Skill tutor

The Games We Play​

Skill Tutor​

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I used my shirt to wipe the sweat off my face, trying to slow my breathing. I'd been here for…around two days now, I think; I hadn't stopped practicing since I'd come out here and I'd lost track of time a few times because of my long meditation sessions.

At first, I hadn't even been able to practice my powers all at once; they were just too exhausting to make it feasible. I could only go full power for about five seconds and then I'd need to meditate for something like ten minutes to recover—the speed I exhausted myself undid the main benefit of using Soul of the World for training. I'd had to train myself piecemeal, starting with just using my persistent skills and then meditating with Soul of the World to lengthen the time I could keep them on.

I couldn't do much else while I was meditating, but for techniques I could train simply by leaving on it didn't matter—at least, not when I didn't have anything else to do. I hadn't done it much while training my Aura, partially because there had been so much else to do, but mainly because I had managed to get it to the point that I could keep it on all the time with just my passive MP regeneration and there wasn't much need. But for this…

The upkeep per minute for Summon Elemental and White Tiger's Hide, quite possibly my two most valuable skills regarding this mission, were ungodly at fifty MP per minute each—higher than that of Claws of the White Tiger and White Tiger's Tread combined. If I used all my persistent skills, I'd exhaust myself in a little over eleven minutes; less time than it took to regain all of my MP though Soul of the World. If I trained them while using Soul of the World, however, the addition to my MP regeneration was such that it greatly slowed the process; with that method, I could train the techniques for over an hour before running out of MP.

Furthermore, the math quickly proved to be in my favor as the cost of maintaining those skills dropped swiftly as they leveled up and were slowly overcome by my increase MP regeneration until I reached the point that they could be maintained indefinitely while I meditated. By the time day had come and gone and the moon had risen, I'd reduced the combined cost of all my persistent skills to around fifty-five MP per minute, discounting the MP I regenerated every minute, raising the amount of time I could fight with just them to close to over twenty-five minutes thanks to the MP I'd gained from Soul of the World—more than twice what I'd started with. At that point, I'd decided to practice my Active skills, leaving the persistent on as I did, because I could use Soul of the World whenever my MP got low and maintain them constantly.

I'd started with Jaws of the White Tiger and, honestly, had kind of felt like a cat with a scratching post. That's pretty much what training it had amounted to, to be honest; shoving my fingers into trees and tearing them apart. I added in Power Strike, Rip, and Crush once I got Jaws cost down some, as the former was already pretty cheap from my week of training beforehand and the latter weren't all that expensive to begin with, at least comparatively. I'd gotten a lot of training in for Soulforge Restoration, too, healing the trees I'd set about ruining, though it improved slowly.

I'd trained that from what I judged to be a little before midnight to around dawn before switching over to training Lunge. Once it got dark again, I put everything together and started bounding around the clearing, tearing the place up and putting it back together again and again and again. Blake hadn't called me yet, so I figured I'd keep practicing until dawn—it was cheap enough to actually use in combat as more than just an ace in the hole, but it still tired me out too quickly, reducing the amount of time I could fight to somewhere around thirty seconds. If Blake didn't come back by dawn, though, I'd probably have to call her instead.

I flexed my fingers, looking down at them. I'd need to meditate soon, but I could go a little bit longer. I'd leveled up Martial Arts Mastery with my earlier training, but improving Bai Hu's White Tiger Technique required using several of the techniques together and since improving Jump was easiest to do while practicing Lunge; all told, now that I had the costs down some, this was the best way to grind all my skills. Taking a breath and crouching, I was preparing myself for another series of crushing attacks.

"So that's the famous technique of the White Tiger of the West," A voice interrupted me—and very nearly scared me out of my skin before I suddenly calmed again. I turned around to stare at Adam's red and white mask and the passive portion of his face that was visible below it. "Impressive. I've known of several Faunus who sought to recreate it from the tablets, but even after years of study and practice, I don't think any of them came as close to mastering it as you have in just two days."

I laughed a little at that.

"Thanks for the compliment," I said. "But this isn't mastery. It's not even close. There are still two techniques I'm not even strong enough to use and even these ones I've only just gotten good enough to use for real. If I had mastered this style, well…I don't even know what would happen, but I think there'd be a lot less trees in this forest."

"Even so," Adam said, reaching up to touch the broken surface of one of the trees. "Your power is amazing."

"Blake told you, then," I said, unsurprised.

"Did you think she wouldn't?" He answered evenly.

"I told her to tell you whatever she wanted. I trust Blake," I returned, not rising to what I figured was probably bait. "I'm glad she told you, actually, because that means she trusts you and it saves us some time. I take it she told you I wanted to speak to you? It's a pretty good time for it—I got most of my skills decently leveled. Now's as good a time as any to start moving on to the next step."

Adam said nothing, just staring at me steadily. Or I assumed he was staring at me—it was hard to tell with the mask, to be honest.

"Since you're here, I assume you'll be joining us on this mission," I filled the silence when it became evident that he wasn't going to. "To be honest, I feel better about this insane plan with you at my back."

"Because I'm strong?" He asked.

"Yes," I told the truth. "No offense, but you and I don't really know each other yet. We didn't really talk much after I healed you and I left shortly after. I only know a few things about you as a person: That you're here, so you must want to help those guys on Mantle as much as Blake and I, that Blake trusts you, and that you're strong as hell. The first two are enough to make me comfortable with working with you and the latter is enough to make me real glad you're here. What about you?"

"What about me?"

I scratched my head and sighed, musing—but no, enormous power or not, there was a reason I'd called him here. I settled my own gaze on him and was glad I was so calm, whatever aspect of my power was responsible for it.

"Well," I said. "I assume you don't like me much."

"Because I'm part of the White Fang," He said and it didn't sound like a question. It didn't sound particularly accusatory, either, thankfully; it was just a statement of something that was, to him, a fact.

"No," I shot down immediately, shaking my head. "I can think of loads of reasons for you not to like me—and any number of them could play into why you might be in the White Fang—but I don't think you'd hate me solely because you were a member. I mean, for one thing, Blake doesn't seem to mind me too much and she's part of the White Fang and most of the guys I healed seemed okay with me, though some of the others were a bit cold. They all at least tolerated me, though, because of what I did. And you seemed to as well, but…"

"If you're worried about me stabbing you in the back, you can relax," He said quietly. "It's true that I hate a lot of humans and I'm apathetic about many more, but I'm aware that there's more to groups than the group and specific individual people can be exceptions to any rule. I don't particularly dislike you, as these things go—and I wouldn't endanger this mission even if I did."

"I know," I nodded. "I got that feeling from you and I trust Blake enough to trust you. But what I'm saying is, though you don't hate me, you don't like me, either."

He shrugged.

"Like you said, I don't exactly know you, do I?" He answered. "If it makes you feel better, I don't like many people. I don't have to like them to work with them."

"Cool. But since we're going to throw ourselves into the fray together in an absurdly dangerous mission that could quite possibly get us all killed, I'd like to get to know you a bit," I said. "As such, I came up with a team building exercise."

"And that's my cue to leave," Adam said, turning around. "Blake said she'd be busy until around noon, but she'd come by then. See you later."

"Wait!" I stopped him quickly. "Stop, it was a joke. Sort of. I really do need your help with something, though!"

"Get to the point, then," He stopped and looked back at me with a trace of irritation.

"Blake told you about my skills and levels and such, right?"

"She did," He said. "I don't know how many games Blake's actually played, so I'm not sure how much of it she's clear on, but I understand how your power works, more or less. You've been training Bai Hu's style out here, I assume."

"Yeah; that and a few other things," I said. "Mostly my combat stuff, since that's easy to practice on my own and I kind of need to abandon my usual style for this mission. But there are a few other skills I think will be useful that are hard to train quickly, or at least safely, without help. I'm gonna have Blake help me with Stealth and Disguise, for example, because those seem to be her things, but there's another one that I think you could help me with."

"Oh?" Adam asked, slowly turning back around to face me.

"For this mission, I'm both the medic and the driver, which means staying active is my main priority—especially since I'm the only one who can fulfill either of those roles. I've been training my combat skills for the point when things inevitably go horribly wrong, but on the whole, my most important skills are my defensive and healing ones, which are what I'd like you to help me train. You've seen my healing skill; it improves based on how much HP I heal, so these trees aren't a great way to improve it anymore. I've also got a skill called 'Physical Endurance,'" I said, bring up its window as I did so. "I got it back in the warehouse, after a robot drained my aura and shot me. Long story short, it makes me more durable; even at level one I receive three percent less damage from anything that hits me. But as far as I can tell, the only way to improve it is to lose HP to physical attacks. Without my Aura on."

Adam tilted his head to the side and I was sure that if he hadn't been wearing a mask, I would have seen furrowed eyebrows.

"Wait, then….you want me to…"

"To beat the crap out of me, yeah," I said. "Many times. You beat me up for a while until I need to back off and heal and then I get back up and we go again, rinse and repeat until I grind both skills up some. I'll need to test how the reduction in damage interacts with my other defensive powers, too, so we'll test that, too."

"Why not just continue to improve your Aura-based defensive techniques?" He asked. "There's one like that in Bai Hu's style, isn't there?"

"White Tiger's Hide, yeah, and I've got my Aura and Metal Aura, too," I said, nodding. "But there's the issue of diminishing returns and we don't have a lot of time. Like…I can usually learn the first ten levels of a skill in about eight to ten hours if I train it right, but getting it to twenty takes around the clock training for several days. Going by my Aura and Metal Aura, getting them up to fifty…I think it'll take three weeks to a month, even if I focused on them. The effort I have to put in to see improvement grows fast, but the amount of improvement per level is usually fairly constant. And since Physical Endurance is passive…"

I shrugged.

"I get more out of ten levels of it then I would from one more level in White Tiger's Hide. So I need you to hurt me a lot."

Adam just shook his head—and then said something that surprised me.

"I guess that's fitting if you're a game character. It worked in Grimm Nights," He sighed.

I blinked at him. Once. Twice.

And then I smiled brightly.

"The lava cheat in Three?" I said.

"I played the first few a long time ago, when I was a kid," He said, looking away. "Before the Rights Revolution."

I assumed from his wording that he hadn't played any of the others. It was fairly easy to guess why.

"You should play at least six, seven, and ten, if you haven't," I said. "They're the best in the series."

"I don't have time for games anymore," He said, voice flat.

"Neither do I, since I'm busy living one. But since I don't sleep I'll be working around the clock, so there'll probably be some downtime for you and Blake when I don't need one of you to help me; you can play mine, if you want," I shrugged. "Or borrow it. My parents will be out of town for a while, so you two can crash at my place if you don't have anywhere to stay."

"Maybe," He said with the same voice as before. "Also, I know what you're trying to do."

"My mom always says that strangers are just friends you haven't met yet," I said, smiling as I gave him another shrug. "And since we'll be out here for a while, we might as well talk some. And hell, if you want me to shut up, you can just keep beating the crap out of me."

Adam was silent for a long moment.

"That seems fair," He mused at last.

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