The masked warrior threw another slash that Cecilia parried and hurriedly stepped back, trying to get range to let her longer two-handed sword give her the advantage, but the other warrior was too fast at closing the distance and too skilled. He kept up the pressure on her, throwing a whirlwind of blows that she was only barely able to defend against, until she wasn't.

The first blow that got through was a low one, not deep but she still felt it sever a major artery as blood gushed down her leg. Not a fatal blow thanks to her high stats and natural regeneration, but disabling. Her reactions grew slower, her body heavier as the blood loss sapped her strength and let more blows through.

A second slash got under her guard and took her left hand off at the wrist. A thrust of the masked warrior's odd saber went over and around her blade to stab into her lungs, narrowly missing her heart.

She didn't see the lightning fast follow up that separated her head from her body.

"Cecilia!" Jun screamed as her roommate's headless body fell to the ground, the sand of the training hall stained red with her blood.

"She'll be fine kitten, focus on your own practice," Shiori said moments before she sent another spell into Jun's barrier.

With her attention split by Cecilia's severed head, she didn't have time to adjust her barrier before Shiori's spell shattered it, sending a lance of pain through her skull from the backlash that left her feeling unsteady on her feet.

As Jun blinked the tears from her eyes, she heard footsteps approach her before a hand lightly grabbed her head and started to massage her scalp, easing the backlash pain. "Watch," her adoptive mother commanded, gently turning her head.

Through tear-blurred eyes, Jun watched as Cecilia's corpse repaired before her eyes. Her roommate's spilt blood flowed in reverse back into her body and her severed hand and head reattached themselves. Cecilia's chest began to rise up and down as she started breathing again, and in less than a second her roommate bolted up, shuddering as she sat in the now pristine sand of the training hall and ran her hands across her now whole body in disbelief.

Jun watched as Cecilia seemed to stare at her healed hand like it didn't belong, her other hand reaching out to feel the now healed skin of her neck.

Inari hovered near her for a couple minutes before Cecilia stood up. Cecilia's sword floated over to her and the young warrior reached out to grasp it only to hesitate, her hand trembling as uncertainty painted her face.

The foxkin woman approached her slowly from the front and gently wrapped her arms and tail around the shuddering woman in a hug. Wrapped against Cecilia, it was obvious the powerful healer was shorter than her, Inari's chin barely coming past her shoulder as she leaned in to whisper into her ear.

Whatever Inari said to Cecilia, Jun doubted she'd ever know, but as she watched the vacant look of horror on her friend's face slowly faded into anger, disbelief, and then finally calm introspection. It took another minute or more before Inari finally released the girl and stepped back, but when she did the warrior was steadier and more confident. Soon enough Cecilia grasped her sword again and the sound of metal meeting metal filled the air as she and the masked warrior resumed their fight.

"Inari is an excellent healer and teacher," Shiori said, continuing to massage Jun's scalp. "While her training methods may seem harsh, she won't let any under her care come to true harm, and she has a talent for producing exceptional warriors. Your friends are in good hands."

Jun felt as Shiori gently turned her head to take in the other fights throughout the hall where Gareth and Cian fought their own masked warriors wielding versions of each fighter's favored weapons, their clothes and armor ripped and torn by gashes but as blood free as Cecila's own clothes.

In the far corner of the room Sara and Keira exchanged shots with a pair of masked archers in a deadly game of tag. She watched as one of Sara's arrows pierced through a masked woman's heart and yet she didn't fall, instead firing back and piercing the elf through her eye moments before both arrows vanished along with their wounds.

Amidst the chaos, Michael and Corin followed the foxkin woman as she moved from fight to fight, lecturing about each wound someone received and the intricacies of anatomy and healing magic.

"Now, enough distractions, let us return to the art of spellcasting in combat kitten," Shiori said, guiding her head back around to where Lane and Aya sat against the wall, eyes closed as they focused on recovering their mana.

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Aya couldn't help but frown as she tried to recover her mana using the new technique this Shiori had taught them.

Traditionally, mages were taught to push as much mana into their channels from their cores as possible, packing the mana in until they could hold no more. The immense pressure of the dense mana would keep mana from flowing out of the core, forcibly expanding it over time to give a mage a deeper well of mana to pull from.

At higher levels the mana would condense, moving from something akin to vapor first to mist, then droplets, before finally crystallizing at the highest levels. Denser mana was far more powerful, with mist easily a tenfold increase in strength over vapor, droplets a hundredfold increase over mist, and crystalline a thousand fold beyond that.

Every technique she'd ever heard of, from those passed down in the noble families, to those of Sects and national militaries focused on condensing mana to expand the pool and multiply the power of their mana. Her own family's technique was supposed to be one of the most powerful of these, her mana already Mist despite only being an Iron Rank. Yet this Shiori, the mysterious woman who saved them in the Forest and oddly shared the same name as Jun's cat, practiced something different.

The badge the catkin woman wore partially tucked beneath her robes was clearly a Gold IAG badge, and that she was appointed as an Advisor at the Academy meant she had to be competent. Even the weakest of Golds who didn't practice a condensation technique naturally condensed their mana into mist simply by virtue of their levels and stats.

Both of the beastkin women's mana was still vapor. The density was unmistakable as both Shiori and Inari demonstrated the new technique, taking turns flooding the student's mana channels with their mana and demonstrating the method of cycling mana to flow constantly. Instead of packing mana into channels to create a densely packed source of mana like her family's technique, their technique focused on moving mana through channels in a constant cycle, slowly bleeding off small amounts as it increased in speed with every cycle. Each repetition of the technique seemed to suck more mana into the core from the world around them, drastically increasing mana recovery.

In a battle of stamina, Aya could understand how such a technique could be valuable, potentially allowing someone to pack more and more mana into a spell as it regenerated, or afford to cast numerous smaller spells without worrying about mana management. The technique would even explain some of the stranger things she'd seen Jun do. How her barriers seemed unusually durable and long lasting for her level, and how she could cast so many smaller spells one after the other.

Still, Aya wasn't sure the technique was right for her. Moving her already mist-like mana was tedious, the denser mana moving sluggishly through her channels as she followed a teaching that ran contrary to her family technique. The speeds she could manage brought back some of the mana recovery she lost to her family's technique, but it was far from enough to justify the effort it took to maintain. She certainly couldn't keep it up while actively casting, and feared she'd lose the power of her denser mana if she continued to use it.

But she'd seen the way Shiori handled two peak Golds at once and then confronted the horde and whatever that phenomena was killed Arwen and had the rest of them fleeing the Forest. And she was certain the mysterious catkin woman was the one who handled the situation.

If she hadn't, Aya knew for a fact that whatever happened out there was bad enough that if it hadn't been handled immediately, the noble students would have long evacuated the Academy and the city would be preparing for war. But beyond the premature ending to the Winter Expedition and rumors of more patrols by Gold ranked adventurers into the Forest there'd been nothing indicating that the powers that be thought there was a major threat out there. At least not anymore. The look on the Platinum ranked woman who got to them shortly after Jun passed out had been telling.

Shaking her head, Aya cracked her eyes as she watched the strange catkin woman who shared a name with Jun's pet as she shattered her friend's barrier as easily as breathing. It was plainly obvious the woman was an excellent mage.

She just couldn't make sense of this Shiori, or her companion Inari. And Shiori's claim of being Jun's mother only spread that confusion to her friend of the past few months. She couldn't help feeling suspicious of her friend keeping such a secret. Not that Jun had been very revealing about her life prior to the Academy in the first place, nor had Aya pried into her friend's private life. Everyone had their own secrets. A strangely powerful mother of a different race wasn't that big of a secret. Or at least it didn't seem like it should be, but the revelation still left her feeling confused and hurt by her friend.

As she watched Jun and Shiori square off again, the older woman calling out errors in Jun's spellcasting as she dodged snares and casually shattered barriers with seemingly simple and underpower spells, Aya's stomach roiled. A strange emotion ate at her gut that she casually locked away in a vault with numerous other emotions. Whatever was going on with her friend and this Shiori, she'd have to talk to her when they had a private moment away from other eyes and ears. She would have answers from Jun.

But first, she needed to practice this new technique. Mastering it might give her another tool for her plans, and she would need every possible advantage for them. Trying once again to put her whirling thoughts to the side to focus on the new technique, Aya closed her eyes and threw her will back at her sluggish mana, spurring it to move just a bit faster.

The sound of fabric rustling shattered her attention as she heard Lane stand next to her. It took an effort of will not to open her eyes and get an eye full of the handsome man. As much as she enjoyed his company, he was still a distraction, one she was sadly weak to. She needed to remain focused on her goals. Lane, Jun, her friend's mother, their relationships and secrets were all distractions. She needed to focus on building her strength first. Everything else was secondary.

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