The Eternal Assassin

"You're like an uncut gem… The potential to shine brightly is there, but it needs some work before it's ready to show itself," Moxy explained as they ate breakfast. Asher hadn't been surprised when Loratta had given him a small room and requested he start living within her strange bunker, but the morning visit from the battle-obsessed warrior with two bowls of porridge had been unexpected.

If it had been Loratta, he would have tried to come up with some sort of excuse to turn her away, but he honestly didn't mind Moxy's company. He hadn't been around her for long, but he could already tell that the woman was very straightforward and spoke her mind freely.

"You've got excellent skills and a good sense for battle, but it's rather evident you're lacking the most important part of being a good fighter," she continued, pointing her spoon at him. "You know what that is?"

"Killing intent?"

"Experience," she corrected, laughing at his answer. "No, you've certainly got killing intent alright. You barely hesitated when given the opportunity to take a free shot at Loratta, and don't think I couldn't sense that you were doing your best to kill me during our little bout yesterday either. Don't get me wrong, that's exactly what I want, and it certainly made Loratta happy. But willingness to kill is far from the most important thing a fighter needs. Tell me, how long have you been in the honing stage?"

Asher blinked at the fighter, unsure if he'd heard her correctly. "Sorry, the what stage?"

"Stage of Honing?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow at his blank face. "Oh boy, we've got some work to do. Your skills, how long since you unlocked all fifteen of your skills? How many are within the second tier?"

Asher continued staring at Moxy, realizing immediately that for some reason she thought he'd unlocked all of his skills already. The question now was whether to be honest and admit he hadn't yet reached this strange 'Stage of Honing' she'd mentioned, or try and fake it.

After a few seconds of hesitation, he sighed, shaking his head. He was a terrible liar, and in the worst case scenario Loratta may have issued some sort of command that if he was caught lying to her or her elites, Rosh would receive more punishment. He hadn't been allowed to see the man after Moxy had healed him, but he'd been told Rosh was being held in a secure room somewhere within the facility.

Just one more obstacle he needed to overcome when he killed Loratta and rescued his friend.

"I actually still have two skills left to unlock," he admitted, earning a look of surprise from Moxy. "And one of my skills is at level twenty, but I haven't evolved it to the second tier."

"And you can fight like that? While still in the Stage of Discovery?" Moxy barked out a laugh, slapping her knee and beaming at him. "Oh realms, I feel like a starving man that's just gotten his hands on a turkey dinner!"

Asher remained silent, watching Moxy laugh herself out. He briefly contemplated dismissing his Eternal Mark on Brian and trying to subtly place one on her instead, but thought better of it when he realized even as she laughed, she never truly let her guard down. Placing one of his marks required him to make firm contact against something with his hand for an entire second, and he had no doubt if he tried something like that she'd snap his fingers like twigs. He'd learned from his study of elements and skills within the library that there were quite a number of dangerous and deadly skills that had similar activation requirements, so allowing someone to place their hand on you for more than a split second was considered a sign of trust. Because of that, handshakes weren't nearly as commonplace in this world as they had been back on Earth, either.

After a few seconds, the woman wiped away a tear and sighed, taking in his expression. "You don't know much about anything, do you?"

"Nope. I was in a small border village before coming to the city," he explained, sticking with his already established excuse that was technically true.

"Yeah, I've met plenty like you before," she nodded. Clearing her throat, Moxy put her empty bowl aside, giving him an uncharacteristically serious look.

"Okay, first things first. Make sure you don't evolve any of your skills until you've unlocked the full fifteen, understand? Don't ask me why, I'd be lying if I said I understood, but it's generally agreed upon that skill evolutions tend to grant weaker secondary effects if they're done while you still have locked skill slots for your elements. Something about messing with your potential or whatever.

"On that same note, don't start getting frustrated when your skill leveling slows down after evolution," she warned. "Skills in the first tier level up remarkably quickly, especially in life and death situations, but that slows down quite a bit after hitting tier two. If I had a shard for every person who came up to me quietly asking if something was wrong with them after evolving a skill…"

She grunted, shaking off her annoyance after a moment.

"Regardless, that's my advice to you. I'm a bit more of a 'hands on' teacher, so don't be expecting any sort of book learning from me. As soon as you're done eating, the two of us will hit the arena again and get in another bout. If you honestly only have a single skill sitting at level twenty, we've got a lot of work ahead of us."

"Why are you doing all this?" Asher couldn't help but ask. "You know I'm trying to kill you and Loratta… I'm only here because I'm being extorted. Not to sound overly confident, but isn't training me to be a better fighter a bit dangerous?"

"I sure hope so," Moxy laughed. "Regardless of why you're here, you're one of Loratta's tools now, and she wants you to be as deadly to those who dare stand in her way as you were to her own elites. As for myself? I just want to have a strong sparring partner! If you get strong enough to actually kill me, don't feel bad. It would only mean I hadn't trained enough after all."

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"You have a very strange way of looking at life," Asher pointed out.

"Eh, maybe," Moxy shrugged. "Now hurry up and finish eating so we can get back to trying to kill each other."

"You move well, but you're focusing too much on reacting!" Moxy called out in between firing out bullets of air strong enough to rip his flesh from his bones. "The biggest difference between fighting a monster and fighting a person is that a person thinks ahead! You need to spend more time trying to predict what your opponent will do, which will allow you to spend less of your time reacting, and possibly even use your opponent's attacks to your advantage!"

"How exactly do I use blasts of air I can barely dodge or see to my advantage?!" Asher called back, struggling to speak while both running and flickering in and out of the astral to dodge Moxy's deadly strikes. Anything he said while he was on the astral plane would land on deaf ears, after all.

"You really can't, which is why I'm such a dangerous opponent!" Moxy grinned, aiming her next few shots at his head as if to drive her point home. "But with so many different elements and skills out there, that will be the case more often than not. Which means the next thing to focus on is making sure your reactions serve a purpose beyond just saving your own skin!"

Thankfully, Moxy let up on her attacks for a moment, giving Asher a chance to pause and catch his breath as she continued.

"During our fight yesterday, when you finally revealed that you can use that strange vanishing skill of yours for longer than a split second to try and attack me from behind, do you remember my reaction?"

"Yeah, you used a skill to blast yourself into the air, dodging my attack completely," he said, wincing at the memory of being sent tumbling across the hard stone ground. "The force of the blast sent me flying."

"Exactly! You surprised me, and for the first time during our fight I had to react to your attack instead of focusing on my own. But rather than just dodge your attack, I used my skills and experience to transform my split second reaction into my own attack. That's a clear indicator of an experienced fighter."

"Okay… So basically, instead of focusing on just dodging your barrage of air punches, I should be moving toward my own attack?"

"Precisely," Moxy nodded as she pointed at his chest. "You've got a little bit of reach with that other strange skill of yours, but unlike me, you're still primarily a close range fighter. That means your main priority in just about any fight you wind up in will be focusing on getting up close and personal with your opponent. Rather than just running and dodging a person's attacks, you need to make sure your reactions are bringing you closer to your opponent so you can strike."

"That makes sense…" Asher hesitated, wondering how many of his weaknesses he should actually reveal to the warrior. After a moment, he decided to go ahead and milk this opportunity for all it was worth. Other than the fact that her attacks might actually kill him if he slipped up, Moxy really was an excellent instructor. Not to mention she'd already seen him fail to kill Loratta once.

"So what should I do when I run into someone I can't actually harm?" he asked cautiously, curious what answer he'd get. "You know, say Loratta orders me to kill a rival gang leader that can turn his body into mist or something."

"Or perhaps someone capable of turning their body into slime?" Moxy asked, raising an eyebrow. Thankfully, her smile made it clear she didn't mind what he was trying to do, and she began throwing more blasts of air for him to practice dodging. "In that situation, you do the same thing any seasoned warrior would do. Run the hell away. Some people, like Loratta and her Slime element, are just about immortal. If you haven't fought them before, slimes are a terrifying monster. They're immune to pretty much everything, and the only way to take them out is to destroy the small cores floating within them. Loratta's Slime Body skill doesn't have a core, which means there's pretty much zero chance of someone like you or I actually killing her."

Seeing that he'd already gotten fairly good at timing his flickers to dodge her attacks, Moxy finally stopped her flurry of ranged punches that she was able to maintain even while lecturing. Cupping her hands together like she was forming a snowball, she adjusted her stance as if she was a major league pitcher. Taking careful aim, she hurled the invisible ball of compressed air toward him.

Asher didn't know what was coming, so as the ball soared toward his feet he slipped into the astral and stayed there rather than flicker through the attack, deciding to play it safe. But to his horror, the compact ball of air didn't detonate upon landing. Instead, it came to a dead stop right in front of his feet, spinning like a top on the ground.

That's not good… Wishing not for the first time that he could use Distortion while in the astral realm, Asher ran, trying to put as much distance between himself and the sphere before his skill ended. He only made it about a dozen feet before his muscles gave out and he was forced to return to the material realm.

Which was exactly when Moxy chose to finally detonate her skill.

The explosion of compressed air behind him was powerful enough to lift him off his feet entirely, forcing him to drop his daggers as he was sent flying across the room before landing hard on his arm. After hearing the distinct crunch of snapping bone, Asher tumbled for a few more seconds, eventually coming to a complete stop.

Complete Resilience - Lvl 13

Not complete enough, you stupid skill, Asher thought, groaning at the shooting pain throughout his body. He'd thought it was just his arm at first, but he was pretty certain either the explosion or the rough landing had snapped more than a few of his ribs as well.

Hearing footsteps approach, he opened his eyes to see Moxy standing over him, grinning down at his crumpled form.

"Loratta will pick her targets for you pretty carefully, so you'll have quite a lot of downtime while you're waiting for your assignments. Technically, you're free to do whatever you want during that time, but based on the fire I see in your eyes even while you're lying there broken like that, I imagine you'll be spending most of that time in here, training with me."

Returning the warrior's grin, Asher slowly pushed himself to his feet, spitting out a mouthful of blood that would have gravely concerned him before earning his Eternal Regeneration skill. One of his broken ribs must have punctured a lung, which would explain the slight wheeze his breathing had taken on. Wiping his bloody lips on the back of his hand, he pulled out a new dagger from his bandolier with his still functional hand, letting his broken arm hang limp from his side as he dropped to a readied stance.

Her smile widening to the point that she almost looked deranged, Moxy raised her own guard, motioning for him to come at her.

As the two of them clashed once more, for the briefest of moments, Asher forgot all about his plan to rescue Rosh and kill Loratta inside her own compound. His fight with Moxy required his full attention, or he was liable to receive a fresh set of injuries from the battle maniac.

Flickering past bullets of air as his dagger continued to be dodged or deflected by those strange, living furs, Asher lost himself in the glory of combat.

It was only after a few minutes that he realized her wild, maniacal grin was mirrored on his own face as the two of them fought for their lives with everything they had.