"Too slow," Shiro said as she hit Iris's weapon aside causing a loud clack which echoed inside the cave. "Do it again."

Iris step back and assumed the posture the beast woman had shown her. It turns out that spearmanship is far more complicated than Iris had ever thought. It wasn't just stabbing at the thing in front of you until it died although she knew that already just like anyone who had ever had to use a spear but she had never expected to be as deep of a craft as it was. It probably shouldn't surprise the elf that she thought this way as in Theocracy particularly polearms were the weapons of the levy and not of the holy warriors, who preferred weapons with more destructive potential like great swords or war hammers.

From what she saw in her travels with Brad, most nobles and professionals outside of Heavenfall used polearms as their primary weapon since they fought against other armies rather than patrolling the countryside in small groups. Long lances and halberds although effective on the battle field were liability in hunting monsters. Since monsters are faster and stronger than humans, they want to kill monsters as fast as possible to limit the time fighting the superior killer. Mounted combat is often out of the question as monsters live deep in the forest or in caves and the safest ways to kill a monster left other polearms as effective but unpreferable as smashing the bones of the monster and causing it to bleed out was safer than poking its thick hide or trying to hit its weak spots. The more she thought about it the fact that adventurers and paladins used similar weapons became more obvious.

Shiro opened the hoplite's mind to how complex fighting effectively with a spear was. The small movements Shiro did with her arms to manipulate the tip of her spear seemed easy to do at first but whenever she tried to do them, she made the movements way larger than needed. Even now Shiro who was standing in front of her and not manipulating Iris's abilities to her advantage somehow always managed to sneak the tip of her spear anywhere she wanted while appearing to have the ability to teleport her spear past Iris's weapon.

"Lead with your spear, not your leg." Shiro said as she pinned Iris's shoe to the ground causing the undead to almost trip over as her body carried moving forward from her momentum.

To Iris's somewhat childish disappointment, the white-furred nekos weren't teaching anything as deadly as what she did now. Currently, the tall undead was learning weapon leverage and basic footwork. The former was quite easy to grasp as it involved taking advantage of the opponent's grip on the weapon. Striking a shield on its outer edge would cause the inner part of a shield to move, exposing the opponent's torso and so on but the elf found the latter to be much more difficult. She would concentrate on her feet and their movements causing Shiro to bonk her on the head with the wooden shaft.

Shiro's words became blurred mumble inside the damestar raven's mind alongside the entire world before snapping into focus as a loud whacking noise cleared her mind.

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"I think that's it for today." Iris saw Shiro holding the steel oak shaft in her closed palm mere millimetres away from her cheek. The woman let go of the shaft and walked toward the campfire with an unhappy expression painted on her face.

The elf looked at the end of her shaft which came close to ripping the cat's head off with confusion before that her teacher was calling her over.

"I don't think you were listening to me, today." The warrior said as she stirred up ash, freeing the burning embers from their ashen prison. "Is there a reason for this, Iris?"

"I was listening to you very intently," The elf said. "I'm unsure what happened now. I-I think I blanked out for a moment."

"I'm sure you did but I watched you looking like this the entire day." Shiro pulled the corners of her lips down while furrowing her eyebrows. "You are sulking the entire day so take a rest to fix whatever making you like this and then we can train again tomorrow."

Iris wasn't sure how to answer so she nodded her head to the demi-human suggestion before rubbing her face to remove the strange expression she was making.

"Eat this." Shiro handed the elf a couple of strips of dried meat. "When I'm hungry I get similar to how you are now."

"I appreciate but-"

"No buts." Shiro said in a warm motherly voice.

Iris placed a strip of meat in her mouth and bit it. As she rolled the chunk in her mouth waiting until the meat becomes softer she noticed that she couldn't taste the meat. Bitting a bigger piece of sun-dried meat, Iris felt that the food was tasteless completely, even water had a taste to it but the only thing her tongue felt now was the tiny hint of charcoal.

"If you gather up spit and wait it becomes tasty." Shiro advised the elf who was already doing what she suggested.

"Yea..." The risen absent-mindedly responded as she mulled the charred meat in her mouth. "You said that I really too much on combat precognition, should I completely ignore it to get better?"

"Nyo," Shiro half open her full mouth to respond. "The problem with your ability is that people who have it rely on it too much. Combat precognition gets better regardless of rank when you increase your knowledge of combat. The higher the rank the quicker it reacts but the quality of the moves it will recommend will increase since it's based on your knowledge. Also, you have to know how to fight without it so that when you are in a fight you can intervene. Remember your ability can be easily tricked even without using my technique, it is as simple as luring a predictable response from you. But at the end of the day if you master your weapon your ability is utterly broken and unfair to fight against. I wish I had it, the best I have is that the world slows down a little bit in my mind but that is a given for a person with my level."

Before Iris could respond the silken fire between the two women suddenly vanished causing the two to be drowned in darkness. Both of them could hear the other lunging up onto their feet. The sound of hushed whispers filled the darkness before blue light illuminates the cavern.

Turning toward the source of the flickering blue light Iris saw a huge fire elemental encased in a bulky body resembling that of a golem with long arms reaching down to its knees. As candles igniting inside of a temple dedicated to Idicac upon entry, smaller elementals started to appear around the two women surrounding them before they could react. The undead hoplite casted Inspect on the smaller elementals around her before focusing on the blue flame fire elemental.

[Inspect]

[Water Spirit Level 89]

[Great Earth Spirit Level 101]

[Great Air Spirit Level 139]

[Great Water Spirit Level 123]

[Great Fire Spirit Level 105]

[Greater Fire Spirit Level 300]

"Shiro, those are level 100 something!"

"And that bastard?!" Shiro screamed as she began to sweat from the heat made by the fire elemental.

[Inspect]

[Greater Blue Flame Fire Spirit Level 300]

[Fire Spirit who had chosen a path of using the wind of Ak'Shi to its unconventional extremes.]

"Level 300!"

"Fuck!"