I will strive beyond this cursed bloodline!

Honestly, once you got used to the idea of someone who had grown in a laboratory, doing study and research their whole life, having better skillsets than you, it wasn't that bad.

Unlike what Rena had expected, Amelia didn't judge her for what he was or how her body was set up.

If anything...

"What the hell is this? Who even set up like this?" Amelia grumbled while perusing one of the blue screens that had manifested in front of her.

One that had the data on Rena's skill set.

Rena had checked, it was indeed her skillset. Only, more bare, Rena had told her what was missing and as such, it was now more thorough, but even still, it was quite the surprise, so far only Elizabeth had been able to peruse as much data as this.

"Why.... Why did you think that having two legacy skills was a good idea? They are messing your balance, you can't have two Legacies at the same time, those stories about peerless genius who do this are Bullshit, pick one." Amelia said grumbling while pointing at her two legacy skills.

One was the one that she had picked for herself, one of the first things she truly had done, not because someone had told her. But because Rena herself wanted.

The other...was what she should pick, the legacy from a life as a sword saint.

What was more useful to Elizabeth, what would allow her to stand at the side of the woman she loved?

"And no, the correct answer isn't the Sword Saint one," Amelia added just seconds before Rena discarded the [Legacy of the Sword Princess]. "Also we are getting rid of these."

Swordsman Armory

Sword Sheath

Legacy of The Sword Saint

Legend of The Sword Princess

Armor Penetration

Power Slash

Fluid movement

Shift

Bed Technique

....That was her whole skillset.

"The General skills...are fine I guess...If I had my way, I would restructure those too, but for now, these are what we will focus on, you can do that later if you want." Amelia said shaking her head.

"You want me to discard almost all my skillset, what am I supposed to do?" Was what Rena asked confused, this seemed counterintuitive.

"Not discard outright, but make them yours." Amelia said shaking her head, "You see, while you have some useful skills like [Fluid movement] and [Swordsman Armory]...the others aren't really that useful."

The legacy skills weren't useful?

"Then what are you saying? If they are good, why remove them?" Rena asked again just to make sure.

"Because they aren't you." Amelia said, shaking her head, "What I see from you isn't the type to have those type of skills, the only one I feel like is yours is that shift skill, but even that is a stretch."

...That was, partially true.

"So the first step is to make your skills yours," Amelia said, pulling a new skill list. Rena saw the skills and was impressed, the list was long, yes, but it also was different from what she had opened at the moment.

"It is a set of nice skills, but I have none of them available at the moment," Rena said shaking her head, most of those had been skills that got offered at a point in time, but Akira had said to her to not pick those skills.

"I can give them to you," Amelia said, smiling, "It's part of my skills, I can give people the best skills for their job and to realize what they want...or that was supposed to be my job, I ended up as a peace-making Hero."

That was a weird change of job indeed. "So what skills would you suggest I take?" Rena wasn't that sure, she had each skill for a reason, even the less palatable ones. "The ones I had, there had been a reason why I had them."

"...I don't doubt that, and most of the time I would even encourage them, but as I said, there is no reason why you need them, do you need the system to guide your hand to move your sword?" Amelia countered.

"No," Rena admitted, while it was true the [System] would move her hand and offer guidance, those movements felt... inadequate. Too mechanical, they had rarely the same edge as if she was doing the attack. "But they still offer some help, some bonus."

"Right, your Legacy skills are like that, true." Amelia said, nodding, summoning a new blue screen and moving her two Legacy skills there, both [Legacy of the Sword Saint] and [Legacy of the Sword Princess], "But tell me this...why do you need [Swordsman Armory] and [Sword Sheath]?"

What?

"The first grants you an inventory-like space to store your weapons, right?" Amelia said, to which Rena nodded her head absently minded, "And the second offers you a way to summon your weapon as if you had a sheat."

"Yes, that is their function," Rena said nodding, "Why wouldn't I want those two? They have been greatly useful."

Amelia looked at her as if she had said the most dumb thing ever, almost in the same way that people usually looked at Elizabeth...Rena....Rena wasn't sure what to feel about that.

"Let me spell it out for you, but... Don't you and Rossaline have a shared space with Elizabeth Starbright? I noticed the ripples in space distort and connect you to her, at first I thought it was whatever that weird you all have..." Amelia said sighing, Rena couldn't help but cover the rings on her hand as if to protect them from being defiled, "I have no interest in whatever weird cult-like thing you three girls did, but really. If you already have a spatial inventory skill, why do you want another? Or does yours provide you with any advantage?"

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Rena stopped to think and, "No, Eli's skill is better...And I doubt she will ever let it go." Mostly because it was not a skill but a function of what Elizabeth could do with her Shadow Haven.

Unless Elizabeth discarded it... this shared inventory would remain forever.

And it had even expanded as of recently thanks to the addition of that weird new fox girl.

"Okay, I admit that it's true, and the others?" Rena asked, the woman was right in that Rena didn't need to keep those two, but the others?

"Let's debunk them then," Amelia said nodding at Rena's prompt, "First the next on the list is [Armor Penetration], you barely leveled it, at all... So I assume it wasn't something you used or wanted."

"It's... It was useful under the idea that there could be enemies that had heavy armor, in which case my sword would be hard at work to damage them..." It was also one of the skills The Bug had demanded her to take, after he was gone... Rena had thought about removing it herself, damage to her soul be damned. But thinking about it...

If there was ever an enemy with a heavy enough armor or shield that she couldn't damage... It was or would be useful to have.

"Wrong," Amelia said shaking her head, "That is the thought process of a child, a true [Hero] does not think like that."

Amelia said as she shifted once more, first to something entirely different that she hadn't used before, this time her whole self felt impenetrable. "[Ingrain]"

And a second time she used that weird skill, this time she used it on her new shield, one that had manifested at some point and while sighing she placed it on a wall, "This will suck...this always sucks... why am I doing this....?" Mumbled the blonde woman as she walked away from the shield, each step seemed to take her more than the one before, "Pay close attention because I will not be doing this twice."

The woman said as Rena felt her shift again, this time it was almost as if a part of her had been ripped out, the woman bit her lip as if to resist it, ".....huff.... It sucked as much as I remembered it, you better invite me to that goddamned wedding... Anyway.." The blonde woman said as she sighed again, she had shifted once more to [The Sword Saintess] if Rena's instincts were to be believed.

"That is the strongest shield I can [Paradigm Shift] into, and this... is not the strongest bladed form, so that would mean my attacks would be futile right?" Amelia asked, to which Rena nodded, she... Rena didn't think her sword would be able to pierce that. "Correct."

Amelia then stood in position and unsheathed her sword, an Iai-type attack. Rena didn't see the movement or the attack, but what she felt was the floor tremble under her feet as a loud *CLANG* resounded.

The sword seemed as if it had almost broken, but it remained both steady and sharp, Rena's [Sword of My Heart]... it would have been broken.

"As expected, so you keep that [Armor Penetration] for these situations right?" Amelia asked again, to which Rena nodded, "Well, this is what happens when you do."

Amelia then played with her status and Rena felt a new kind of sharpness on the sword, the woman repeated her attack and...

*CLANG*

Another sharp sound, only this time...

"A crack?" Rena asked as a small crack formed on the shield, only for it to mend itself a second later, "... was it pointless?"

"Yes, most of the people who focus on defense to the degree that a sword becomes pointless have some regeneration skill or two, mostly because of these same situations. So an Armor penetration skill is pointless unless you specialize in armor penetration type skills."

"...Then what am I supposed to do?" Rena asked as she felt powerless, even the sacrifice of keeping a skill picked by the bug was pointless?

"Easy," Amelia answered as Rena felt the whole presence of the woman turn sharper and sharper, "You need to only cut it apart."

And as if it was a joke, the woman brandished her sword again, this time however, Rena felt no skill activation, at all.

Instead the sword traversed in what felt a slow arc towards the shield, and while Rena expected a sharp sound again, this time she heard the sound of something being cut away.

"Motionless blade, cutting through what is solid." Amelia whispered in a low voice, "That is the answer, if a shield stands in your way and you can't get past it, you cut it, that is the mastery and the end point of a true Saint who wields a sword."

"But....you...you couldn't pierce it before." Rena pointed, "How are you doing it now?"

"These defenses are impenetrable under the system's blessing." Amelia answered, "So all you need to pierce them is to move without using the system."

"...that easy?" Rena asked dumbfounded, "It can't be that easy."

"It is that easy, most of the time." Amelia shrugged, "It becomes hard when the other party knows of these tricks, and starts using methods that are also not blessed by the system, when I am using that [Paradigm Shift] I don't depend fully on skills, I do have them and use them."

The older woman then breathed in and the shield turned into motes of light that joined her, the woman let out a sigh of relief as the light entered her body, "That is better, anyway. I use both system and non system skills. I use the mastery my body has engraved with thousands of hours, even if fake and something that I got from exchanging something else, the mastery my body has is real."

"So... what you are saying is that I need to...both complement my swordsmanship with skills while not being bound by the same skills?" Rena was confused, was Amelia telling her to use or to not use skills?

"Exactly," Amelia nodded, "As such, these three aren't really needed."

Amelia then showcased the skills that she had said before, [Armor Penetration], [Power Slash] and [Fluid Movement].

"Armor Penetration I showcased that the damage is negligible, [Power Slash]... It's really a trap skill, you can achieve the same with merely focusing some mana into your skill." Amelia said, raising a pen and infusing it with mana, the effect was weirdly similar to the one that showed whenever she used the same skill. "As for the other ones..."

"Fluid movement and shift?" Rena asked, these where the next two skills on her list after all.

"Well, [Fluid Movement] is a good skill in theory, but like the others, it is kind of like a trap or an intermediary skill; it is meant as a stopgap more than anything." Amelia said showing a blue screen, one that split in two, the two showed the same woman (Amelia) dancing across a stage, "The left is me using fully the skill and the right is me not using the skill, as an example I was using [Paradigm Shift - Dancer] for these videos."

Both images showcased a great range of movement, but if anything, the right one was moving better; the left, while moving fluidly, seemed to fall into a preset movement that made her predictable.

"Do you see the issue?" Amelia asked.

"While being fluid in movements, they are predictable." Rena said sighing, "I can see the issue, the skill should help with fluidly moving from one point to the next, but if the movements are preset then there is a risk of being predictable, and in combat... that is dangerous."

"Precisely," Amelia said nodding, "So we remove them, [Shift] on the other hand... I would advise to move it to General skills if anything, nothing wrong with you having it, but you don't need it in a main skill slot."

That seemed like a fair assessment, but was that even possible?

"I thought [Shift] was a job skill?" Rena said confused, as far as she was aware it was like that, since it was integral to most people's job, granted it was possible to achieve it by spell skills or magical circles... but that was counterintuitive, if one needed to use it on the sly, then it was better to have it as a skill.

"Usually no, it isn't." Amelia said nodding, "But most people don't have me as a teacher."

The woman then pulled something from thin air, it looked like a small crystal shard, "This is [Skill Database], and from there we get... [Shift], ready to use and to infuse in a general skill slot."

That was... something else. Rena took the skill, and between her Instincts and her system screen, she understood what was needed of her, so she acted. And sure enough, she felt the prompt from the system asking if she wanted to learn a new skill.

So she followed suit and soon enough there it was, the new shift skill in a general slot skill. It felt... weird, she knew the skill worked more or less the same, by what she was getting from the data, it should work worse. But thanks to her connection to Elizabeth, the change was negligible.

"Now, I can help you to move the last skill to a general slot, if you really want it." Amelia started speaking, and before Rena could say anything, she quickly added, "I just want you to know, that this type of skill... Is usually only useful for night workers, since like the others, it moves your body for yourself, it is optimized to give the illusion of care, but... at the end of the day, do you want your lover to be pleased by automatic mechanical movements? Or by your own hands?"

That... That was quite a way of seeing things, "I'll remove it myself," Rena said as she started removing skills, one by one. It felt kind of good to not have any weight on her Soul. It would not last of course, since she would need to put things there.

But it was nice.

She would love Elizabeth and Rossaline with her own hands, and she would learn to do it by their side.

"Thank you, for everything." Rena said bowing to Amelia, "But it is getting kind of late, so I would like to return to wait for Elizabeth to come back and go to sleep, also I need to speak with both, Rossie and Eli about what do they think would be best for me."

"The best path forward is the one you pick." Amelia said sternly.

"I know, but I still want their opinion, they know me best in some regard, they had been saying some of the same things you did today, so their opinion would be useful."

"Fine," Amelia said waving Rena away, "Use the button on the wall over there, it will teleport you away, also use this to return tomorrow morning."

Amelia threw Rena a bracelet, it held the emblem of a crow on it, "It will get you here, now go away, I need to log some results from today training."

And with that done, Rena walked to the wall and pushed the button. As promised she arrived to the same apartment they had been, Rossie wasn't anywhere to be seen, nor Eli.

"Heh, I was the first." Rena said smiling to herself, she sat happily in a sofa and started to think about all the things she would tell her lovers, surely they would be surprised when they found out that she had discarded most of her skills away.

Rossie and Eli had been asking her to discard the [Bed Technique] after all, but Rena hadn't seen it like Amelia put it, it was true, whenever she used it, while Rossie would moan, she Rena herself felt no pleasure or anything from it. Also, Rossie sometimes ended up grumpy afterward.

Rena hadn't thought why that was, but looking back on it, perhaps Rossie knew whenever she used it? It was a good thing that she hadn't used it on Eli yet.

Now... when would Rossie and Eli come back?

Perhaps... Perhaps Rena could prepare dinner?

"Yes, I'll prepare dinner while waiting." Rena said walking towards the small kitchen they had here. She would do her best and prepare Rossie and Eli's favorite dish while waiting. "Heheheheh, they will be so surprised."

Rena couldn't help but smile at the idea of Eli walking in to a warm dinner ready for her. It would be perfect.