Beatings. They started with beatings.

"Get up," Kali demanded, shaking out the sting in his right hand as if he were the one suffering. He stalked around the cellar, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in his wake. "We are nowhere near done."

Alarion spat blood as he pushed himself to a knee, staring daggers at his instructor — or a dagger, at least; his right eye was swollen almost shut.

"That's a good look," Kali praised, waiting as Alarion drew upright on shaking legs. "Not just stubborn. Persistent."

Alarion's lips twisted into a humorless smile. "You think I have not taken worse?"

"I think you've survived worse. But this session isn't one-and-done like all the rest."

On that, Kali had a point. Alarion had suffered grievous injuries more times than he cared to remember, but those had been solitary events, bookended by necessary recovery. His battles and endurance training in Elena's Void Arena had healed as quickly as they'd come, while his more severe wounds at the hands of The Duke and the True Heart had been followed by considerable bed rest.

The last two weeks had been something else entirely. Day after day, Kali beat him bloody, then had a healer knit him back together—but never fully. They needed Alarion injured, needed him riding the thin edge that his skills provided.

Ostensibly, it was sparring, but the word felt like mockery. Kali struck without hesitation, every blow a lesson, every feint a punishment for the slightest hesitation. His strength was overwhelming, his technique merciless. Again and again, Alarion's HP was ground to nothing beneath the healer's watchful eye, and each reset left him with fresh layers of aches and new lingering conditions piled atop the old.

His body was a map of bruises, purple and black splotches running across his ribs and thighs. His right arm could no longer rise fully above his head, the shoulder stiff and swollen from a recent dislocation, while his opposite knee refused to bend without protest. Kali had avenged his loss a thousandfold, but he showed no signs of stopping as he slipped Alarion's guard and broke three of his ribs with a single punch.

It was abuse, but it was abuse with a purpose.

There were three agreed-upon paths toward an epiphany: training, insight, and pressure.

Of the three methods, training was the most straightforward. Most often applied to active skills, it relied on deliberate effort—pushing an ability's boundaries through practice and experimentation. An archer who wished to evolve [Powershot], for example, could strain the limits of its charge time, further increasing the power of the evolved variant. Another might instead focus on flawless execution, resulting in a skill that was the same, but better. Both would be left with a new understanding of their skill, of its strengths and limitations.

By contrast, an epiphany by insight was the result of a singular moment of understanding. Often considered the 'right' way to evolve a skill, these were the origin of the term epiphany, a name coined back when the System was still young. Such epiphanies were powerful, but scarce, occurring most often in moments of extreme desperation, when the user needed the skill to do more.

When [Introverted Mana Sense] had become [Unraveller's Sense], it had been because Alarion pushed the skill well past its boundaries, his necessity overriding its limits. Such moments could be coaxed but never forced, for they were the collision of experience, observation, and intuition.

Lastly, and most maligned of the three, was pressure; the slow and grinding evolution. Here, there were no quick paths, no grand act of will or directed growth. Such evolutions were not the result of understanding, but erosion. They improved by endless use and repetition, becoming something new by sheer familiarity.

All things being equal, insight was always preferable, but not always attainable. Unfortunately, passive skills, owing to their nature, were notoriously difficult to improve by any method besides pressure. Most had fixed boundaries and little, if any, input from their user with which to build upon. Defense-focused passives were even worse. An active barrier could be trained through use, but a skill like [Pig-Headed Resilience]? There was really only one way.

So, the beatings would continue until the skills improved.

Specifically, four skills: [Pig-Headed Resilience], [The Best Offence is a Good Offence], [Survivor's Endurance], and [Endure Through the Pain]. They were to be the foundation of Alarion's new growth spurt and, hopefully, his class merger.

The System could not be tricked, but it could be led. The hope was that by focusing first on the development of his martial skills, it would signal his intent to the System when it came time to make the final push with [Unraveller]. At the bare minimum, he could use [Dedication] to block all XP gain from [Orphan] and [Indomitable Swordsman], thereby funneling all of the XP gains from his epiphanies to [Unraveller].

Assuming he ever had any epiphanies.

The sad reality was that they had been at it for days, and there was no end in sight. The first few days had rewarded him with his final levels in [Endure Through the Pain], bolstering his will to continue, but that felt like a lifetime ago. Now his body ached with every movement, every dodge and parry draining a little more of even his prodigious will to continue.

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Kali loomed over him. "Do you need a healer?"

"I am okay," Alarion reassured him through gritted teeth. A few broken bones were nothing new, sadly. Kali did his best to avoid any serious injuries, but over a long enough timeframe, accidents were bound to happen. "Just… need a breath."

"You are due for a break anyway," Kali rumbled, extending a hand.

Alarion took it without reservation, leaning heavily on the big man as they made their way to the nearest bench. When they reached it, he pressed his battered back against the cool stone wall, closing his eyes and letting the chill sap some of the agony from his bruised body.

"How much more?" Alarion asked.

"Today? Or in general?"

"Both," he sighed. "We have been at this for ages."

"We knew it would take a while," the sergeant reminded him. "Though your skills seem as stubborn as you are."

Alarion snorted. "Is this how everyone else feels, then?"

"Less battered and bruised, but frustrated? Yes." Kali slapped Alarion on the shoulder, instantly regretting it as the boy yelped in pain. "If it makes you feel any better, they will probably Grade Up all at once, or close to. It is taking so long because they are all so similar that they are leeching off one another. But it must be soon."

Alarion already knew that. They had already had some version of this conversation half a dozen times or more over the last two weeks. Always soon, but never now. If Kali had been more gleeful about the whole affair, Alarion would have accused him of somehow prolonging it. But even the sergeant had grown tired of victory.

"Your stance is getting better," Kali grunted, wiping sweat from his face with a threadbare towel. "But your control of your Inva-Maie is still terrible."

"My what?"

"Your-" Kali frowned, a thick finger tapping his thigh as he searched for a word. "-Death aura? No. Radius…?"

"Spacing?" Alarion suggested.

"Not quite… Zone of Violence is, I think, the closest translation. The concept is similar to spacing, but more in-depth." The Godborn flexed a fist, as if hoping it could explain the concept. "It's a problem with all Vitrian training, one of several, actually."

Alarion opened one violet eye to fix Kali with a skeptical look. "Oh? And where did you train?"

"The Principalities."

"A Vitrian province?" Alarion voiced the obvious.

Kali scowled. "There is a difference between quantity and quality. In both levels and soldiers."

The young man considered the words briefly, then nodded. Lily had driven home a similar argument during their training, but somehow, he hadn't even considered that Vitrians might have numbers on their side. To him, the empire was some distant thing, only ever seen in the form of individual officers.

"What is wrong about how I fight?" he asked, suddenly quite curious.

"A lot?" Kali suggested. When that failed to satisfy, he huffed in annoyance and crossed his arms to think. Thrice he opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn't until the last attempt that he found the words. "You're not enough of a bully."

Alarion tilted his head, but said nothing.

"You are too passive," Kali tried again. "Too calculating and tricky, always aiming for a master stroke instead of good enough."

"I did beat you by being-"

"You beat me by exploiting rules, which is the most Vitrian way to win, I'll concede, but it is a bad way to fight when it matters. And it is a terrible strategy for you, especially." Kali leaned over, tapping the head of Alarion's mace with one of his knuckles. "Most Vitrians have professional instructors, men like ZEKE. They learn to fight not against peers, but against people much stronger than they are, and that lesson sticks. They're always aiming for a masterstroke, a decisive win. Your greatsword-"

"Imperial Greatsword."

"Your Imperial Greatsword is meant for decisive blows, but the way they teach you to use it is all about reach. You're trained to poke with it, to keep opponents at the edge of your reach and wait for the perfect moment."

"What is wrong with that?" Alarion asked. "It is my biggest advantage."

"Your damage is your biggest advantage," Kali corrected him. "The only reason you can keep me at a distance is because a clean hit from either of your weapons will maim me. But the way you've been trained, you're far too focused on those clean hits. Look at your fight with the Bones back in Shae-Yomag."

"We won that fight."

"Dimov came away maimed, and you had barely a scratch. I read his after-action report, and I've seen how you fight. You duel as though ZEKE is going to rap you on the knuckles for anything less than perfection. You don't fight for the win, you fight not to lose."

"Those are the same thing."

Kali shook his head vigorously. "They're really not. Someone who fights to win will take risks, they'll set the pace and even trade hits if necessary."

"So you are saying I should be more aggressive?" Alarion asked. "ZEKE would have something to say about that, I think."

"No, not aggressive. You're plenty ferocious when you want to be, but you fight like an angry street cat. Sure, you'll pounce on the unprepared and shred them if given the chance, but once they've shown they can hurt you?" Kali raised both hands and pantomimed batting lazily at the air. "You hang back and bap at your opponent. A little swat here, a spell there, just enough to keep them from coming too close until you sense a weakness."

"I am not a cat-"

"No, you're not! You're a seven-hundred-pound grizzly bear, and you need to start acting like it!" Kali declared. "You have spent so much time fighting up that I don't think you realize how powerful you are. You are probably the strongest man alive at your UCL, at least by pure attribute totals. I am a pure physical specialist at the cusp of Rank III, and you still trade favorably with me. You need to learn to leverage that, to impose your will. Otherwise, what is the point of all this training?"

Alarion considered the words in silence, running a thumb along Echo's hilt.

He didn't like the way that sounded. Imposing his will. It felt altogether too Vitrian. Too Imperial. He fought to 'not lose' because he fought to survive, not for any higher purpose. But that had changed, hadn't it? Sure, he wanted to live, but he would hate himself if Bergman or Kali, or anyone else under his command, died because he was too timid.

Teal and purple. It had been so long that he'd almost forgotten why those colors were entwined around Echo's hilt. The colors of his adopted family.

If he'd 'fought to win', would that have been different? Probably not. Elena, Dar, and all the rest were doomed the moment Ruin was set loose upon them. But Sierra?

"So what should I change?" He asked.

"Well, first, I have to finish beating you. And then I have something far worse in store for you."

Alarion's swollen lip stung as he adopted a deep frown. He'd known he could only put off the coming terror for so long.

"Paperwork," Alarion groaned.

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