Outrage of the Ancients

Learning from Dietrich von Bern was an intimidating prospect.

With most of Mia’s teachers, they might have been far beyond her when she started, but she had swiftly learned from them, mastered the basics, and grown from there until she’d eventually hit the point of diminishing returns, where measurable progress only occurred over a period of months or years. Give it a decade, decade and a half maybe, and she’d be able to maybe not surpass the various people who’d taught her, but at the very least, she’d be able to give them a good fight and win occasionally.

With Dietrich, it was different. She could feel how much power was in his blows, and how much more he was holding back. It wasn’t just that she’d seen him hack apart a mountain in one hit and casually obliterate monsters that would have killed her and Tristan in seconds.

She was, quite literally, able to see the gulf between them. [Power Sense] barely worked on anyone else, but her teacher she could see clearly. Sense the overwhelming strength he wasn’t bringing to bear not just because this was training but because to him, the world might as well have been cardboard.

Dietrich’s sword bounced off hers, Balmung being one of the few weapons that could withstand Mimung. Yes, they were using magical weapons, because her [Training Safeguards] made even that safe. In fact, it was explicitly mentioned that as long as everyone involved in the training was fine with it, even legendary blades couldn’t do any damage.

Mia lunged while ducking low, trying to evade the ancient king’s follow-up attack, going after his leg. But he backstepped to avoid the attack, then moved in and lashed out with his boot, stopping it a bare centimeter from her nose before he dropped it back to the ground.

“That could have worked against a worse fighter. Don’t try that unless you really have to,” Dietrich announced while Mia got back into a proper stance. She really had overextended, and even if it had gotten her closer to landing a solid hit than anything else she’d tried, it had still failed.

Yet even as insane as the power gap was, her growth was even more ludicrous. She wasn’t just learning, she was also gaining magic, of which [Matchless Endurance], [Knowledge Sponge], and [Training Safeguards] were only the least.

She’d also gained the same [Arcane Core] that Tristan had, which would let her learn magic if she ever found someone who could teach her, and finally, she’d gained something called [Blank Sword Art] that Dietrich had figured was the basis for creating her own, well, Sword Art. A powerful active Skill based on what she was good at, presumably.

His was known as “Giantsplitter”, a single incredibly powerful attack meant to bisect powerful foes in a single strike, which he could unleash every ten minutes or so. And the origin of the name was obvious. After all, he’d hacked apart plenty of giants in his time.

What would hers be? And how the hell did she make that happen? It would be a complete game-changer when she managed it, but until then … it just hung there in her Skills list, practically taunting her.

“Can I try something?” she asked.

“What do you want to try?” Dietrich answered the question with another question.

“Can you just defend for the next round? I want to see if I can figure out how to get my [Sword Art] figured out.”

He shrugged, then nodded, once again drawing Mimung and settling into a combat stance she hadn’t seen him use yet. Something defensive, clearly.

Mia took a brief moment to try and remind her to focus on attacking now that she could afford to, and began to free Balmung from its sheath, when she saw Tristan march in.

Wearing a shredded t-shirt, and there were several long scratches running across his right shoulder, and she had no idea how much further it extended down his back.

“Are you okay?” she gasped, running past Dietrich who sighed and turned towards her brother.

“Giant eagle, I think I just need some disinfectant and something clean to cover the wound,” he sighed, gesturing at the injury she’d already spotted. Clearly, he didn’t think it was too big a deal. “The first aid kit is here, right?”

“Yep,” Mia said, as she hurried to fetch it. It was the one from their car, though it had been filled primarily with stuff meant to fix injuries when doing choreography.

The wounds turned out to be really shallow, but of course, Tristan wound up squirming and cursing as she cleaned them anyway.

“Did you try to hunt monsters on your own?” she finally asked once she was done.

“No,” he shook his head, sounding irritated. “I was outside to use the internet and poof, there it was. Ogier’s going out hunting, though.”

“So, the situation is being handled,” Dietrich stated, though it might have been a slight question too.

“Until the monsters come back. I was right, by the way, when there are no ancients around, the monsters go after big cities. The only reason for this many to be here is that they are after you.”

“I think we can move training outside,” Dietrich offered, throwing Mia a questioning look.

“Of course we can,” she nodded empathetically. Tristan could miss a literal bomb going off when he was deep in his research, or engrossed in a book, him being outside with things as they were was not safe.

“Come on, do you need me to carry you?” she asked Tristan and stuck her tongue out when he glared at her.

“You know, I have a combat Skill now. I can make shockwaves when I get insulted.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he grinned at her, which was immediately followed by a tiny wave of wind that could just as easily have come from someone a couple of meters away blowing out a candle. “I think someone needs to attack me to make something cool happen.”

Mia elbowed him in his uninjured side, and was rewarded with a slight but clearly magical pushback. He didn’t even move himself, it was all a Skill.

“Cool, but I don’t think that’ll save you from a monster,” she replied.

“It’ll hit harder when it needs to,” he said, to which Mia responded by waving her hand through his hair, or tried to, at least. A shockwave threw her hand off course.

“I think it hits harder based on how much you don’t like what’s happening,” she remarked. He hated it when she ruined his hair, and the response had made a pretty clear statement.

“Yep.”

“So, you’re invulnerable now?”

Tristan shook his head. “The harder it hits, the longer it takes before I can do it again.”

At least he was a little protected, even if it was much weaker than it had sounded.

Together, the three of them marched out of the mountain and took up position outside the door. Tristan found a nice rock to sit on, while Mia decided to pick up where she’d left off. Using an ancient king as a “punching bag”.

Mimung and Balmung practically flew from their sheaths and hammered together in a steady staccato, speeding up all the way, until the sound of metal on metal was like an entire hardware store was falling down a sinkhole.

Even with her being entirely free to focus on offense, she wasn’t getting anywhere.

By the time her sword was even halfway towards Dietrich’s body, his blade was already interposed. No matter what she tried, he was able to read her like an open book.

It didn’t matter, honestly. She’d known from the start that he was better, she could literally keep this up for the entire day thanks to [Matchless Endurance], and it felt like she was so close to figuring something out. So she kept going.

At some point, Ogier marched past, looking like he’d been rolling around in the dumpster behind a butcher’s shop. Tristan looked up at his phone at that and waved his hand, using that restoration Skill of his to clean the whole affair … only to yank his hand back with a yelp of disgust when a tennis ball-sized orb of grossness appeared where his hand had been a mere second before.

Oh, her little brother was adorable. It didn’t matter that their age gap was measured in minutes, he was still her little brother. Always willing to help, not always thinking things through quite to the end. Which was weird, considering how he overthought quite literally everything else. But also endearing.

But once that little distraction was over, they both went right back at it.

One of her strikes was deflected straight into the ground and carved straight through, the front third of the blade vanishing into the rock. Mia froze, staring at it.

“Do you want to try something else?” Dietrich asked her, not in the least annoyed with her. Somehow, she’d expected him to not be quite as okay with being used as a glorified training dummy. Not that she thought about him like that, but she would have understood if he begrudged her the current situation.

“Five more minutes, I think I’m close,” Mia finally replied after considering for a long moment.

“Five more minutes,” Dietrich agreed, raising his sword between them.

And they were right back at it. Some of her blows were stopped dead, others deflected, others still, the worst of the lot, deflected with such force that she had to regain her balance.

Until Mia’s sword was once again bounced into the rock … and continued, carving through the stone practically with ease, the supernaturally sharp blade aiming straight at the bottom of Dietrich’s shoe. He could still have blocked, Mimung was even sharper than her sword and would have had no trouble punching through the ground to stop her attack before it could hit, but for once, she’d caught him by surprise.

In a burst of motion, he was suddenly a meter further back, with the blade exploding from the ground and almost reaching chest height before Mia managed to arrest its momentum.

“Not bad,” Dietrich admitted. “But that’s not something you should try if you have another choice. Even if your sword can cut stone, you can’t move it to the side in that situation.”

“But I managed to get you to use a Skill,” Mia grinned. His handicap and her ability to attack with impunity be damned, she’d managed to get him to use a fraction of his true power. That was an achievement.

[Legend’s Apprentice Lv. 9 -> Legend’s Apprentice Lv. 10]

[Capstone Skill gained: Arsenal of the Soul]

And apparently, the System agreed. Now, what the actual fuck was a Capstone Skill?