Chapter 463: Training - Markets and Multiverses

I wasn’t very surprised to see my other three friends make it into the hero training program after my audition. The four of us were well beyond the norm for people our age, even if we excluded half of our abilities. Realistically, each of us could probably fight an average warrior and have decent odds of winning, due to how many powerful abilities we had brought with us.

I was much more surprised by the number of other children who made it into the hero training program. At the end of the auditions, there were a total of ten children from the seven towns. The number of children within the proper age range who were also willing to participate numbered around one hundred and fifty, so around one in fifteen children who tried made it in. Gifts couldn’t entirely bridge the gap between regular children and the power we had imported from the Market, of course - but they were far more powerful than I had expected.

The first of the six children in the program with us was the strong boy, who had auditioned before me. The next two had gifts that boosted their development as Mages, granting them extensive mana pools and noticeable boosts to their innate proficiency with certain types of magic. The first boy had a strong boost to his fire magic and mana pool, while the girl who auditioned after him had an innate blessing that strongly resembled {Born of Winter’s Hold}. Perhaps more accurately, it resembled what I suspected the Skill would look like once it reached Tier 5. It was still missing some of the power and control over Laws of reality that a proper heroic skill had, but it was incredibly useful for someone who wasn’t even eight years old yet. Of course, it would drop off in power significantly as she got older and stronger, since there was no way for most people to boost a gift - at least as far as the clan knew. Based on my own knowledge of the greater multiverse, I felt it was unlikely that there was no way to boost a gift further - but perhaps it required resources that were not available in this dimension, or they were exceptionally rare. Regardless, the girl was quite strong for her age.

The fourth hero trainee outside of our group was an apothecary who could use his gift to create some medicinal materials from thin air if he had the mana for it, meaning that all he really needed was some levels to get him started on his path and sufficient understanding of the herbs he was trying to create. 

The last two both had gifts that boosted their physical stats. One of them had exceptional speed, which allowed him to move considerably faster than his [Agility] would normally have allowed. He only got a boost to that one specific aspect of his attributes - but he had invested most of his stat points into [Perception], and combined with his high speed, he was capable of escaping from dangerous situations that most scouts would have had a hard time dealing with. I personally felt that it was a bit of a shame he didn’t find a better way to make use of his unusual speed, but if he was happy with his chosen lifestyle, it wasn’t my place to butt in.

The last girl was an archer. His gift drastically boosted his precision by giving his arrows a kind of target-seeking ability. It was moderate, but coupled with her already exceptional archery skills, she was a strong combatant.

A few days after the hero selections ended, the Ember started moving again, and the surviving village-bearing beasts once again started their endless journey through the frozen jungle. Some things felt the same - as always, we were moving through an endless, frozen wasteland with bits of greenery encased in endless ice. It felt as if the chaotic annihilation of one of the village bearing beasts, and the start of the hero program, had barely changed our way of life.

However, other things had changed forever.

My father, as well as the family of every other hero trainee, was moved to one of the village-bearing beasts. As a method of ensuring ‘fairness,’ we would need to move to another town every time the ember stopped again. This seemed like some kind of delicate political power struggle, where each town tried to cultivate our loyalty to their specific town over the other five. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that - after all, we were all part of the same clan of wanderers. I felt the whole thing was a bit silly. Fortunately, the towns didn’t seem to take it too seriously - there wasn’t much backstabbing or political pressure, just a simple rule we needed to follow.

The other thing that changed was training. Previously, I had only trained with my father, and only when he had time. My other training partner had been Anise. Now, all ten of us lived in the same town, and had six trainers assigned to us - one from each town.

The first day of training, the six trainers introduced themselves, and then started lecturing us about what was expected of us in the future.

“The ten of you are the hero trainees of the clan. For other children, they don’t need to pus themselves. They can spend time with their parents or with their friends and play while they’re little. You have chosen a different path,” said Vonk, the most muscular of the six trainers. “We aren’t going to mess around. We’re here to train you into the best versions of yourselves, and to make you strong. That means you won’t have much time to play with your parents or friends. We won’t ban you from time to play or family time completely, of course - but you can expect it to be limited to an hour or two every day. This is what you signed up for. You can drop out at any time, but know that you won’t be welcome back into the program afterwards. We don’t need unmotivated heroes wasting the town’s resources.”

The ten of us nodded.

“All right, the first thing I’m going to do is have you duel each other. The four of us will watch over you and make sure that you don’t hurt each other. This is a test to see where you’re at, and also figure out if you have any bad habits that we need to train you out of.”

The four trainers didn’t seem that interested in who we fought with, so my friends and I eyed each other, before we paired up with each other. Anise and Felix, who were both a bit behind in raw combat strength, paired up against each other. That left me and Sallia, which made me wince. Sallia was probably going to win this - she was a lot more focused on personal power, while a lot of my abilities were more support-oriented. Also, Sallia was more than willing to give me a few good whacks with her training sword to make sure I didn’t make the same mistakes on a real battlefield - and since the four of us shared our stats with each other, she knew how much I could take without any real damage happening.

The moment the instructors gave us the signal to start fighting, Sallia sprang forward with a lightning-fast swipe that nearly hit my forehead before I could respond. I hit her with a spray of icy shrapnel, but Sallia easily batted my icicles out of the air, before she tried to slam me in the ribs with the pommel of her training sword.

Her movements were much slower than usual, and I realized that she wasn’t using any of her physical boosts - perhaps in order to make the fight more fair. After all, Sallia also knew that most of my build was support oriented, so it really wouldn’t be fair if she used her full build while I could barely use mine.

Even so, I barely managed to avoid her rib-slam by twisting out of the way. I followed up by trying to spray her in the face with some snow, but Sallia twisted out of the way before I even finished grabbing snow with my essence. She spun under my attack, and knocked my feet out from under me with a body tackle. With both of us on the ground, it only took Sallia a few moments to get her sword in a position where she could have stabbed me to death if it were a real fight.

Despite our battle only taking fifteen seconds, the trainer watching us clapped.

“The two of you almost move like you’ve been fighting each other for years,” she said. “It’s really strange.” I froze. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we really did fight like we had been fighting each other for years - because we had. Sallia had dodged my snow attack before I launched it, and that was probably because she knew how to read my facial expressions and body language. No opponent I fought would ever  realistically have that level of insight into how I moved, thought, and acted while fighting. The very same familiarity with each other that made the four of us a good team also made it a pain to fight each other on the practice field - we knew each other way too well. 

The trainer laughed. “Well, surprisingly, neither of you have any major bad habits. I was expecting much worse. Sallia, I saw you dodge Miria’s snow before she even finished forming it - do you have some kind of extra gift that helps you sense essence manipulation? If so, I would focus on training that - it can be a huge help in a fight. Miria, it looks like the biggest thing holding you back right now is your low Skill Tier. Once you get to Tier 3 or 4, your fighting abilities are going to skyrocket. it’s almost as if your brain knows exactly what you need to do to win a fight, but your essence control can’t keep up with it.”

I shivered. This trainer’s insight was terrifying. She didn’t have all of the information the four of us had, but she had still managed to guess or joke about several truths that the four of us would rather keep hidden.

“Since this is the level of proficiency you two already have, run a few more practice fights. No sense in standing around while the other kids work hard. Tonight, the other trainers and I will develop more specialized training programs for the two of you - but I suspect your biggest gains will come from the time you fight on the front lines with the rest of the warriors.”

Afterwards, the two of us ran a few more practice fights, before we tried pairing up with a few of the other children. Sallia crushed all of her opponents with ruthless efficiency, while I struggled a bit more. The girl who had a gift surprisingly similar to {Born of Winter’s Hold} proved to be an impossible matchup for me, since I was afraid of using my high-power spells such as Extinguish against her, and she could basically nullify my ice and snow related spells. I could win against all of the other children, although some of them put up surprisingly good fights despite my overwhelming advantage in combat experience, stats, and level. 

After several rounds of training fights, we rested for the day. The next day, the trainers presented everyone with far more personalized training plans - ice-weaving practice for me, swordsmanship training with one of the actual trainers for Sallia, magic lessons for Anise, and carving practice for Felix. The four of us were more than happy to follow the training plans and work on improving.

Days started to bleed together, until two months later, the ember came to a stop again.

Our trainers led us to the edge of the village-bearing beasts the minute they came to a stop.

“Ready for your first fight?” asked one of the trainers.

Author’s Note:

Scheduling Notice for the rest of the year: Those of you who have been around for a while probably already know this, but I take the last week of each year and the first week of each new year off as vacation time. Basically, the week of Christmas and the week of New Year’s. I also need time to rest and recharge, okay XD. This year I intend to do the same thing as usual. I will also be taking the day of Thanksgiving off, since I live in the US and I’d like to spend some time with my family and eat some turkey. As a result:

On November 27th, there will be no Markets chapter. Expect two chapters for that week, not three.

Then, from December 19th to January 5th, I will be taking my yearly vacation. The first chapter for next year will probably be up on January 6th, unless I see a reason to make some kind of scheduling change to what days of the week I release Markets and Multiverses chapters. I currently tend to mostly release chapters on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but I might swap these dates around if I think of a compelling reason to do so during my vacation. I’m not saying it will happen, just that it might. Vacation is a good time to look at my schedule, my plotlines for each story, and spend some time thinking about how I organize things and do things without the imminent pressure of ‘gotta release another chapter soon.’ I have no idea whether I’ll actually implement any changes, just noting that some might happen post vacation. Anyway, chapter releases will continue (as usual) up until my vacation. I just like to give people extremely advanced forewarning when I plan to take time off. Consider yourself forewarned!