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Elero kicked a tired and beaten Frey one last time. He fell to the ground, gasping for air. She had stopped kicking his groin either from pity or regret, she didn\'t know which. Instead, she opted to go for his stomach. Frey slowly rose back to his feet, shuffled to the side of the stage, and hurled up some of his dinner. He turned back to her as he wiped some leftovers from his cheek. "I can keep going…You might not see an improvement yet, but I promise you that I\'m starting to see what you mean." She glanced at his shield. Even though it had been subjected to the full force of her longsword for hours, it was still in one piece.

"I\'m glad this wasn\'t for nothing," Elero responded. She did not charge in for another round. She fell down, her legs shaking. The once stable layers of life essence began to fade. "You might be able to continue, but I don\'t have your scary amount of stamina. Just continue practicing because I can\'t stand," She gestured to her shaking legs. "How you fight," She gave a half-hearted smile.

"I don\'t know what hurts more," Frey sighed. "Those abominations you call jokes or my entire body."

Elero wiped her sweaty face with a towel, "Shut up I know they\'re bad but I can\'t stop them." Her shaking hands pulled out all the little pieces of her braces from her spatial ring and assembled them around and into her legs. Just as she put the last piece in, her life essence flickered out of existence. Frey helped her to her feet. The gears clicked as her legs straightened. "I\'ll be useless for a couple hours while I rest. Practice with Thomas or Doevm." She shambled over to a corner of the cave, sat down, and downed the contents of a water sac. Before putting it away, Doevm could have sworn that he saw something other than water inside.

Frey walked over to Thomas, who was sitting with a pile of spears to his left and a much larger pile of sticks to his right: "Do you mind going a few rounds?"

Thomas stopped mid-cut and looked to Doevm, pretending not to hear Frey: "Shouldn\'t we be preparing for everything ahead instead of wasting our energy training?"

"That\'s a cheap move," Frey muttered.

"At first," Doevm\'s first words made Thomas\'s face darkened and Frey\'s brighten. "We were here for the salamander venom, the points, and any weapons we find, but after remembering how typical humans act, I realized I want to get stronger. If Trak\'s group have some kind of resistance against the venom, which they can easily have bought at any shop, we won\'t last long. They won\'t just take us as prisoners, not you and Elero at least. Then there is the fact that we all lost to them." At those words, everyone\'s heads casted to the ground.

"And I\'m pissed off," he said. His usual plain tone, which hid everything like a mask, was absent. "I\'m really, really pissed off. I don\'t just want to win. I want to beat them. At the very beginning, I told Mr. Quinn that I wanted to gamble on both getting stronger and winning but now, I just want to get much, much stronger. Initiation isn\'t the end. It is just a minor boost, just like Mr. Quinn said. It doesn\'t matter if we lose, but it matters if we improve. There might be a prize, it might be shaped like a competition to weed out the weak, but the real purpose of this is and has always been to get stronger before we face something truly…difficult. So yes, you should spar. Spar until you can\'t move. We\'ll split the days between hunting and training but each day here, every second you hold your weapon, push yourself."

Doevm stood up, pulled all the salamander corpses from his spatial ring, and began to harvest the glands that produced venom, and the venom from the skin. Since the antidote he had taken was still in effect and he had no wounds on his hands, he didn\'t have to be very careful, but he was.

Before Thomas could protest, Frey pulled him onto the stage. "Attack me." Thomas threw a stick at Frey, who caught, yanked it out of Thomas\'s grip, and whacked him on the head with it. "Attack me with your spear. Wood won\'t be very good against metal and you need to save these." He tossed the stick away.

"Do I really?" Thomas looked to Doevm, who put a fist into his hand, signaling no mercy. Thomas immediately threw his spear at Frey, who deflected it and put his foot on it.

"Really?" Frey sighed before reeling his other foot back and driving it into Thomas\'s groin. He winced as Thomas fell to the ground. "That wasn\'t satisfying at all. I just feel bad. I\'m sorry," he knelt down, helped Thomas to his feet. and gave him his spear back. "Sorry, but if you half-ass this, I\'ll do it again." They both got into position. After circling each other for a bit, Thomas ran and executed a flurry of blows all aimed at the shield. Frey held on tight, gritting his teeth as he slid back on his numbed, tired legs.

"That\'s more like it!" Frey did his best to mix in dodges and weaves, but the assault prevented him from doing anything but blocking. Thomas did not however, realize that Frey could also attack. Frey simply hammered the back of his Kopis on Thomas\'s head. "You\'re on the attack but you need to still treat this like sparring. Again."

Elero stared at them absentmindedly, biting onto her lip so hard that it left a mark, just shy of bleeding. "What do you plan to do while we\'re here?" Doevm asked only to get no response. "Elero."

"Honestly," Elero shrugged, coming out of her stupor. "I\'m still deciding. I can\'t spar for long, and I can\'t hunt for long either. I don\'t think I can do both." She glanced down at her metal legs "Reforming my legs take too much energy. Most of my life essence goes towards it in battle. On top of that, even if I spar with you guys, I think I\'m better than all of you no offense."

"None taken," Doevm replied as he finished dissecting scraping all the venom off of the first salamander with his dagger and dripped the last of it into a spare water sac. "I saw how you fought in the tournaments and with those beasts. I don\'t think I could beat that. So if not technique or stamina, then will you train up your speed?"

"My speed?" Elero asked. Cursing filled the chamber as Frey fell to the ground. Thomas took the chance to take a swig from his water sac before putting it back into his spatial ring.

"You\'re too quick." Frey said in between breaths. "But if I wasn\'t so damn tired and numb."

Elero turned their way. "Shut up with the excuses. If you can\'t move fast enough, then you are forced to take the blow head-on with some life essence and swing at him with a counter. Maybe you could find some way to extend you shield around you or change it as you fight." She leaned towards Doevm and whispered. "Can he do that with that kind of special shield?" Doevm nodded. "Yeah, change it while you fight to confuse him." Doevm suppressed his laughter. Frey nodded and got off the floor. He gulped down some water and got back into the thick of it.

"Say Doevm, you\'re pretty smart." Elero said as Doevm meticulously worked his way through the salamander\'s corpse and removed its venom-producing organ. "I was wondering if you could give me some advice."

"I just did," Doevm said as he cauterized the ends in order to save room in his water sacs but still keep the venom in an air-tight container. "Your weakness is those braces, so work on being faster when putting them together and disassembling-" He didn\'t finish the thought, because Elero just shook her head.

"These braces," she said. "They hurt. A lot. I don\'t show it, but I\'m getting tired of dealing with the pain. I can\'t go much longer or I think I\'ll lose it but I\'m just so close to getting fixed. I\'m so close to being normal again. I think I found the solution, but it\'s…it\'s dark magic. I know it\'s forbidden throughout the kingdom but I have no other choice. No healers, no miracle drugs, no life essence technique, nothing else has worked. If you know anything, I promise not to tell anyone. Do you know about dark magic? Something, anything. I just need to know."

"I mean," Doevm glanced away from the next salamander to her and back to the salamander. She hid her face in her arms, which brought her metallic legs in close. "What kind of dark magic?"

Doevm heard her gears click. When she brought her head out of her arms, she wore a strange expression. "What do you mean \'what kind of dark magic?\'" She imitated his words. "There\'s only one kind. You know, what everyone keeps warning you about your entire life. Forget it. Maybe I should just-"

"Did an expert in dark magic tell you that there is only one kind?" Doevm asked. Elero shook her head. "And why are you so afraid of this magic, aside from biased sources?"

Elero scrunched up her lips and glared at him for a few moments. "It\'s how I got like this in the first place you ignorant jackass. \'Oh did I ask an expert?\' Of course I fucking didn\'t. A user of dark magic would kill me the first chance they get. You don\'t just go up to your friendly neighborhood heretic, knock on their door, then ask them about dark magic like asking to borrow some sugar!"

Frey fell like a tree, slapping against the stone stage. He got up, leaving a sweat outline behind him: "I can still continue." By now, even Thomas was on his last legs, breathing hard and leaning on his spear. He looked at Doevm, his eyes still pleading for salvation. Doevm shook his head. Thomas groaned and charged at Frey once again.

"Well, you seem to know one," Doevm said as he finished another salamander\'s corpse. He tossed the eviscerated figure back into his spatial ring and moved to another. "And you seem to have talked to this friendly neighborhood heretic without said heretic killing you. Did you ask what would be involved or ask to borrow sugar?"

"Well…he…" Elero paused.

"Did he break down your door, point at you, and laugh maniacally while demons lurked in his shadow? Did his eyes have a dark presence about them and did the room chill to an unnatural temperature? How did you meet him?" He ripped an organ out of another salamander\'s corpse and worked his dagger around it.

"He…I didn\'t know that he was like that. He was dying and I patched him back up."

Doevm nodded and rubbed his chin. "It seems like…you just need to ask him. I mean, you saved his life, right? Shouldn\'t he want to repay the favor?"

"I-I guess I can ask him," Elero said. "I can do that?"

"Can he speak?" Doevm asked, internally slamming his head into the stone wall behind him. \'Just ask him you idiot! Holy shit I have never wanted to strangle someone so bad.\' He took deep breaths and set "Lich\'s Malice" back on its shelf. "Then yes, you can. Now that that\'s settled, I have a few questions for you. What is this about hues of life essence?"

Elero sighed. "I guess commoners are never told about this stuff because no one thinks they\'ll amount to much…no offense. I don\'t know everything about what you can do about life essence. New things are being discovered every day, techniques are kept secret by some people, so I\'ll just tell you what I know and you should keep asking for more information when we get to the academy."

Doevm signaled for Frey and Thomas to pause, so they did. Frey, however, didn\'t leave the stage. He passed out right then and there. "What\'s got him so determined lately?" Elero asked.

"It\'s not determination, it\'s more like it\'s rage," Thomas gasped, still trying to regain his breath. "I\'ve sparred with him for a long time and he\'s never fought like that. It\'s like he\'s got something clawing at his heels, pushing him into a sprint when he should be jogging." He sat down next to the two. "So what\'s this about hues?"

"I\'ll just say the hues of blue for now, because only those are relevant to us," Elero said. "Blue is separated into seven hues. The darker the stronger, usually. The first stage of blue life essence, like Thomas, Frey, and I have, is Cyan. Next is turquoise, what Doevm has. Remember Gregen? He had sky, the third level. I\'m pretty sure Trak had azure, the fourth. I haven\'t seen the rest in person, but I know they go teal, sapphire, and finally midnight. I suck at remembering them so I just use the anagram Can. Turtles. See. All. The. Seven. Mermaids."

At this, Thomas burst into a fit of laughing that quickly expelled the last of his air and turned into a coughing fit. "Yes, I know it\'s ridiculous but it works. Can. Turtles. See. All. The. Seven. Mermaids. Cyan, turquoise, sky, azure, teal, sapphire, and midnight. Not only hues, but even shape determines how life essence is used. It surges when using strength, thins to a thin layer when using speed, and has all sorts of other shapes in other situations. I like fighting without those sorts of things if I don\'t have to. I mostly studied the regeneration parts of it so I can show you guys some of that but you should really be sparring."

"But Frey\'s asleep right now," Thomas said with a smile, an expression which froze when he felt something tap his shoulder.

"I\'m up," Frey smiled. "Time for more. I didn\'t miss anything while I was passed out did I?"

"I\'ll explain it later," Doevm sighed. He looked over to Elero. "Thank you. We all had the same teacher, and he wasn\'t the best with explanations."

"What was his name?"

"Jameson." At this, Elero\'s eyes went wide.

"You were all trained by the Jameson? As in the one with silver life essence, the former apprentice of General Alexander Finlish?" Doevm nodded. "Everyone in the academy knows his name!"