The news about the nobles causing trouble caused the otherworlders to take a hold on their next tower diving. The reason was obvious–the next tower that was known to be reported was right next to one of the noble houses' main estate.

It wasn't exactly to the point where its location would cause heavy casualty, but it was next to one of the houses' main streams of revenues. There was a mine that helped gather rare metals used to create the very same constructs that made up the entire city's runic structures. The ones that had put in every runist's work into the creation to make the city come alive as it is. It even helped with the layline's structure, allowing some of the users to make flight and use the Jetrail for that very purpose.

The noble house in charge of the mine was the one gathering the material and selling them at a rather pricey market. While losing the mine itself wouldn't so bad in the grand scheme of things, the house refuses to let anything happen to the mine.

That house was known as the House Paragle, at the equal standing as House Corran, the noble from earlier that caused the team trouble.

That meant that until Cronus settled the issue with House Paragle, the team was on hold for now. The Tempest Winds went ahead to keep up with some quests, and while Zeke and Mikella would be glad to join and get some reputation within the guild and some gold, they had more important matters to deal with.

Such as training their new comrades.

"Ghh!"

Janet stumbled, her arms visibly shaking after receiving a hit straight from Mikella. The two stood against each other at the same private room at the gym they went in before. They booked the room for the entire day, so they planned on using it to the limit. Due to that, Mikella had no qualms of holding herself back even against an Expert.

The two were wearing simple cloth instead of their armor. Mikella wore a simple white T-shirt with baggy cargo pants that reached to her knees, using the same combat boots as before. Despite her lack of fashion style, she still made a cutting figure of authority as she stood with her back straight, her training sword in hand.

Janet was in the same boat, except it was a gray tank top with long gray pants, her usual training clothes when she had her own day off. Since she wore so much dark clothing, it was hard to notice, but she had a slim figure that worked perfectly with her build. Though it was easy to tell it was feminine, there was clear muscle tone over her arms and upper back, showing the effort she put into her training.

Still, at the distance, it was easy to tell who would come out on top.

"Nice defense, but you're lacking consistency. You gotta keep up the charge or else you'll get taken off guard," Mikella said, putting her input into the fight.

"That's… easy for you to say," Janet said, gasping for air as she grumbled. "You hit like a damn truck!"

"Then why guard instead of dodge?" Mikella simply asked. "You should know by now. What, you weren't fast enough or something?"

"Grr…"

Zeke watched with wrapped attention at the duel between the female otherworlders. While Mikella seemed unfair, comparing herself to an Expert like Janet, Mikella made a valid point.

The duel occurred normally with Janet being on the offensive. However, throughout the spar, Mikella kept taking control of the pacing, and eventually put Janet on the backfoot. It got to the point where one surprise attack from Mikella forced Janet to defend, leaving her in the state she was in now.

If she had focused on keeping a distance rather than trying to keep up with Mikella, she could've had enough energy to move aside. The purpose was to push her limits, but also understand just how far that limit can reach.

In Zeke's eyes, Janet got too greedy and tried to attack when she thought she had a chance. She was playing in the palm of Mikella's hand this entire time.

"Don't you think she's going a bit too far with Janet?" Lyle asked beside him. Clear worry in his voice as one would expect after watching this fight.

Meanwhile on the male side, Zeke was helping Lyle with his own training. However, it was nowhere near as intense as the girls' side. That was why Lyle had the time to look over with concern while Zeke stood opposite of him, his fists hanging in the air.

"Mikella's a lot of things, but she's not a novice when it comes to fighting," Zeke said, knowing full well that Mikella could hear him when she sent a withering glance at him before returning to her own fight. "Besides, I can heal her if things go too far. It's better to at least raise her Pain Resistance skill on top of all that training. Does she have it?"

"Of course she does; we both do," Lyle said exasperatingly. "But normally people don't focus on that skill, or attain it at all if they had a choice."

"Wait, people don't pick up the Pain Resistance skill?" Zeke said, this time sounding horrified. "How else can they survive in a fight?"

"Bruv, you're thinking of fighters and adventurers. I'm talking about normal folks making do with normal jobs," Lyle said, shaking his head ruefully. However, a mirthful grin showed on his face. "Then again, we ain't exactly normal ourselves."

"That's the plan."

Zeke grinned before rushing forward and hitting Lyle with a straight jab. Lyle's eyes widened in alarm before ducking the easily telegraphed punch and swinging his own fist.

A fistful of bear claws appeared from his original human hand as it almost ripped his face apart. Though Zeke dodged it easily, the range of that giant claw still surprised him as the two battled on their own end.

After a few minutes of careful dodging and hitting, Zeke laid off from Lyle, only barely panting while Lyle was already riddled with sweat, his face starting to pale even with his dark complexion.

"Not much of a fighter, huh?" Zeke said, noticing the clear difference between Lyle and Janet.

"I'm-a… huuuh," Lyle breathed, hanging his head back. "I'm a bit out of practice. I'll admit it."

"You don't have Kinetic Perception, right?" Zeke asked, prompting an approving nod from Lyle. "Normally I would suggest you get that. It's one of the skills that's really useful for a lot of things. You already have Mana Manipulation, obviously."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Zeke said as he saw Lyle's concocting back at their shop before heading here. He wanted to get some potions made before opening his shop once he was finished here. That kind of careful crafting requires a heavy use of mana control, hence why he was good on that part.

"But that Beast Soul skill… I definitely believe that it's a Unique-rarity skill."

Beast Soul; It was the skill Lyle acquired back at their first tower that allowed him to transform into any sort of beast or monster he had shown so far. Out of every skill he had known, Zeke had never seen a Unique-rarity skill before, and he wouldn't be surprised if Cloud or Val wouldn't know about it either.

For one thing, it doesn't follow the regular advancing or evolving methods other skills do. Instead, it continuously levels up even beyond Level 10, working like it's own system-granted feature like their classes, gaining new abilities whenever a certain condition is met.

And that condition is for Lyle to eat a literal heart of any monster or beast he had slain himself. By eating a heart whole, Lyle can acquire a new monster form for him to use. However, he can only acquire a form, but not it's complete body. Just like his bear claws, he can transform any part of his body into that of the new form he would acquire once eating the heart.

Then, if he wants to transform into said beast entirely, he had to keep eating the beast's body parts to 'level up' the beast form. It doesn't always have to be the heart, thankfully, but it's a pretty difficult way to level up the skill.

But because of that, Lyle can transform into several different forms, and even interchangeably transform into different forms at once. Though it requires an extreme amount of stamina and mana to do that much.

His werewolf and snake form from earlier was acquired when Lyle had no other choice but to eat wolves before heading into Arcelot, and eating a full-course meal made entirely of snake meat when he joined the assassin's guild. Apparently having a large ass snake on their side was worth the strangely large amount of snake meat they had. Zeke would never ask how, or why, the guild had such a thing, as he had no reason to ever head into an area with that many damn snakes. He still had that trauma from his own first tower.

So far, Lyle can transform into several beasts, including a bird form to make wings, and even a spider form for the legs. He would use those legs only to freak other people out, so he had no intention of transforming into an entire form–which is another way of efficiently using the Unique skill.

In other words–Beast Soul is a broken ass skill that was extremely envious for any fighter. Then again, one normally doesn't have the stomach to eat literal hearts, cooked or otherwise.

"Is it possible that you can cut off a part of your monster form and use it for materials?" Zeke asked, eventually getting to the question he so desperately wanted to ask.

Lyle grinned a wide fox-like smile. "That I can, mate. It makes searching for ingredients for alchemy super easy."

"That is so broken," Zeke shook his head, a smile on his own face. "But there's gotta be a limit, right? You can't just–say–cut off a limb for their claws and keep regrowing them like I can?"

"Hell nah," Lyle waved his bear claws in a negative gesture. "It's not that powerful. Anytime I get injured in my forms, such as cutting off for materials or getting hit in battle, I get a cooldown on that form. I can't transform for a while. Thankfully, it's only on the form I got hit by. It's a pain in the ass if I'm trying to defend myself, but at least that way I don't have to worry about missing my real limbs when I transform back."

"Damn, that's convenient," Zeke whistled. "I wonder if it acts automatically because it's a Unique-rarity skill?"

"Maybe. I tried searching up for it at the Skill Repository with Janet's help, but there's nothing there that even suggest it even exist. Considering this place is famous for its Respository, I got myself a real treasure from that damn tower. Honestly the only good thing outside of Janet."

Zeke couldn't agree more. Even if he did met up with his family at his own tower, and then gained Barrier Craft and Recovery, his two most powerful skills, he still wished he could leave the nasty memories behind outside of all of that.

Before Zeke could start up the training again, a young woman suddenly flew right past the two and crashed into the pristine silver wall with a hard thump. Clear signs of bones breaking echoed in their sensitive ears and a gasp of utter pain escaped the girl's lips before falling to the floor like a limp doll.

The two men looked back to see Janet in such a state, then turned back around, Lyle's face turning pale and Zeke's turning red to find Mikella standing stock-still, her hands covering her mouth in surprise.

"Uhh… oopsie," Mikella flashed a wry grin at the two. "I might have taken it a bit too far."

"'Too far', huh!?" Zeke shouted. "I told you to take it easy! I can't heal her if she's dead, Mikella!"

He was glad to see her face wincing at his shout, but he turned right around to get to Janet with Lyle already there comforting her.

Thankfully, the damage wasn't so bad that he couldn't use Restoration and quickly got her back to her feet. She couldn't move because her ribs were broken in several places and even just moving an inch sent ripples of pain throughout her body.

Despite all that, the end result got Janet a whopping few levels in Pain Resistance, something that would be very important for the later training.

"I admit I went a little too far, but she almost had me. At the rate she was going, she really might advance her Dagger Mastery to Rare soon!"

"That's still no excuse for launching her across the room and breaking her ribs," Zeke said flatly, ignoring Mikella's frown and possible puppy-dog eyes to get away from getting blamed.

Still, she had a point. Despite the horrid training, Janet still went up to fight Mikella again. There was that fire in her eyes that Zeke can only surmise as a gamer's passion after her Pain Resistance leveled up, and like Mikella said, her Dagger Mastery also went up a few levels.

Zeke was trying to get Lyle trained enough to get Kinetic Perception, then after working for a while, they planned on getting some magical training. Janet's own skills from the tower was definitely something Zeke was interested in.

It was called Elemental Resonance, which is a combination of the four basic elemental masteries put together; Fire Mastery, Water Mastery, Air Mastery, and Earth Mastery. Of course, that wasn't the only thing.

Normally, mages have difficulty getting more than one elemental mastery, not unless they really worked hard for it to get a specific combination, such as Fire and Water Mastery to get steam-based magic. Having an attunement on top of that would make using both elemental masteries possible to use, but it was very niche in that regard.

Elemental Resonance is a Rare-rarity Acquired Skill that doesn't only control all four elemental masteries in one skill, but also manipulate them in ways that would normally be impossible for any mage not built for that element. She can mix fire and water to make steam as easily as making a simple fire spell, and she can also create deathtraps with earth and water spells to drown her enemies instantly.

And just as it is versatile, it is difficult to raise. Even after six months of using it after acquiring it at the tower, it was still at Rare rarity–and she used the skill plenty of times, especially during her assassinations for troubling Journeymen targets.

However, the point of the training is to get these two to Journeyman stage, which means that Acquired Skills aren't needed to be trained. So far, they did a good job of leveling their Class Skills, Lyle's Alchemist Class being his day job being obvious, while Janet's Rogue Class, evolved into a class called Elemental Assassin Savant, was getting high up there. The title requirements were already met, considering they were survivors of their tower as well as making a decent living here in Arcelot despite their shortcomings.

What they needed were two other requirements; Leveling their General Skills, and of course reaching Level 60. The path to Journeyman will not be short, but Zeke knew that their necessity to live requires them to push past their limits.

Though Zeke really wondered what their attunements were. On that bit alone, the both of them were oddly quiet about that. Lyle revealed that since they couldn't take on basic mana-boost attunements just like Zeke and Mikella, they instead opted to choose less than exemplary attunements, with Lyle choosing a nature-theme attunement to go along with his Alchemist Class and Beast Soul unique skill.

Strangely, he often avoided mentioning Janet's attunement. However, it was time for them to reveal it once magic practice came into play.

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