"I was born almost a thousand years after the Eternal Empire was founded," Shen said. "In other words, in year 956 of the Eternal Empire Age."

Alicia sat with her back on a tree, her shield and sword on the floor beside her. She was breathing fast and trying not to scream from the pain caused by the large cut on her arm.

Just a few minutes ago, they had been fighting giant spiders. Shen had purposefully let her handle a little more than he thought she could, but he hadn't intended for her to get injured. He had never gone through training himself, but he knew every martial artist was put in increasingly dangerous situations so they could rise to the occasion.

At first, it had worked. Alicia had shown more awareness and speed than she had until now.

Then she realized her own improvement. The surprise took her out of the zone, and she almost died.

Now, Shen was standing guard over her after dealing with the remaining spiders. She would dislike him for ignoring her pain, but there was nothing he could do but say encouraging words. However, cultivators often dealt with pain and stress in the middle of battles, their allies dying around them rather than telling them sweet words. It was good for her to get used to it, especially here, where the injury wouldn't bleed or get infected.

Well, Shen had started telling her his tale to also help distract her—he found it hard to be completely merciless. Silently ignoring her would be just... needless cruel.

"I'm not from your time," he continued. "We're not speaking the same language, your culture is alien to me, and I don't even recognize the fabric your people wore in the first stage. If I'm not mistaken, I come from the distant past, where people like me, martial artists that wielded magic-like powers, ruled over everything. They were called cultivators."

Alicia clenched her jaw and looked at him. He could almost see her pain decreasing. He had been actually surprised it had taken so long to go away since he could barely notice his own pain. Maybe higher stats helped with that?

Her eyes had a mix of annoyance and disbelief.

Shen could imagine how the average mortal would find it hard to believe him. They had lifespans of what, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years? A human being alive for longer than that was probably an outrageous concept. Even Shen didn't know how he was alive, though he credited it to his father.

He quickly stopped himself from hoping other cultivators might be alive too.

"I'm not lying," he said quickly, this time to distract himself, "but you don't need to believe me," he conceded. "Just act as if you believe when the time comes for you to tell me about your culture." They wanted each other's knowledge, not mutual acceptance.

"How old are you?" she asked.

He hadn't been expecting that question at all. "Sixteen," he said.

"Shit," she said, then smiled through the lingering pain when he failed to hide the surprise in his face. "I'm not into fantasy stuff and all, but you could at least be a thousand-year-old master or something, you know? It would make my life so much easier to have an overpowered guy owe me one."

"So you do know immortals despite not knowing cultivators?" he asked, even further surprised.

Alicia shook her head. "No, no. This is the stuff of fairy tales. Go on, tell me more."

"The fairies survived the fall of the Empire?" That made him outright astounded.

It was just ludicrous. The Immortal Emperor had imprisoned every fairy in the world after they sucked tens of millions of mortals' lives to empower themselves in an attempted coup. The emperor would never fall without personally killing them rather than let them start a reign of terror over his non-cultivator subjects.

"No," Alicia said, "it's a manner of speaking. Tales for kids, not real. I'll explain later."

He recognized he was being difficult, so he took her earlier suggestion to go on.

"The Eternal Empire was created and ruled by the Immortal Emperor. He built it around two main concepts: power and honor. The powerful were elevated in society but had to repay it with service to the Empire. Law and honor demanded it. Just as honor demanded me to save your life when you were about to get killed by the hornets. I'm a cultivator, thus stronger, and it's my moral obligation to help the weak when I can. Of course, there's a limit to it; honor to strangers doesn't translate to self-sacrifice. Honor to one's clan and family, on the other hand, demands everything from every single member."

"Oh, plenty of that on movies," Alicia said derisively. "Obedient little kids manipulated by the powerful."

The system's translation let him know movies were like recordings. Remembering the translation function, he found it weird how the US acronym hadn't been translated, though he knew it was an acronym. A limitation, perhaps?

Anyway, Shen shook his head to her absurd words. "Saying that about my elders offends me deeply. I don't know how to explain it to you, but in my time, calling a man's mother a harlot would come close."

Alicia chuckled. "So being a son of a bitch offends people in any timeline?"

He smiled slightly, though he noticed she hadn't apologized. Maybe mortals didn't say they were sorry these days? Then again, she had said she was sorry for her ignorance when he asked her if she knew what cultivators were. Such a confusing culture.

"So it seems," he said. "Your understanding of honor is wrong. I would die for a fellow clan member just as they would die for me. Clan wars are especially ferocious because their consequences are long-lasting. Even if a defeated clan survives, for not all fights are to the last man, it will be without powerful leadership. I told you power came with responsibility in the Empire. The firsts to fall in battle are the strongest of a clan. What use is it to have power and not use it? If we sent our weak to battle first, the enemy's strong would kill them all. Even if a clan's leaders survived, how could they rebuild their clan? Who would trust them? Who would join their group and fight to the death for them again? Even their remaining clan members would leave. They would stand forever alone and in disgrace."

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"Yeah, sure," Alicia said dismissively.

"You're offending me again," Shen said. Once again, she didn't apologize. "My people were not mortals to exploit their own family for personal gain."

Alicia's face retreated a few inches as if slapped, and Shen regretted the words as soon as he said them. He had said nothing false, but they were petty revenge for being unable to call on her cultivator overseer to punish her for the disrespect.

He knew better than to not apologize when he was behaving unhonorable. He cupped his hands in front of him and nodded once. "I apologize."

But she surprised him once again.

Alicia shook her head. "No, no. Not at all. You're right; humans suck. I've felt that very deep down, very often. Thing is, they all suck, every single one of them. That's what you don't realize. No human is perfect. Power corrupts, and if I got it right, you're saying the ones with personal power were given status in your time." Her tone made it clear she didn't believe it. "That's a recipe for a shitshow right there."

"Maybe for people without the privilege of having a benevolent immortal leading them," Shen conceded. "We had a saying, 'A dragon's head is on a dragon's body.' The Eternal Empire was the body of the Immortal Emperor as much as he was our head. One was part of the other, one affected the other, one reflected the other. If he let corruption fester in his Empire, he would get corrupted in due time. Likewise, if he was corrupt, so would his Empire be. Before the Eternal Empire came, cultivator society was... chaotic. But the Eternal Empire changed everything thanks to our ruler."

Alicia didn't reply immediately. He was about to continue, but then they were out of time.

New spiders had appeared.

"Use your magic to defend yourself when I let some spiders pass," Shen said and rushed at the enemy. One injury wasn't enough to stop giving her the opportunity to grow stronger in a crisis.

"Shit," she said and stood up.

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The rest of the day passed by with extra fights and expositions on Shen's culture. At some point, Alicia had said it was somewhat similar to what she knew of the Asian, though it admittedly wasn't much.

"They also use robes and shit," she said.

That gave Shen an idea he hadn't thought of before. "Buy a book on the differences between the world's culture and mine," he said. Unfortunately, it didn't work. "Buy a book on the Asian." Nothing.

Alicia got injured a couple times after the first, but she still improved visibly.

Ever magic-wise, she was faring better. Shen's F-rank sight let him just barely detect her fireballs making smaller holes in the Shadows, yet still killing them. It meant greater control or potency, or both.

Dealing with her was easy despite her blatant disrespect toward his culture sometimes. They only got close to a verbal fight when she complained as night fell. "I need rest! I'm not a machine like you!"

"We need no sleep or food," he replied. "There's no reason to rest. Every hour wasted is one less hour to gain AP."

"I don't caaaare," she pouted. "I'm mentally tireeeed."

"You said you wanted protection to grow strong, not to slack off," he countered.

"Screw that," she said and sat on the ground. "I'm not moving."

Shen just stared at her in disbelief for a while. That was ridiculous. She was behaving like a child.

He almost ordered her to stand up. Almost. Then he remembered she wasn't his clan's subject and nodded. "It saddens me to see our agreement come to an end like that, but I shall not cripple my growth for you. May the heavens bless your Path."

Then Shen turned and started walking away.

It surprised him to see her say, "God, I hate you," then stand up and rush to follow him. Where was her self-respect? The willpower to go through with her decisions?

He shook his head.

'Mortals,' he thought.

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It was night, and Alicia was throwing up again. This time, it had taken her nine fireballs too close to each other to reach that state.

Using magic was... self-enlightening in a way. She could just barely feel what mana did when it obeyed her. If she focused on it, she could understand it better. It was like seeing connected gears turning and understanding how and where they connected to each other.

With better understanding, she could create fireballs with less mental strain, faster, and tell better how much damage she was dealing.

Yet that was nothing in front of how physically powerful she was feeling.

Shen was a damn awesome teacher. He could tell her mistakes at a glance and suggest ways to fix them that made sense. For instance, instead of, "Use your whole body to swing the sword," he would say, "Raise your sword two inches when swinging. That'll put you out of balance and force your stance to change to adapt. That, in turn, will end up with you using your entire body, increasing the power. After you understand what to do, try to do it without losing balance."

Taking revenge on the giant spiders with her sword had felt awesome. Not as great using magic, but still.

As for his tale of being from a distant past...

Alicia had no idea why he was making that stuff up, but the world was kind of ending, wasn't it? She didn't blame him for wanting to make up a cooler past than whatever boring one he had. Hell, she was tempted to do the same herself. Giving up on her shitty past and becoming someone more interesting sounded great.

His story was so detailed that it was fun to point out its holes, though he was good at always finding an excuse for them. He was so stiff too, "I'm a robot, and you're offending me."

She chuckled, then vomited more.

Great teacher, asshole of a drill sergeant. She had no idea what to think. The image of an austere brother was turning into something more akin to a tyrant teacher.

Still, he was doing what she had asked, and it was for her own good...

Alicia decided to uphold her judgment about him for a few days.

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The morning of the 15th day of the second stage was like the 14th. Shen trained Alicia, then they hunted.

About midway through the day, she realized she could improve her stats with the AP she had amassed already. Shen himself was rapidly approaching forty thousand.

Alicia purchased the strength, agility, and resistance upgrades. The system made her float as it improved her body, yet her hair didn't fall like Shen's had—his hair was growing well. It was interesting to see her muscles growing and changing position. Her skin also became a very barely noticeable shade darker.

When it was done, the first thing she did was touch her head. She then screamed, purchased a scarf and a mirror, and wasted a lot of time fixing it up.

"Fuck, my eyebrows," she lamented.

Alicia killed their enemies with newfound ire that day.

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It was night. They were killing more rabbits when the Shadows just froze in place. Shen's spear reached one of them but just rebounded from it as if he had attacked solid metal with a stick.

A system message followed.

Tutorial - 2nd Stage

This stage has reached its halfway point.

New purchase options unlocked in your stat store!

Access granted to the skill subsystem!

All enemies will be frozen and impossible to injure for ten minutes. You have that long to get used to your new skill if you unlock one.

After that, all enemies in this stage will have their stats increased once:

G → F-

F- → F

F → F+

F+ → E-

No stat higher than E- is allowed in this stage.

When applicable, their ranks will also increase to be compatible with their new stats.

Fight well!

As usual, as soon as he finished reading, he got a new message, this one about the mysterious skill subsystem.