Training with the Analyst

Ming stared out over the mountains, hand on the pommel of her blade. She ran through sword forms in her head, and expected she would be doing the same thing for this entire session. 

In the battles around the tournament, Ming had earned the mentorship of three people, but only one of them mattered: Ikki, the Patriarch of the White Viper Sect. Perhaps the greatest swordsman on the planet, and a verified master of a dozen other weapons and unarmed combat styles. He was the man that could help her push her power further. 

Unfortunately for her, the only timeslots he had available were in the evening, making him the last of the trainers in the schedule. And so she had to deal with someone known as the Analyst, and then the Amethyst Mask. She was at least interested in meeting the Mask. The folk hero of the Crystal Coves, a wandering xia, and the man with a legacy that made his mana impossibly powerful at the cost of control. When she'd created her mana meditation, some of the stories about his life had come to her then. Her meditation was, in a way, based on his unstable cycling powers. 

He wasn't a blade user, but she expected he could still teach her plenty about wringing every possible bit of control and efficiency over her spellcraft. Perhaps he would even have insights in how to improve her mana meditation.

But the Analyst? Why would someone with that power be a suitable teacher? What could they teach her? Why had they thought they could? They sounded like they'd be better off mentoring one of the people who competed in a sensory event, or who was at the technological exposition. 

As soon as she sensed a powerful presence behind her she spun, slashing out with a quick sword-draw cut. The air hummed around the blade, the Nascent Truth of Combat, her new Dominion, Silvery Blades, and Quickstep flowing through the growth item to form a perfect cut. 

If she was able to kill the Analyst, or even a simulacrum, with her current power, she would know that it was entirely worthless to attempt to learn from them, and she was certain that the Knowledge King would prevent any retribution. More than that, whatever retribution there might have been would be born of shame, their own fault. The shaft of a spear caught her blow and knocked it aside. Ming snorted and let her blade drop to her side, glaring at the middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair, a sharply tailored suit, and a golden pocketwatch in one hand. The man arched an eyebrow as he slipped the watch away.

“If you’re going to teach me anything worthwhile, then you need to show me that you actually mean it,” Ming stated flatly. “Nothing else matters.” 

“Don’t be an idiot,” the Analyst snapped. “You’ve al–”

“If you veiled yourself to my power level, I bet you’d be a lot less confident about calling me that," Ming snapped back, lifting her sword and channeling power again. Something lit in the man’s eyes, and he stepped forward. As he did, the power flowing from the simulacrum began to drop. Sixth. Fifth. Fourth. She expected it to end there, matching her at mid-fourth gate, but instead it kept dropping, until the simulacrum felt like it was at the beginning of third gate. Then he was at peak second, and Ming only had an instant to feel insulted before he conjured shards of bone.

Violence exploded between them as she unleashed a massive instance of Silvery Blades, empowered further with the might of her Nascent Truth and Dominion. With all the power she could pack into it, the strike should practically evaporate the man in front of her, but he teleported away.  She needed to turn and stab, but before she could, a voice called out.

“Tactically unsound, reliant upon instincts from someone three full gates higher than yourself.”

Then a bone shard appeared in front of her eye. She had an instant of panic before it drilled into her skull, crushing her eyeball like wet jelly. Pain tore through her, and she screamed, unleashing a wave of Silvery Blades in every direction. Hundreds of them exploded from her body, and she knew they’d tear through his defenses. But he’d teleport away, so she mastered her pain and re-focused. Her Idealized Regeneration spell would stop the blood loss. It wouldn’t give her back her sight, but she could still fight–

Another bone shard crushed her other eye, and she screamed again, even as she heard the man’s voice. 

“Inefficient mana use, relying on higher walls than you currently have.” 

This was fine. She cast an ungated spell to dull the pain and focused on her mana senses. He was right, she was fighting poorly. The instant she sensed where he was, she formed a Silvery Blade right in front of him, prepared to drive it through his heart. Instead, another one of the bone shards appeared and slammed into the side of her spell. 

Ming’s spell was well built. She didn’t understand how she’d created it, but it was a masterwork. But even a masterwork had flaws. Desolation mana was inherently unstable, far more than any other mana type. Forging it was incredibly difficult, and in order to create her blades, Ming had been forced to grapple with that instability, and create a handful of weaker points in the ‘flat’ of the blade. The Analyst’s bone shard slammed into the largest of them and broke her spell before he spoke again.

“Flawed spell design due to your inexperience.”

They launched at one another, bone shards spinning around him as she formed more blades. She’d been wrong to treat a second gate opponent so lightly, but she would not repeat that mistake. He tore through her spells, but she formed new ones that cut the bone shards in half. He teleported them inches from her, but she cut them in half before they could touch her skin. Their mana senses slammed against one another as they pushed back and forth, and he seemed to be doing something with his resonance as well, using it to empower the force of his bone shards. It was as if he was applying the resonance directly to the spell, similar to how she applied her own Nascent Truth – but he didn’t seem to have a Nascent Truth. How? People without one couldn’t usually do anything with resonance until Arcanist, and he had genuinely sealed his power down. 

Then she felt it – an opening, where she cut through several of his bone shards at once. She could take off his arm. She lunged forward, sword humming with power, and sliced it off. The limb fell neatly to the floor, and a shard buried itself in her throat. She had a moment for the shock to run through her. He’d sacrificed an arm… as a trap? Darkness swept over her, and Ming wondered if she was going to die. 

She did not. She woke up on a steel table that looked more like the sort used for an autopsy than for healing, with the Analyst peeling off a pair of gloves. Gratitude rushed through her – not only had he not actually killed her, but he’d repaired her sight. She could see. Fully. A part of her had known that she would be healed – the Knowledge King wouldn’t let him go too far. But still, accidents happened.

“I’m nowhere near the level of the Healer, but you should be operational again,” the Analyst said. “Does that answer your question as to my qualifications, or are you going to continue to act like a child throwing a tantrum?” 

“How did you infuse resonance toward the end? Did you tap into Wu Wei? Nobody with a grand array – which I think is what you have? – should be able to resonate with a spell before Arcanist, and you were limiting yourself. Or… did you form roots at second gate?” 

A look of amusement crossed the man’s face, and he shook his head. 

“That was simple application of resonance. It’s hard to learn without a Truth before Arcanist, but hard is not impossible. You’re not the only genius in history, Ming. And it was not Wu Wei. I’ve rarely, if ever, achieved Wu Wei in my life. And frankly, it’s not the impressive resonance technique you’ve managed. Ikki will help you bring out its potential, but I'm far more interested in something else you've done.” 

An hour ago, Ming would have been insulted at the very idea. Wu Wei, effortless action, was the ultimate expression of the self through combat. It was perfection in movement, thought, mana, and action. Learning to tap into it was the clear next step in her development. But if he’d beaten her so thoroughly using other techniques… 

“What is the most impressive?” Ming demanded. 

“Creative Flow,” the man said simply. “How did you, as someone without even an open first gate, manage to create a spell that would flow so seamlessly with a full-gate spell – a spell you also created? Third gate? Fourth? Eighth? Ninth?” 

Ming shifted. She didn’t like thinking about the day she’d made the spell. Her village had died, her parents, and her friends. She would have died as well, if not for a bit of dumb luck. And worse… she didn’t know. She gave the answer that she gave anyone who asked – or at least, anyone who asked and who she bothered to answer. 

“The local library had been burnt down, but some of the spatially stored books had survived, including a copy of Silver Tide’s field notes, which were in transit to a big city. I read them over and over, and designed my spell.” 

“Uncanny, isn’t it? Your ability to perfectly read through notes that should have been far above you in both theory and power, and were able to somehow parse the information contained within. Not just parse it, but apply it. And your mana manipulation technique. Built off the Amethyst Mask? Those notes weren’t there.” 

Ming hesitantly nodded, and the Analyst gave a knowing smirk.

“In the same way Wu Wei cuts out waste, but also greatly amplifies the effectiveness of your combat abilities, the Creative Flow helps you hyperfocus, but also helps you draw on more. In that state of loss, pain, and rage, you tapped, ever so slightly, into your Intent, and into the collective Intent of creators all across the world. While in the Creative Flow, you can do more than you should. As another small benefit, it should assist in absorbing the combat instincts that you have gained from absorbing the headstone. Make them truly yours, rather than the instincts of someone with far more power than you.”

He flicked his fingers and spread papers out on the steel operating table where she was sitting. Her eyes flicked over them, and widened. Those were schematics for the Silvery Blades spell, as well as for her mana meditation. But they were marked up in red ink, as if she’d turned them in to a professor for grading. 

“But just like how Wu Wei is only an amplification, Creative Flow is only a tapping. It’s not guaranteeing perfect results. The heart of your spellcraft is good, but there are countless inefficiencies and flaws that we are going to need to correct, which arose from gaps in your knowledge. Across all of the minor errors, we can likely make your spellcraft half again as efficient as it is now. What’s more, when it comes time to design your fifth gate full-gate spell, you’ll need to be much better grounding in the theory behind those principles, as well as capable of entering that state. You’ve had it easy – your third and fourth gates are effectively simple modifications. But fifth and eighth? Those are going to be difficult. If you work with me, you can actually achieve it.”

Ming leaned forward, more interested than she wanted to admit. His explanation did help put into perspective why her spell design had been so good – despite the flaws he’d identified. 

“I do see how that would be good. Is that what you offer? Assistance in learning spell design and the… Creative Flow?” 

“Oh, I have plenty more to teach you. For one, your choice to not take the Analyze spells is beyond foolish. You also need to adapt a spellseal breaking spell or natural treasure, as otherwise having Silvery Blades sealed renders you impotent. Your mana manipulation skills are underdeveloped for your tier, as you use such simple flows, which will be a problem as you advance and they grow more complex. Your combat skill relies too much on brute power, which does complement your mana meditation, but runs counter to chasing Wu Wei…” 

The man continued to rattle off every inefficiency and inadequacy that he spotted in her, and by the end, both of them were smiling. She might not agree with everything he said, but once she learned to apply all these lessons, she was confident she was going to be more powerful than any other mage at her tier. With the Analyst's help, she was going to kill Occultists one day.