Mentored Training 2

As we come out of the dungeon, we see Mia sparring with Skylar. Olivia turns to us, smiling. “How did it go? Did you achieve what you wanted to?” She asks. “It went well. We made some decent progress, although it’ll take a bit longer to get the skill to where I want it to be.” I say, and she nods. We turn to my girlfriends, who are still fighting.

“What’s happening here? Any progress for Skylar?” I ask. Olivia looks at me and grins. “A little, but it will take a while longer. Training in those dungeons of yours has given her stamina, which is a good thing, but we need to push right to her limits so she can **** herself past them. She is an adept fighter, but she fights very defensively.” Our teacher observes.

I nod. “Yeah that’s probably her training. As I understand it, she was specifically taught to fight defensively, especially in situations like this where she is outmatched in power by both you and Mia.” I say. “A sound strategy, but only fighting defensively leaves one lacking in offence. I also feel that she does not understand the full depths of her capabilities. Her powers are more versatile than she displays, and I am unsure if she knows this.” Olivia says.

I smile at her. “I reckon you can probably teach us a lot. I hope you don’t mind.” I say. Another smile makes its way onto her face. “I became a teacher for a reason. I do enjoy passing knowledge on to others, and if I understand all your powers correctly, then I believe I can teach you how to use them a larger variety of ways.” She says.

As we talk, Mia shatters Skylar’s shield. Olivia calls out to the two them. “Alright, break. Mia, you can rest for a while. Skylar, you have two minutes to have some water, then I will fight with you again. Do not sit down.” The lady of the beasts instructs. The both of them nod, with Skylar looking a bit tired from all the exertion.

As they walk over for a break, Skylar falls into Ivy’s arms. Giggling, Ivy holds her tightly, rubbing her back. “How are you feeling honey?” The healer asks. Skylar groans against Ivy’s chest, and I chuckle at her reaction. “So tired.” She says simply, as Paige hands her a bottle of water. She takes it and nods her thanks, drinking deep gulps of the life giving liquid.

Ivy checks her for injuries, and only finds very minimal scrapes and bruises. She uses her healing magic to heal them up anyway, and Skylar smiles at her appreciatively. Another minute passes by of holding and comforting the shadow mage before Olivia intervenes. “Alright, break time is over. Let us get back to training Skylar.” She says.

Skylar gives us each a quick kiss, before returning to Olivia to begin training again. “You are doing very well. You will need to push hard and dig deep to surpass your limits and have a breakthrough.” Olivia compliments and encourages. Our girlfriend nods, smiling, before getting into her battle stance. She conjures a shield and a few seconds later, clashes with our teacher once more.

Ivy and I luckily don’t have to wait too long before going back into the dungeon to level mana shield some more, as the rate of our mana regeneration and the nature of our abilities means that we only need a bare ten or so minutes to be fully recharged for the next encounter. Bidding Skylar good luck, we enter the rats dungeon again.

The second run through is much the same as the first. I take slightly less care this time, now knowing what to expect. I also implement a strategy of killing most of the rats before I start the power levelling, only leaving one left before the boss, so as to reduce the danger to myself in leaving myself almost without mana. The less enemies I have to face in that state, the better.

The dungeon passes without incident, and Ivy and I level up to level 61. We allocate our statpoints, once again, agility for me and wisdom for Ivy. My agility is getting closer to the milestone of 100, now currently being at 86. Every increase in speed is exhilarating, and every time I increase the stat, the feel of being so fast just makes me want to increase it more. It’s absolutely intoxicating.

After allocating our stats and picking up the loot (which I immediately list on the abyss auction), we head back to see how Skylar is progressing with her training. She’s fighting Olivia at the moment, and is looking even more tired than the last time we saw her. She’s fighting valiantly though, and we can tell she’s working hard to push forward.

We check in with Paige and Mia to see what they think, since they’ve been watching the whole time, and in Mia’s case, sparring with Skylar too. “She’s doing really really well, we’re really proud of her.” Mia affirms, and Paige smiles. “She’s amazing.” The terramancer says. “Is Olivia pushing her too hard, do you think?” I ask them.

Paige looks a little unsure about that, but Mia answers for her. “No I don’t think so. She’ll be absolutely exhausted by tonight, but I’ve seen this kind of training before, and it works. I haven’t seen it as intense as this, with such a massive power gap, but still. As long as Skylar pushes through her tiredness, she’ll be right.” Mia says.

Satisfied by that, we stand with them to watch the fight, while we regenerate mana. Skylar’s fighting slower than before. She’s visibly sweating, and breathing heavily as she continues to block blow after blow from our teacher, retaliating where she can, but not having the energy to muster much **** behind her magic.

We check the time, and we find that we still have some time before lunch. We ask them if they think we have the time to do one more dungeon run, and they agree, with Mia guessing that Olivia will call for a break for lunch the next time we come back. We kiss them each and shout some encouragement to Skylar before we go into our third dungeon of the day.

We run through the dungeon once again with no issues, and really nothing of note that happens at all. I use my previous strategy to optimise the run, having found that it works pretty well for a fairly easy time of things. By the end of the dungeon, the mana shield skill is at level 72, which I’m pretty happy with. I’ll hopefully only need three or so more dungeons to max out the skill properly.

Once we get back and Olivia sees us, true to Mia’s prediction, our teacher calls for an extended break from training and lunch. Skylar looks almost ready to collapse from exhaustion, and walks over to us wordlessly. We help her inside and sit her at the table, where Ivy and Mia make a quick meal for us all.

The second Ivy places Skylar’s plate in front of her, the umbramancer mumbles a quick thank you, before devouring the delicious assortment of meat, vegetables and carbs. Ivy looks worriedly at Olivia. “Are you sure you should be pushing her so hard? She doesn’t look very okay.” She asks, gently rubbing Skylar’s back. Our teacher smiles sympathetically.

“She will be okay, after some food and rest. Our lunch break will give her some time to recover a bit of her strength. I understand that this kind of training is very harsh, but rest assured that this is nothing she cannot recover from.” Olivia reassures. Ivy looks our girlfriend over, using her healing magic once more to heal the small cuts, scrapes and bruises that she has sustained.

Skylar looks almost completely out of it. If she can even hear us, she’s not paying attention to anything we’re saying. We’re all a little worried about her, but we trust Olivia, and Ivy makes sure that she isn’t injured. She’s been fighting for almost a solid three hours straight, so it’s no wonder she’s so tired.

It makes me question whether or not we should let Olivia keep pushing her, but after she’s inhaled half of her plate of food and sat down for a few minutes, Skylar does assure us that she’ll stop if it feels like it’s too much. At this point, all Ivy, Paige and I can do is to trust the two of them.

After her reassurance that she’s okay and that she’ll stop if it gets too much, Skylar is mostly silent for the rest of the meal, using the time to rest and recover her strength, as well as eat and drink. We use the time to get to know Olivia a little, although she noticeably stays away from getting too personal with what she tells us, which I can respect.

We do find out that she likes classical music and enjoys wandering around art galleries and museums. She also loves history, both abyssal and mundane, and seems to know a lot about it. However, she doesn’t tell us much about the abyss beyond Sydney, saying that the politics are complicated and difficult, and that it’s much better if we focus on our immediate surroundings for the moment, which is something I can understand. We have enough worries here as it is.

We spend a full 45 minutes at lunch, resting with Skylar and talking with Olivia, getting to know her a little more. In that time, Skylar manages to recover some of her stamina and gets involved in the conversation a little, something which I’m pleased to see. However, once Olivia calls for more training, our girlfriend looks decidedly less upbeat.

With yet more reassurances from Skylar that she’s okay and happy to push herself like this if it means it’ll help her in the long run, Ivy and I go back to the rats dungeon to continue grinding the mana shield skill while Skylar keeps sparring with the rest of our guild. Our grinding is fairly mundane at this point, but it’ll hopefully pay off.