“I’m not sure I call torture interesting,” Damien wheezed. He flopped over to look up at the sky. The sun had long since risen, and was now getting close to its zenith. He dreaded to think how long he’d been training.

Henry had been strangely silent. Damien reached out just enough to brush his mental energy across the void creature’s presence – just to make sure he hadn’t somehow run off somewhere.

He was certainly there – Henry just didn’t seem to be in a talking mood. Damien was too tired to care, so he didn’t bother his companion further.

“I need to take a shower,” Damien said.

“For the healing water?” Sylph guessed, stepping into his field of view with a small grin.

“Yes,” Damien grumbled. “I am pain incarnate.”

“Delph showed me this forest. He said that the showers get a lot of their water from this lake, and that I could use to recover from training.”

Damien didn’t need to be told twice. He forced himself upright and staggered over to the edge of the lake. He dipped a hand into the clear water and let out a relieved sigh as it instantly started to draw out the soreness from within his muscles.

He removed his coat and slid into the water, soaking his clothes in the process. Damien basked in the lake for several minutes, the pain leaving his expression as his body started to heal.

Once his body was responding to him again, Damien climbed back out of the lake. He sat down next to his cloak while he waited for his clothes to dry off.

“You already done?” Sylph asked.

“I’m not done. I’m just training something else,” Damien replied, drawing on the Ether surrounding them. He channeled the energy into his core, enjoying the buzzing sensation it filled him.

Damien pressed two motes of Ether together and sent them down his arm, visualizing a gravity sphere. The spell spun to life in his palm and he tossed it into the air above the lake.

It detonated as it hit the water, sending a rather large wave rippling out through the water. The wave splashed against the edge of the lake, sending droplets of water everywhere.

“Showoff,” Sylph said, half-jokingly. “Not all of us can do flashy stuff like that.”

“Yeah, but I can’t turn invisible or make Delph think I’m actually going to kill him,” Damien said. “The flashy magic isn’t going to help me if I still lose the fights, and we need to do well in the ranking battles.”

“That’s right,” Sylph said, grimacing as she remembered Delph’s words. “If we aren’t rated highly, we won’t be able to go on any of the more dangerous quests, which means we’ll be earning peanuts.”

“Which means I need to practice more than my physical abilities in the next two weeks,” Damien said, setting his brow. “We both do, if we want to have a chance of winning. I don’t know how they’ll do the fights, but if they’re one after the other…”

“I’m doomed,” Sylph finished with a frown.

“Don’t talk like that,” Damien said, crossing his arms. “You were the only one that actually managed to beat Delph at his challenge. Now that you’ve, ah, had that extra training, your core is larger. Even a little more Ether should be a big difference, right?”

“That’s true,” Sylph said. “I can’t imagine there will be more than twenty or so rounds. If I end each fight with just a few spells, I have a chance.”

“Can you do that?”

“For some people, probably,” Sylph said after a few moments of thought. She gave Damien a slight smirk. “Like you. But if I got farther into the rankings, people like Mark would make it difficult. I don’t think I’d place in the top ranks.”

“Like me, for now,” Damien corrected. “And it sounds like we have a plan. You need to try to figure out how much more Ether you can use in the most efficient ways possible, and I need to figure out how to fling enough spells to take the other students out before they can get to me.”

Damien and Sylph got back to work. They trained through most of the day, heading back just in time to argue that it was still technically lunchtime so that Sylph could make Delph pay for her food.

She split it with Damien, but declined tasting half of Damien’s free meal. Once they’d finished eating, the two of them returned to their cave in the mountain. Damien carved a new hallway into the back of the training room, expanding it deeper into the mountain before starting on a new room.

While he worked, Sylph carefully drew in Ether and expended it, making sure not to accidentally cause a repeat of the previous night.

They headed to bed a short while later. The next two weeks fell into something of a routine. On most days, Delph left a slip of paper with instructions for where they should report for their special training or normal class.

Delph seemed to enjoy alternating between the forest and the arena, although he only ever held the private sessions in the forest.

The professor occasionally instructed that only Sylph or Damien were to show up in extra sessions throughout the day, but most of their training was together. Delph took on the form of a wendigo several other times.

It quickly became apparent that the man was still holding back. Every time that Damien or Sylph felt even the slightest modicum of improvement, Delph grew faster and stronger.

During their individual sessions, the man put Damien through all sorts of scenarios, forcing the boy to summon multiple spheres at once, cast them in rapid succession, and a number of other stressful tasks. Henry offered pointers whenever he could, partially because his voice occasionally distracted Damien, causing him to drop his spell. The companion found this incredibly amusing.

When Damien wasn’t training with Delph, Sylph, or both of them, he expanded the training room. He added an entire extra area behind it where he could practice his gravity spheres without pulling his roommate around like a ragdoll, although the magic still ended up sucking most of the air out of the small space.

At Henry’s recommendation, Damien focused on increasing his abilities with the enlarge and the gravity sphere spells rather than adding new ones to his repertoire. Between the two, Damien was much more partial to the gravity spheres, and Henry seemed to get great joy out of watching Damien shatter the walls.