“Progress is easily the most encouraging thing possible when you are training someone. Even better when the person in question is aware of the progress they have made. That way they understood that the training they had been through was not in vain.” - Roderich Lintner, former military instructor for the Clangeddin Empire’s Imperial Guards.

*Thwack!*

“Forty-three…”

*Thwack!*

“Forty… Four!”

*Thwack!*

“Forty… Five! *Huff* Done!”

“Good work!” praised Aideen from where she was stirring the contents of a pot over the campfire, a stew of some sort for the two of them to dine on later. Celia had been practicing with the “weapon” she bought her in Carolus City, as she raised the hefty, dull blade over her head in an overhead stance, held it there for a moment, and struck a fallen log with force repeatedly. “You can see your improvement, no? Just yesterday you barely managed to do forty-two, and a week ago you could barely hit thirty.”

“Yeah,” said Celia as she gathered herself from the strenuous exercise. The younger woman huffed and puffed as she panted for breath - more an instinctive reaction of her body and mind which was still unused to being unliving and thus often fell back to old instincts - as she struggled to lift her practice weapon out of the deep dent she had made into the log with her strikes. “Is it fine just to leave this here?”

“Either someone would use it up as firewood in the near future, or else it’ll rot and feed the worms. In neither case would the dents you made cause any issue,” replied Aideen nonchalantly. The log was part of a fallen tree near a clearing often used by travelers as a rest area, as proven by how many of its branches had already been trimmed and likely used up as firewood in the past. “If anything you had just made their jobs easier for them since you tenderized it up pretty good.”

“I guess,” admitted Celia as she looked at her handiwork, and the results of her practice. On Aideen’s advice she had practiced swinging her weapon every day, at least twice a day if not more, for her body to build up strength and stamina over time. When there were big rocks or fallen trees where she practiced, she’d use them as targets to get herself used to the rebound from striking hard objects, which often left her arms numb and aching.

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Even as Celia unwrapped the strip of fabric she had wound around her hands - partly so she wouldn’t keep tearing up her own hands while practicing - she felt how the palms of her hands and the tips of her fingers started to build up calluses. An unliving’s body was unlike a normal living body, and while they might seem unchanging from the outside, internally they could improve at relatively rapid speeds, once they learned how to abuse their ability to just keep going without rest.

Of course, Celia was still too new to being one, unlike Aideen who had been unliving for over two centuries. The younger girl still mostly adhered to old habits from when she was alive, like sleeping and resting on a regular basis. Aideen had slowed her pace on purpose to accommodate the younger woman, she herself knew from experience and observation that just about everyone only adapted to being unliving slowly, often over years of time.

After all, they still felt everything their bodies experienced, be it pain, extreme temperatures, or muscle fatigue. Time was needed for new unliving individuals to learn how to overcome those instincts that had accompanied them all throughout their lives, and the process of acclimatization was often difficult for some, though not all of them.

Even many older unliving kept some habits from their mortal days. Aideen herself particularly enjoyed her food and drink, even when they were no longer strictly needed for her continued existence. Some others kept to a regular sleep schedule though they could easily go on for weeks if not months without, and yet others still shied away from situations that would have been bad for a mortal but meant little more than a nuisance for an unliving.

On the other hand, some others took to their newfound immortality and relative invulnerability like a fish to water. The goblin alchemists Colin and Cormin came to Aideen’s mind, with how they often eschewed everything, be it food, sleep, or companionship, when they were deep in the throes of research and discovery. That, coupled with how their research often ended up in large explosions that would devastate everything within their reinforced laboratory - themselves included - and had done so on many occasions would have deterred most, yet those two just had their passions inflamed instead.

Aideen had no certainty how Celia would take to her unliving state, though she had hopes for the younger girl. In general, those who died younger before they rose as an unliving tend to adapt better and faster to being one, compared to those who passed away at older ages. Jerrod and Illyana, two of the younger ones when they died, had adapted much faster than Mallard had, though the old duck was also an oddity in how nonchalant he was with his new state of unlife.

Celia had taken her state of unlife well so far, even if she had yet to really come to terms with what her body could now do, unshackled as it was from the limitations it had when it had been alive. Aideen had gotten used to herself rather fast, but that was partially aided with how she was a healer, and healers tend to know their own bodies best, compared to others.

As for the younger girl, only time would tell on how she would fare. Celia was no mage, with only piddling mana to her water affinity, something she could barely make use of, so further development for her would likely have to focus on the physical. That was one side Aideen was at least familiar with, as she too had undergone a stringent physical regimen to improve herself, given how little her affinity would be of help in a battle for life and death.

She just hoped that the younger girl wouldn’t have to be put to the test too soon.