[*ding [Storm Core] has reached level 26-31!]

[*ding [Shock] has reached level 12!]

[*ding [Overcharge] has reached level 12-13!]

[*ding [Quick Step] has reached level 12!]

[*ding [Hyper Processing] has reached level 17!]

[*ding [Keen Mind] has reached level 21-24!]

[*ding [Perseverance] has reached level 3-4!]

[*ding [Vigilance] has reached level 20-21!]

[*ding [Learning] has reached level 30-31!]

[New General Skill Available!]

"Well, at least it was effective," Lucas grumbled as he rubbed his side.

"What was that?" Eugene asked from over by Quinn. "Ready for another round?"

"Still going through notifications," Lucas quickly answered and walked just a little bit further away.

"Alright, let us know when you're ready."

Lucas prompted the new Skill to show.

[*ding You have received the General Skill [Reflexes]!]

[Reflexes: life won't always give you time to think things through, sometimes you just need to react. This will help you react all the faster.]

Stolen novel; please report.

It was another Skill with a largely vague description--no precisely stated bonuses--but it also sounded like the perfect Skill to fill his last General slot. It would synergize so well with many of his other Skills, there really wasn't any other choice he could have made than to accept it.

[*ding You have learned [Reflexes]!]

"Alright, I'm ready!" Lucas called out and turned to the other two. "What's next?"

Eugene had fallen right back into instructing Quinn during Lucas's little break. They were doing that same, near-choreographed spar as they were when Lucas first arrived, but they paused as Lucas marched through the sand and came over.

"You still want to keep going after that?" Quinn asked in disbelief, sort of vaguely gesturing to where Lucas and Eugene finished their own spar. "I mean, I know it wasn't that long, but that looked brutal."

"It wasn't so bad," Lucas reassured him, "just unexpected. I've already recovered." He proved it by patting the spot Eugene jabbed him in the ribs, the pain already having vanished from the location.

"[Warrior]s and combat Classers of all kinds have to deal with a lot more than that, Quinn," Eugene told the boy. "We can't be scared of a little pain if we want to do our jobs. And there's always [Healer]s to see if we do get hurt," he finished off with a nod at Lucas.

"Right!" Quinn forced a confident nod. "Who said I was scared of pain?"

Lucas had to hide a small laugh at the younger boy's bravado, and it looked like Eugene did too.

"Ok, next up," Eugene cleared his throat, "Quinn, I want you to keep drilling for a little while. Unfortunately, without a Class or anything, it wouldn't be safe for you to join Lucas and I."

Quinn's face cringed as if he'd just tasted something sour, clearly not the most enthused with being excluded, but he accepted Eugene's instructions anyway and stepped away with his spear.

"As for you and I," Eugene spoke to Lucas, "we're going to keep sparring. I can show you a few more moves, but at this point the most beneficial thing for you to do is to test yourself and solidify what you know."

"Ok," Lucas nodded.

Eugene stared at him without saying anything else for a moment before pointedly looking down at Lucas's hands. "Are you sure you want to keep using those? You did use them fairly well, but I won't be able to help you so much with anything other than a spear. It's also what you've been training with this whole time."

Lucas looked down at the two swords. He'd almost forgotten about them with how natural they felt in his grip. Lucas hadn't felt as if the weapons were new and unfamiliar to him while he and Eugene were sparring. He took to them naturally, like he'd been training with a sword for years.

"Do non-specialized [Fighting] Skills improve your abilities as you level, with weapons you've never tried before?"

"Like giving you knowledge of how to use a sword before every really using one, of example?" Eugene asked.

Lucas nodded.

"No," Eugene said. "If that were the case, no one would ever specialize their Skills because it would be so much better to keep them general. You probably had others, like your mental Skills, helping you not completely fumble with those as we fought."

"Yeah, you're probably right..." Lucas trailed off as he continued to stare at the two swords. "Still," he returned to looking up at Eugene, "I want to keep using these for a bit. Maybe I'll try a few other later, too."

"Whatever you'd like," Eugene shrugged, "just switch that wood one out for another iron one. I don't want to break anything else, or the craftsman that makes them will kill me."

Lucas hurried to comply, honestly glad to fix the issue of the two swords' differing weights. It threw him off a little earlier and had been something he had to adjust his actions for. Not to mention he didn't dare hope to block one of Eugene's strikes with something so insufficiently durable. That meant he had to take each strike with the iron training sword and it gave Eugene a weakness to exploit.

With that weapon traded out and returned to where he originally found it, Lucas rejoined Eugene in the center of the room.

"So we're just going to keep fighting?" Lucas held his two weapons before him and asked.

"Yep," Eugene confirmed. "This time, don't bother conserving your mana. Bring everything you have to bear on me, because this time, I'm not going easy." He grinned at Lucas like a predator, just before they pounce on their prey.

Oh, shut! Lucas thought, then Eugene was upon him.

----------------------------------------

Lucas collapsed to the ground on his back after completely emptying his mana reserves for the umpteenth time. He sported a number of bruises across his entire body including a particularly gruesome one on the back of his left wrist that had begun to swell. The oldest bruises, those he'd received during his and Eugene's earlier spars, were little more than shadows of slightly darker skin, but repeated punishment at the end of the man's spear had prevented them from completely fading away just yet.

Eugene never over did it, of course, but the experienced [Warrior] and guard certainly knew how to put Lucas through his paces. As it was, the signs of Lucas's training would likely fade away in less than an hour. The soreness would definitely extend into the following day, though. Tomorrow morning was going to suck.

From out of sight, Lucas heard Eugene whistle. "Good job on that last, kid. Actually managed to land a solid hit."

"Ha," Lucas dryly chuckled. He'd had to put every single Skill he had to use to land that last strike, even performing a little trick with his Limited Mana Authority, and still he had barely managed to hit Eugene. That man was a monster.

"Hey, I'm serious," Eugene extended his hand and pulled Lucas to his feet, then clapped him on the shoulder, "you did a good job. Never seen a ten year old put up such a fight against someone with two Classes in their fifth and fourth evolutions in my life. The fact that you landed a hit at all is very impressive."

"There's no way you were doing your best, though," Lucas shook his head. "But thank you. I'll just have to do better next time."

"That's the spirit," Eugene tousled Lucas's hair. "Now, come on. Let's clean up before we head out. I believe we are having you, your mother and I are having dinner with Quinn's family tonight and we still need to wash before then."

Together, they went about the sandy room and retrieved all the equipment they had made use of for the last few hours, and brought them over to the racks at the side of the room. Lucas put away Quinn's spear as well, the younger boy having left in a hurry earlier when his mother picked him up. The adults must have decided to pull everyone for dinner together then, because Lucas hadn't heard a word about such an occasion beforehand. He just hoped his mom knew about it as well, though he honestly doubted Penelope would arrange it without looping his mom.

When everything had been returned to its rightful spot, the two of them met back at the room's exit.

"Alright, now's the time to look over the day's progress," Eugene told him. "How many levels did you get?"

Despite his fatigue, Lucas was just as eager to look through his notifications as Eugene was to get his answer. He let them all through and was suddenly flooded with [*ding]s. There were so many notifications, it looked like every single Skill he had must have leveled a number of times. However, it was a few near the bottom that drew his attention most.

[*ding [Perseverance] has reached level 5-10!]

...

[*ding General Skill [Perseverance] may evolve into a Class Skill! Would you like to proceed?] [Y/N]