Chapter 53: Chapter 51: Learning From the Best

Kali transported herself to her “afterlife” plane, watching with apprehension as the sprits living there gathered.

“Kali, long time no see!” One, a male angel, said jovially. “You’ve been busy.”

Kali laughed nervously. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorry I haven’t visited lately, I’ve been dealing with the whole High Arbiter thing.”

The angel, Raphael, nodded. “So I’ve seen. I’m assuming you’re here to look for volunteers to teach? If so, I’d like to request first dibs.”

“I, uh, thought you might. If I let you, would you…” She trailed off, letting the sentence hang.

After a moment of studying her expression, he nodded. “No need to worry about that. I’ll do my best. My granddaughter’s in her care, after all. And…well, I feel I owe it to Lilith, after everything.”

“Agreed.” A tall elven female added. “I have much that I can help with.”

“That would be excellent, Artemis. Who else?”

“I’m interested in the small one.” A huge, muscular human, said. “She’s learning swordplay and I think I can set her on the right path.”

“Alright Lancelot, I’ll mark you down.”

“I’ll teach her what I know of running an army, too.” A smaller, but still muscular, human said, clapping Lancelot on the back. “I’d be lonely without this guy anyway.”

“Thanks, Arthur.”

“She needs a magic tutor, yes? She knows a lot of spells but little theory, right?” A short, wiry demon, asked. She carried a large tome, and her hands glistened with rings.

“Excellent point. I’ll take that to mean you’re interested.”

“It is as you say.” The demon, Solomon, said with a bow.

“I can teach her how to fight while in other forms. I feel that has been sorely neglected.” A small, black-haired woman stated.

“Of course. Thanks, Tiamat.” There was silence as she waited for anyone else to speak up.

Eventually, a small human-looking man raised his hand. “S-she’s dealing with my wife, right? I can…probably help Carmen out.”

Kali flashed him a smile. “I’m sure you’ll prove to be a more than capable instructor, Oberon. Anyone else?” She waited, and when no one spoke up, continued. “Alright, if you change your mind let me know. Teachers, come with me, the rest of you can go back to whatever it was you were doing.”

She gathered the instructors together and teleported them all to another small plane she had recently picked up, next to a large spire made of smooth black stone. “I’m going to bind you to this obelisk, which will later be bound to Lilith. It’ll allow you to manifest physical bodies within this plane, but only while Lilith’s here, and the obelisk is going to have to be charged with Worship from time to time. You’re not going to be able to be out as spirits like you are now, but it’s the best I can do if you’re going to be training her. Physical interaction is going to be kind of important.”

Kali wrung her hands nervously. “But, before I get started, I have a request to make. Lilith lacks…decisiveness. I’ve tried to instill some into her over these past couple of months, but it hasn’t really been working the way I hoped. Her and Carmen’s personalities have seemed to converge to a minor extent lately, though, so all hope isn’t lost. I have some theories, but…”

Solomon nodded understandingly. “You did your best. It’s a little worrying, but she’s a strong soul and it hasn’t been very long yet. We’ll take a look and see what we can do. Any suggestions?”

---

Lilith looked up at the spire in front of her. It had been a couple of days since their meeting, and Kali had just approached her, saying that she was finished with the training device. It was a small, metallic cube, and when she had pressed the button on the top, she had been transported to the grassy plain she was currently standing in. “So,” she said, “Just press my hand to it and put in some Worship and it’ll start working?”

Kali nodded. “Yup. There are some…extra features in here, though. Most notably, it gives the instructors a fair bit of power over just about anything in this space, and even some control over your abilities. For instance, they can forcibly summon any or all of the Parallels here, giving temporary bodies to the ones lacking a mobile body to call their own. They can also cut your connection and keep you from contacting each other. They won’t be able to dismiss any of the Parallels, of course, and they can keep your connection cut for at most a day at a time, and if anything dangerous happens outside all control is given back to you so you can deal with it. To leave, you just touch the obelisk again and activate the teleport function. You’ll learn how to do everything after you charge it with Worship. Anyway, that’s all for me, I’ll see you after you finish the day’s training, love you!” She gave Lilith a peck on the cheek and vanished, presumably via Administrator teleport.

Lilith returned her gaze to the obelisk, and with a little apprehension, put her hand on it and put in some Worship.

Ten or fifteen Worship was snatched away, and there was a flash of light from the top of the obelisk. When Lilith looked back down, there were seven people in front of her.

“Hey there, how’s living treating you?” The one in front, an angel, jovially asked.

“Um, fine, I guess?” Lilith replied.

He gave a smile and walked forward, giving her a pat on the back. “Good to hear. The name’s Raphael, and I have to thank you for taking care of my granddaughter.”

Lilith blinked. “Granddaughter? Wait, you’re Raphael’s grandpa?”

He laughed. “That’s me! Thank you for taking care of her, I really appreciate it.” His face fell a little, and he sighed. “And yes, Elenoa’s my wife. She wasn’t nearly this bad when I was alive, so please don’t think my judgement is too bad. I was young and in love, and her little quirks were nothing worth ruining a relationship over.

“But…I suppose absolute power corrupts absolutely. Don’t worry, I won’t do a worse job of teaching you just because you’re going to use these skills to fight her. I just ask that, if at all possible, you avoid killing her. Take her to justice, make her own up to her wrongdoings, but don’t kill her.”

Lilith nodded. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

He gave her a weak smile. “People rarely do. Still, I’m going to expect you to kill her if you have to. In battle it’s going to be her or you, and you can’t choose to let it be her. Whether they know it or not, a lot of people are counting on you to keep their freedoms intact. You can’t fail just because you’re afraid of killing.”

He shook his head. “But that’s a lecture for another time. It’s time for everyone to introduce themselves. Why don’t you start?”

“Uh, right. I’m Lilith. Um, not that Lilith, but I’m sure you all knew that.” Lilith said, looking around at the assembled people. To her surprise, the most common reaction was a sort of…sad, bittersweet look. “Sorry, did I say something I shouldn’t have? Did you all know her or something?”

“It’s fine.” A small human-looking woman with black hair said. “We’re just…remembering friends. She was with us in the afterlife for quite a while, and we’re not going to be able to see her or anyone else until we’re done here.”

She shook her head slightly, then looked back at Lilith. “Don’t worry about it too much, we all chose this. We knew what we were getting into. My name’s Tiamat,” she gave Lilith a smile that had an odd tinge of melancholy to it, “and while you may not be that Lilith, I am that Tiamat. Rule of thumb for us instructors, or any of the other people in Kali’s afterlife, if you have to ask, yes, we’re that person. Anyway, I’ll be teaching you combat for non-humanoids forms. It’s not an area I feel you should neglect, especially since with your skillset you can potentially incorporate parts of what you learn here to your fights in a humanoid form.”

She took a step backward, then motioned to the next person in line, a tall elf with long, blonde hair. The elf took a step forward, then spoke. “I’m Artemis. You may have come to realize this, but after the war a lot of famous figures were rebranded into gods of ancient religions, or otherwise changed to fit the new “human only” history given to people from Earth. I just happened to be really good with a bow, and I distinguished myself enough during the war that I got a spot on the new mythos. I’ll mostly be tutoring Mae on fighting from range, but I’m sure I’ll give you a lesson from time to time.”

The next two stepped forward at the same time. The first, a large, very muscular human motioned for the second, a smaller (but still quite muscular) human to do the talking.

“I’m Arthur, this is Lancelot.” The smaller once said. “We’re both mainly going to be teaching Eve how to use a sword and how to lead an army. Like Artemis, we’ll probably give you lessons occasionally, but it’ll mostly be her.”

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The second to last one, a demon woman carrying a large tome and wearing all sorts of rings, stepped forward once Arthur and Lancelot were done. “I’m Solomon.” She said. “Legends paint me as a human man, but when they changed my race in the legends, they also changed my sex so as to better fit in with the times. That’s not really important, though. I’ll be teaching you magic theory, and if you want to get better at magic, I highly recommend paying attention.”

That left only one. He took a meek step forward and spoke in a soft voice. “I-I’m Oberon. Used to be Titania’s husband before she offed me for not agreeing with her methods. I’ll be helping train Carmen to better use more...sneaky magic, as well as giving information on how Titania operates and how to best counter her.”

Raphael nodded in satisfaction. “Alright. I’m going to give you five minutes for your Parallels to finish what they’re doing, Nuwa excepted, and then I’m teleporting you all here. Tell them now, if they don’t already know.”

After she did, he continued. “In this realm, we’ve been given the ability to boost our stats so they are ever so slightly higher than yours. The purpose of this is to force you to learn to fight properly by making you fight someone that raw stats won’t let you beat down. Our boosted state is more draining on your Worship than our regular one, though, so we won’t be in it all the time. Most of our other extra functions will drain that Worship too, so I have to ask, how much do you have at the moment?”

Two-hundred and eighty seven. Mae told them. There was a sharp uptick in gain around the time of the Shift, and while we might not be earning as much as we were right after the Shift, we’re still getting far more than we were before.

“Good. We won’t have to be too sparing, then. Let me know when everyone’s ready.”

Once everyone was, she informed him, and he gave her a nod. Suddenly, Carmen, Eve, and even Mae were all standing beside her. And then, her connection to them dropped. It felt…wrong, all that information she got from their senses just…stopping.

“Right.” Raphael said cheerfully. “To begin with, we’ll be training you separately. It’ll increase your ability to concentrate and we can’t guarantee there won’t ever be a circumstance in which you are somehow separated, so it’s going to be important to learn how to fight by yourself. Especially you, Lilith. You should be able to share almost everything after you’re hooked back up, but details might be a bit fuzzier than you’re used to. Our method of severing the connection isn’t nearly as polished as Kali’s. That should be everything, so the teachers will grab whoever they’re teaching today, and we’ll get started.”

“Gotcha. Eve, you’re with us.” Arthur said, waving. “Kingdom management and swordplay one-oh-one.”

“Coming.” Eve said in an uncharacteristically serious tone. “Which one’s first?”

“Mae, follow me. We’re starting.” Artemis said, already stalking off.

Understood.

“Tiamat and I will be your teachers today.” Raphael informed Lilith. “I’ll be helping with unarmed combat as a humanoid and integration of magic and Skills into the aforementioned unarmed combat, Tiamat will do much the same for your other forms.”

“Thanks.”

“Um, I guess that leaves just me and Solomon, then.” Oberon stammered. “Is that alright with you?”

“Of course.”

---

“First things first.” Raphael said, looking Lilith over. “I’ve got to get a feel for how you fight. We’ll do a quick spar, none of your instant-kill stuff, just a clean fight. We’ll go twice, one time where we can both use spells, another where we can’t. Got it?”

“Yeah. Are we just going to go at it right here or…?”

“Here’s fine. Tiamat will be the judge. Let’s take a few steps away from each other, and then Tiamat will tell us when to start.”

Once they were a good distance apart, Tiamat signaled for them to begin. Lilith immediately began bombarding him with a series of attacking spells of all different elements, attempting to end the fight before they were ever in melee range.

It didn’t work. Each different approach she tried, Raphael seemed to have an answer to. Large swarms of small spells were negated by a barrier, slower but stronger spells were dodged or, when the spell homed in on the target, carefully deflected using a fist imbued with Mana. When she tried combining the two types of spells, he put up the barrier, dropping it only to deal with the large spells, and either dodges the small spells that came through, or let them hit him in non-vital areas.

Pretty soon, they were up in melee range, and then it was all over. She tried to push him away using a spear of hard carapace she manifested from her torso, but he ducked to the side, chopping down with his hand and slicing it clean through. Taking advantage of her off-balanced state, he lashed out faster than she could react, landing a square hit on her jaw, knocking her off her feet, and sending her about a foot backwards. She was about to get up when a tingle spread from the point of impact, and her responsiveness dulled. And then, Raphael was on top of her, hand poised to chop down on her neck.

He held that pose for a moment, and Tiamat called his victory.

The tingling vanished. He offered her a hand, and she accepted, getting unsteadily to her feet.

“There are a lot of things I could say, but I’m going to save that all until after the second round. I’ll give you five minutes to recover and then we’ll go again.”

It went about as well as the first fight had. As soon as he was up-close, he just ended the fight with one solid blow. After helping her to her feet again, Raphael sat down on the grass, not even panting. “Take a seat if you want, we’ve got to discuss what happened.”

Lilith sat, and Tiamat walked over so she was close as well, though she chose to remain standing. “I’ve got input as well.”

Raphael nodded. “Mind if I go first?”

“Not at all.”

“So, in the first fight, you were way too concentrated on spellcasting. You didn’t use any Skills, you didn’t try and fire your guns, nothing. You also just stood there, when you could have been moving backwards. If you’re fighting an opponent who wants to be up close, you should make an effort to keep the distance between you. Then, when I did get up close, you didn’t even activate Zoan’s Barrier. You could have stalled me out for longer if you had. And, when you tried to shove me away using Eldritch Abomination, you didn’t coat it with any sort of substance. Even a weak paralytic agent would be better than nothing, and I’m using my fists, so it would have been more effective than on someone using traditional weapons.”

He took a breath, then continued. “And the second fight had a similar issue. You used your guns, sure, but there was no mix-up. You were too straightforward, didn’t even try anything really underhanded.”

“There’s only so long you can keep your status as an untouchable power up.” Tiamat added. “And while straightforward fighting works great if you’re much stronger than your opponents, it doesn’t work quite as well if they’re as tough as you are. When the time comes that you’re fighting an opponent on nearly equal footing, and that will come, it’s going to come down to who fights smarter.”

Lilith tilted her head. “How can you be so sure I’ll have to fight against someone about as powerful as I am? I grow a lot faster than anyone else, so theoretically I shouldn’t need to.”

Raphael shook his head. “First off, there’s a high chance that you’ll be fighting in those battles for planes Kali was talking about, and our planes are still on the weaker end of the spectrum. Your opponent’s baseline abilities are likely to be higher than yours. But, even disregarding that, you’re going to hit a point where differences of even one hundred to two hundred levels are unimportant. A difference of one hundred or two hundred points in a stat doesn’t mean as much when you both have, say, four or five thousand in that stat. Levels are going to be increasingly hard to earn if you’re not resetting Classes constantly, so there’s almost a soft cap based on how much experience you’re earning.”

He stood up, dusting himself off. “And so. it’ll end up being way more efficient for you to go around picking up all sorts of different Classes and getting those Skills. But you’re not using your toolkit right now, so it doesn’t matter. But that’s what we’re here for. We’re going to beat proper fighting into you, no matter how long it takes. And don’t think we’ll be finished after you deal with my wife, either. Your opponents have thousands of years of experience, so there’s no way we’ll be finished after a month.”

Lilith stood as well. “Alright, then. What should I do first?”

Raphael grinned. “Good attitude. First, we’re going to go over all of your Skills, and all the spells you know. Then, we’re going to figure out what works together, and what doesn’t. And then we’re going to be practice. A lot. Tiamat, mind taking us to that classroom Kali showed us?”

Tiamat shifted into an enormous black dragon, easily five times the size of Kirdin, then stretched out a leg. “Hop on.” She told them. Once they were on, she lifted them to her back, continuing to talk as she did. “Kali placed it a ways away from here so that anyone inside wouldn’t be interrupted by people training outside. Alright, everyone secure? Here we go!”

She took off, and the conversation settled into silence, giving Lilith some time to think. It was certainly the strangest first day of “school” she’d had, what with the dragonback transportation and her teachers being, apparently, history’s best, but not a bad one, all things considered.

Yes, she had gotten beat up a bit, but that was only to be expected, given she was here to learn how to fight. She shifted a bit, finding the most comfortable position she could, and then decided to go check in on Elenoa and Titania. Nuwa was monitoring them, yes, but more eyes couldn’t hurt, and she wasn’t doing anything anyway, so she closed her eyes, and got to looking.