“Rise. I’ll teach you the sword skill.”

Ike squinted at Silver, then looked at the ground all around him. “Where’s the skill orb?”

“After your body adapts to the motions, then you get the orb,” Silver said sternly.

“That doesn’t make any—”

Silver’s hand blurred. His stick rapped the back of Ike’s head. “Rise.”

Rubbing the back of his head and frowning, Ike climbed to his feet. He lifted the stick Silver had tossed his way and assumed a cheap copy of Silver’s stance. I don’t get it. Why not give me the skill immediately? The skill will shape my body and mana to the required shape to enact the skill.

I understand general physical training, but learning the same exact skill the manual way, before I absorb a skill orb? What does this kind of training do for me?

Silver stepped forward, sweeping the stick out. Ike lifted his to parry, but far too slow. Compared to Silver, his blade seemed to move through molasses, not air. A half-dozen blows landed on his thighs and abdomen, pushing him into a better copy of Silver’s stance.

Ike stumbled back, smarting all over. “Ow!”

“Resume your stance. Never abandon it for anything!” Silver boomed. Cold eyes pierced Ike, Silver’s gaze not unlike the distant cruelty in his uncle’s.

Ike instinctively jumped to, resuming the stance he’d taken moments ago. Again, a half dozen blows flew forth. He tried to parry them again, but even knowing where they would land did nothing to help him. Once again, his limbs smarted as they were adjusted into place.

“Watch your opponent. Their body tells a story. Foot placement, hand placement, balance.”

Ike’s eyes widened. Rather than react to Silver’s blade, this time, he watched how the man moved. The blows landed on his body again, but he bore them, learning from them.

“Before they move, you should already know what attack they will unleash.” Again, the stick darted toward Ike.

This time, Ike watched Silver’s feet. He stands like that every time he strikes my legs. He pivoted back.

Silver’s feet shifted. He stepped forward, and the stick struck Ike’s chest.

“Hey! I was just getting the hang of it,” Ike protested.

“In a real fight, your opponent can mask their moves and change their attacks at the last second. In a real fight, you’d be dead,” Silver returned. He stepped back, lifting the stick before him. “You’ve fought monsters so far, and it shows. You haven’t yet fought anyone who could be considered your peer in intelligence.”

“So?” Ike asked, irritated. They were hard fights. I had to claw my way through with tooth and nail. Don’t dismiss them like that!

“A sword skill is useful against monsters, but so are axes, spikes, and glue traps.” Silver flourished the blade, then darted in.

Ike lifted his stick, blocking a frontal blow, only for Silver to flow past him, as fluid as water. As the stick struck Ike’s back, he murmured, “This skill I’m teaching you, is meant to be used against your fellow humans.”

Ike nodded. His mind flashed to the bandits back when he was bringing the Salamander home. If I’d had a technique to fight humans, I wouldn’t have had to rely on the wraiths. “I understand.”

Silver nodded. “Lift your sword.”

Days passed. Ike and Silver dueled in Silver’s yard, fighting back and forth, up and down the line of the stream. The owl parts laid in Silver’s cave, all but forgotten. As the days piled up into a week, Ike tired of the endless training. All day, every day, getting beaten by Silver, with no skill orb in sight. At last, he plopped down by the side of the stream. “When are you going to give me the orb?”

Silver sat down beside him. He took off his shoes and put his feet in the water. “When you’ve mastered the technique.”

Ike squinted at him. “I won’t need a skill orb once I’ve mastered it!”

There was a long pause. At last, Silver looked at him. “Do you still not understand why I’m doing this?”

“To teach me the skill better?”

Silver grunted. He lifted his hand and flexed it into a grasp. Ike felt the mana around him stir as Silver activated a skill, and a stick flew out of the water into his hand. He grasped it. “What you are doing now, with that movement technique of yours, is like what I just did. Using a skill to move your body.”

“Isn’t that what skills do?” Ike asked.

Silver flexed his hand again. Mana stirred at the same time. From across the stream, a hand-thick log flew to his palm. “What I just did was move my body and my mana at the same time that I operated the skill. Do you see the difference?”

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“Yeah…but can’t I learn that after I get the skill? The skill shows me the way to properly move my body and my mana, and once I know that, I can learn the skill through practice.”

“This is true…for most skills,” Silver allowed, lowering his head.

“But not sword skills?”

Silver crossed his arms. He sat back and cleared his throat, taking the moment to think before he spoke. “A battle is…not just a contest of skill, nor of skills. Not just a battle of attrition between your body and the opponents’, your mana and the opponents. A battle is a mental contest. Life and death, decided in the blink of an eye.”

He lifted his hands, looking at his palms, then lowered them. “If I gave you the orb, you could learn how to use the skill, yes. But you would not learn why, or when. Your body wouldn’t have the strength and stamina to operate it. You wouldn’t have the proper channels built for your mana to use it properly. You wouldn’t have the proper muscles to bring out its full power.

“If I beat the skill into you to the point you can use it in your sleep, then you have learned combat…and so has your body. You already have the reflexes to counter the skill’s weaknesses. You already know how to fight an opponent of superior strength, without relying on your skill to carry you.”

Ike nodded slowly. The doubts in his mind cleared, and he suddenly understood what Silver was trying to express. I don’t know how to fight. He isn’t just teaching me the skill; he’s teaching me battle.

Not only that. Teaching him battle, and training his body to support it. Ike turned to his arms. The once skinny, bone-slender limbs now swelled with burgeoning muscle, the once-pale skin now tanned. He spent his time fighting outside, hunting with Silver, eating meat and fish, and every day, he grew stronger.

“I understand,” Ike said. He stood. “Let’s continue.”

“Hah,” Silver muttered. He pushed off the bank into the water, fluidly taking on cat form between the two. Rather than jump up to follow Ike, he paddled around the water, then darted under to chase a fish.

Ike shook his head at the pool. “Typical cat behavior. The second I want to do something, he wants to do something else.”

Silver’s head broke the water. That scarred eye glared at Ike.

Ike grinned. He didn’t hear that, did he?

“Fifty laps,” the panther barked.

He heard it. Ike saluted and set off, already knowing he’d only receive more laps for responding.

The months passed by. Spring passed into summer, summer passed into fall. Between hunting, swimming, fishing, and fighting, Ike’s days were full. He steadily grew stronger. As he’d promised, Silver beat the sword technique into him. Every day, Ike went to bed covered in bruises. Salamander Healing healed them by morning, and steadily leveled up as it did so.

Silver also taught Ike a hand-to-hand technique, though this technique was more incidental. Silver favored a quick swat to the back of the head for punishment. When Ike eventually learned to dodge that, he changed to the shoulder, and so on, Ike learning to dodge strike after strike. Eventually, what started as quick punishment swats turned into back-and-forth open-handed duels, Ike blocking, parrying, and dodging while Silver doggedly continued to try to land his blow. Between Ike, who stubbornly refused to be hit, and Silver, who stubbornly refused to miss his strike, the battles could last for minutes before Silver got bored and turned away, or Ike rolled on the ground, holding his smarting head.

In his few free moments, Ike absorbed mana from the lake and practiced Sensory Enhancement and Lightning Clad (Forearm). He experimented with stretching the skill up his calves, or from his elbow to his shoulder, but both directions wore his mana thin in a single shot. After a few attempts, Ike shelved expanding Lightning Clad for later, and focused on mastering what he had instead.

“Repeat that strike fifty times. I’m going for a swim,” Silver declared.

“Sir!” Ike lifted the wooden sword and brought it down. The sun beat down. Sweat dripped down his back. Silver splashed into the pool in cat form, and Ike eyed the dew-dappled black fur with envy. That pool would feel so good right now. Ugh. I wish I could jump in there and—

Branches rustled. A human form struggled through the barrier of trees at the far edge of the clearing. Metal flashed in their hand.

Shit, a hunter! “Silver, run!” Ike shouted. He leaped the stream and ran toward the man, raising his sword.

Silver hauled himself out of the water and raced past Ike, closing in on the man with a ferocious growl. He tackled the man backward, into the underbrush.

“Ah! You got me, you got me!” Orin laughed, throwing his hands up.

Ike slowed. He lowered his sword. “Orin?”

“It’s me. You took so long out here, I was worried the old cat up and ate you,” Orin said, slapping Silver’s shoulder. Silver climbed off him, but paced nearby. He lifted his head to sniff Orin, then sauntered away. Water dripped off his short fur.

Watching Silver go, a thought occurred to him. “You said he was called Silver on account of the scar, but he says you’re the one who gave it to him.”

“Aye. Well, they’re both true. If he doesn’t give out a name, people are gonna call him something,” Orin reasoned, still lying on the ground. He gestured for Ike, and Ike helped him to his feet.

“What did you call him before the scar?” Ike asked.

“He wouldn’t give us a name back then, either, so I called him Goldie. ‘Cuz of his eyes,” Orin said, pointing at his own.

“He got downgraded,” Ike muttered. From gold to silver.

Orin sniffed. He shrugged. “I think he likes Silver better. I was kinda being an ass to him, calling him Goldie. More of a girl’s name, you know?”

“Yeah…guess I wasn’t thinking of it that way,” Ike replied.

“I see you’ve, ah. Become comfortable with the other Silver,” Orin commented, nodding at the panther.

Ike nodded. “‘Other’ is a good way to put it. Seems equally comfortable in either form. He helped me with an owl-monster in the first few days, and I put two and two together pretty fast. Once he knew I knew, he let it all hang out.”

“He likes bein’ a cat. Well. Who wouldn’t?” Orin mused.

“You two know each other, I heard,” Ike commented, eyeing Orin.

Orin snorted. “He was in my party, back in the day. Was me, Cara, Goldie—well, Silver, and the mage.”

“He’s the same age as you?” Ike asked, surprised.

“Monsters can live for hundreds of thousands of years. Even the weak ones live for a thousand years. Is it that surprising? Hell, he’s probably older’n me. Don’t think he’s aged a day the whole time I’ve known him.”

“Huh.”

Silver leaped the pool and transformed as he landed. He looked over his shoulder. “Hurry up. You still have fifty sets before sundown.”

“Sir!” Ike nodded at Orin and ran after Silver, leaping the narrower stream rather than the pool.

On the far side of the stream, Orin nodded. “It’s what the both of ‘em needed,” he murmured quietly to himself. Louder, he called, “I hunted some redbird on the way in. Gonna roast it for dinner.”

Silver lifted his chin and nodded.

Chuckling to himself, Orin picked his way across the stream and vanished into Silver’s cave, leaving Silver and his protégé outside to sweat in the sun.