There was yet another who was showing rapid progress however, the young Gray who was now under Scathach's tutelage. And despite the toughness and brutality of the training, the young girl seemed to be up to the task, earning her master's praise, something which did not come easily . . .
The little girl was certainly growing at an incredible rate, even physically as in the short time she spent training, she had physically grown enough to look older by a few years, looking like an actual teenager.
How was this accomplished? One might ask.
Well, Scathach used her consummate knowledge and skills to reconnect Gray to Artoria after inspecting the way Morgan was training Magdalena.
And she did it in a way that would still prevent Gray from becoming a carbon copy of Artoria while also drasticlly boosting her growth speed by allowing her to passively absorb skills and accumulated combat experience from the King of Knights through direct sparring.
In fact, a few weeks later and Gray actually looked older than Artoria who had stopped aging at fifteen years old. Looking like a blooming young woman with respectable, even if not huge assets, just enough to suit her.
Her features also gained a bigger distinction from Artoria's and while they could still pass as sisters extremely easily due to how alike they were, Gray had grown beautiful in her own way, having sharper features, that made her look quite elegant.
While the girl herself was quite embarrassed an uncomfortable with her new stature, she was infinitely pleased to have a face that was just her own once again.
It was not her old face and it still looked much like Artoria's but it was different enough that most people who didn't know them could differentiate.
And so, very proudly, despite still wearing massively conservative clothes due to being embarrassed over her maturing body, Gray stopped concealing her face with a hood, walking around with a shy demure smile while showing her face to everybody.
She profusely thanked her teacher but unfortunately, Jun who she was most thankful to, was nowhere to be found, leaving the young girl in a young woman's body longing for his presence.
Moving on to her actual growth in ability and power though, it was most definitely beyond impressive.
Her parameters had completely left the domain of a regular human and though she was quite far beneath a top tier Servant still, Strength: B; Endurance: C; Agility: B; Mana: B; Luck: C+. Parameters respectable for a Servant, outrageous for one who was a human in modern times.
Gray's factor of the Dragon had developed enough for her to acquire her very own Magic Core, though still not yet at its full potential.
As a result, Gray developed two skills associated with her draconic features. Magic Resistance: B who made it very difficult for modern mages to deal serious damage to her and Mana Burst: B which allowed her to use the enormous amount of magical energy provided by her Core to greatly enhance her abilities and destructive power.
Additionally, Morgan had made a few improvements upon Add, the mystic code sealing Rhongomyniad and to the holy lance itself, removing its restraints and increasing its affinity with Gray who otherwise would have never been able to wield its true power as it was meant only for Artoria and her alone.
This resulted in Gray being able to draw out an A++ Ranked Anti-Fortress attack from a full release of the holy lance and being given the Protection of World's End skill at a high A rank, which had the effect of temporarily boosting Mana and Luck along with resistance to harmful effects.
The girl's skillset was indeed great, and as her disposition was extremely different from Artoria's, it also opened for several new possibilities.
While Gray would never develop the charisma of a ruler or the raw Instinct that Artoria and Mordred possessed, her mindset made her much more suited for learning magecraft, allowing for all that untapped talent in it that someone like Artoria would never take advantage of to be put to good use.
She was such a good student in fact, that Morgan was able to be convinced by Scathach to give her some lessons as her magecraft suited Gray much better. Seeing a possible inheritor for her Rhongomyniad Magecraft, Morgan actually put in some effort which was soon rewarded.
By using the holy lance, even in its sealed state as an casting assist type mystic code, Gray became able of manifesting spear shadows at will and firing beams of light with the lance's power.
Effectively making use of an extremely weak version of Morgan's magecraft with very minimal training which immediately earned the girl another strict teacher.
As for Gray herself, she was most delighted by all the praise, and getting it from her strict and demanding teachers made it doubly more pleasant.
While Gray was on a high however, others were not happy, specially with her physical changes. Namely Illya and, to a much lesser degree, Artoria as well.
The latter was simply a bit ticked of that a very young child, looking like her, suddenly turned into a beautiful and well endowed young woman who still resembled her. This was because after getting drawn to the magic of love, the King of Knights became much more self conscious.
Wondering if her physical training left her less feminine and attractive, while looking jealousy at girl with bigger assets as her own body was locked into her fifteen year old self.
Still, she was not that immature so she quickly got over it and despite meeting Gray regularly in training, the young girl never even noticed despite her perceptiveness, meaning it was really not that big of a deal for her.
The one truly dissatisfied, was Illya.
Out of nowhere, her cute new little sister had grow into and young lady with womanly assets just slightly lesser than her own mother.
It irked her beyond reason and each time the two met, Illya jealousy glared at Gray while gritting her teeth, leaving the latter flustered, not knowing what to do before electing to simply run away and avoid her.
On the matter of mothers however, Magdalena and Gray had made some progress in mending their relationship after Morgan began tutoring the daughter, as it meant they were often together , learning under Fairy Queen.
They had yet to have an actual discussion but their proximity and general liking of each other's presence even though they didn't talk much, made it obvious things were going in a good direction and maybe, in the near future, they would completely make up after a tearful heart to heart.
But with no other changes to report, it was time to move attention back to Jun and his meeting with two individuals so vehemently seeking him . . .
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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!
The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba without the extra dots of course.
You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.
There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!
I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.