It proved to be a good idea to watch the recruits spar; there were some interesting results. Even though I wasn’t aware I held any biases, my surprise by some of the results made it apparent to me that I did.

Alyssa was a lady that looked no older than twenty years of age. She had a slender physique and was only about 5’8 tall. While her stature, in particular, might've informed my opinion of her physical abilities, it was a generally accepted thought that females were physically weaker than males.

The female warriors, few as they were, all tried different things to overcome that gap in physical ability. Typically, they honed their techniques to near perfection to keep up. Even then they still struggled, after all, the males also always looked to improve their techniques.

Perhaps Alyssa's background in magic was what drove her to fight the way she did, but she did something novel, something I’d never seen before. She used mana to strengthen herself.

Her opponent wasn’t the most domineering figure among the recruits, but next to Alyssa he looked big, so I'd expected a fairly boring fight. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did Alyssa keep up with him in terms of speed and strength, but she also dominated using those.

She circulated mana throughout her body, using it to strengthen her muscles and bones. It made her faster and stronger, much like she was under the effects of buffing magic. However, like buffing magic, the toll it took on her body was debilitating.

She won the fight handily, but by the end, she looked more battered than her opponent. I understood why she fought using this method, but, she wouldn’t be useful in battles that lasted long without a mage around to continuously heal her.

Rosalia and Alyssa had very similar physiques, except Rosalia's shoulders were broader and she was more busty. Rosalia was a little luckier with the opponent she drew. Her opponent was Atif who was tall, but he had a slender physique. Him being an archer also meant he didn’t try to dominate in the spar using strength.

Atif fought using a wooden dagger, and he fought using hit and run tactics. He waited, baited his opponent, attacked, and immediately put some distance between himself and his opponent. It worked well to prevent him from taking too much damage, but he couldn’t finish his opponent quickly enough.

Rosalia had decent endurance, more so than most people. While she was slower than Atif, she made up for it in skill. What was interesting about her was she used mana to replenish her stamina and heal herself bit by bit, making it so long drawn out battles was something she excelled at.

The fight ended with Rosalia emerging victorious. Atif looked incredibly displeased that he lost, insisting the result would’ve been very different if he had used his bow.

“Atif, in battle the circumstances will not always be ideal. You must learn to fight with the dagger just as well as you do with a bow,” Aurel said to him.

I turned to look at Aurel, a feeling of sadness creeping up on me. His words were reminiscent of the words Titus used to say to us when we were young. It was back when we were reluctant to learn to use weapons other than the sword.

“The circumstances of a battle varies depending on many factors, the ones that can adapt better has a better chance of winning. One simple ability that will enable you to adapt well is to be able to fight with a hammer just as well as you can with a sword,” Titus had said to us with a wry smile. Petulant as we were at the time, it only seemed like he was punishing us by giving us more chores, and dishing out abuse in the form of training.

There was a faraway look in Aurel's eyes. He had a very similar wry smile to the one Titus had when he'd said those words to us. Sometimes, I forgot that my friend still missed his father, especially in recent times, as strange things started happening to me. I'd become preoccupied with my own troubles.

I decided tonight I would drink myself to stupor beside Aurel, but only after thoroughly beating him for the stunt he pulled on me.

Aurel's words did little to improve Atif's mood, but I wasn’t too concerned with that. It was good that Atif hated losing, that would only motivate him to try and be better I thought to myself.

I started to think about the ways Rosalia and Alyssa used mana, perhaps there was some knowledge I could glean from their application of mana. As I watched the sparring sessions between the recruits, I ran simulations in my head.

I particularly liked Rosalia's application of mana. I decided that I would make time to ask them questions on how they came to learn to use mana in the way they did. Perhaps, I could even incorporate it into the training of the recruits. Warriors who weren’t mages, but could still channel mana internally to manifest various effects within the body. Imagining warriors like those I got excited again.

There was the matter of the enchanted weapons, the changes to my body, and also now the possibility to train warriors in a new way. All these things excited me to no end, not least of all because they were all related to magic in different ways.

Once the sparring sessions between the recruits ended it was mine and Aurel's turn. The pensive look he had earlier had totally vanished, it was now replaced by a smug look of confidence. The conceited grin on his face irked me to no end.

“Finally, I get to move my body,” Aurel said, stretching out his limbs to limber himself up.

Once the signal to start was given, Aurel was on the move. This time, I decided to be more defensive. It occurred to me that if I attacked the fight would be over before I could gather any data, so I wanted the fight to last a little longer.

While I’d always been faster than Aurel, his movements had never appeared as slow and sluggish as they did now. It felt like an eternity passed between when he swung his wooden sword and when it connected with mine. It didn’t take much effort to dodge his swings after I swatted away his first strike with my wooden sword.

It felt like I was barely moving, but Aurel was struggling to keep up. He became more desperate as the sparring session wore on, the smug look on his face replaced by a frown, his eyes looked mad, yet they were focused on me.

I let Aurel dictate the tempo. I dodged most of his swings, but there were times when I wanted to confirm my own strength and chose to block instead of dodge. His blows that used to feel very heavy before felt lighter than feathers now. Even though he was the one attacking he looked to be under more pressure.

Since I was barely exerting myself, I was as dry as a desert while Aurel was drenched in sweat. His breathing became labored, but he didn’t relent. The more desperate he became the faster his swings became, and the more strength he exerted. That mad look in his eyes seemed to become more intense.

It was all for naught though, for even as I noticed that his attacks became sharper, it was only barely perceptible to me. He was still too slow and his strikes were still too light.

I decided to end the fight and picked my time to strike. Using what I’d learned from the leader, I side-stepped an overhead swing from Aurel and punched him in his sides with my left hand.

I did my best to control my strength, but I still felt his ribs creak. I was surprised to see Aurel ignored the damage he took and swing vertically at my head instead. I ducked and struck him in the abdomen. He leaned forward and stepped back as I got up and kicked him in his temple. The spar ended with Aurel going unconscious.

We'd sparred many times before but not once had our sparring sessions ended in such a decisive victory for either him or me. Having noticed the increase in my physical abilities before, I was certain I could beat him, but the gap in our abilities was wider than I'd imagined.

My surrounding grew eerily quiet. I looked around only to see the recruits looking at me in awe. The ones that had arrived early simply had wry smiles on their faces, but the others looked awestruck.

Suddenly, it became noisy again. As if they all suddenly remembered how to speak, they started to murmur amongst themselves.

“Alright!” I shouted to quiet the crowd, “that'll be all for today,” I said once the recruits grew quiet and organized themselves in neat rows in front of me.

“Each of you will take a mana crystal with you; practice mana channeling on your own. We'll meet here again tomorrow at the same time. Don’t be late,” I added and then dismissed them.

I looked down at Aurel who was still lying on the ground unconscious. Even though he didn’t show it, I was aware I’d injured him during the spar. I decided to carry him to the infirmary to get healed.

Aurel woke up with a start after getting healed. He looked carefully at his surrounding before training his stare at me. He examined me closely before carefully asking, “You, what was that earlier?”

“Whatever do you mean?” I asked, feigning ignorance. I made no effort to hide the mockery in my voice.

“Don’t lie to me!” Aurel exclaimed, “you cheated, didn’t you? There was a mage hiding somewhere that cast buffing magic on you, wasn’t there?”

I couldn’t help it, I burst into laughter. Aurel was making a hilarious face, he looked genuinely convinced that he was right, and he was only asking me to get these questions to get confirmation.

“Why are you laughing?!” he asked, a bit of anger and frustration making the pitch of his voice go up a few octaves.

“Because it is funny,” I said once I’d managed to stop laughing.

“It is not funny. You cheated, admit it,” Aurel said, his eyes burning in anger now.

“Aurel, you lost fair and square.”

“No way, there is absolutely no way I lost that badly unless you cheated,” he said, still determined and sure he was right.

“Maybe it's all the drinking you've been doing. It has made you sloppy,” I teased, a sly grin on my face.

“You, be honest with me, someone must've cast buffing magic on you. It's no use denying it, it's not like you'll be punished or anything. But I refuse to count this loss as a loss,” he replied, lying back down and staring at the ceiling.

I pondered a bit about whether to tell him all that had been happening to me or not. Aurel, like my sister, was one of the very few people I could confidently confide in. He was a willing partner in all my mischief, in fact, over the years we'd gotten into all sorts of trouble.

I thought about it but decided to wait. There wasn’t really much he could do now, and I didn’t know what was happening to me. I decided to tell Aurel about it later once I knew more. For now, I decided to let him protect his pride by thinking I beat him only because I cheated.

Knowing Aurel though, he won’t let this loss go. I had no doubt in my mind he would look for opportunities to ask me to spar again. I snickered a little thinking about what excuses he'd come up with after losing badly again.

It was still noon. I'd finished training the recruits for today and I had a bit of free time on my hands. There was a lot I needed to learn, and there was no better place to go to when one had scholarly queries than the library.

I'd spent a lot of time there reading, but at the time I was very focused on learning about the various gods and the myths surrounding them. This time, I needed to learn about attribute magic more in-depth.

I'd tried studying it before, but I gave up early once I realized I tired myself out casting a single simple magic. I wasn’t certain, but I thought there was a wealth of knowledge hidden in the library somewhere that I was missing.

“Aurel, rest up. Tonight, you and I will drink ourselves to death. But, for now, I need to go to the library,” I said to Aurel as I got up to leave.

He didn’t reply, he simply waved me off. He looked to still be displeased with me. I smiled as I left. I was very pleased with myself, this should serve as sufficient payback for him making a fool of me in front of the recruits.

As I made my way to the library, I ran through the things I needed to learn. First, I needed to learn more about runic magic, but that was because I thought maybe I could get some inspiration and find solutions to the problem currently plaguing father.

Second, I needed to learn more about the other kinds of attribute magic. So far, I only knew of runic magic and trait bestowal magic. I was looking forward to learning what other kinds of attribute magic there were and the ways they could be useful to me.