With the light of the dawn sun barely breaking through the meagre cloud cover, the morning broke cold and pregnant with snow.

Faye trudged to the Guild Hall with her cloak wrapped tightly around herself. She knew that a morning training session should be invigorating but that would have been something she had chosen to do, probably with her friends and not some hormonal teenager that needed a strong lesson in humility.

But even so, the change from prior to getting her class to now was incredible. People she had passed the day before were treating her like a real person.

Better still, her friends were able to talk to her now, help her through things. And a giddy thought rose in her when she thought about Gavan finally starting her training in magic.

Maggie had even promised to come to the house after her shift at work that day. Faye had few enough friends in this world that she wouldn’t turn anyone away from the role. Plus, Maggie had seemed genuinely apologetic about how she had spoken and acted in the past.

Faye grinned; they were starting to be pretty good to her. She admitted that the adventurers, at least, had never been anything except nice to her. A little too willing to go along with the draconian rules the Guild meted out, perhaps. She couldn’t really blame them for that too much.

The streets through the town to the Guild Hall were relatively straight forward, they meandered a little as any street would, and there was the slightest uphill gradient to everything in the town the further north she went.

Faye didn’t mind, it was early enough that there was no one around to bother her or make her weave around traffic and the exercise quickly warmed her.

By the time she reached the Guild square, just in front of the Guild Hall, the rays of the sun were breaking through to shine brightly in the town.

She pushed open the doors of the Hall and slipped inside.

It was warm inside. Her eyes took a moment to adjust. Even with the large braziers, the light inside was much dimmer than even the cloudy morning.

There was a single attendant in the lobby, he was watering plants in the large planters and occasionally sweeping some small patches of dust or dirt on the marble-like floor.

Faye made her way to the doors that led further inside the Guild Hall. Her heart thudded a little as she walked across the lobby. Despite knowing she was supposed to be here, there was a sense of wrongness to the action — like being inside a library on your own, wondering if the librarian would come to kick you out at any moment for wandering into a forbidden section, or because you made too much noise.

The doors to the corridor swung shut with a clamour, causing Faye to wince.

“Dammit,” she whispered.

Navigating the hallways back here was still a little fraught with the danger of getting lost, but fortunately the training rooms were close enough to the lobby and regularly used enough that they were more than simple to find.

She left her cloak and outerwear in the storage bins in the changing room, then stepped through the magical cleansing doorway and into the training room itself.

Because she was coming here specifically to train with the sword, she had brought her wooden training sword with her.

Despite her midnight activities the other night, the blade was pristine. She had marvelled at its performance with Arran last night when they had finally taken Ailith home — apparently recovery times were very short here. He had laughed at her amazement, telling her that the whole reason he got it for her was its durability and usefulness for a young swordfighter.

She still could hardly believe that a wooden sword was at all effective. He had told her that it was probably the worst sword she would ever get her hands on, but it was good enough for now. She’d agreed emphatically that it was good enough for now. It had gotten her her class, after all.

Stepping across the training room’s threshold, Faye felt the stillness of the room settle on her body and senses. It was a calmness that she’d always enjoyed when in particular training centres at home. Particularly when it was just her in a place. It was as if she felt the weight of the memories of swordsmen and women from ages past sinking into her as she stood where they had stood, years, decades, or centuries past.

That stillness meant that Rían, her so-called training master, wasn’t here yet. She tried not to scowl. He had been such an ass about getting here at dawn, too.

She shook her head.

Setting her sword by the wall, she stretched a little and performed some basic callisthenics to warm up.

Halfway through her second set of star jumps, she heard someone come into the room. She finished the last six exercises before turning around.

Rían’s temple throbbed with a vein, and his neck and face were red.

She tried hard not to laugh in his face.

“Of course you’re too stupid to come to the right place,” he finally spat out. He stalked over to her, getting in her face. “What possessed you to come here rather than the training rooms at my family’s house?”

She blinked. “I had no idea you had training rooms. Why would you assume I would think of anything other than these rooms in the Guild?”

It was the truth. Though, as she thought about it, she might have remembered Maggie saying something about some of the adventurers having their own spaces to train in. Regardless, she had done what she thought he had asked.

Rían was going to say something but he visibly stopped himself. When he spoke next, he was less alarmingly red. “At least you know your place.” He sneered. “I think this stinking shithole is all you deserve to train in, anyway.”

She couldn’t help but arch an eyebrow at that. This was a bare, but perfectly serviceable, training area. It had what she needed, which was, mostly, space.

Backing away from Faye, though he still looked angry enough to spit, Rían placed his hands behind his back.

“As a new Swordfighter, you will have access to at least one skill,” he said. He took on a tone that she knew meant he was parroting something someone else had told him. It didn’t have his usual teen angst smouldering beneath the words. “Do you even know what your skill is called?”

Ah, there was the tone she knew and hated.

She cleared her throat.

“I have two class skills,” she said. Holding up her first finger, she said, “Swordfighting — Intermediate,” she put up her middle finger next to the first, “and Swordfighter’s Sense.” She stood, holding up her two fingers at him for a few moments, relishing the thought that he didn’t know what it meant, before grinning at him.

He hadn’t moved. He was staring at her with narrowed eyes. She wasn’t sure exactly what had triggered him, but obviously it was something about the skills.

“You’re lying.”

His words were quiet, even in the still air of the training room.

“Why would I lie about that?” she said.

“Because you’re a common born pleb that thinks she’s better than she is, why else?” he said. He was holding the grip of his sword, though it was still sheathed. His white knuckles told her that he was just barely keeping control of his anger.

Before he said anything else and before she could refute his insane insult, he drew his sword and practically flew toward her.

Something at the edge of her mind nudged her, the moment he started to move. She dropped and rolled backward, coming to a stop near the wall where she had left her sword. She grabbed it and turned to see what Rían was doing.

His blade was bare, and he was still coming for her, held in a high guard. The low light in the room shone on the steel of his blade. It was a single-edged sword, holding a slight curve. Though the tip wasn’t chiselled like a katana, it’s what she dubbed it in her mind.

Made for slashing and cutting attacks, he was less likely to thrust with it.

Her own sword, on the other hand, was made with both cutting and thrusting in mind. The tip met aggressively in the centre line of the sword, allowing her to transfer all of her power through that one point on the weapon.

Something told her that she wouldn’t get her thrust home before his weapon whipped down and took off her head, so she powered to her feet, throwing herself forward and to her right. She swung her blade up and to the left, blocking the slash she knew he would throw at her.

Sure enough, his blade came down and met with the wooden sword in her hands. Despite its effectiveness against the forest enemies, against a real weapon it did not fare well. She flinched at the sound and at the mark she saw form on the blade.

Before Rían ended his move, she could sense his muscles bunch and saw minute shifts in his stance. He was going to quickly follow up the attack with another.

With barely any thought, Faye reacted to the tiny hints her experience and the skill was giving her. It was as if she had a sixth sense. This was obviously Swordfighter’s Sense in action.

She found herself grinning as she whirled around Rían. He was stronger, faster, and more coordinated than her most of the time. If not for this sense of when he would move, and a hint of how, coupled with the evening effect of the training room that Arran had explained to her, she would have been defeated already.

The next time she tried to meet his attack directly, rather than deflecting and dodging, his cut broke through her guard. It came with a strength she had not been expecting. At the last moment, he pulled the attack, but the shallow slice across her cheek stung.

He didn’t stop there, though. Despite earning first blood, the spar continued.

Each time he managed to smash through her guard, or physically bully her with his toughness and speed, he didn’t quite use the full effect of his stats. That didn’t stop the attacks brutally bruising her, and one particularly vicious pommel strike might have broken a rib.

Of course, Rían didn’t stop, so Faye didn’t, either.

An unknowable time later, with sweat pouring from every pore and her hair a damp, lank mess, Rían finally stepped back and sheathed his sword in a ridiculous flourish. Faye wasn’t sure what angered her more, the fact that he was barely breathing hard, or that he’d performed that awful spinning flourish and perfect sheath without looking.

She felt her body droop as the adrenaline and rush of the fight faded.

“Barely adequate,” he said. He looked her over once more, shook his head, and left via the door he had entered by.

She stared at the doorway he’d left through, breath hitching every time it tweaked her rib. She tenderly felt it and realised that it was bruised, but it wasn’t broken.

“Bastard,” she muttered, then turned and left through the doorway she had entered by. It hadn’t been a training session. If she hadn’t had the class skill it would have been a murder at worst, a savage beatdown at best.

She shook her head as she sat on a bench in the changing room.

If this was all he was going to do, then these sessions would not be worth the time it took to walk here each morning. The words from the others echoed in her head and she reminded herself that she could potentially get a class skill out of these sessions… if things worked the way they were supposed to.

Then, she narrowed her eyes.

Despite the supposed difference in their levels, the training room had evened out their physical strength a little. Rían relied too much on the system. Faye was confident that with a few more levels, she could beat him.

A devilish grin broke through.

Oh yes, my master. If you really want to try me, I’m game.

Rían stormed through the corridors in the Guild until he reached the entry hall. There, he slowed his steps enough that anyone watching wouldn’t immediately notice his foul mood.

He admitted to himself that he was angry, more than angry, with the girl. It was not a good thing to have one idiot girl affect him this way — the thought of what his father, or, worse, his mother, would say if they knew he was this emotional over her…

It did not bear thinking about.

Opening the front doors to the Hall and heading outside, he took a deep breath. The cool morning air was refreshing but it didn’t do enough to rid himself of the roiling anger in his chest.

How could she have gained Swordfighter’s Sense at fifth level?! How?!

It was an incredibly useful skill, a passive ability that would benefit any martial artist, let alone a swordfighter, and usually took years and years of dedicated study to learn. She had somehow tricked the system into giving it to her on her first day as a swordfighter?

And to lie so audaciously, ludicrously, about her swordfighting skill!

It was infuriating!

The passive skill had helped her more than he thought it would. He clenched his fist. What he could do with such a skill…

He realised belatedly that his fist had slammed into the trunk of a tree outside the Guild Hall, leaving a somewhat obvious indent.

Shaking his head, he turned to walk away only to come face to face with his servant, Muir.

“Muir, by the gods man, I’ve told you not to do that!”

Muir bowed his head.

“My apologies, young master. I came to see if you needed… assistance?”

Rían ground his teeth. He knew that the man was completely loyal to his father and the family, but every time he spoke, he managed to make Rían feel like a child again, instead of the man that his family knew him to be.

“Of course I don’t need assistance.”

“Very well, young sir.”

“I want you to find out what you can about this girl,” he said. He bit the inside of his cheek. For a dumb child to get the most coveted Swordfighter skill so soon, and to lie about an Intermediate level skill… there was something strange going on here. “I suspect foul play.”

“Anything more specific than that, Master Ríoghnán?”

“No,” he said, scowling. “And don’t call me that. Only my mother calls me that.”

“Yes, sir.”

He didn’t hear what Muir had to say, though, because his thoughts kept travelling back to the lying girl he’d just sparred with. He didn’t care who she was, or what the Administrator said. She was a cheat. A thief. A liar.

She needed to be broken.