The earth-kin did a small wave with their hand not getting up from their chair.

“I hope you got here today and not yesterday.”

“Yeah, just an hour or so ago.”

I glanced at the completion banner and saw that I had doubled the totals accidentally. Maybe it had been more than an hour.

“Good, I am Thran. You are?”

God, saying Quartz as my name to an earth-kin would not be fun.

Earth-kin were from the southern part of the continent. They mostly lived in the desert lands but some stayed in the mountain borders between the southern lands and the elven and human lands.

In the south other than the earth-kin there were fire-kin, water-kin, and air-kin. They were so lazily named because of their skin tone and the fact that each race only had the associating attribute when it came to mana. To fit the simple naming style all together they were called elemental-kin.

Further south after the desert and the earth-kin, was the ocean and an archipelago where they were separated from each other. I’d met a few kin here and there in Azmar and they were generally nice people but the earth-kin I met laughed when she heard my name.

“Uhh I’m Quartz.”

Thran smirked.

“Seriously?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright, well dinner’s about ready so come inside.”

Thran got up and headed back to the door.

Why couldn’t it be any other elemental-kin, well at least not an air-kin they’d probably make fun of me more. Well, at least it was better than me ending up with an elf. If there would even be an elf training people on this floor.

The more I walked the more I realized I was no longer as sore as I had been when I woke up. I mean I should’ve noticed sooner; I haven’t doubled the requirements accidentally in a while (the one time only being when I was running away from something on a floor). If I was really that sore or even bored, I would’ve probably been checking the count every chance I got. I must enjoy it more than I thought.

I looked up at the sky, it was really amazing that this was the inside of a tower whose base wasn’t much larger than Azmar. It was a whole world in here… were the inhabitants of the tower really just illusions to play along? Or were they living their own lives here not on repeat and not only for the service of the challenges with each floor? Well, I guess this was the only floor with such a large number of inhabitants.

Floor six had people, but if it was only those in that village that Mezu killed I don’t think that’d even compare to half the amount of people in the arena. Cyrus had also felt like his own person, and I’m sure the more time I spend with Thran, I’d feel the same way.

The closer I got back to the hall I heard multiple voices. I slowed down, I thought I was alone here. Were there other trainees that I had missed? Or where they just teleported later than me. Though, with the way Thran acted when I got here, I don’t think he often got people to train.

I opened the door to see an elf with an ale in his hand sitting next to Thran.

I had gotten ahead of myself; my luck ran out.

“Oh Quartz” Thran snickered a little while saying my name, “this is Alrick, he’s a trainer from one of the other places. He doesn’t have anyone this time, so I invited him to relax here.”

I nodded at him a little. The elf was tall and well built, his black hair was short and tied up neatly. His skin and eyes were darker than I’d seen on an elf before. I sat down across from them and started to eat, couldn’t talk too much with my mouth full right?

“So how far did you get?” Alrick asked.

Guess he didn’t care if I talked with my mouth full.

“Semi-finals.”

“Why’d you stay then?”

I looked at him a little confused. He was right, I should’ve gotten asked if I wanted to move on or not. No banner had shown up. If the Monarchs had interfered, then they might want me to make it all the way to the finals before leaving. But I didn’t get any banner at all, and the last time they had interfered there was a banner.

“uhh, I wanted to get the best rewards, you know…”

If these two were real people, and I spent more time around this elf he’d notice I was half, but hopefully not the healing. I didn’t know the delay between the two here but after a while he’d notice right?

Would it be better to say something? Or if he just saw my ears, would he say something on his own?

“So, what type of training are you looking to do?”

I didn’t really want to talk with them all that much. Still, when it was just the three of us in a room, did I really have much of a choice? Aside from swords, some hand to hand would probably be useful but I really just needed some experience and to work on my stamina.

“Any experience would help; I’m pretty lacking technique in general.”

“I took you for a hand-to-hand fighter, with your build anyway.”

Thran seemed to be looking at me pretty intently.

“Mana or aura?”

“Aura.”

“Neither of us will be much help with that, but fighting techniques I’m sure we can lend a hand.”

Didn’t someone say that it wasn’t common knowledge that aura and mana weren’t the same thing? That people use physical augmentation mana and aura interchangeably? Why did they know that I actually meant aura?

My confusion was apparently evident on my face because Alrick chuckled softly.

“Once you’re at a level in both mana manipulation and aura, you can see mana in the world and within people. With a glance I can tell that you have no mana cores, and yet still have pathways. Even if I couldn’t see your aura, those without mana entirely don’t make it very far in this life. Additionally, when you’re an adventurer it’d be a bit naïve to not be aware of the differences in the power systems. The difference in strength between someone with mana and aura is too noticeable. However, I haven’t met a single elf that’s able to use aura before, you must be half.”

My hands shot up without thinking to see if my hair had moved from covering my ears. Alrick laughed again and waved his hand downwards.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I’ve got nothing against halfers, and your ears aren’t showing, at least not right now. I saw them when you were training.”

With my hair all neat and taken care of like this, my ears really were visible when I moved around.

“Oh, uh why did you say that you can see the difference, but Thran asked me which?”

Thran leaned back in his chair taking a swing from his mug.

“I’m not at the level yet that I can see aura consistently. And if someone wants to hide their cores from me, they can do so pretty easily. Alrick’s got about three times the amount of years on me in training alone.”

“I thought that since they’re different you can’t see the one you don’t have.”

“It’s an advanced level after aura sight or so I’ve been told. I’ve only met a few aura users before so I couldn’t really tell you for sure. We’ll help you out though. Thran’s much more experienced in martial arts than I am, but I can give you pointers on your blade work. It wouldn’t hurt to improve it even if your build is probably more inclined for a form of martial arts.”

“Shouldn’t I focus on one or the other though?”

They both shook their heads.

“Being well rounded is better. For example, elemental-kin that are trained by their family too strictly end up at a plateau when they can’t think out of the box. I learned mana cultivation and hand to hand at the same time to improve my physical strength since my body couldn’t handle my mana well. Once I started actually manipulating my mana, and classes on that, even though my teachers insisted that I shouldn’t bother with my sparring I didn’t stop.

“I mixed the two and learned to fight in a way that I felt much more comfortable with. It pushed me too. It made me learn to cast faster, use my mana more instinctually than structured like we were taught. If you lose your sword in a fight and can’t do anything else, you’ll be killed. Similarly, mages don’t get very far on their own unless they’re quite skilled in their casting. If they run out of mana, or their spell gets interrupted anyone fighting with a weapon can easily kill them.”

“Isn’t that why they’re in parties though? So that they can be protected so their casting isn’t interrupted?”

Alrick chimed in “but in the tournament weren’t they very easy for you to beat? What’s the point of a close-range spell that requires you to stay still while casting? I primarily use my sword, and I don’t often lose it in a fight, but if I did, I’ve got enough skills to keep me alive until I need it again.”

“What I do is an advanced form of what people call physical augmentation mana manipulation. I’ll show you tomorrow what I mean if you want, but that’d take time out of training, and we probably only have a few days until you’ll get called back to the tournament. Probably best to just help you out where you want.”

I was finally feeling tired, but I don’t know if it was because we were talking about complex things for so long. Either way, I’d get help with both and I didn’t want to waste too much time.

“If you’re so willing to help, I won’t say no to it.”

“Great, then we’ll actually have something to do tomorrow.”

Thran elbowed Alrick before taking a swig from his mug. Alrick chuckled and shook his head gently before taking a sip himself.

Training with the two of them was interesting. Most of the first morning was spent sparring to determine where I needed work. Then Thran decided what martial art style would suit me best, and Alrick had comments on my sword technique.

The second morning we worked on the dummies, and alternated between sword practice and a berserker class form of martial arts called Akulai-E. Why he defined it as a class specific style and not a race specific style, was odd.

Most techniques of things were based on the race teaching it to you and were named as such. Classes of adventurers tended to come after the fact. They were all decided by the Adventurer’s Guild. After being tested for entrance, their specialty was evaluated, and they were slotted into specifics. I hadn’t met a berserker before. Most people fit into the most general class titles and not the more specific ones like berserker, healer or summoner.

Most people that used mana could do most basic healing spells, but only those with a specific affinity could really use healing effectively so they were called healers. Berserkers were more specific than tanks, and summoners were mages that were spiritual mana manipulators. Even with these classes that the guild decided on, I’d never heard about them naming fighting styles after them.

It was really easy for me to learn though. It felt close to what I had already been doing instinctively. Thran probably thought it was better to teach me something similar to what I already did, than to teach me something entirely new.

After the dummy training, we did this really fun style of sparring. I’d spar with a sword until Alrick knocked it out of my hands and then they swapped making me use Akulai-E.

At the end of the day, I didn’t realize how tired I had gotten, or for how long we sparred without breaks. Either my stamina had greatly increased, or I was just having so much fun I wasn’t paying attention to any of it.

Over the two days, I managed to break through the pathway point in both of my elbows and the load on my aura felt better. I didn’t have much time to practice my circulation, but it didn’t really matter to me.

Meal breaks were an odd affair, they were mostly discussing a lot of theory around the different forms of fighting. Most of which went over my head until they then showed whatever they were saying to me later.

I thought I’d be uncomfortable spending so much time with an elf but I didn’t think about it as much as I thought I would. He was kind of just there. It was fun being around him and he wasn’t condescending with his teaching style like I would think a elf would be to a halfer. Even if he said he didn’t have any problems with halfers, I still expected a little bit of a superiority complex.

It was different than Cyrus, who kind of just felt like an old man. I mean Alrick is much older than Cyrus (I’m sure even I’m older than him). With Alrick though it was a level of instant comfort and fun competition that I’d never had before.

Which was weird since I was initially so worried about it. I didn’t know what to compare this feeling to. With Thran, it was somewhat similar, but he still felt close to Cyrus age wise. It just feels like if Thran and Cyrus were elves, they’d be older than both me and Alrick. And in that sense, our relationship would be considered different, they would be elders, I guess. With Alrick he felt older than me but didn’t give that feeling of being an elder.

I keep going back to the thought about how much of this was just created for the challenge of climbing. This comfort wasn’t something I’d feel again, it was just here on this floor. I didn’t want to think about it much though, and with the training, we did the only time I even had for my mind to wander, was before I slept.

The third day was the same as the second and in the morning of the fourth, I was called back to the waiting area. In the time before my fight, I worked on my circulation. Now I was moving a lot more of my aura around. Since I was done with my arms, I should move onto my legs next.

I think Cyrus said that the ones at my shoulders and the ones at my waist were the hardest to break through. It was a bit hard to feel it in my feet, but I didn’t get much practice on it anyway since I was teleported to the arena floor.

“He made it to the semi-finals and lost to a more skilled swordsman. In this round of sixteen against a fighter how will he fair!”

The announcer’s voice was loud even over the cheers of the crowd.

Had I really just missed it the first time? Being aware of it now, I didn’t know how I could’ve missed it, it was loud enough to be heard over the cheers so how had I missed it the first time?

I stood across from a human again. His clothes were simple, just a shirt and pants. His hands were wrapped, and I saw no weapon. This would be a good chance to practice the new skills I learned. I put my sword outside the ring since I didn’t want to risk breaking my sword, like I did to that one guy’s great sword.

“What a strange contestant, putting his weapon down before the fight, let’s see how much better he does without it.”

I could really do without the comments, well the comments made in a way that I had no choice but to hear them. Why couldn’t we just enjoy our spars in peace and quiet? I wished I could ignore it like I had for my first two fights.

“Alright! Let’s get this show on the road!”

My opponent took that as a starting call and rushed at me. I coated my fists with aura and blocked his first right-handed swing with my left as I swung into his gut with my right.

I hit solidly and felt some spit cough up out of his mouth.

He doubled over grabbing onto my fist and threw himself backwards pulling me up and over him.

I slammed onto my back, and he quickly released my arm and swung his fist towards me.

I caught it in my hand, using my aura to reinforce my grip as I reached my left hand to grab his forearm tightly.

He punched at my face with his other hand, but I let the hits come.

I was still on the ground, and he was partially over me. I slammed my feet into the ground, knees bent to cement my position a bit. I pulled on his arm as hard as I could thinking I could throw him over me. Instead, I heard him yell in pain his other hand clawing at my own.

I let go of him and got up throwing myself from my laying position onto my feet. I turned quickly and he was still on his knees behind me. I took a step first with my left, lifting my right leg into a swing to kick his head. Three dings rang out and the second I would have made contact with his head he teleported away from the ring.

“Amazing! What a fight! The brutality of hand to hand always makes the most exciting fights! Who would’ve thought that the sub rate swordsman was skilled like this! Way to keep the crowd entertained!”

The crowd cheered even louder and all of a sudden it was almost completely cut off. I could still hear it in the distance, but in the waiting room, wherever that was, it was a much more peaceful place.