The next few days proceeded in a similar manner. Over and over again I was forced to fight this crazily powerful knight who was obviously enjoying the chance of getting to beat me up. Slowly but surely, I got more familiar with his style of fighting and with every time that I was beaten down, I became a little bit more adapt at escaping the furious barrage of blows coming from Sir Mellen.

Of course, that evil guy also slowly increased the speed and power behind his strike, meaning that even after three days I could do little more than barely defend against a part of his attacks while evading another part. Despite that I would still be beaten to the ground from time to time.

Finally, on the fourth day of simply exhausting myself until I was completely incapable of even standing, Sir Mellen finally stopped after a few hours of the usual onslaughter.

“You aren’t half bad after all. I guess you do deserve to be a hero.”, me having hanged on for three consecutive days did seem to have earned his recognition.

“Now let’s start to give you some options for counterattacking. You are supposed to kill the demons after all.”, he moved his hand with the sword in front of himself and suddenly an awe-inspiring aura began to rise around him.

“Basic slashes and drills are all good and fine, but once you are able to defend yourself it is far more effective to use actual offensive skills to do the killing. Especially as you are a hero with high endurance and quite a lot of mana to go with it.

Normal people at level one can only execute simple offensive skills once or twice unless they are gifted in magic. With your aptitude you should manage at least three to six attacks depending on the level of the skill. If you manage to kill one goblin, the lowest of the monsters around the capital, with each of that skills you will already have reached level 2. At that point your mana will be restored, and you will have a higher capacity too.

Of course, this is not a strategy that can be use in all situations as you might run out of mana once your level becomes to high to quickly raise it. But to get you started it should work fine. As long as you can defend yourself, we can work on your footwork and basic slashes while hunting.”, having given this relatively long explanation Sir Mellen lifted his sword above his head and with a yell he sliced towards the ground.

My divine ability reacted and rows of information began to appear in front of my eyes.

While my divine eyes copied the skill, I witnessed the power of a martial skill. The wooden sword in the knight’s hand was surrounded by a visible wind current and as he slashed down this wind current detached itself from the blade and proceeded to slash towards me.

“S-“, I wanted to curse, but instead my drilled body began to move on it’s own, assuming a defensive posture like I had when I had been defending against Mellen’s usual strikes. Of course, this time I wasn’t confronted by a simple wooden sword, but with some sort of wind blade.

While my body was acting on my own, my mind gradually caught up and I checked the method of using the martial skill that had been branded into my mind by my divine ability. Drawing upon this mysterious force that I had already came to recognize as the mana within my body I simply forced it through my hands and into my sword. There I gently manipulated it to create the sort of air current that Sir Mellen had created.

Using this so-called Martial skill was truly similar to using magic, only that magic was many times more complicated. Each spell had its own way of manipulating mana in a way that created a certain natural phenomenon. The words in the ancient language of the gods were only a catalyst that eased the task of manipulation.

Describing it in a more visual manner, using magic was like forcing water into a certain set of invisible channels through pure mental force. Not only did one have to visualize these intangible channels, simultaneously you had to carefully guide the mana into these channels and be careful to not lose control over it.

The mental requirements to use even just the simplest magic were ridiculous.

My divine ability was truly just like a cheat when it came to magic. It basically took over the job of visualizing the channels while I only had to guide the mana. Of course, it had the drawback that this was restricted to only low-level magic.

Martial skills, on the other hand, were in a way just very simplified versions of magic. Instead of having to visualize complicated channels you could use very basic manipulations to affect the area around your weapon.

When the wind blade finally came towards me, I had finished creating a wind blade around my wooden sword. Instead of also flinging it away like Sir Mellen had, I simply swung my sword to parry the incoming wind blade.

As the attack connected with my blade, it simply vanished.

“Wha-“, Sir Mellen stared at me in shock.

“H-how did you create a wind blade? And what the heck happened with mine??? Even if you blocked my attack with a wind blade on your own there should have been some sort of explosion!”, he was completely flabbergasted.

I coldly retracted my sword.

“More importantly… what is the meaning of this?”, I was honestly very, very disturbed. Though, I did not know how strong a wind blade was, I was quite certain that it could have ended very badly if I hadn’t blocked it upfront. For Sir Mellen to suddenly attack me in such a way….

It was an understatement to say that I was angry.

The knight was taken aback by my cold response. After a short moment he realized the source of my anger.

“Calm down That attack wouldn’t have seriously injured you. Even if you hadn’t blocked at all it would at most have left a little wound. Just using the sword to block would have sufficed to dispel most of its power and you wouldn’t have been harmed at all.

If you couldn’t do that much after three days I would have failed as a teacher and you would be disqualified as a hero!”, his justification was convincing enough for me to calm down again.

“Fine.”, I said, still a little upset.

“More importantly.”, the evil, sadist knight came closer and gave me a curious look.

“How the heck did you manage to perform wind blade after only seeing it once? And even within just a few seconds! And why did my blade simply disappear????”, he was genuinely impressed.

I shrugged.

“I simply reversed the air flow so that it would perfectly counter your blade. As such it negated your wind blade, and both simply disappeared. As for how I copied your skill. Well that’s due to my divine ability.”, I was actually very proud of thinking of reversing the flow of the wind to negate the power of the wind blade.

Sir Mellen on the other hand focused on another thing.

“Your divine ability?”, he asked, obviously surprised.

“Usually it only activated once the hero is experiencing grave danger. Has it activated when I attacked you with that wind blade?”

“Y-yes…”, it was better to let him think that.

“So, what does it do? Allow you completely mastery over all martial skills?”, Sir Mellen continued to ask with curiosity. What a noisy guy.

“All low-level one’s that I have seen once.”, I decided to conceal the whole effect of my ability for the time being and make it seem as useless as possible. It was always good to have some hidden surprises in case things when south.

“That’s quite disappointing considering it is a divine ability of our country’s hero…”, he replied bluntly. He truly seemed quite bummed about it. Well it did seem like quite a shitty ability after all.

“Guess I will have to make up for it by working harder than other heroes.”, I simply replied with a grin.

He laughed.

“Well then let’s continue our training!”

We continued to fight and Sir Mellen showed me all the low-level martial skills that he knew. A dozen skills later we continued by performing a few mock battles and attacking each other with a bunch of skills while figuring out ways to defend ourselves in the most effective manner.

The result was that I found out that it currently took me three hours to recover all my mana once I had used it up. According to that stupid knight my mana recovery rate would rise according with my maximum mana capacity and level.

Also, I realized that martial skills could be used in several creative ways. For example, the skill ‘wind blade’ could be used as a long-range skill like Sir Mellen did, as a melee skill to increase the destructive power of a blow or even defensively as I did it.

When the sun was about to sink beneath the roofs of the palace, we finally stopped our training and for the first time in four days I was able to walk back to my bed room. I was accompanied by Riina. Maira and Ilea had gone of somewhere during lunchtime and only the adorable cat girl had remained to watch the duels between myself and Mellen.

Now she silently followed me as I walked back to our quarters.

“Everything ok?”, I asked her after having walked in total silence for some time. Up till now I hadn’t had the energy to properly interact with her or Ilea and as such our relationship had not really progressed. I knew that she liked to watch the training sessions between myself and Sir Mellen and that she was a huge fan of food, but that already amounted to all I had found out in the 4 days since I bought her.

“S-sure.”, she replied surprised that I had suddenly asked her such a trivial question.

“That’s great.”, I simply said. Then I once again struggled to find a topic to talk about.

“Do…do you like Maira?”, after some time of being unable to think of anything I finally asked this stupid question. I had noticed that Maira was spending quite a lot of time with Riina and Ilea, so much that they had become quite close in the few days that they had been living together.

As I expected Riina nodded shyly.

“Maira is really nice and she treats me and Ilea like little sisters so its comfortable to stay around her.”

“I’m glad to hear that. After all the three of you are a family in a sense.”, I replied without much thought, but when I looked over to see Riina’s reaction her face had flushed.

“S-so you intend to do these sorts of things after all.”, she had lowered her face and her hands were once again fumbling around at the seam of her skirt. It seemed to be something she did every time she felt embarrassed.

She had obviously misunderstood me and now I felt embarrassed too.

“T-that’s not what I was trying to say.”, I quickly exclaimed.

“Even though that darn princess always talks about that stuff I don’t intent to force you to do anything of that sorts!”, I honestly felt a little offended that I was thought off so poorly and it showed on my expression.

“I’m sorry that I misunderstood.”, Riina gently said, and I could see the relieve on her face.

“If master would have wanted to none of us could have rejected you after all. Either way, I should stop talking about these shameful things….”, her face once again flushed in an alluring red color.

Once again, we were silent for some time.

Finally, Riina spoke again.

“M-master?”

“Hm?”

She looked very embarrassed.

“W-would you mind eating something with me? I have already eaten, but since master hasn’t had lunch or dinner, I thought that I could accompany you…. And eat some food myself?”, that little glutton. She clearly just wanted to use the change to eat some more. How the heck did she stay that thin with the amount of food she eats every day????

I had to laugh loudly, and Riina became even more embarrassed as she realized that she had been seen through.

“Sure.”, I finally said.

“Let’s have a little snack before heading back to my rooms.”

As a wise man once said:

The way to a woman’s heart has always been food.

When we casually walked towards the royal kitchen to grab some food from the chef, I suddenly heard the voice of a certain noisy princess. She sounded nervous and agitated with a slight sliver of fear trembling in her voice.

“…is dangerous. You should stop while you still can. Otherwise the consequences will be graver than you could ever imagine.

I also don’t like him, but he is the hero of our country after all! Trying to hound the nobles onto him will end in disaster for our kingdom!”, Maira’s words made my blood freeze and my mind shake.

After being shocked for a short moment I began to feel anger. Pure, hateful and burning anger.