Chapter 239: Chapter Two Hundred Forty

A week. A week of constant ass kicking, three days of the group  fights alone, then four more days of group fights while Abel did his  best to actively distract us. That week got me seventy points, as well  as seven attacks to stockpile. Thirty five wishes. The seventy points  were distributed to my stats mostly evenly. Fifty to Fantasy, bringing  it up to a hundred and one, and then ten each to Perception and Creation  bringing them to one hundred even and one hundred and two respectively.

Knowing  I could get to that point without dedicating every wish to stats, we  started letting Callie make the two remaining wishes after the  contractually obligated three for the Beast Lord Garden for the last two  days, as well as giving her one for the third to last. The seven shadow  attacks brought me to an even ten, and Callie dumped all thirty five  points into Fantasy as she'd been considering bringing her to an even  hundred and twenty.

It was a truly staggering windfall for  us, rounding us out in multiple important ways, and we saw the benefit  of almost none of it during our training. Abel refused to let us use  Skills, and had made sure to engage suppression to prevent us from  abusing our stats to compensate for the numbers, so while we were  growing more powerful, it didn't have a pronounced effect on our combat  abilities as it happened.

That wasn't to say our combat  abilities didn't improve. They definitely did. Even with the  suppression, our cooperation for smoother and more intuitive as we went  on. As we progressed, Abel started throwing us curve balls to distract  us. Making us switch to fighting alone against half the attackers, then  staggering the numbers, and at one point throwing ACTUAL curveballs at  us from behind when we were mid battle to try to ruin our focus.

We  reacted to all of them as seamlessly as possible, making some mistakes  at the beginning, but slowly growing more comfortable slipping into our  'teamwork trance' and then back out of it. Even the curveballs weren't  landing by the end of the week, Callie and I able to defend each other  even from Abel's absolutely monstrous sense of spatial awareness and eye  for weaknesses. He wasn't using his power to attack us or anything, but  we had definitely come a long way and I was proud of our progress.

Which  is why I was deeply concerned when we showed up to the Pavilion and I  found not ten people, but two, standing in the circle of dirt waiting  for us. Mel and Abel were standing relaxed, seemingly unconcerned with  our arrival as they waved us over without looking up from a game of  chess they were playing at a small table. Abel held up a finger to ask  us to hold, and then continued the game, effectively ignoring us for  about twenty minutes as the two of them finished up their game, not  appearing to hurry at all.

When they finished, I expected  them to stop, but again, I was thrown for a loop as they reset the  pieces. This time though, Abel began to speak. "We've been working with  you for a bit over a week now, and you've gotten much better about your  awareness. Your instinctive grasp over each other's position is passing  now, at least when you try. In the process of that, however, your combat  styles have both changed from what they were. The version of you that  fights next to your partner, and the version of you who fights BESIDE  them, react to things in different ways."

He made a move,  and Mel clucked her tongue in annoyance before picking up the thread of  the conversation. "What my cryptic ass of a boyfriend is trying to say,  in the most pretentious way possible, is that you need to relearn each  others habits. You know how your partner fights, but that's changed.  Proper cooperation is built with trust, and trust is built with  knowledge and communication. The better you know someone, the more at  ease you can feel when putting yourself in their hands."

I  raised a skeptical eyebrow behind my mask. "So...you want us to play  chess? I assume that's where this is going and that we aren't just here  to spectate your own games? Because I don't think even you two can  convince me that watching you play a board game is a viable training  method for team combat." Mel glanced over at me with a chuckle, which  faded into a curse as Abel made another move.

"No." She  said. "You will be playing. As for the reason...well, chess has lots of  correlation with real battle. It's limited and constrained enough not to  be a great representation of combat, but that serves our purposes  perfectly here. We WANT limited and constrained for this part. You need  to build your understanding of each other back up slowly. Of course, you  aren't going to be playing to a win. Beating another person is easy.  Fuck, who uses an en passant anymore?" She cleared her throat as she  realized she'd trailed off. "Sorry, as I was saying, easy. What we want  you to do is play to a stalemate. Well, one of you. The other one will  be trying for a win. That'll alternate."

That  was...harder. I knew the rules for chess, my dad had taught me as a kid.  He hadn't exactly been around, but he sent tasks for me to do and  contacted me remotely often enough as a child. Chess was easy to play  over long distances, and it fit well with his mindset. Still, she was  right. Winning a chess game was MUCH easier than trying to force a draw.  At least against an opponent trying to beat you. I could already see  how annoying this was going to be. Still, I saw the logic at least, and I  was pretty sure Callie did too.

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It took about a half hour  for the game to finish and when it did they stood up and gestured to us  to sit down. "Ok." Said Abrl. "Solomon is up first, you're going to be  the one trying for a draw. Let's see how well you know Nightstrike. Pay  close attention to her play style and how it compares to the way she  acts in combat. Learning the way that kind of thing translates is the  key to being able to predict her moves. If you can't learn to do it with  something as structured as chess you have no shot in a real fight."

I  sat down and started to play, going slowly and taking my time.  Unsurprisingly, Abel didn't stop talking as we had our game,continuing  to wax philosophical. "If it helps, this isn't just a benefit to combat.  It's really good for your relationship to learn how the other person  thinks. Being able to intuit your partners emotions is the key to a  successful courtship." His tone was distant in a way that implied he was  trying for wisdom, but it was cut off by his ear being grabbed roughly.  "Ow, ow, ow Mel that hurts!"

The red masked woman was  glaring down at her boyfriend. "Are you really in a position to be  giving these kids relationship advice after running off on me for years?  If so, maybe you can educate me too. Tell me, what kind of emotions are  your intuition picking up from me right now?" The half of Abel's face  exposed by the mask paled as his eyes widened like a deer in headlights.  Seeing a guy that powerful cowering like that was pretty sad. I would  have laughed at him for it, but I felt like Callie might get upset at me  for being petty.

I very deliberately ignored the irony as  I chose to focus on helping Abel out. "So, is this the last step in  this hare brained training you have us doing? Because I'm anxious to get  to the point where we can train with actual Skills." I was lucky I had  so many points to give to Callie actually, because I would need a LOT of  shadow attacks for all the training we were planning on doing. Just a  shame she needed them more than the others, I really could have used  some more fire attacks. I would be sure to get some from Cark before the  tournament.

Abel's eyes snapped from fearful to  suspicious so fast it became clear he had mostly been playing up the  patheticness for Mel's amusement as he glared at me. "First of all. No  rabbit jokes. You're better than that, and if your aren't, I have MUCH  more intense training I can subject you to until you are." He pulled  away from Mel. "Second of all. No. There's another step after this  before we allow Skill use. But it's combat oriented so I'm sure you'll  enjoy it quite a bit." The way he was grinning at the thought made me  pretty suspicious of that prediction, but I couldn't spend too much time  watching because I was busy.

The  game itself ran for about an hour. Playing for a stalemate was weird.  I'd learned chess with the express purpose of victory, and playing  against someone to essentially make sure no one won, was a radically  different mindset. Rather than playing for position, I was aiming to  exchange as many pieces as possible just to free up the space to box her  in. Lots of amateurs played that way even in serious games, but rapid  trading was actually an incredibly stupid way to play in the early game,  at least if you wanted to win.

I'd  also never played chess with Callie before. Abel's nonsense turned out  to be accurate again though, because when I paid attention, I COULD see  similarities between Callie's play style and her fighting style, and I  could somewhat reverse engineer those similarities to predict her moves.  Despite how weird and absurd that had sounded, I'd neglected to  remember that I was now at over a hundred Focus, meaning my brain was  processing approximately a hundred times faster than even a genius  mortal.

Focus  was...a weird stat. It came across in the day to day as improved  memory. Most of the rest of the time it wasn't really obvious how it  effected you save for offsetting Perception overload. It was just a ton  of raw processing power, but in the same way a scan box would have a  massive processor. I didn't USE that much processing power most of the  time, so it didn't have a marked impact on my daily life.

At  times like this though, when I was cranking my deductive skills as hard  as I could, I really drew on those reserves. It showed me more than  anything how deeply stats could effect you without you noticing. There  were so many aspects of stat gain that I never bothered to try to tap  into, still constrained by my mortal mindset. I suspected people like  Abel had a much more holistic grasp on their stats and how to make the  most of every point at all times. I made a mental note to try to put  some effort into that when I finally got the chance, but I knew for the  moment it was just another thing on the pile.

I  lost the game, and Abel made us reset. This time I was trying to win,  which I did. We played back and forth for hours, constantly switching  which of us would try to stall the other. By the end of the day we'd  each managed at least one win, with me managing a second. Once the  training was done, Abel called a stop to it and began to put away the  board. As he did, he gave us both an approving nod. "Good. You learned  what you needed to. I want you to keep doing that exercise nightly, one  game for each of you. As for here though...well, like I said, the next  step is a bit more physical. Make sure you wear your armor tomorrow." He  gave us a wide grin. "It's time for me to take a...personal hand in  your sparring matches."

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