Nightwalker (Shadowblade): The user can manipulate the level of grip their feet have on a surface, allowing them to glide across any floor, as well as stand fast against great force.

Rank: 19

Cost: Variable, depending upon usage. Maximum cost=8 stamina per second.

Effect: User can manipulate the grip of their feet against the floor at will. Maximum grip force=12 stone.

Rank 19. It was a frustrating number to Maiz. Nightwalker had become so useful, and he frankly thought he used it the best of his physical skills with the possible exception of Fast Feet. But while that skill was now pushing at the bounds of Apprentice, he still hadn’t broken Novice with Nightwalker. There was something, something important, that he simply didn’t understand about the skill. The short sheet in the Library from which he had learned the skill didn’t contain any useful information either, so he would be forced to simply figure out how to advance the skill.

“Over here, if you please.” The gray haired Adept--the division commander--spoke in a polite tone, but his voice still projected incredibly well, considering they were in the open desert. Maiz didn’t know if it was the heat of the sun, or an effect of the sand, but sound always felt muted in the desert, almost dead. Even this place, which was just next to an open-air Dungeon from the Path, was the same way, though Maiz knew that the hole in the ground a few dozen meters away would lead into a natural catacomb infested with elemental monsters.

As the Adept continued shifting people about, moving surprisingly efficiently considering that he was corralling nearly a hundred people at once, Maiz considered his other abilities. Of the ones he’d decided to keep in use, he was fairly happy with his progression. Certainly, he’d have liked to be higher in his Spellsword skills, but he was still progressing quite well towards the end of the Apprentice ranks. From what he knew, the Journeyman stage’s progression was based on adding variations to his abilities--that was something he looked forward to, and he wasn’t very worried about getting there. In fact, there were only a few abilities which he’d deemed useful that had gotten left behind in his training.

The first was Minor Suggestion. There wasn’t much of a way to train the spell without using it on people at this point, and he wasn’t prepared to do that just yet. The opportunity would rise in time, he was sure.

"Yes, yes, there. Now this, group, stand in ranks four wide and three dee please. Be quick!"

Maiz wiped away a drop of sweat that had collected on his forehead, grimacing. Of all of the problems he associated with the pen desert, sweat was among the worst. The sand that drifted about in the wind, forming lazy swirls over the dunes, would stick to his skin now, and the grit would make him feel like there were insects crawling across his skin. Wonderful.

The other spells which had been left behind were his divination abilities--Thousand Eyes, Farsight, and Wayfinding. Maiz was convinced that the person who’d left the information for Thousand Eyes had either left something out intentionally, or the spell was simply designed for the Intelligence of an Adept, and he couldn’t handle the stress. As far as he could tell, the spell was completely useless to him as it was, and he wasn’t going to be trying it again anytime soon. Farsight was a Diviner spell which let him view a target from afar, provided he had an object deeply connected to them, such as their blood. It was extraordinarily limited--it didn’t let him see the target’s surroundings, only them, and only for a short amount of time--but spells like those were so rare that it was still a valuable ability. Wayfinding was a simple spell, also from the Diviner title, which let him know the direction he had to travel to reach a place he’d already been. It was trivial, yes, but he never again wanted to be stranded like he’d been when he was teleported into the Waste.

In all, he didn’t think there was much he could afford to do at the moment to progress either Farsight or Wayfinding, and as the commander came over to move his group, he put them out of his mind. The gray haired man directed his squad and the others around them to spread out and back away from the other half of the division. Once they had done so, he walked walked across the sand, turning to survey them.

“Very good! We will be performing a mock raiding exercise, in preparation for our action in a few day’s time. This is primarily meant for our younger participants to understand the basics. All of the complex maneuvers will be performed by more experienced combatants, who will not be making mistakes.”

The man’s words carried a not-so-subtle threat, but none of the assembled combatants appeared afraid. Actually, they seemed remarkably professional. He himself, as well as Hugan and Lila beside him, had fallen into the habits enforced back at the training ground--he stood at strict attention, keeping his eyes trained on the commander--but the other Warrior Monks were doing just as well, standing with their hands clasped behind their backs, backs rigid, eyes focused. Ziya was with the other Clerics, who were the furthest away by far for this assignment.

“Now then, the first group,” he gestured at the massed group opposite Maiz’s own, “will act as the ‘army.’ The other will be the raiders. Senior squad leaders in the raiding party, please bring your squads to the forefront to practice baiting maneuvers. Junior squads, you will move further back, and act as reinforcements for the retreating squads at the forefront. Now, make sure--”

The man continued in impressive detail, focusing mainly on the idea that they should attempt to hit the enemies giving chase from the flanks or rear--they had to be able to recognize when the senior squads, who would essentially be luring the army away from their encampment, were in true need of help, and when they could afford to wait for a better striking opportunity. Maiz was somewhat relieved he didn’t have to do any truly complicated maneuvers himself, but he found the discussion interesting. At Lila’s direction, they moved behind a dune several dozen meters away from the ‘army.’

“Begin!”

The half dozen or so ‘raider’ squads moving in among the other group, who had all taken a seated position, eyes closed. Each of them landed blows on enemies towards the edges of the group, removing them from the fight with minimal fuss, but the affected combatants still cried out theatrically. From there, the fighting truly began, and Maiz was impressed with the level of enforced realism on display. The Monks were all sparring in truth, and more than a few raiders fell to blows from the stronger members of the ‘army.’ As the raiders began to draw their targets outwards, in some places they managed to section off small parties of fighters and pull them away from the main group, but in others, the ‘soldiers’ disengaged or retreated as the fighting moved further out.

Maiz had never been in a battle of this sort, and he suspected it would be impossible to perfectly replicate the chaos of a true raid on an enemy encampment, but this seemed a fairly good approximation. He looked down at Lla, who was crouched on the sand of the dune they were nestled behind, just peeking over the edge to see the combat.

“We do this sort of thing here at least a few times a season. Not always on this scale, but the older ones are always willing to teach stuff like this. When you get close to Adept, the Jin start letting you practice group combat in the higher level Dungeons, under supervision. Some of the Jin have gone and studied tactics too, and a lot of travellers are in some military or another,” Lila whispered to him. “Get down here, or we’ll get in trouble.”

Once Maiz joined the others in the shade of dune, Lila looked around at them--Hugan in his armor, Maiz, and Juya in their tunics. Maiz had gotten some questions from Adrian and Juya about whether he wouldn’t like armor, but he had argued that, without a specialized ability, armor was only marginally useful to him, and he did better dodging in any case. Since he still looked like a strong breeze could send him flying, no one had questioned the assertion.

“Okay, we have to treat this like another Dungeon raid, but we have to stay aware of our surroundings. Hugan, you need to be guarding our backs all the time. If we get an injury, you’re in charge of protecting them until one of the transport squads gets them to the Clerics.”

When the time came, they jumped out from behind their dune and charged out to attack a small group of ‘soldiers’ chasing a pair of older Warrior Monks. Maiz didn’t have much of an issue with the fighting--he simply picked out a tall female Monk with a staff and began aiming swings at her. It was only slightly more chaotic than usual because he had to worry about being attacked from behind, but combat with Warrior Monks was fluid enough that he didn’t have to worry too much about a surprise hit.

No, the real issue was that he just wasn’t able to keep up with his opponents. As he ducked and swirled around an opponent’s staff, he became steadily more and more fatigued, Fast Feet draining him quickly against the enemy’s high Dexterity. He aimed a few swings at the tall woman he was fighting, but she dodged them with ease. If he could have used Blood Paralysis, or even Flaming Strike, he would have been able to finish her off easily and move on to the next opponent, but he was hamstrung by the fact that this was a training exercise. The feeling became strangely literal, as the woman’s Perfect Strikes finally left him unable to move, and he had to lie and listen to the sounds of the fighting--mostly the dull thunks of strikes and a few grunts. Such fun.

“Woah, that was fast! Here, they’ve got you Maiz.”

Hugan’s voice barely registered before someone picked Maiz’s limp form

“There you go, good luck,” a young man in a green robe offered as white light suffused him. Maiz nodded his thanks, and resignedly went back to the training.

In all, it was a fairly pointless exercise as far as Maiz was concerned. He was somewhat pleased to realize that he would still end up in fairly small scale fighting, at least for the moment, but once he’d gotten past that, it really was almost exactly the same as fighting the invaders in a Dungeon.

The only difference was the openness of the surroundings--but with Hugan’s Shieldmate ready to give support and his fellow fighters all keeping the enemies occupied relatively well, that difference was minimized. When the exercise was switched, he learned that some of the more powerful squads would roam about to support the weaker ones who might face combatants beyond their rank. He only learned that fact incidentally--fighters near him happened to be quite powerful, and they brought a pair of enemy Adepts into the fight within minutes.

The most interesting thing however, was the commander’s words at the end of the exercise. Maiz wasn’t in much of a mood to listen, but the man’s words raised some interesting questions.

“Your squad leaders will brief you all on the more common titles we have observed within the army. However, I must stress to you all that there have been very high incidences of enchanted weaponry of various types found on the invaders. The effects are variable in the extreme, but none of them are much more powerful than the abilities of an average Journeyman.”

The man paused, looking… at Maiz. Or wait no, Lila was raising her hand next to him. They were at the front of the group, so they were close enough that the Adept simply nodded at her.

“Wouldn’t they be limited by the type of enchantment title use to create them? I thought that Enchanters could only create effects which manipulate the user’s mana or stamina, and--”

The Adept raised a hand, giving Lila a small smile. At that moment, a particularly powerful gust of wind blew by, and everyone closed their eyes at once to avoid the sand which flew up from the ground. Maiz absently cursed the infernal stuff in his mind, but he was focused on Lila’s question--it had been a good one.

When the dust cleared, the Adept looked directly at Lila, still oddly polite considering their difference in rank. “I hate to say, but we have no answers to that question. The fact is that there do not seem to be limits on the type of enchantments they have access to, though not every soldier has enchanted equipment. As to why, we do not know.”

Hm. That sounds like a challenge.