Nina couldn’t simply leave the village without warning, of course. That would be a pretty irresponsible thing to do, so she briefly went off on her own to tell the chief about the contract she had made and the plans they had to avoid giving away the secret of the tribe’s existence. Lisa had went silent for a long moment after that, but then simply hugged Nina and told her to ‘do her best’.

And the other members of the village couldn’t be kept in the dark, so Elise’s new partner was soon approached by other rabbitkin, one at a time, even after she returned to the duo. Some were more or less worried about the possibility of being exposed, but none of them actually opposed Nina’s decision. Perhaps they knew deep down that there was no chance for them to remain hidden forever. They were also just as skeptical as Nina had been about the possibility of one of their own becoming a strong fighter, but reasoned that the ‘magic armor’ would at least give her some strength.

Mostly they wanted to say goodbye to her (she got hugged many more times) and to wish her luck. Elise and Nalia waited patiently for them to be done, then Nina got into the armor (or maybe saying the armor got on her would be more accurate), Nalia used a spell to levitate the rest of the destroyed armor and they headed back to the surface before making their way back to Hiroka, who was indeed waiting at the place Elise had asked command to direct her to.

“Ah, you’re finally back! What exactly happened? And what are those things?” The fox woman said after meeting with them.

“It’s a long story, but basically we fought a Stranger that controlled a magic armor as her form of offense. We eventually managed to break the armor, but she escaped via teleportation and then Nalia used some of the armor remnants to make a new version for us to use in battle.” Elise explained before pointing to the floating pile of junk that was the second thing Hiroka had been asking about, besides the black armor.

“And this is the rest of the wrecked armor. We thought the Alliance might want to take a look at it just in case. And we made our armor black to not get confused with the enemy.” She finished.

“Hmm, I see. Did you decide to do it because the Stranger’s armor was really powerful?” Hiroka asked.

“Kinda.” Nalia took up the reply “The metal works really well for magic to be channeled through because of the way it was used, not to mention it is just good quality. The main reason is because we thought having an additional tool for combat would be helpful in general.”

“Right.” She examined the armor “I guess you’ll be using it in the operation?”

“Yeah.” Elise said, then changed the subject “We’re gonna make a report about what happened, so you’re welcome to listen if you want to learn about it in more detail.”

Hiroka was indeed interested, so she sat there and listened attentively as the contractor and fairy gave their report, which was a pretty accurate summation of what had happened, except for how it didn’t include anything about the Reite tribe or their meeting with Nina. Nalia was the one doing most of the talking, with Elise only giving out additional details every once in a while.

That was because the human girl was dedicating most of her attention to a mental conversation with her newest partner.

‘You can feel your hand, right? You need to focus on that feeling and perceive all of it. The skin, muscles, bones, tendons, nails… Everything. Until you have a perfect awareness of your hand.’

‘Okay… Now what?’

‘Wrong, you are just imagining your hand, not actually feeling it, and your imagination is missing many key aspects as well. Maybe it was a bit too much to try at once, so begin by focusing only on a single finger.’ She could tell because Nina was completely sharing her thoughts at the time, specifically to help with training.

‘Hmm… Hmm… Is this it?’

‘You’re closer. You managed to get some awareness of your finger, but most of the detail is still being filled out by your imagination. Focus a little bit more on your natural perception of your own body.’

And so on. Their exchanges kept going even after the report was over and the group waited for a response from command. Nalia had started a conversation with Hiroka about botanical diseases and parasites, leaving Elise free to guide Nina while pretending to be resting.

The response didn’t take all too long to arrive, and it asked the group to proceed to a nearby part of the forest (outside of the ‘nothing’ area) in order to rendezvous with another member to deliver the wrecked armor parts. None of them had any objections to that, but before they set off Nalia asked Hiroka something:

“I want to test the armor’s mobility, so do you mind if I put a minor wind boost on all of us so we’re traveling at a higher speed?”

“Sure, no problem. It will be interesting to see how it feels.” She replied.

And so Nalia cast her spell on the trio and then they took off at double ordinary running speed, the fairy putting some extra magic on the armor to allow it to keep the same pace. Of course, doing things like that also meant she could use the boost to surreptitiously manipulate Elise’s movements.

Because even though they would reach the rendezvous point in only around five minutes, Elise didn’t want to waste even a second of possible training time, given that Nina was still in the very crucial initial parts of her training.

Soon enough they were back in a much greener forest area and from there it didn’t take very long to reach the area where their contact was waiting. And it happened to be someone they knew: Amara the owl woman.

“So we meet again.” She spoke pleasantly when they approached.

“Nice to see you.” Elise replied, which was echoed by Nalia.

Then the fairy flew over to Amara while carrying the armor wreck and began speaking to her fellow magic user. She wanted to make it very clear that there was no way the Stranger would be able to hijack her newly created armor, use it for spying or do anything else negative to them through it.

As for Elise, she paused with her instruction of Nina for a bit in order to speak to Hiroka:

“There’s something I would like to ask you.”

“What is it?” The foxgirl replied.

“I think that was enough excitement for the moment, so the two of us are probably gonna stay put until it comes time for the mission.” Elise explained “But after it is done, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to keep accompanying us in further missions, like what happened when we went scouting.

“And so we get to my request: I’d like to ask you to make some extra food we can preserve, so that we can eat well when you’re not around.” She rubbed her head in embarrassment “I do have some rations on me but… I’d rather eat good food.”

Hiroka’s eyes seemed to sparkle and she gave Elise a large smile “You can count on me.” She said.

Then she put a hand on her chin and began thinking of what exactly she’d make. Elise smiled in return and thanked her before sitting down, leaning on a tree and speaking with Nina again.

‘With this it will be easy to sneak you some actual food.’

‘… I’m not sure I like the idea of eating food made by… No, I’m being ridiculous, forget what I said.’

‘Just remember that Hiroka is just a person. And she’s not old enough to have been part of what happened to your tribe.’ Elise said. Since that happened twenty years before, the woman would have been a child during that time.

‘I understand. I’ll just focus on my training and forget about that. Plus… The ones I really want to fight are those Strangers, specially that woman. I’m okay with working alongside the tribes if it means causing more trouble for them.’

‘That’s the spirit. Now let’s go back to the training.’

Things were quite peaceful afterwards. Amara seemed satisfied with Nalia’s explanations of how the armor had been made and the methods she used to make sure it couldn’t be turned against them. She did some preliminary checks of the remains and gave her farewells before leaving with them.

Hiroka had gone off to gather ingredients for Elise’s request as well as for the meal they would be having a bit later and Nalia was practicing her spells again, giving special attention to those that had proven their usefulness in the recent battles, and Elise’s training of her newest partner continued.

Nina slowly made progress, to the point where she was almost managing to get a full awareness of a single finger by the time Hiroka came back and began making their lunch plus a few extras. And she had already moved on to try and do the same for her whole hand when they had to stop for the group to eat.

It was a simple matter for Nalia to sneak some of the food to the rabbit hidden inside their black armor. After that brief interlude Nalia went back to her spell training and Elise picked up a fallen branch and began idly tracing patterns on the ground, so Hiroka took out a cat’s cradle from her clothes and began playing with it.

Naturally, Elise’s focus was actually on training Nina, so it could be said that Hiroka was the only member of the group who wasn’t doing some sort of training. Time passed, and the rabbit girl’s slow and steady progress had gotten her to the point where she could reach full awareness of an entire arm.

However, that was also the point where another difficult aspect of the training began to rear its head:

‘Ugh, my head hurts.’ Nina said.

‘That’s natural.’ Elise replied ‘You have been focusing pretty hard, and also on several different things at once, so the strain on your mind is pretty heavy, specially given you’ve never done things like this before.’ She stopped for a moment ‘From what I can tell, it hasn’t reached a point where further training would have negative effects, so there should be no problem continuing.’

Nina caught the unspoken question ‘Yeah, I can take it. Let’s keep going.’

The brief interlude was over and the training continued. The headache did make it harder for her to concentrate, so it took a couple false starts before Nina managed to get full awareness of her arm again, but after that she moved into trying to do both arms at once. Despite the area she had to focus on having been doubled, the fact that both arms were mostly the same meant that it wasn’t that much of a jump in difficulty, so it only took an hour or so for her to achieve success.

She still had to account for faded scars, different muscle density due to it not being her dominant arm, as well as other tiny details that made the second arm different in ways one wouldn’t expect at first, otherwise it would have taken less than half as much time as it did.

There was another brief interlude as Nina started feeling hungry again and Nalia gave her half of one of the extra lunches Hiroka had made. The woman had left at some point in order to gather more ingredients, so they didn’t even had to worry about her. They went back to training after that, Elise deciding that Nina should fully focus on one of her legs first instead of trying to do it at the same time as keeping her awareness on both arms.

It was a whole new set of challenges for Nina to overcome, but her headache had faded a bit and together with the previous experience, she was able to make appreciable progress in relatively little time. Still, it was already getting dark before she was able to attain a full awareness of a single leg, showing just how difficult that training really was.

Hiroka also came back during that time and the group began to make preparations for sleeping. Elise and Hiroka took out their respective sleeping bags (Nalia would share Elise’s bag, of course) and Nalia cast her usual alarm and general protection spells. She also casually moved the armor to have it lean its back against a tree and added some small charms to make it more comfortable for Nina to sleep inside, creating a sort of air cushion and making sure the temperature would be pleasant.

‘Nalia told me to ask if there was anything else you wanted to be able to rest properly.’ Elise told Nina. Eventually she would be able to develop a mental network to allow her contract partners to communicate with each other directly, but until then she had to serve as an intermediary.

‘Not really. Honestly speaking, this is more comfortable than my bed back home.’ Was the reply ‘But I’m still not sleepy, so let’s get back to our training.’

The rabbit girl still wasn’t sure what the effect of the training would be, but the fact that she was making visible progress still motivated her into wanting to progress further with it. Elise had no reason to refuse, so they kept going further even after the group had turned in to sleep, Nina pushing harder and harder to make progress.

She had almost reached full awareness on both her legs at the same time when it finally happened.

‘Ahhh, ah what is this, I… That hurts so much, why…?’ The headache from before had came back with a vengeance, growing stronger and stronger as Nina forced herself to ignore it, but that wouldn’t have been enough to garner her current reaction.

What truly pushed it past what she could bear was the sudden appearance of a new pain: A burning feeling in her arms that was like what one would get if they forced their muscles too hard, except that it was five times more painful and wasn’t limited to just the muscles, the feeling consumed every part of her arms, from the skin to the bones.

That totally unexpected pain broke her concentration, thus resulting in a one-two punch as Nina was no longer able to ignore her headache. Both of those things together were far too much, as evidenced by Nina’s somewhat hysterical reaction.

‘Argh... T-this pain in your arms is your body’s reaction to the concentration of energy you… The amount of energy you focused so deeply because… Of the way you forced your awareness of them…’ Elise, who was sharing her sensations for the sake of giving accurate guidance, also had some trouble speaking.

‘So… So it’s just part of the training…?’ Nina managed to ask.

‘It’s evidence that the training is working, y-yes…’ Elise replied, then thought to herself ‘Big sis... You really put yourself through this… Without having any need for it…? Y-you’re so…’ She didn’t complete the train of thought.

‘T-then it’s… Fine. I can take it…’ Nina was getting used to the pain. Not having to bear it alone certainly helped with that, but the fact that she wasn’t even considering the possibility of giving up still showed just how strong her desire was.

‘That’s fine… But we shouldn’t train any more today. It wouldn’t give enough results to be worth it.’

‘Then we should go to sleep…’

‘Yeah.’ Elise agreed.

Nina wouldn’t be able to get to sleep so easily while in so much pain, of course. And Elise refused to dial down the connection in order to avoid the pain, as she would not leave her partner to suffer alone. That was simply not her way.

This meant the two of them ended up remaining awake for several more hours, enough time that Nina’s legs also suffered from the same thing. Eventually Nina managed to fall asleep, having hazy thoughts about how she was still a long way from completing the training.

Elise fell asleep shortly afterwards, feeling grateful that the mission wasn’t the next day.