When that recording ended, they jumped right into the next one, which Beth was not looking forward to. And with good reason, as it turned out, if the expressions and body language of the other two were anything to go off. As the playback progressed, Beth could practically feel the annoyance wafting off both Enforcers as they watched her companion solve the puzzles and Beth gleefully dive into combat. By the end, both of the others were glowering at her while ignoring Blood.
"I punch things," Beth said helpfully, raising her left arm and forming a fist, her knuckles popping when she did so.
"She's beyond help," Jaq said laconically, gesturing for Baelvyr to move on to the next recording.
The detailed breakdown and recording for stage six appeared, with Beth watching in some fascination as they took on the giant beast. It was just a…different experience to watch a fight like that, especially when it was them on the screen having done the fighting. She found that the memory of the battle, while saved perfectly in her mind, was different, more ephemeral and less visceral. Jaq made a few witty comments about proper application of force while Baelvyr was actually helpful with his advice, explaining better ways to weaken and kill giant enemies.
A lot of these early stages hadn't been particularly challenging and, in the same vein, Baelvyr and Jaq didn't find an extensive amount to correct or discuss. They pulled up stage seven, giving the recording some time to play before discussing some better ways to maneuver in water. Sadly, it was likely water maneuvers would still be in their future, whether it was rivers, lakes, oceans, or submerged dungeons, and it was best they had a good understanding of how to deal with the environment. Jaq's biggest piece of advice was to find not just the bottom of the body of water, but find a rocky outcrop or other such feature that they could use as a landmark to work out from in a pattern. That way, they had somewhere easily identifiable to return to if they got lost or were having trouble finding new enemies or paths.
When they started the labyrinth level, Jaq immediately interjected, "Do not follow his advice of going through the walls. We've covered this before, but it's not possible until you're so strong that it doesn't matter."
Baelvyr just grunted, not bothering to reply as he thumped his stomach with his right hand. They watched the movement through the stage, Baelvyr mainly concerned about how efficiently the girls were fighting the enemies and what they could do better to make the battles faster. Jaq commented on several skills they could look to pick up that would make navigating somewhere like a maze or large dungeon easier, but Beth wasn't particularly interested. Blood asked him a few questions, and they got into a deeper discussion of scouting and navigation while Baelvyr continued to point out a few inefficiencies or mistakes in the fights to Beth.
The next stage was the first beast tide stage, stage nine, and Baelvyr and Jaq both seemed to perk up quite a bit when they saw the stage details. Jaq commented that the minimum requirement of surviving twelve hours seemed almost too easy while Baelvyr just grunted his agreement. Baelvyr did have some helpful advice about keeping the battlefield clear as they watched the video, sped up multiple times, not wanting to spend nearly twenty-four hours on the stage. Jaq did give a sarcastic admonishment about actually relying on the hired help to take a break when and where appropriate, but their excoriation was rather mild for that stage.
The tenth stage garnered quite a few lectures totaling a run time of nearly half an hour, especially denoting Beth's poor performance in going into the criminal group's hidden base fist-first. There was also a long breakdown from Jaq about what Blood could have done better in terms of scouting and spying on the gang before they decided to move in. Baelvyr only made special comment in pointing out how limiting fighting Beth inside had been to the gang, even though it was their own base, showing how understanding and picking your battlefield was very important.
They flew through stages for a handful of minutes after that, the two Enforcers having little comment on much that happened all the way through the crafting challenge. They resumed a more detailed analysis with stage sixteen, the multiple bosses in one fight stage. Both had some rather severe criticism of the way Beth used her Presence, which she attempted to defend. They also pointed out a number of early flaws with Blood's initial attempts at battle in her human form.
"I ain't an expert on this, but I do know some things," Baelvyr began. "Humanization, as they say, is somethin' that allows ya to fight with the power of a beast in a human form. Even when ya find yer skills lackin', ya should be able to make up the difference with the power it brings ya. We'll have to work hard to get ya up to snuff if this is how ya use it."
"I feel stronger, sure, and it's great being able to use all kinds of weapons, but the difference isn't that big," Blood retorted.
"Then ya don't know what yer doin'," Baelvyr said, earning an eyeroll from the two girls.
"Don’t roll your eyes," Jaq scoffed. "You must understand that Humanization is a power that is meant to bring a sapient beast even with a humanoid-by-birth Wayfarer using their Presence. Not only that, but there is far greater power in that form than you realize."
"Yeah, yeah, it's great to say that, but you're both just being cryptic without properly explaining again," Beth retorted.
"Doin' it properly means drawin' on yer beastial nature, not to let it run rampant in ya, but to tame that power to make yerself unbeatable. The whole point is ya channel that power, which doesn't increase yer stats in a way that you can see on yer page, but it does give ya a sizeable boost in power. It's not somethin' we can explain in simple, 'one and one together is two,' kinda terms. Ya got to feel it, experience it. That's why the only trainin' for it is just that, workin' yerself to the damn bone to master it," Baelvyr explained.
"You can also see visible progress," Jaq cut in. "The further she masters her control of her bloodline, the less beast features she will have, though she can control that. She will reach a point eventually where she looks entirely human. Beyond that is a realm very, very few beings ever go, as it channels the nature of her bloodline to inscribe runes directly onto her body. If you ever see someone with runes covering parts of their body, you must be very careful. They are either someone like Blood who has gone extremely far in harnessing the latent power of their nature, or they are someone trying to copy that by directly enchanting their flesh."
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
"That enchanting your own flesh thing sounds pretty fucked up," Beth said. "I wouldn't want to carve random magic shit in my…flesh…"
"It's worse than that," Jaq said coldly. "Such experiments are almost always some combination of half-understood esoteric rune-theory and mad scientist torture experiment. They don't start well, they don't produce stable individuals, and they usually end in a lot of blood and tears."
"Right. Avoid the rune-inscribed crazies," Beth said with a nod.
"Or the beasts who have rune-charged strength," Blood added with a twitch of her left ear.
"Whadda we got after this?" Baelvyr asked with a grunt, flipping back to the main page of data.
"Uh, hunting monsters, then the highly skilled fight, then team Dream Snake," Beth replied while tapping her chin before scoffing a little at the end.
"Dream Snake?" Jaq asked lazily.
"Just a team we dealt with," Beth replied with a wave.
"They had some pretty big heads for being mediocre," Blood cut in. "Beth clashed with their leader a couple times."
Beth gave Blood a slight glare but was surprised when Jaq didn't lecture them but seemed to agree instead. "You aren't some cut-rate second tier garbage; you're members of the renowned White Hall. Don't get lost in arrogance, but don't let weaklings walk all over you."
"People do stuff differently," commented Baelvyr. "But ya gotta understand; we're just better. Don't let other people push ya around or tell ya they know better or are better. We don't take that kinda shit from anyone, never mind some low-effort chumps. Let's look at that skill test."
"Shit," Beth murmured, hoping they would have glossed over that one.
Baelvyr brought up stage eighteen, where they had spent endless hours continuously fighting against the incredibly high-level opponents. There was a lot more scrutiny of this fight, and Beth wasn't surprised when Baelvyr pointed out, after seeing her precise work in manipulating her Presence, that Sanna was at least an Exalted, someone of more than fifty rebirths. Baelvyr's main admonishments were that Beth had to try to move a little more, extolling the virtues of what managing to get your opponent's side or back could do for someone in a fight as he pointed out her constant head-on rushes. Jaq merely mentioned that Blood needed, at times, to focus on dealing a powerful strike, as she had let how ingrained her hit-and-run tactics had become lead to her almost never dealing any singularly devastating strikes.
"What else?" Baelvyr asked after they finished the review of eighteen.
"Uh, working with the team, gathering resources on a 'high' mana density world, the Grand Melee stage…uh, what else? Surviving on an untamed world for a month, fighting from the back of a Legendary Beast, hunting slavers, the statue fight stage, and a solo beast tide? I think that's it…" Beth said, giving air-quotes when she referred to the world as high mana density.
"I see you did not mention your defeat?" Jaq commented, arching his left eyebrow.
"I don't think we need to spend a lot of time on things like that," Beth said with a tiny frown, waving her hand in front of her face as she tried to laugh it off.
"I wanna see this statue stage ya mentioned," Baelvyr said. "Then, we're gonna look at that infiltration stage in detail."
"Can't we just, you know, leave that for some other time?" Beth asked. "It's already been so long and-"
"Girlie, it ain't even been two full hours yet," Baelvyr cut her off, switching on the recording of stage twenty-five. They proceeded to watch a highly sped-up version of the stage, Beth noting that with their increased stats they were even able to process a video played at multiple times normal speed as if it were just running at a standard rate. Baelvyr paused a couple times to point out some mistakes, though he did comment they had done a rather good job of handling this stage. Jaq threw in a few snide comments, but even his snarky remarks still pointed out flaws in their techniques or teamwork.
They moved on after a handful of minutes to the last parts of the review, starting with their failed infiltration stage. Jaq was more serious here, but no less harsh as he excoriated them on their performance, in particular their planning. He lectured them greatly on their information gathering operations in particular, as he pointed out information was the basis of all actions and their poor efforts in gathering and analyzing information about the Count's forces was key to their loss.
"Alright," Baelvyr said. "Now that we got that shit outta the way, let's get to it."
He stood up and ejected the flash drive, handing it back to Beth before walking over to the training area. Jaq followed him and stopped to the side, shoulders square, back straight, and hands clasped at the small of his back in an "at-ease" stance. Baelvyr then gestured to the training stage and Beth and Blood quickly took the hint, hopping up onto the stage and turning to face the two.
"Alright, show me what ya've learned," Baelvyr said, summoning a group of opponents for them to fight. The next hour turned into a living hell, Baelvyr and Jaq pushing the two far harder than they ever had, summoning ever more and ever more powerful opponents for them to face before Jaq himself stepped into the arena. Baelvyr just crossed his massive arms over his enormous gut with a stony expression while Beth quirked an eyebrow. Two long knives appeared in Jaq's hands, made of some type of golden metal so reflective it practically glowed, with each being thin as a hair.
Jaq stepped forward almost lazily, looking like he was going out for a simple stroll, but he was on top of the two girls in an instant. It took everything they had to stop him, as the blades he held turned into a storm of attacks, a dozen slashes targeting both of them simultaneously. After a few seconds Beth gave up trying to use finesse and called upon her Presence, nearly getting gutted in the process as Jaq was not staggered by her summoning of the crown for even a microsecond. She launched forward at her maximum speed, burning all of her buffs and she smashed apart the sword lights Jaq had made with the knives, her fist empowered with so much mana it glowed faintly through her gauntlet that was rocketing toward his chest. At the same moment, Blood attacked with her new claws and Blood Queen's Claws, firing out a storm of energy claws so thick they practically formed a wall as they approached Jaq.
The commissary officer sneered, moving his arms languidly but producing a shocking effect. He struck Beth's arm nine times in a fraction of a second, shoving her immensely powerful attack far off course while seemingly using no strength himself. At the same time, he slashed behind himself in a complex pattern, shattering Blood's massive attack by precisely hitting the weak points amongst the energy claws. He swiped with his knives again after deflecting both attacks, Beth only barely able to block his strikes while Blood darted out of the path of the blades. Beth still suffered several cuts on her arms and one across her right shoulder that sliced through the mana steel scales, leather, and her skin all as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.
She ignored the slight pain of the wounds as she pushed herself harder, determined to land a hit that would wipe the smug look off the Enforcer's face. She moved even faster than she had during the fight against the stone statue boss, to the point where somebody at level fifty would have barely seen her as a blur. Realistically, she knew that she was still barely a child compared to Jaq, in multiple ways considering his power, age, and experience, but that didn't discourage her at all. She punched like the piston of a top-of-the-line engine, hammering away at Jaq's defense with a hundred fist strikes a second. Blood continued circling at the same time, slashing at Jaq constantly as she moved with the flow of battle, all three of them allowing Beth to dictate the pacing and movement.
Jaq's defense was impeccable, however, and Beth's fists never even got close to him. She changed her tactics as every blow she struck was slid away with a graceful flick of his wrist, her greatsword appearing in her hand before she swung it with a fully charged Monstrous Blow. The air tore apart as the blade passed with a shriek, Jaq having to put a little more effort in to block this than her previous hits. A little more effort still wasn't much effort, however, and he easily toyed with her even with her blade out, not much impressed by her combined use of fists, feet, and sword to attack. He eventually seemed to have seen enough, his body flickering for a second before disappearing from their sight, Beth only realizing several seconds later that both her and Blood had been cut to ribbons, almost literally.
Thankfully, they were using one of the training stages and, when Jaq reappeared beside Baelvyr outside the ring, their bodies and equipment were fully restored to the moment before the spar started. Beth's sword vanished into her ring with a flourishing twist of her wrist, and she hopped down from the stage, ignoring the two instructors as she went over to the corner of the room to retrieve drinks, petulantly only getting enough for her and Blood. Her snub was somewhat ruined as Jaq simply made a canteen appear from his storage item while giving her a somewhat comical side-eye.