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  The problem was, Kes’ combat style was already defensive, and Ed had little doubt that in her time as a soldier Kes had faced improved reflexes before and—since she was still alive—she had developed strategies to counter them.

  In fact, when she and Ed had fought Ranger Ioan, Kes had been confident in facing the Ranger in close combat, despite him having advanced reflexes—the superior version of Ed’s talent.

  Finally, Kes knew of Ed’s talent choice and had seen him in action before. She was aware of Ed’s singular triumph card, expected it, and could counter it.

  Judging from the glint in her hazel eyes, Kes had followed Ed’s thought process so far and knew that he knew that:

  I cannot win this fight, Ed thought. So that’s why Kes has been so cheerful. Even if we are friends, I doubt she’s had the chance to kick a Dungeon Lord’s ass before.

  This was going to be a painful experience—and an embarrassing one, at that. Alder, Lavy, and Klek were watching him, and even though they couldn’t possibly expect him to win, Ed discovered that he wasn’t fond of the idea of letting them see him at his worst. He liked his friends, so he appreciated the opinion they had of him, and he feared that their opinion would lower after watching him drop like a sack of bricks.

  Sure, they had seen him run away from a fight before—when they had fought the spiders in Hoia Forest—but they, too, had run, and so had Kes. They had never seen him lose.

  Perhaps he ought to follow Alder’s advice and ask Kes to go easy on him.

  I’m being childish, he told himself. Trying to trick my friends into thinking I’m invincible, that’s something Ryan would’ve done. Let’s be honest here, as their Dungeon Lord, I’m their leader. My responsibility to them is to let them know my strengths and weaknesses by heart, so they can adapt to fill those gaps. If I’m too insecure to do that, I could get them killed.

  Even though he knew what the results would be, Ed activated his improved reflexes without any outward warning and charged Kes with all his strength, sword above his shoulder and ready for a downward strike.

  The wave of heat coming out of his body with every step he took in slow motion dissipated all the cold he had been feeling. He propelled his body forward like a bullet, teeth gritted with effort, clouds of sand rising with every step he took.

  He was vaguely aware that Kes hadn’t bothered to raise her own sword. She had left her arm hanging limply by her side and instead had raised her right hand in front of her like it was a weapon itself.

  He was upon her so fast that he had no time to process this information. He was committed now.

  Only then did Kes move. She took a lateral step toward him just as his arms initiated the arc of his sword strike, and she struck his right arm an inch below his wrist. Ed watched all this happen in slow motion, at just the right speed to be unable to do anything about it. This stopped his sword before it had gained enough speed to be dangerous. His own momentum carried him forward, and he thought he would smash into Kes and bring her down.

  Instead, Kes shifted her own body to catch his weight with one shoulder while at the same time pushing Ed’s arm over her head, adding to his momentum and robbing him of any smidgen of control he could’ve regained. She pushed with her shoulder, bending her body like a branch—Ed barely had time to yell in surprise when his feet left the ground.

  His improved reflexes ended just in time for him to register a dizzying blur of movement, and then air rushed out of his lungs and he was flat on his back, a small cloud of dust surrounding his body.

  He coughed, tried to roll away from the source of pain, and then a heavy boot on his chest stopped any recovery attempts. His sword had fallen somewhere out of his reach, and he was seeing stars. The tip of a wooden sword appeared among those stars. He stared at it like a drunk man until his mind recovered enough to tell him that the sword owner was Kes, and that he had been defeated.

  Outside the ring, Ed heard Alder’s voice saying, “Alita’s holy tits, you saw that?”

  “No,” whispered Lavy.

  “Ouch,” Klek muttered softly.

  Kes moved her sword away and lent Ed a hand so he could stand up.

  “Are you okay?” Kes asked.

  Ed wanted to joke and ask if someone had written down the number of the truck. Instead, what came out of his mouth sounded more like, “Gah…”

  He shook his head, cleared his throat of rogue particles of sand and tried again. “I think so.”

  “You activated your reflexes too soon,” Kes advised. “If you wished to take me by surprise, you should have used them at the last possible second. Next time, close the distance first.”

  “But you already expected that,” Ed said.

  “Yes, yet you decided to attack anyway. If you are going to try a desperation maneuver, then fully commit to it, otherwise you aren’t desperate enough. You lacked confidence in yourself.”

  Ed felt his ears burn hot with shame. He stole a glance outside the ring, toward his friends. At least they weren’t laughing. Actually, they seemed to be busy dreading the same ass-kicking happening to them when their turn came.

  If he faltered now, it’d encourage them to falter, too, and it would endanger their lives later on.

  He picked up his sword.

  Kes nodded approvingly and raised hers. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  This time, Ed waited to activate his reflexes. Instead of disarming him in a single hit like the last time, Kes parried his strikes without counter-attacking, letting him try to break her defenses. As she did so, she threw glances at his feet, elbows, shoulders, and waist, scowling all the time with a focused expression.

  Ed realized she was analyzing his fighting skills in very much the same way he had studied her character sheet. All while fending him off.

  She wasn’t liking what she found. Ed kicked his efforts up a notch, trying everything he could to make his sword come down as fast and as unpredictably as possible, and every time she parried and diverted him without issue. Most of the time, she shifted around him as she did so, her feet moving so fast they were a blur. Despite her speed, Kes’ steps were always purposeful and solid. She didn’t dance around him; her movements weren’t gracious, but spartan and stoic—intended to offer Ed a bad angle for his sword and give her a perfect arc to riposte from every parry. At no point during their fight did she ever remain in the same place. It forced Ed to flail and jump around just to try to keep her in front of him.

  Ed soon found himself out of breath. The instant that his movements slowed, he was sitting on his ass, his sword having mysteriously flown away from his hands.

  “That’s enough,” said Kes. She lowered her own weapon and again helped him stand up. Ed dusted himself off while he tried to regulate his heartbeat. His forehead was covered in sweat.

  The mercenary scratched her chin for a moment, like she was putting together the pieces of information she had garnered.

  “You lack anything that even approximates proper fighting technique. Your footwork is atrocious, too, your cardiovascular capacity is lacking, and you need to strengthen your legs and abdomen.”

  Ed realized that Kes didn’t mean any of it as an insult, but as a mere statement of fact—like saying that water is wet.

  In a way, Ed found it refreshing. Had Kes tried to care for his feelings, it would’ve been patronizing. Instead, she was merely a teacher correcting her student.

  But now she was scratching her chin. “It makes no sense, though,” she said. “You clearly have an idea of what a longsword is supposed to do, so you must’ve seen one before. And yet, had you seen a sword fight, you’d have realized that your current movements don’t work. It’s like someone trained you wrong as a joke.”

  Ed had no way of explaining fancy action movies to her without spending the rest of the day on it. So he simply shook his head, dejected.

  After Kes was finished with Ed, she had Alder step up into the ring. The Bard gulped and glanced nervously in Ed’s direction as the Dung
eon Lord swept away the sand from his trousers with a pained expression. Ed caught Alder’s gaze and gave him a thumbs up.

  Alder nodded, took a deep breath, and bravely went for his dose of ass-kicking. His weapon of choice was a wooden short sword and a shield. He made sure to leave his flute safely tucked near the weapon rack before he actually entered the ring.

  Unlike Ed, Alder had seen a proper sword-fight happen in real life. He approached Kes carefully, his shield positioned between the two and his sword half-hidden behind it, trying to mask his attack until the last chance.

  Kes waited until she was almost within his reach, then neatly side-stepped into Alder’s lunge and pushed his shield into his body before he had a chance to react. The Bard lost his footing and lowered his blade as he cursed loudly and tried to counter-attack Kes at the same time that he tried to fix his shield’s positioning. Instead of managing any of that, he ended flat-out on his ass.

  “If you are going to use a shield,” Kes told him while she helped him stand up, “make sure you actually have the strength to keep it where it’s supposed to go.”

  “I’m a lover,” Alder complained, “not a fighter.”

  “Steel goes through lovers just as well as fighters,” Kes snapped back. She raised her sword. “Again!”

  Watching the fight—if it could be called that—from afar was a very different experience than being in the ring. Ed watched over and over again as his friend tried and failed to hit Kes. Ed winced at every misstep and at every potentially deadly counter-attack that Kes chose not to deliver.

  When Alder stepped out of the ring, groaning and covered in sand, Ed didn’t feel like joking around. He couldn’t help but imagine what would’ve happened had Alder—or Ed himself—faced Ranger Ioan or Inquisitor Gallio in close combat.

  Alder reached Ed’s side and the both of them exchanged a nod, like two veterans of some terrible war greeting each other at the bar.

  Lavy caught this exchange and gulped audibly.

  “Do I have to?” she asked softly.

  “Try to land on your ass and roll with the impact,” Alder told her. “It hurts less that way.”

  The Witch selected a spear with a round tip for her weapon and stepped into the ring.

  “You wouldn’t hurt a lovely young lady, would you, Kes?” Lavy offered the mercenary her best smile.

  As a response, Kes calmly grabbed the spear that Lavy was shaking in her direction and pulled hard, which made Lavy lose her footing, as well as her hold on the spear. She stumbled into Kes’ reach with a terrified expression. The spear flashed around in Kes’ hand and she used it to sweep Lavy off her feet.

  “Ah, she didn’t listen to my advice,” Alder muttered to himself as he winced in sympathy.

  “I don’t think she had time,” Ed said.

  Lavy didn’t bother to stand up. “I surrender.”

  “There’s no surrender,” Kes told her darkly. She prodded the Witch’s ribs with the tip of her training sword. “There’s only me.”

  A few minutes later, Lavy was out of the ring and standing next to Ed. The three trainees looked a good bit worse for the wear. Ed nursed his elbow, Alder’s hair was dirty with sand, and Lavy had a thousand-yard stare and wouldn’t answer when spoken to.

  Kes paced before them like a lioness studying her prey.

  “There’s much work that needs to be done,” she was saying. “I’m afraid all of you have terrible fundamentals, and I can’t train you in combat before we fix that: otherwise you’ll develop bad habits that will get you killed sooner rather than later.”

  She nodded to herself, paused to think for a moment, and turned to face them. “First of all, we’ll work on your Endurance and Brawn. Those attributes need to be at least a ten. No excuses. Normally, it’s not efficient to train them both at the same time, but you three are so abysmally untrained that we can start with both and specialize later on.”

  She listed the exercises that they would do, every morning of every day, for the next several weeks. Starting tomorrow, they’d run outside for an hour, following Kes’ pace, and then they’d come back to the Training Center where she’d instruct them in the exercises required to strengthen their bodies.

  Kes finished her speech and stared at them with a stern gaze. “Any questions?”

  “What did I do to deserve this?” Alder asked. It was a question that Kes didn’t bother answering.

  Lavy continued staring at nothing. Her eye twitched a bit.

  “If it isn’t a problem, I’d like you to train me too,” Klek said timidly. The mercenary stared at the batblin with an inscrutable expression.

  “Klek,” she said, “you can’t expect to be on the front-lines and survive.” Her voice was stern, but Ed knew the mercenary well enough to see that her eyes had softened.

  Klek nodded. “Yes, but I’ve a title to live up to. I’m the Ranger Slayer. I must do my absolute best to protect my cloud. I want my father to feel proud of me.”

  The cloud was the name the batblins had for their clan. Klek’s cloud, led by Drusb, had become Ed’s minions shortly after Kes had joined the group, and now they lived on the outskirts of the dungeon. They provided most of the food consumed by the dungeon’s inhabitants. They were also assholes, and when Ed had first met them, they had almost lynched Lavy and Alder, and they had abandoned Klek to die when things didn’t go their way.

  “Very well, I’ll train you as hard as everyone else, Ranger Slayer.” She then turned to the three humans. “And you… I expect every single one of you to put as much effort as Klek will into his training.” She glared at them sternly. “Or else.”

  4

  Chapter Four

  Open Locks

  Ed left the Training Center, followed by Alder and Lavy. Klek and Kes went in the opposite direction, headed for the outside world. The batblin would supervise the foraging efforts of his cloud while Kes planned to visit Andreena and see if the Herbalist could come up with a brew to help with the training.

  For all his effort fighting Kes, he had managed to gain a single rank in untrained combat, which didn’t bode well for the amount of effort he’d need to raise his attributes and learn real fighting skills.

  Although, if becoming stronger were easy, everyone would be.

  “I don’t understand,” Lavy said while the three humans were alone. “She only has a hundred experience points more than you do, Ed. How can she be so strong? In the grand scheme of things, a hundred experience points is not that much of a difference.”

  They were the first words Lavy had spoken since her ass-kicking.

  “It’s the difference between experience points and actual, real experience,” Ed said at last. “She has training and combat experience to back her up, and since her skills and attributes are higher, she has access to an array of talents that fit her style. She knows how to use those talents to their full extent and has the physical fortitude to handle the energy expenditure.”

  “But,” Lavy went on, “then why does she have so few experience points? Kael had at least a thousand. If Kes was a soldier, she must’ve fought in a war—killed other soldiers. If she survived enough battles, I can’t imagine why she doesn’t have thousands of experience points.”

  Ed mulled this over. To be honest, he had wondered something similar himself, back when he first arrived in Ivalis. He didn’t fully understand the way experience points worked. Many situations had earned him a bunch of points, but similar situations had given him almost none. He had earned almost a hundred points during the Battle of Burrova, but not a single one over the following days.

  “Oh,” said Alder, “I know the reason. It’s the Idiot or Carpenter correlation.”

  “Beg your pardon?” Ed asked.

  “It’s a bardic thing.” Alder shrugged. He traced an imaginary line in the air and pointed at one extreme. “Idiot goes here. Carpenter goes on the other end.”

  “Alder, I really don’t follow,” Lavy said, clearly as confused as Ed was.

&n
bsp; The Bard smiled when he realized he had the rapt attention of his audience. “As you may know, the way Objectivity grants experience points is a correlation between the risk incurred and the experience points of the being you just killed. A spiderling has like five experience points, but normally a single one is no risk for any human, so you’ll earn no points for stomping one. But if you have never seen a spiderling before, and it’s late at night, and there are a lot of them, then you’ll probably earn some points. The full five for your first kill, and a reduced amount for each one after that, until you’re earning zero just like the rest of us.”

  Alder’s hands followed his words like he was trying to paint a picture for Lavy and Ed. “There are, of course, other modifiers. If you’re fighting in a group, the amount of experience points will be divided between each member of the group, and Objectivity will grant each member a different amount according to their personal risk and so on. Luck, for example, takes away a big chunk of points if you manage to kill something too risky for you. In no case will you get more points than what the creature you killed had in the first place. In Elaitra, my teachers called this the ‘EXP Law of Conservation,’ after Professor Everett Xalander Painter, who first proposed it in—”

  “Back on topic, please,” Lavy demanded. Alder stopped dead in his tracks, gave Lavy the stink-eye, and then realized he had forgotten what he was saying in the first place.

  “Yes,” he said after thinking for a bit, “the Idiot or Carpenter line. As Bards, we spend a lot of time following people around who we think will have lives worth telling, you know. Yes, many years, while we work on our songs and poems, and if they get killed too soon, we’ll have wasted a lot of time and creative effort for very little payout. So, an Idiot is someone who takes a lot of risks, and relies heavily on luck to win their battles. He’ll earn a lot of experience points at first, which will make him think he’s doing something right… so he’ll undertake even more dangerous quests. But Idiots aren’t that strong, even if they have a lot of points, because they don’t train much. Eventually, his luck will run out, and he’ll die—egotistically depriving his Bard of new material.”