Waking up the next morning, Vittorio decided to do something he hadn't done in a while: Change pact. If he was going to study under Ulberto he might as well do everything he could to learn well. Ending the pact with {The Still Wind} was simple enough as he simply did not renew it, something he normally did with a simple mental assent. He then reached out to {The Singular Direction} to try something out.
> Mortal mind greeted is again! You time for has passed. You grown have, learned. {This} approves!
Uh, thank you. I wanted to discuss the terms of a pact, if that is acceptable?
> Speaking acceptable is. Warning given is: Mortal weak is. Gifts survive the full extent of cannot.
I understand. I will be training, learning, under a teacher. I was wondering if you could bolster that part of the pact?
> It possible is. Price paid must be.
I'm willing to pay a higher price, or I could get less in other respects?
> Pact strength remains same. It done can be. Price unchanged.
Then I accept those terms.
> It formed is.
Vittorio felt a slight tingle as {The Singular Directions} influence settled within him. He brought up his Interface to see just what he had gotten:
Pact Passive skills Lead by example
While you are engaged in an activity, allies behind you gain a boost to performing similar activities. The more similar the activity, the greater the boost.
Master and pupil
You immediately gain insight into the best way to teach or learn from another person. Increase non-class Traits slightly faster when tutored.
Active skills All at once Slightly increase the effect of Lead by Example for a short duration. You can use this ability every now and then. Passing of Ages
Age or erode worked materials with a touch. The more exposed to the elements the target is the greater the effect. You can use this ability sometimes.
Singular Purpose
Enter a combat stance of constant movement and unrelenting aggression. Gain an intuitive understanding of the stance and its movements. Your balance, movement speed, and reactions are greatly improved while you are attacking. The effect lasts until you stop moving. You can enter the stance often.
Spells Talents Generic Deals Occult Occult initiate Transformation Class: Pactmaker
Looking it over, the new terms seemed somewhat unbalanced. Everything else was weakened in exchange for a faster understanding of how to train and an increased learning speed. That is what he wanted, but it did cost a fair bit - he guessed the pacts were the way they were for a reason. Or possibly learning speed was that strong? He'd have to ask the others.
Making his way to breakfast was confusing and distracting, the improved Master and Pupil constantly telling him the best way to learn from strangers. He learned that the big, scarred warrior in front of him in the queue for food was extremely good at metaphors, and if Vittorio were to teach him written words and diagrams was the way forward. He did not need to know this. One of the [Cooks] also got annoyed with him for staring, his Mark once more causing trouble. He already missed his moved-by-wind-or-not mark. Nobody had cared about that one, weirder things went on in the guild.
He settled down at one of the long tables and was soon joined by Gloria and Tarcisio, the latter being in an almost annoyingly good mood. Vittorio had gathered the man liked having another of his class around but it did get a bit much sometimes.
"Fast Slash - wonderful, would work well in the Rat Room right now but, rats you know, Extended Strike: safe, solid, superiour with spear, sword? Sufficient. Forceful Blow? Nuno knows, not I - not nearly as spear-suited a skill, see?"
Vittorio didn't know what to do. He just kept talking. Thankfully, Gloria had some experience by now.
"Did you sleep well, Vittorio?" she said, just speaking over Tarcisio. He quieted somewhat but kept talking to himself. "I'm guessing you're using the direction one with how you're staring."
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"I slept alright, I am, and that phrasing feels a bit weird."
"You know what I meant. I don't know how to talk about your class, really."
"It's okay, it's a bit awkward. I did try something new today though: I renegotiated the pact."
"Really? You can do that?"
"Yeah. I asked to be better at learning and was willing to be worse at other stuff, and {The Singular Direction} agreed! So now I'll be learning faster, but my stance and stuff isn't as good. I figured it wouldn't matter if I'm just training."
This caught Tarcisios attention. "You learn faster?"
"Yeah, I have a skill that lets me learn non-class Traits faster and tells me the best way to learn from people."
Tarcisio looked at him intensely for a long moment. He seemed to be growing angry. "You don't even know how lucky you are, do you? How rare that is? [Trainer] and [Teacher] classes, people with
"Tarcisio!", Gloria said sharply. "Control yourself! This is too far!"
Tarcisio, shaking with rage, closed his eyes and slowly started to calm down.
"Because his emotions are so strong, he needs to use Control Emotions over and over for it to have an effect", Gloria said softly to Vittorio. "Still, might be best if we trained separately today." Vittorio nodded.
Nuno, Vanessa, and Ulberto had gone out for breakfast, having grown tired of porridge. Vittorio agreed that fried bread and glazed pork did sound better. After they returned, there were some awkward explanations for why Tarcisio was in a bad mood and why Vittorio kept staring at everyone. After that was mostly cleared up, Ulberto and Vittorio headed for a meeting room while the still very grumpy Tarcisio took Gloria to the training hall.
"Dummies have no feet", Ulberto had explained. "Can't stumble. Don' need space or fallin' around. We'll sit."
The room he'd chosen was small but comfortable. Four lush chairs surrounded a square table, all on top of a thick maroon rug. A magical light in the ceiling kept the room lit without being too bright. Ulberto sat down, removed his shoes, and dug his feet into the rug. Unsurprisingly, Master and Pupil told Vittorio that Ulberto wasn't very good at explaining things and they would do better with him providing examples for Vittorio to follow. There was a fundamental issue with that approach, however.
"Nothin' to see. Li'l hexes jus' happen. I'll cast it on you, feel it, try it on me." That said, he gave a little flick of a finger and Vittorio felt something. A tiny trickle of energy which somehow felt light purple entered his eye and immediately travelled down to settle in his calves. It lay there, waiting.
"Wha' you fellin'?", Ulberto asked. Vittorio described it to him. "Colours? Tha's good. Easy to tell apar'."
"What do you mean? What does the colour mean?"
"Feelin' magic. You feel colours. I feel sounds. Once trained wi' someone who smelled it. Said my magic smelled like vomi'. Bastard. Poin' is you can learn to tell it apar'. Stumbling Hex is ligh' purple, worse things prob'ly darker. Or diff'rent colour. Dunno."
"But why did it go in through my eye, and not straight into the leg?"
"Occul' spells hit from the inside, so gets inside. Eyes are vulnerable. An' they were closes'. It'll go for ears, mouth, other... openin's, whatever's best." Vittorio briefly wondered what it would be like to taste purple, then what it would be like to experience colour with other 'openings'. He abandoned that train of thought.
Focusing on the hex in just his right leg, he found that he could make out a sort of structure to it. Even resting in his calf muscle it had a colour, but now there was a shape to it. It was small and thin, with large gaps like a net, and felt a bit itchy. It made him think of coarse wool. He tried moving his leg and felt the hex close up, growing a bit sharp. His muscle twitched and he could tell that had he been walking, he would have lost control of the leg just long enough to trip him up.
His 'Very good' Learning: Experience trait and his new Occultism Initiate skill allowed him to attempt casting the hex himself. In his mind, he formed the same structure he'd felt before moving his leg, in the same colour as he'd seen when it entered his eye. He pointed at Ulberto, tried to send the construct at him - and it dissipated.
"What'd you do? In detail." Ulberto said. Vittorio answered with as much detail as he could, not quite finding the words at times.
"Good. Tha's one par' of it. Bu' you need to... roll it up. It's like throwin' leaves. Scrunch 'em up first. I'll do it again. Focus on your eyes an' how it feels movin'. Ready?" Vittorio nodded, discarding the question of why you'd have a technique for throwing leaves. Ulberto flicked his finger again. Vittorio did as Ulberto had said, focusing on the feeling of the hex entering him and then travelling down his body. He grasped part of what Ulberto had said - it didn't take on the shape he'd studied until it reached his calf. Before that, it was compressed. The whole thing happened too quickly, however.
In total, it took Vittorio the better part of two hours to learn how to very slowly cast Stumbling Hex. Ulberto said he'd picked it up very quickly, and that he'd be able to learn future hexes even faster now that he knew better what to look for. They went on to Agonizing Hex, which despite its name just caused a small twinge of pain, and finally Swelling Hex which allowed the caster to choose a part of the target's body to swell for a short duration. Ulberto said there were a few others that might be useful at times, but those three were the ones he'd found consistently good. Stumbling and Agonizing were good against pretty much anything to annoy and disrupt them, while Swelling was good against monsters that relied on finesse. He'd also used it to trap a snakelike monster who tried to crawl away.
At this point, however, it was just a matter of practice. Vittorio hadn't actually been able to inflict any of the hexes on Ulberto (which he'd very much looked forward to after the fourth Agonizing Hex) because his Magical attacks: Immediate could not hope to overcome Ulbertos Resistance: Mental.
Still, it was a rousing success and Vittorio was in high spirits. Such high spirits, in fact, that he decided on a little outing to Master Kahes second-hand magic shop. Like the last time he visited, there were shelves of small wooden placards describing objects and listing their price, with the actual magical items stored behind the counter. He ignored the crafting and houseware shelves, instead taking a look at the training, combat, and knick-knack items.
Among the training equipment, he saw a tier 0 Nopain and a training dummy (neither of which he needed thanks to the guild) as well as a blade that purported to train both your Resistance: Physical and Resistance: Pain by making shallow, extremely painful cuts in one's skin. Useful perhaps, but he wasn't going to be doing that. There was also an item that would help train your Resistance: Heat, but he'd been warned of those: An ordinary candle was better at low tiers.
He moved on to the combat shelf. Most were very basic, simple hardness enchantments and the like. Good, but not interesting. There were a few standouts, however: A pair of heavy iron boots that dealt extra damage when kicking creatures who were lying down, a truncheon that couldn't damage a skull, an axe that could cut stone, and a cloak that blended in with the bark of trees. The cloak sounded fairly interesting, but it also seemed very limited. Presumably, you'd be hard to spot from behind while you were facing a large tree.
The knick-knack shelf held plaques describing a wide assortment of items. His favourite was a "Grasping Beard (Lesser)", a false beard that you could control like a hand. He had no idea what he'd use it for but was still tempted - though not as tempted as he was by the food items. A box that kept any food placed in it fresh and at the same temperature for up to a week and a "Mangosteen Stone" which would grow a mangosteen fruit around it once per day were both interesting, but ultimately too expensive. It'd take years for the stone to pay for itself. There were also four "Spiced Spoons", each of which could imbue a spice into a meal or drink twice per day. They were all cumin. He idly wondered what cumin-obsessed person had died recently.
He left the shop empty-handed, though still appreciative of Master Kahes tip. He'd be back to have another look some other time. Returning to the guild he went to have a look at how Gloria was doing, and found that she'd been joined not only by Nuno but by another warrior of some type, a woman who also preferred sword and shield. As he approached, Vittorio watched as the newcomer stabbed through her shield and into the dummy, without leaving a mark on the shield afterwards.
"What was that?", he asked Nuno, stunned.
"Permeable Shield", he answered. "An advanced and very dangerous skill - a sword could pass through from the other side, too. Gloria can't learn it yet, but I asked Konstantina to help out and she was curious. Konstantina is something of a specialist, she has more striking skills than anyone I know."
As they watched, Konstantina stuck her sword through the shield and left it there. After a moment she let it go - but it was caught in the shield. Vittorio could hear her telling Gloria that it could be used to disarm an enemy, but she probably shouldn't: The foe now had a great grip on the shield and it would be hard to control.
Vittorio decided to leave them to it. The next few days continued in much the same way, although now that Vittorio just needed a living target Ulberto spent his time reading or doing other minor things while Vittorio desperately threw hexes at him. By the time Gloria was deemed good enough with her strikes to head back into the Rat Room, Vittorio still had not managed to inflict a single hex on Ulberto. His tutor was unconcerned, saying that it would have been a miracle if he had and they were sure to work better on the rats.