The buckets bite into my palms as I trudge up the winding path. With each step I take, the water inside sloshes, threatening to spill over. Besides me, Bae jogs and jumps along, whistling and humming carefree. When did I agree to this? It doesn’t even make sense. They get water up there straight from the irrigation canals. Why should I bring water up from the lake only for training? I feel like those rodents running on a wheel the children in the slums used to make bets about. I bet that Bae only makes me do this because the suffering of others makes her feel pleasure.

  “So, I was wondering,” she speaks directly next to my ear, making me flinch and almost stumble. The buckets pull me forward, and I take a hasty step to recover my balance. “So skittish,” she snickers. “Don’t forget your surroundings. You need to train your perception, too. What could help with that?” She curls her hair with one of her fingers. “I know!”

  I see her dart into the distance in a blur. A few heartbeats later, a pebble flies straight towards my belly. I barely have time to evade. The water sloshes hard, making the buckets bite even deeper into my palms. “Do you need to do that?” I complain.

  “Yes!” Bae wags her tail, grinning widely. She throws another pebble. This time, I see it coming early, which makes it easier to evade. “It will help you keep aware of your surroundings and dodge harm. That should help you train your perception and agility.”

  “Okay,” I mutter, unconvinced that this is the best way, but who am I to judge? I have become a simple farmhand, a laborer whose opinion doesn’t matter.

  The sun is barely cresting above the tree line. Sweat already rolls over my forehead in glistering beads that mix with the dust that clings to my skin on its way down my temples. My arms burn, my shoulders ache, and my legs feel like stiff, wooden tree trunks that creak and groan, resisting every step forward.

  “As I was saying.” Bae’s voice seems distant, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “How did you pull off getting past those guards they posted at the tunnel?” She dances past me, a spring in her step. “I checked it yesterday. They filled the whole length of it with wards and traps. Crazy bastards!”

  I put the buckets down to recover enough of my breath to answer. “I didn’t go through the tunnel. I climbed over the mountain.” A faster pebble flies towards me, biting into the shin of my right leg before I can react. “Ouch!”

  “Don’t stop,” admonishes Bae. I glare at her but lift the buckets again to continue with this torture. “You ought to max out your strength and endurance before you rank up. I know that can be hard when you are already close to your potential.” She shrugs and interlaces her hands, almost as if apologizing. “But on the bright side, this will help to increase your willpower.”

  Sure, who would have known that trying to become a great mage meant that you have to grow indifferent to suffering?

  I sigh as I reach the top of the hill. Bae already stands there with her arms folded, watching with the detached gaze of someone measuring raw material before deciding how to forge it. She seems to pretend to impersonate a stern taskmaster, even though her wagging tail betrays her excitement.

  I dump the water into a pond, trying not to feel envious of the glowing fish lazing around. Then I wipe the sweat off my forehead with my sleeve, trying not to slump my shoulders and betray my exhaustion.

  “Again,” says Bae in a deep voice that doesn’t correspond with her throat. “Let’s race back to the lake!”

  I didn’t argue. There is no point. Losing means more training. I know I will lose, not just because I need to carry the empty buckets with me. Her advancement stage is way higher than mine. But I know that not putting enough effort into trying means she will push me even harder with every additional chore she can think of. Yesterday, she made me chop wood for hours, help the villagers carry logs of bamboo and sacks of rice up and down the hills, haul water, swim up the stream trying to catch the slippery trout darting past me with my bare hands, weed herbs out of the flooded paddies and unclog the water channels that feed them. In the evening, my arms trembled so much I could barely lift a glass of water. The bamboo sticks they used to eat instead of cutlery kept slipping through my fingers until Bae took pity on me and allowed me to eat with my hands.

  When I finally arrive at the lake, huffing and panting, Bae is already waiting there. She even found time to pull off her shoes, sit down, and dip her toes into the water. She giggles while small fish nibble at her skin.

  “Oh! You are finally here!” She observes how I fill my buckets again. “Not bad, but we can still improve your speed.” A few boats drift by. Some of the fishers greet us, waving their hands. Every peasant living in the village seems to know me already, even if I can’t remember any of their names. “Sit down for a minute and eat a few mandarins. You need to replenish your mana and strength every once in a while to continue training.”

  I let myself fall onto my buttocks. “Okay.”

  Bae snickers. She looks at me, then at the mandarins. I’m about to peel the first one. “Wait!” she exclaims. I flinch. What now? “Do you know how to juggle?”

  “A bit?” I did try it out for a stint as an entertainer at the market. Not that I was ever good at it. I used it to distract while Dante cut the purses of the crowd. I sigh, remembering that I will never see him again.

  “Great!” exclaims Bae. “I will show you tricks and the technique you need to build up to juggling five, six, and seven mandarins.” I blink, dumbfounded. Seven mandarins? Did she lose her mind? “This will help you train your dexterity and perception. And it is funny.” She giggles and grins, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “If you let them fall too many times, too bad for you. You will have only mush left to eat.”

  I sigh again. “Great.”

  “So, how did you manage to cross the mountain at your advancement level?” she asks. One of the mandarins falls, bursting open after impacting the ground. Does she expect me to converse with her on top of it? It would be easier if she stopped distracting me. “The Ice spirits are ferocious and deadly.”

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  “I… don’t… know…” The remaining mandarins wobble until I stabilize the pattern without dropping another one. “By crossing?”

  “Hmm, strange…,” she mutters. “Did you meet Kylo? I’m training him too.”

  “Who?”

  She claps her hands. “Oh! He will love to have a training partner when I introduce you to him!” Okay? But you haven’t explained who this Kylo is. Bae looks at me, at the runes on my arms and those peeking out under the hem of my shirt. “What is this? Seal mana, seal heat, and Invisibility.” How can she read them so fast after barely glimpsing at them? “So, you used body runes. Smart. Haven’t seen that in a long time.”

  Huh? It may be an opportunity I can’t let slip. “Why… don’t… more… people use them?”

  Bae throws my fallen mandarin towards me, nearly making me lose control of the rest of them. “Good question.” She leans back, supporting herself on her elbows, letting the sunlight bathe her. “They used to be very popular a few centuries ago, but then people stopped using them here in the empire in favor of just using techniques inscribed in their meridians.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Well, there are a bunch of different reasons.” Bae’s eyes grow distant, seeming lost in thought. “First, while body runes can give you a lot of versatility, the power they can exert is limited by the ink’s quality you can obtain. Most people think that they lack power at higher advancement stages compared to the power of advanced techniques. That is why you hear them say it is a broken or an inferior path. Even though versatility has a quality of its own.” She sits back up, tossing me another mandarin that has fallen with a smile. “There are also cultural and political reasons.”

  “Cultural reasons?” I try to ignore the sticky juices clinging to my hands, delaying each toss by a fraction of a heartbeat.

  “Yeah! When the latest conflict with the Underdark started, people confused body runes with the holy sigils the goblins use to commune and channel the power of the spirits they worship. Some idiots started throwing wild accusations around until nearly everybody thought that users of body runes were consorting with the enemy or some other nonsense.”

  “But that… is stupid.”

  “Completely,” admits Bae with a snicker. “A lot of you humans can be complete morons that believe everything some other idiot tells them.” Her hand flashes out in a blur, catching a shimmering trout that tries to wiggle out of her grasp in panic. “It wasn’t until the latest trade agreement with the dwarves and their runic artifacts that everybody learned to tell the difference.” She bites down on the fish’s head, ending its struggles. “But enough chitchat. Eat up what’s left of your mandarins. We have more training to do up in the courtyard.”

  Bae’s tail flicks from side to side as she sifts through a weapon rack. Her ears twitch each time the steel clatters against the wood. She looks up at me. “What kind of weapon have you used?”

  “Just the bow and daggers,” I answer, intimidated by her intensity.

  “The bow? Great! We can use that to train your strength and perception.” She says, lashing her tail again. I sigh in frustration, trying to massage life back into my aching arms. “But maybe we will leave it for tomorrow, once you have recovered a bit, along with dancing lessons to increase your agility.” She grins at me. “You wobble too much right now.”

  She goes back to rummage through the rack. I shift from foot to foot, trying to find a position that doesn’t ache. I take the opportunity to circulate mana through my muscles in an attempt at recovery. It seems to work, although slowly.

  “Let’s see, neither axes nor maces. You don’t need more strength training.” She looks at me judgingly. “Some kind of sword to train your dexterity and maybe the spear, but which ones?” She snatches up a straight, double-edged longsword and turns it in her hands, feeling the balance. “Nah. Your agility and dexterity are higher than your strength. You need something fast and versatile. You will have the spear for wild beasts because you don’t want them to get close. Maybe you can dual-wield against humanoids.” She turns to glance at me again, sizing me up. “But what to try? Saber and buckler? Sword and parrying dagger? Hmm. Maybe we will decide later.” She lifts a simple spear, just a leaf-shaped piece of iron embedded on a straight wooden stick, a bit taller than I am. “Catch!”

  I fumble, nearly tossing it, but catch the shaft at the last moment. It feels smooth and worn under my touch.

  Bae takes up another spear herself. “We will start with this, she says.” Twirling it around in a blur. “The basics are simple to learn. You pierce with the pointy end, and you parry with the shaft. You can also whack someone over the head if piercing them doesn’t work. Follow me!” She starts walking over to the center of the courtyard. “There is more to it naturally. Mastery takes time, as with everything. Let’s start with footwork. If you don’t hurt yourself or cut off your feet this week, I may show you more. If you feel comfortable using it, we may choose it as your main weapon.” I look at her dubiously. She snickers. “Don’t worry, we won’t choose anything before you have tried out other weapons, too. Now observe and repeat what I do as best as you can.”

  The dirt shifts beneath my feet as I struggle to keep up. The butt of my spear drags behind as I move. I stumble again, nearly losing my balance from excessive momentum. There are just too many small details to bear in mind, small shifts in posture that accompany every movement and every strike.

  Bae sighs, her ears flicker in frustration. “Again,” she barks, stepping forward and spinning her spear in a lazy arc before snapping it forward until the tip stops, a hairbreadth from piercing my shirt. “Slow down if you need to. Your feet are falling behind. You can’t stick them in the ground like roots. It has to flow together. Once you learn that, you can increase the speed, react to your opponent, and control the space around you.” She steps back, demonstrating again how to do a proper lunge. Her footwork is light and fluid. Her body shifts with the natural rhythm of the weapon, accelerating it in a snap. “Can you see it? Every step is an attack. Every retreat is a trap designed to make your opponent overextend himself. If you don’t learn that, you are just some idiot swinging a stick.”

  I swallow, adjusting my grip and resetting my stance. The spear feels even heavier in my hands, but I push forward, determined to earn approval.

  “Better,” she praises me. “Turn your forward foot until it is in line with the direction of your thrust. It will help you keep your balance and react faster.”

  A white shadow moves behind Bae between the cherry trees surrounding the courtyard. Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see it sneak closer, spotted fur as high as my waist and blue eyes that glare at me. I know this big cat! It’s that bastard that tried to hunt me up in the mountains. What is he doing here?

  “Umm, Bae?”

  She stops mid-lunge and looks at me. “What?”

  I point to the white shadow under the trees, maybe fifty steps away. “There is a leopard.”

  She whirls around in a blur. “Kylo! You have come to play!” Wait, this is Kylo? The guy she told me about. I blink, puzzled. But he is a feline! He huffs at us, glaring at me again. “Great improvement to your stealth, but I would have sensed you anyway if you stepped a bit closer,” says Bae with a snicker. Kylo huffs again. “Come over. Don’t be shy now.”

  Slowly, the big cat steps out of the shadow of the trees. He jumps over the low stone wall encircling the courtyard and trots over. Bae kneels and embraces him, ruffling his pelt. He glares at me over her shoulder, clearly remembering our encounter. Then he growls at me.

  Bae stands up and holds him by the nape like a misbehaving kitten. “Be nice,” she admonishes him. “That is Minae. I’m training her, too. She can be your new sister in arms.” The leopard looks at me dubiously, huffing again. “This is Kylo, I started training him since his mom became tired of his antics. He is close to awakening and becoming sapient.”

  “Okay?” I mutter, feeling suddenly out of place.

  Bae looks down at the leopard, then back at me, her eyes glimmer. “We seem to have gotten another training partner. What should we do?”

  Wait. Why is she grinning from ear to ear? The leopard gives me a panicked look. Shit!