Up Slash – Missed, Down Slash – Blocked, step to the left and shield thrust – heavily parried, Dodge back.

We were both breathing hard, trying to feel how our passives improved our motion, aim, balance and the feeling of the weapons in our hands. Alexander was using a short sword and shield, and his opponent, he never got her name, used a heavy hammer.

Heavy breathing, “You are very good with that monster of yours, have you been training long?” Alexander asks the girl. “My mother is a blacksmith,” breath in “I have been helping her around the forge since I started walking.” breath out” You are not too bad yourself” breath in “I wasn’t expecting you to use a shield like that though, is your arm okay?” She responded while trying to catch her breath.

“HEY!!! YOU TWO IN THE MIDDLE, STOP TALKING AND GET BACK TO SPARRING! IF YOUR STAMINA IS ALREADY DRY I WILL HAVE YOU RUNNING FOR THE REST OF THE DAY!” they heard a shout from one of the instructors from our left. “SIR! YES SIR! WE CAN CONTINUE SIR!” they instantly stand straight and shout back at the instructor.

“Round 3, are you ready?” Alexander asks the girl. “Come at me” the girl replies.

And so, they Sparred

An instructor in a military uniform paces in front of a truly massive group of people, but this is only a fraction of all the people getting this talk today. “So, what have we learnt today about stamina and passive skill use?” he asks “You over there with the blond hair” he points into the crowd.

“SIR! Passive skills use very little stamina as you use them. They actually reduce the expenditure if you have them than if you don’t. I have dagger mastery and use about 50% more stamina than my regeneration. If I used a sword on the other hand my stamina pool will be gone in minutes. SIR!” a young girl from the crowd replies. It may not be the exact person the instructor pointed at but so long as he got a reply and a correct one at that there were no … consequences.

“Good! So, using a passive skill increases the duration you can fight. Correct. Using a weapon or performing an action you do not have a passive skill for drains your stamina faster. Strangely enough, unless you are a soldier, no one has a walking passive. Normal every day, non-productive actions do not have skills. Production, gathering and combat actions all have some kind of associated passive.”

“Now, can someone explain to me how one goes about gaining an active skill?” the instructor suddenly turns to the group asks. “No one? Really not one of you knows? Either you are all very smart for your age or your parents really didn’t tell you. Good…” He keeps looking around, trying to find the kids that are hiding their knowledge.

“I think some of you know and need to improve your poker faces. You will need to learn how to hide your emotions better if you want to be successful against Prime Beasts.” He continues “So a passive skill is a Skill you gain by training or in other words, repeating the same actions over and over and over again. Correct?” he asks the whole crowd.

“Sir, YES SIR!” is the unanimous response.

“However, an Active Skill requires a little more work. There are 3 parts to it – The image of the skill: How you wish it to look, and what it does. The will to succeed with it every single time and an expenditure of extra stamina.”

A training dummy rises from the ground, to the right of the instructor, as if by magic. The instructor draws his sword and faces the dummy. “For example, the following is a simple diagonal slash using just the passive skill. Notice the sharpness of the strike and its effects”

He steps towards the dummy and slashes it from shoulder on one side to hip on the other. A deep cut is left in the dummy but nothing more.

“Now, as you can see, the dummy now has a shallow gash, this would normally not penetrate heavy armour and would normally be used more as a way to break the timing of the opponent.” He lowers his stance, and raises his sword in a two-handed grip next to his right ear. “This is an Active Skill. Notice the differences in stance, build up, visual and the final effect.”

As his stance lowers, he looks a lot more solid, like no one can push him over and break his stance. The sword starts to shimmer slightly, the shimmer seems to extend from the edge and the tip slightly.

Suddenly he moves! The sword follows the same arc as before but this time instead of a shallow cut, the dummy is cut in two and blown back half a meter.

He strands back up and sheathes his sword. After turning to the crowd, he continues with the explanation. “As you can see, an Active Skill takes time to enact. Time is needed to get the right stance, time is needed to materialise the very details of the image you use in your mind.”

“Now who can tell me the affect stamina has on your ability to fight?” he suddenly changes topics. “How about you, brunette on the left in the 3rd row? Yes you, don’t try to hide from answering, doing so will have everyone here doing 50 burpees.”

“sir, I do not know sir.” The brunette boy replies.

“Good nothing wrong with being honest, good thing you didn’t try to lie or guess incorrectly, other wise you would be doing 100 press ups instead.” The instructor replies. “Let me explain, as you may have noticed from your sparring, the effectiveness of your passive skills is reduced in relation to how much stamina you have remaining. So, for example, if your passive skill increases your effectiveness by 5% then when you have 100% stamina then you will also get all 5% of the passive. But if you only have 50% stamina, your passive effectiveness is only 2.5%.”

“There are talents that can reduce the loss of effectiveness of skills, increase regeneration or give extra points to your pool through raw pool or raw stat.”

“What does this mean in relation to Active Skills and your effectiveness in combat?” the instructor looks around, then points at the girl in front of him, “You, you will answer this one as you seem to be very attentive.”

“Using an Active Skill drains stamina. So, if you can use an Active skill to attempt to win and then lose because your basic skill is too low. Active skills are not a cure all, they have to be used with care and in the correct circumstances.” the girl replies.

The instructor stares at her and smiles, an evil smile. “How very conversational of you. What is your name?” he asks her. “Sir! Emile Sir!”

“Well then everyone, you can thank Emile here for this. Reach out with your hands around you, can you touch anyone else? No? Good, now you will drop to the ground in a press up position with one leg raised off the ground. As you do the press up you will extend that leg and as you rise back up you will bring your knee as close to your chest as you can. You will do 30 of them on each side. BEGIN!”

Once everyone is done with the assigned torture and standing recovering the instructor continues with the lecture.

“Finally, before I let you go back to your Mommies and Daddies. We need to talk about journals. The journals are a way for you to develop yourself in the direction desired. Once you have chosen a direction and fulfilled the minimum requirements to step onto that path, they will be automatically available to you from the ADMINS.”

He continues “Anyone can change paths, but they will have to start at the beginning Journal of that path. So for example, some of you, those extremely lucky or talented will have a journal for blacksmithing, or combat or something else. This is the path you have qualified to follow now. You do not need to finish one path before starting another as there is no end to the possible journals. But they will be much harder to finish with every tier. “

“You will all now open your statuses and put 10 points into the Journal of the Newbie.” He looks around with a scowl. “I said now!”

Everyone jolts out of their stupor and opens their statuses. They open the journal window and enter 10 points into the Journal of the Newbie.

Alexander looks around, he has been following the explanations so far and attempting to fit all the pieces together. If Active Skills are so costly, how do the instructors get away with performing them so much? Is there a trick to reducing their costs? Something to do with the images used or the level of the skill maybe?

He flips over to the Journal window and puts 10 points into Journal of the Newbie.

+1 Increase Stamina by 1

+1 Increase Strength by 1

+1 Increase Vitality by 1

+1 Increase Endurance by 1

+1 Increase Agility by 1

+1 Increase Dexterity by 1

+1 Increase Intelligence by 1

+1 Increase Wisdom by 1

+1 Increase Concentration by 1

The final point finishes the Journal: You feel stronger and less of a Newbie, all experience gains are increased by 1%.

“This is the end for today but the beginning for your future. There are more mechanics to learn but you will not be taught them here but in your units in the future, out in the world or by your families! DISMISSED!”