Chapter 120: Training montage 1
Alex Sandclaw’s pov:
The next two hours were spent answering questions and doing various little tests. The group of instructors asked us everything and anything that they needed to know. How many battles had we been in? What was the highest level opponent we’d killed? Had we lost a limb? How did you procure water when stranded near the sea? How would we start a fire? Had either of us ever killed a person? How did you skin a boar? What was the best strategy to take down a specific monster? What mistakes had we made during the fight with the undead monster? And so on. Most of the questions could be answered with only a single word, but quite a few required lengthy explanations—though we were encouraged to keep our answers as short as possible.
They also grilled us on our powers. And while I was loath to lay my Skills, fighting style, and weaknesses bare to a bunch of strangers, Felix vouched for them. So I told them as much as I could, from my lightning magic, my resistance Skills, drawing skill, to finally my general experience with swords, spears, and fighting from dragonback.
The tests they had us do were a lot more interesting. Most were relatively simple, like a spar with one of the professors, or showing how I took care of my weaponry. The ones I failed made me really curious about what we’d be learning. Like the one where I had to solve a sliding puzzle, except the box was unable to move, so I wasn’t able to do anything, let alone solve it. Another interesting one was when I was asked to observe an apple and tell them about it. Apparently my answer was lacking.
I was also curious how Felix was doing with these tests. They had us split up some time during the first hour, when the questions they needed to ask us became too different. I felt a little disappointed that we had split up, as it became quickly clear that we’d spent the next two weeks learning different subjects from different instructors. I realized that I had expected us to learn together. And we probably still would, just to a much lesser degree than I’d hoped and wanted.
It only made sense though. We both had different areas to shore up, and flaws to compensate for. Luckily, we’d have time together during the lunch break and when we were done for the day.
And after the intense interrogation session, we did also get fifteen minutes while they discussed.
I walked up to Felix and rested my head on his shoulder while we waited. I was starting to feel the exhaustion of not getting enough sleep now. My movements were ever so slightly more sluggish, and it felt like my thoughts had to move through fog. “I think I’ll take you up on that nap during the break,” I told Felix. His shoulder shook underneath my cheek as he chuckled.
“I figured you might. I brought a pillow with me for you, if you want it.”
Not wanting to lift my head from his shoulder to nod, I just hummed my agreement and nestled deeper into his shoulder. Felix wrapped a wing around me, nuzzling into the top of my head. Part of me still felt wrong about showing affection in public like this, but the training field was out of the way, and the only people that were here were the ones we’d be seeing a lot over the next few weeks anyway. There was no hiding our relationship from them, so I might as well not try.
Too soon, the small break was over. Two of the instructors came over to us, while the rest continued their discussions off to the side of the field. They were making notes on a large blackboard now. Seeing as we were quite a bit away from the nearest building, I wasn’t sure where they had gotten it from. But with people of such a high level, who knew how they did anything? One of them could’ve summoned it from the Depths, for all I knew.
That thought made me snort. Demon blackboard. What, did it have little horns and a menacing aura?
From the two people coming over I recognized one as an observation specialist, and the other as a power generalist. At least, that was what I assumed, anyway, seeing as the two had only asked questions about those two topics. I didn’t know their names, though. We hadn’t yet had time for introductions.
Felix removed his wing from my side and stood up, waving a greeting to the two instructors. “Hi Arvo, hi Peter! Good to see you two again, it’s been a while. Are you two our instructors?” he asked.
Arvo, the cat-like beastkin, nodded. “That we are. I will be instructing Alex on his observation skills, and Peter here will instruct you in the applications of power and magic,” Arvo said, then looked over at me. “Come, follow. Time is short, so we’ll get started right away.”
The beastkin turned away, while Peter, who was just a human, came over to talk with Felix. I gave Felix a quick hug and a kiss—it still felt a little weird—then hurried after Arvo. At first we walked, then seeing I could keep up the pace, Arvo began running while I chased after him. We ran all the way across the field and into the forest there. Thankfully, with my recently improved Attributes, I was able to keep pace rather easily and without getting out of breath much.
Finally we reached a small clearing. With a wave of his hand, a table and two comfortable looking chairs appeared out of nowhere. One was even a chair specialized for lizardkin. I stared at the furniture, dumbstruck. How did he do that?
“Take a seat,” Arvo said, and I did as he said. Though not before doing a quick check for horns.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
The cat-like beastkin gave me a shrug as he took a seat opposite me. “Simple teleportation. Most Paths have a Skill like that around the level 250 mark. But we can talk more about that later, if you wish. Now then, let’s begin. As I said previously, we’ll be working on your observation skills. So, you’ve had two hours to observe me, yes? What can you tell about me? Please give as much detail as possible.”
I blinked. It seemed like we were starting right away. I took a moment to look him over before answering. The man was a beastkin, that much was clear. But I wasn’t sure what kind. He had fuzzy rounded ears that had orange fur on the inside but black fur on the outside, with a white dot in the middle. It kind of looked like eyes, actually. Other than that, the few patches of fur that were visible through his clothes were also orange, with stripes of black. His retractable claws and whiskers told me he was likely some kind of cat, but I wasn’t sure which species specifically.
I told Arvo as much. When I was done, he waited for me to go on, and I realized there was much more I could tell. For one, he was wearing a tank-top and blue shorts. He wasn’t wearing shoes, though, probably because his clawed paw-like feet made that difficult. When he still didn’t interrupt me, I kept going. His height, the shade of his fur, the way his shirt seemed a little too small for his muscles, the color of his eyes, the scraps of fur from a pet or loved-one, the stain of food on his left pant-leg, and so forth. I kept going until I had no more items to list. There was a surprising amount of information I could tell him. I had noticed a lot more than I had initially realized.
When he then still waited for me to continue, I wasn’t sure what else he wanted me to say. After a little while he spoke. “If you’ve said all you’ve observed, say so.”
I hesitated for a moment, then did as he asked. “That was all.”
Arvo nodded. “You didn’t do too bad. You noticed more than I thought you would. And while you did miss a number of small visual details, that's alright—you’re here to learn, after all. And you already have a strong base to work from. That being said, there were a few big categories you missed in your observations. From your expression, I think you have an idea what those might have been?”
I sighed. I had realized it the moment he said ‘visual’. “I only mentioned what I could see, not what I heard, what I smelled, felt, or otherwise sensed.”
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Arvo nodded. “Very good. What else did you miss?”
I frowned, confused. That was all my senses, right? What else was there?
“Don’t be afraid to take a moment to think. We might be short on time, but it is important you make these realizations yourself. We’ll circle back to this issue later, if necessary,” Arvo said with a patient look on his face.
I thought about it for a moment longer, carefully looking the beastkin over. This time I used all my senses. The sound of his voice, the smell of his sweat and clothes, and my mana sense. Still, I didn’t really come up with something I hadn’t already mentioned. At least he was patient. Hmm, patient… was that it?
“Your mood?” I asked.
Arvo nodded, an excited smile on his face. “Indeed. What else? And what do they all have in common?”
I thought for a moment, before listing everything else I could come up with. Age, body language, wealth, status, affiliation, health, intention, and so on. Ah, I see now.
“I think the thing they have in common is that they’re all conclusions? For example, if I see someone wearing expensive clothes I can conclude they’re likely rich. And if someone is sneaking through the streets, they’re probably up to no good.”
Arvo’s smile turned into a feral grin, ears twitching with excitement. “Excellent. Most excellent! You’re exactly right. Generally you can split observation into two parts: senses and interpretation. You see, smell, hear, taste, feel. And then you make conclusions from what you noticed. This is something you’ve been doing since you were born, but more often than not, you likely did it without really thinking about it. I’ll be training you to not just get better at doing it passively, but also to do it actively.”
I nodded. That certainly was a useful skill. But…
“Is it really the best use of the limited time to learn this first?” I asked. “I admit it sounds useful, but wouldn’t it be better to focus on combat right now? Or survival skills?”
Arvo observed me for a moment. “Perhaps. But we need to work on your basic skills first. You recently underwent a massive change in your Attributes. I’m sure you noticed how challenging movement became when this happened? A similar event happened with your senses. I’m sure there was a moment that you realized just how much better your senses were than before?”
My mind flashed back to the cave and that one make-out session. I still vaguely recalled the complex scents of Felix’s and my arousal mingling. I nodded meekly.
“For that reason, it’s important you learn how to deal with your senses. To make full use of them, and to blunt them when necessary. People like Felix, who are born with senses this sharp, learn this as they grow up. But people like us? We have to do it the hard way,” he said with a wry smile. “But aside from all that, we don’t actually expect you to have to fight overly much. The combat training is for a last resort. But it is important that your senses are the best they can be. You are the only one with your title and we suspect there might be things only you will be able to detect, seeing as we still haven’t been able to find this ‘node’ that is supposedly on campus. So it is important your senses and observation skills are the best they can be. And not just that, but that your knowledge is, as well. As you’ve already pointed out, a large part of observation is interpretation. But to interpret you need base knowledge to pull from. You’ll be learning the basics of enchanting, zoology, engineering, and a few other subjects. As much as is possible with only a month’s time, anyway. But that’s homework. We’ll now start with some theory, before moving on to exercises…”
The rest of that morning was exhausting, but so much fun. There was a lot more to observation as a skill than I had ever anticipated. Most of the training session was spent doing exercises, with little bits of theory in between. I definitely wasn’t the best at it, but my experiences with drawing helped quite a bit. It turns out most of the observational skills I learned while learning to draw translated pretty well. Though, that was only visual. I had never needed to put smells and such into a drawing after all. Integrating those senses into my active observations remained tricky. I just wasn’t using them that way.
Arvo also helped fill gaps in my knowledge where necessary, such as letting me know he was a beastkin of the tiger variety. He also put a book on common species and monsters on my reading list. I had a feeling I wouldn’t get much spare time in the coming weeks. It only meant I’d have to choose what I wanted to do with my free time more carefully. I wondered if I could convince myself that making out with Felix counted as condition training?
After I was done with training for the morning, we were given an hour to eat lunch and rest up. I wasn’t feeling all that hungry, but I forced the prepared food down anyway. We’d need it for the field assignment later. At least the food was tasty. Not quite what I was used to, but apparently a chef had been hired to make us food that increased our learning speed and mental focus. I didn’t know that was possible with food, but Skills were weird.
“So, about that pillow?” I asked Felix after our meal.
He chuckled, then grabbed the pillow from his saddle bag. He handed it to me and I took the moment to really observe Felix. He smelled faintly of fresh forests and vanilla, and the slightest touch of blood. His scales were a little dull, but nevertheless very pretty. They were a brilliant sky blue, like the most sunny, cloudless day in summer. His claws were sharper than usual, and I noticed he was more careful about making sure he didn’t break anything. I took in all the small details I could, then zoomed out to take in the global image. Strong arms, a lovely smile, those cute horns, the absolutely handsome scale patterns, and a frankly amazing tail. He really was beautiful, wasn’t he?
“Want to take that nap together?” he asked, his voice smooth, a little deep, and unmistakably male. “When you’re done checking me out, that is. Not that I mind.”
I blinked. “Oh, sorry. I’ve been doing so much observing this morning that it's difficult to turn that bit of my brain off now”
Felix nodded. “I know what you mean. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about applications for my powers either. So, what were you able to observe?”
That you’re beautiful, and that you smell really nice,” I said with a grin. Then, with a softer voice as my eyes drifted down towards his crotch. “And that you’re hot.”
“You’re one to talk. Have you looked in a mirror recently? It’s too bad there are so many other people around, or I would’ve… well, I’ll leave that to your imagination” he said with a wink, then paused for a moment. “Actually, speaking of, we still have that shower to make up for, don’t we? I have a feeling we might be needing one after training,” he said, before pulling me closer for a kiss and whispering into my ear, “How do you feel about spending the night together?”
A shiver went down my spine, and I could smell a small amount of arousal in the air. Sadly I already had plans.
“I have that support group meeting today, remember? So I can’t stay long. What about this weekend?” I whispered back.
Felix pulled back a little. “That’s too bad, but this weekend sounds good. I’m not sure how much time we’ll have, but let’s try to make it a date.
I grinned at him. “That sounds like a plan,” I said, then looked around. An idea had popped into my head, and I didn’t want anyone to eavesdrop. Nobody was listening in or paying attention, though. Still, I rubbed the back of my neck in embarrassment. So, quickly before I lost my nerve again, I said: “I’d, uh, like to try going a little further this time. But no promises.”
A decently sized part of me just wanted to say ‘screw it’, and just go for that dragon dick wholeheartedly. But it was the other part that was still in control, and it would need some coaching to get to that point. And this was a small step towards that goal. Maybe some ‘peer pressure’ was exactly what I needed.
Felix’s eyes widened in excitement, but he forced himself to calm down. “Do you want to talk about it now? Set some limits?”
I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “No, I’ll decide in the moment. I feel if I decide now, I’ll just hinder myself. So, we’ll talk about it then, if that’s alright.”
“Your pace, remember?” Felix said, then leaned in. ”That being said, I’m looking forward to it.”
Another shiver ran down my spine, and I nodded. I might come to regret this decision later. But, well, I hadn’t made any promises. If I changed my mind, we didn’t have to do anything. We could just sit together and read a book together all evening if we wanted to. Knowing everything was optional helped a lot, even if I knew deep down I wouldn’t back off. I grinned at Felix. “Let’s just try and make it a fun evening.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “We could make dinner together? Maybe go for a romantic flight, if we have the energy. I don’t think we’ll have much time to go out.”
I nodded. “That’s perfect. So long as you’re there, we’ll have a great time, I’m sure.” I smiled, then yawned. “But let’s talk about it more later, okay? We’re cutting into my nap-time.”
He chuckled. We grabbed our stuff and I followed him a bit deeper into the forest, where we got comfortable, crawling into Felix’s arms. I put the pillow down on his chest, closing my eyes as my head hit the fabric. They’d wake us when it was time.