The wooden weapon cut through the air, narrowly missing Reysha each time. No thoughts went through the redhead’s mind. Her eyes were in constant motion, pupils dilated to take in the light of the dim evening.

Swiftly, they narrowed. Icy blue light lit up the forest. Reysha suppressed her presence, took two rapid steps back, and the Winter Ray shot between her and Mai. The brunette Infiltrator stared across what had been meant to corner her pupil. Reysha turned around and ran. Mehily swiped her arm, causing the spell to go after her.

Tree bark chilled and froze, fine ice crystals forming on the surface while the divine energy cut deeper within. Parts of the moisture in the air crystallized into a settling mist of snowflakes. Reysha’s pupils dilated, staring at the shape of the elf storming through the white cloud.

Lunging, Mai went into a series of strikes. Stab, wide swing, back swing, into a sudden kick that would have been risky had it not been so unexpected. Driven out of her cover, Reysha’s instincts once more had to wrestle with attacks from two different targets. Had she thought with a plan, the split attention would have been more of a detriment. Thinking only about the very next move all she had to do was keep her eyes wide open. Each excited breath let her taste the earthy aroma of the forest. How it changed when the chill of Mehily’s magic approached.

Step for step, she yielded ground. The training blade in her own hands was light and she waited for her opportunity to strike. Mai and Mehily bombarded with their individual attacks. They worked together well, after an additional month of testing Reysha’s mettle every day.

Suddenly, she felt a rush of aggression. Ki flowed into the practice weapon, forcing the shapes she had ingrained into her mind and joints, gleaming from the Runeblade, into the blunt steel. A purple sheen enveloped it, as she went into a wide slice. Two Bolt spells were sliced apart in the blink of an eye.

Ki was cut and then a different stream entered the weapon. A blue edge replaced the colour of the Spellslicer. Reysha brought the swing to its end. The Edge clashed against Mai’s wooden sword, slicing it off above the hilt.

A moment of jubilation rose inside Reysha’s mind, then fear as a thorn of pure ki extended from the stump of wood, reaching the length of a dagger. In the face of her teacher, the redhead saw the murderer of an empire.

The weapon screamed, an edge of blue formed, hovering, around the blue core. Aggressive vibrations, loud enough to make Reysha wish she had one less pair of ears, made her back up like a scared animal. Mai took a single lunging step.

Pain. The initial step was followed by a continuous rending of flesh. Rapidly forming and flowing teeth across the Edge ripped through fat, muscle and bone, spraying them as fine gore over the forest floor.

Reysha, backed against a tree, would have been dead, had Mai wished it so. The teacher took one step back, her Ki-blade and its Edge vanishing. Mehily hurried over, but froze when the quiet stare of the woman made it clear: the lesson was not over. “Keep casting,” the Infiltrator ordered.

Heavily breathing, from pain and exhaustion, Reysha stared at her teacher in a haze. Audibly, she clacked her teeth together. Hissing, air was pressed past her fangs. Her right hand clenched the weapon at the end of her dangling limb. Veins bulged across her demonic left.

“CAST!” Mai demanded, and a Bolt spell was loosed a moment later.

Reysha twisted her entire body, using her arm more like a whip than a proper limb. Magic flowed past the damaged shoulder, the steel developed a purple sheen once more, and neutralized the bolt. Screaming vibrations once more echoed through the night, the dim glow of the ki-blade extending. Mai was ready to slash across Reysha’s chest.

Pain.

The pain of forcing her magical circuits into action, past their exhaustion, all the way into overdrive. It hurt. It hurt in a way lovebites hurt. The impulse was the same, yet somehow this was satisfying. Mai’s body hesitated, the focus of aggression suddenly slipping from her senses. Already in motion, she sliced anyway.

Tearing through the surface of a tree like it was air, leaving only shreds of wood behind, Mai missed the redhead. Reysha had dropped straight to the ground. Her left arm rushed forwards, trying to grab her teacher by the foot. In a fight between Rogues, everything was allowed.

Had she fought an opponent of equal Level and skill, it would have worked. Mai, however, refocused on Reysha moments before her clawed fingers could tighten around the ankles. Swiftly, the infiltrator pulled her foot up. Her weapon was extinguished and a simple thorn extended from her heel in its place, quiet and still perfectly capable of punching a hole through Reysha’s bones. Teacher and pupil stared at each other.

Then Mai’s eyebrows furrowed. She blinked one time, looking in the direction of but not at the tiger girl. Too exhausted to even get on all fours, Reysha allowed herself the thought, ‘The fuck is she waiting for?’

Eyes landed back on Reysha. Mai showed a covert smile, that quickly faded. “Heal her,” she stated, turning to Mehily. “We are done.”

“For…?” the Priest wanted to know, so she could best conserve her mana.

“We are done,” the Infiltrator repeated. “She passed.”

Reysha could not believe her ears.

She could pass out though.

_________________________________________________________________________

Reysha shot out of her comatose state, startled by the sensation of consciousness. Immediately back in a panicked breathing, she was ready to defend herself. Everything about her felt damp and her bones cold.

Glancing to the side, she saw Mai piling up shaves of bark to use as tinder for the campfire. “How long was I out?” Reysha asked. She felt stiff all over. A consequence of the sheer physical exhaustion and having slept on the cold forest floor.

“About forty minutes,” Mai estimated, calmly continuing to strip the driest branches she had found with a dagger. “Help me with this. You aren’t going home tonight.”

“I thought the deal was that I get stabbed during the day and railed during the night,” Reysha joked, while inspecting her shoulder. The one gaping hole on her body she didn’t want had been healed. “You know, this is my only armour, right?” she asked, pulling at the grey snakeskin leather. “Aclysia will eat my ass for ruining it – and not in a fun way.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Mai tossed a dagger and some sticks across the campsite.

“Where is Mehily?”

Mai did not look up from what her hands were doing. “I sent her away after she healed you. She won’t be necessary for the rest of our training. Hopefully, she got enough out of this herself.” Silently, they created a pile of tinder, then created a few layers of sticks around it. Thirty minutes later, the fire was big enough to actually warm them up. Then, and only then, did Mai continue. “I had a secondary objective, pushing you like I did. You know I wanted you to be able to use Combat Tricks in swift succession. However, what I didn’t tell you is that I wanted to push you to a point where you had to push yourself beyond reason.”

“Personally, I think you succeeded many times over,” Reysha cackled, while poking the campfire with a stick. The warmer she got, the less stiff she felt.

“From an exhaustion standpoint, sure,” Mai responded flippantly, her merciless teaching side diminishing. There was no need for it, at the moment. “Do you know what you did at the end there?” Reysha shook her head. “Would have surprised me if you did. Do you know what the Combat Trick I used to carve out your shoulder was?”

“No fucking clue, but I want to know it,” Reysha said. “That was brutal, I’d love to be on the other side of that blade.”

“I think you will like this next part, with your addiction to having impressive Skills.” Mai leaned back, sorting her thoughts to carefully express what she wanted to bestow onto her student. “The explanation I gave you and Mehily regarding Combat Tricks was incomplete. That is to say, the difference between Combat Tricks is not just the border between what Martial Arts are best in bursts and which aren’t.”

Reysha crossed her legs and waited. She tried to look serious, but she could not suppress the teeth-revealing grin for long. After having spent about two months getting knocked around every day, some traditional teachings were almost enough for the tiger girl to forget she wouldn’t get her favourite treat today.

“To be exact, I gave you the Underplayed variant.”

“Why does that sound like ya just said that in big letters?”

Mai chuckled and picked up her dagger again. “Effectively, I did. See, you can push every Martial Art to a limit, if you have trained yourself enough or the situation causes the blood to run hot. In that sense, everyone can spike their powers for a few moments. As previously stated-“

“-Rogues are the Class most focused on exploiting power spikes, yes, yes,” Reysha interrupted, her tail curving and waving behind her.

“…Exactly…” Mai sighed, missing Mehily’s quiet patience. “Combat Tricks are not just good for achieving this goal, they are specifically a category of Martial Arts that change when pushed to an extreme degree. Watch.” The dagger in her hand manifested the blue Edge. “This is the Combat Trick you already know.” Mai took a slow inhale and then forced a burst of power into the weapon. The Edge expanded by half its total width. Whirling vibrations filled the air with a screaming sound that made nearby rodents and birds flee at rapid speed. Teeth constantly spawned at one side of the hilt and streamed towards the other.

Mai demonstrably moved the weapon through the flickering flames. The disturbance of the air made the sawing effect all the more apparent. “Wait,” Reysha spoke up, while following the crawling slice. “Ya mean I already know the Martial Art to do that?!”

“We call it Underplay and Overplay,” Mai stated, cutting the ki off to let her mana circuits rest. “You can think of it as a trump card among trump cards. This is what truly lets us Rogues go for the killing shot against our opponents.” The purple sheen of the Spellslicer enveloped the dagger. With a wide motion, Mai loosed a thin, purple shockwave. It cut the surface of several trees in its path.

“I don’t remember doing anything that awesome,” Reysha stated, her head turning back from the damaged trees to Mai.

The Infiltrator put the dagger down and retrieved a few cooking utensils from her Adventurer’s Bag. “You Overplayed the Shadowstep,” Mai explained. “It’s less flashy, but no less useful. Like a spasming muscle, the effect of the Shadowstep repeats a few times when Overplayed, with short breaks in-between.”

“…I mean, I guess that’s kinda cool,” Reysha said. “Sucks that I was just laying there as it happened though. Did you seriously torment me all these weeks just to force me to get into that state?”

“It can be taught safely, but that typically takes more time.” Mai rolled her shoulders. “Besides, I told you, you are perfectly tailored to be a Rogue. You have the recklessness, the guile, and the will to do what you must. It was only a matter of time until you kicked that particular gate open. Now that the figurative frame has been shattered once, it is easier to repeat.”

Reysha just nodded. She had signed up for the hard path and it wasn’t like she actually hated how she was being treated. The pain she could have done without. That was the primary complaint. Otherwise, learning by doing was much more her style than sitting in a classroom. ‘Besides, kinda healthy to get the reminder I’m weak,’ she told herself, prone as she was to overextending herself.

“Obviously, using Overplays exhausts you even more than regular Combat Tricks,” Mai continued her explanation. “Even I cannot hold them for prolonged times, use more than one simultaneously, or in quick succession. They are what you use to overwhelm or surprise your opponent. If you have them in your back hand, get your opponent used to the Underplays to deliver the hit when it counts most. When your opponent knows about them, use the threat of their damaging potential to dictate the pace of the fight.” Mai grinned maliciously. “Everything goes, as long as your target dies.”

“So, you said previously that Rogues usually fight at 100% basic Strength and other Martial Art Classes at like 120%, yeah?” Mai responded to the question with a nod. “How would ya put Under and Overplay into that?”

“An Underplay is about a 150%, usually. Enough to threaten an opponent, sometimes even enough to win you the fight. The potential of Overplays does not neutralize that Combat Tricks are fundamentally stronger in their limited window than the regular Martial Art. Everyone always has to be wary of what a Rogue may pull out. The Overplay boosts that to, depending on the severity of your investment, 200 to 250%.”

“So… if I play my cards dirty enough… I can seriously hurt people way above my Level?”

Mai only smiled sweetly.