I did not forget. I was just having a hard time finding time to write recently, is all. The next few chapters will be a bit sporadic as well, until I can get through the festival season in one piece. No, seriously, Kansas is dead serious about their festivals....on a side note~ I'm going to the Japanfest in Kansas City this Saturday~ *flowers flowers* I can hardly wait!

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Night fell quickly, like a black velvet curtain. The clouds covered the moon, making visibility no more than three feet ahead of a person with a torch. But Briar didn’t need a torch.

As she had thought, the bars keeping people from using the river to get out of were rusted and easy to break. Of course, the guards wouldn’t notice it, once she deployed a sound barrier. Moreover, the reflection of the upper part of the bars on the water would lend the illusion that the bottom part was whole, thus creating a hidden way out. She cut them underneath the water using her martial spirit and a subtle application of Yin-Yang Riposte.

Leaving the city, she climbed part way down the mountain a bit. For normal people, walking down the Mountain on such a black night as this was asking to get lost, or seriously injured. But for Briar, with her mana vision, her path was illumined by the mana springing up in the trees, and the moss on the ground, the bugs flying around, and the small animals in the surrounding area. It was as if fairies had illumined the forest with a blue-green ambience.

Of course, this forest didn’t have fairies, the land of fantastic beasts was on a different continent, one that Briar planned to visit upon the slightest of opportunities. The rumored beastmen, elves, and dwarves also lived there side by side with the humans.

She had read in the seventh book of Hachi’s History of the World that the continent she was on had been discovered by a fleeing defeated navy from a former noble, who had died in battle. Unfortunately, the seventh book was the only one of its series that had escaped the great fire in the Great Library of Aldengur. Musing over this, Briar understood the situation completely.

It’s like how Australia was to England during the rise of the British Empire, which makes Master Thales the teacher of the art of the Boomerang. She had chuckled then, at the image of Master Thales holding up a boomerang.

Jokes aside, Briar finally discovered a crack in the side of the mountain. It was so small as to be nearly invisible to the naked eye, yet she had discovered it earlier whilst climbing the mountainside. Having steered the children away from it, the location was probably a safe one. The only one who would really know about it would be Old Man Arthur, and he was rather tight lipped about such things.

When seen at a certain angle, the crack was just large enough for someone Briar’s size to slip into, which she did. After following the crack along for a while, she found herself in a rather large cave. It was about the same general height and width as Madam Rothema’s house, baring the jagged edges of rock and all.

It’s just perfect for experimentation- I mean practice~, practice~. Briar thought to herelf as she began examining the cave.

The only problem was…she wasn’t alone. Turning her mana sight up towards the ceiling, she could see thousands upon thousands of Vampire Bats roosting. Their blood-red eyes turned in her direction as they trained their ears towards her. Briar’s already-smiling face grinned broadly, as she raised her right hand.

A white light shone out of the crack as [Group Heal] was invoked within the cave.

Many children awoke that night, shivering in horror at the collective scream of terror that rang out only once. The tale was passed on in later generations, after being embellished and added onto, as a popular ghost story.

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The bats gone, Briar collected the usable parts which had resisted destruction within [Group Heal]. Mainly bat wings and fangs, these could be sold to physicians and weapons engravers to enhance both medicines and weapons.

Then she power washed the Cave walls and floor with a high velocity form of [Water Spray] to rid the place of any residual filth. She dare not use a flame in this cave, as she could well run out of oxygen and die of asphyxiation.

There was only one month left until the competition began, something that the people in the city were hyping up for. Prices were beginning to rise higher in anticipation of the people that had already begun to pour into the city in preparation for the Ten Year Student Contest.

It was only a matter of time before a suburb of tents and hastily-cobbled together dwellings would spring up around the city. Then it would be twice as hard to leave the city. But the locals were used to it.

Rather, they welcomed it as they brought out ten year old wines and cheeses, preserved fruits and pickled vegetables. Everything was prepared with the idea of huge profits in mind. There were also specialty foods and the marketplace flourished with people from all over the continent trading seldom seen goods for food and information.

Gold would soon be flowing into the city in rivers, so how could they not be excited? Even the children would walk among the tents selling cheap candies and flasks of barley tea and lemonade.

It seemed there was also a rather flourishing black market underneath, as well. Selling information about the combatants behind the scene, trading and collecting rare items for various unpleasant things, creating and buying rare poisons, slave marketing etc.

Of course, slaves were illegal in Grayelle Kingdom, but that didn’t mean there weren’t slave dealings in other countries, it seems.

Well, if it didn’t harm Briar or her friends, then she would allow it to live for now. Cleaning out a city of rats was not a quest that she had been asked to undertake. The local forces should be working on that instead. No need for an outsider to interfere.

But, if they made it her business, then…the black market would become as if it never existed, and many people would suddenly go missing.

Briar whistled a tune as she finished pressure spraying all the dirty water out of the entranceway. Cleaning was done, so all she had left to do was to compress the walls until they were hard enough to withstand an impact without shattering and burying her under a mountain of rocks.

Then, as rarely does happen, Briar took things too far and turned the walls into a super-hard metal alloy. Using a mixture of knowledge from her world and this world, Briar extracted and merged several kinds of metal to create something to the effect of a vibranium steel alloy.

It in itself was not vibranium, of course, because vibranium is a fictitious metal created by the Marvel writers in order to justify their ludicrous plot points.*

Instead, by mixing iron, adamantite, Mithril, tungsten, and platinum, she was able to create a metal that was impact-proof. The precise increments are classified.**

Now that Briar’s secret base was mostly complete, she could start experime-practicing.*** She could begin practicing for the Ten Year Student Contest.

The first thing she did was to confirm all of her skills. As always, her marksmanship was impeccable, whether throwing knives, daggers, needles, or aiming magic, it was always able to hit the target 100 out of 100 times.

As she was slightly strapped for time, this rough estimate would have to do. Briar thought back to her earth days with a sigh.

Back when she had finally mastered throwing weapons, she had to get 1,000 out of 1,000 hits on the bullseye with every weapon that was presented to her from the smallest rock up to the largest of javelins. The Boomerang had proved slightly difficult to handle, but still, Briar had managed it.

Then she began to go through the skills that she had learned one by one. She used the martial skills first, since she didn’t want any large magic signatures to reveal her nice little hidey-hole. Since she had started with martial arts, she always began her practices with martial arts.

Meteor Charge [Fax Collatus], Thousand-Hands [Mille Manus], Ghost Evasion [Spiritus Evasio], Yin-Yang Riposte [Yin-Yang Responsum], Shadow Flight [Negro Pedes], and of course, Stellar Shield [Stella Umbo]: all were able to be used with great precision.

It seems that I have naturally become a speed/crowd-control character. Briar thought to herself. But, she also couldn’t disregard her Red class level two natural physical strength, either.

Somehow, she had become a general all-rounder sort of character, through her hours and days of practice and training. Even so, most of her martial skills were for protection and hit and run tactics. She tilted her head sideways.

Well, wait a minute. Any Gorilla with a sword can hack away at a person. If it were a simple contest of strength, then just choose the one with more muscles, right?

But it seems that once you enter the latter part of the Class Spectrum, cultivation depends not so much upon strength, but upon method and technique. Therefore, the true aim of this battle is to test the level of comprehension of our techniques, and how good our perception is.

Briar paced a bit within the cave, as she thought of these things.

For someone of a similar age to mine, to practice advanced techniques instead of raising battle strength would be considered quite strange. But, for a magician, studying tactics and laws comes first in the process, leaving their body strength building up for latter years.

The more she thought of the differences between Martial Arts and Magic, The more she was sure that there were similarities between the two system.

The Body is the Foundation, the Spirit is the Ruler…In that case, is there a way that Martial Arts lays the groundwork for Magicians? Can Black Class Martial Practitioners become Magicians? Or is there something more?

Briar was switching between her inner perception and her outer perception. Outside, Light blue sparkles here and there showed the mana that was present in the air. Inside, Dark Blue Sparkly Veins extended throughout her body.

These seemed to have been hidden even from Rien’s mana vision, so it must be something that only Briar could observe. But, then the thought that would change everything that she knew about this world struck her. Light blue sparkles…dark blue sparkles….

What if, the martial spirit that I cultivate, and the mana that I use in spells is the Exact. Same. Thing?

“Eh!?” Briar jerked her head up in surprise. If this were true, then wouldn’t this revolutionize the way Martial Practitioners and Magicians train themselves?

Ah, but surely, it couldn’t be something so simple? Briar felt that surely some sort of experimentation had been done beforehand…Surely? Otherwise, why wouldn’t this have been found out earlier?

But, as she recalled, there had been no mention of such an experiment in the books she had read at Madam Rothema’s. Nor had she heard mention of any such thing in passing…

Could it be that no one knows because there has never been a successful dual practitioner and magician before? Of course, there had been many who had tried, but the vast amount of training that they needed to accomplish in order to keep up with their peers was so straining that they would quickly give up.

But, in order to discover the similarities between mana and martial spirit, one had to be able to compare the two systems after having experienced them to a certain extent.

Not only that, almost all the magicians and martial practitioners to date believed whole-heartedly that these two energies were separate. For someone to question that very basic belief, one would need to be either a genius, or a deviant heretic. In Briar’s case, she came from earth, where it was only logical to question everything.

Well, I suppose there’s only one way to find out. Briar took a breath, and stirred her martial spirit. She was going to attempt to use martial spirit in order to confirm her shocking theory. If she were wrong, then she was wrong, there would be little to no change to what she would do.

…But what if she were right? Wouldn’t this revolutionize everything that was known about magic and martial spirit? Wouldn’t this lead to a huge breakthrough in martial and magical science?

Briar breathed in, slowly. When she was sure she was ready, she lifted her hand, pointing it into the center of the cave.

She paused a moment, then her eyes grew bright and determined as she poured the martial spirit out in the way in which she was accustomed to do with magic.

“[Light Sphere]!”

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*Sora-sensei: “author is not impressed.”

Briar: “Oh? But you are all right using adamantite and Mithril, huh? And you end up scorning other people’s use of fictitious metal in their stories? …Be ashamed, you hypocrite!” *slaps author around with a paper fan*

Sora-sensei (with several bumps on her head): “I was wrong! Please forgive me!” *dogeza*

**Sora-sensei: actually, tbh, Briar was just winging it by sight, so she really can’t say precisely how much of each substance she put into the alloy, but this is a se-cr-et~!”

***Briar: “You really were about to write ‘experimenting, right?”

Author: “I don’t know~ You tell me~.”

Briar: =__=’’’