The body tempering and Moxlin's cultivation were meant to be an easy-going, safe break before diving headfirst into another challenge, but it turned out to be the hardest thing he'd faced so far. Not to mention Axl was still psychologically off-kilter from all the memories he'd overly focused on during the tempering, even if he was much better, with all the other stuff he had to get to.

  There was also another extra little bit of fallout from his tempering he'd have to deal with, the fact that the hammer was still hanging out in his soul.

  Soulspace Manuals: Selsin Clan Glyphic Compendium (F-Grade), Elided Tome of Equanimity (F-Grade), Keystone pendant of Pelitrel's legacy (E-Grade), Fleshsmith Bokal's Hammer (?)

  That it was listed alongside his soulspace so mysteriously wasn't a great sign, since even his dimensional rings weren't listed, not even the one embedded in his ribcage. Also, no matter how Axl prodded the damn hammer, he couldn't get it to budge or even respond, it was just sitting there, doing slit knows what. And what the hell was that question mark? Did the system not know its grade? Was the hammer hiding it from him somehow? Or was he just not strong enough to detect that? No option felt like a good sign.

  Axl reached the atrium to see only the servitor there already, politely along the wall, hands neatly folded in front of her. Somehow, it seemed like her dress was somewhat nicer today, oddly more well-pressed, and the flares of color more vibrant. The difference was subtle, but clearly intentional.

  "Noble lady Aria wishes you good luck in your decisions," she said with a short bow. "She mentioned she will need to be in closed-door cultivation for the next few weeks, to consolidate her recent gains."

  Axl nodded. "Sounds good. She helped enough as it is. Relying on her for every little thing is sure to backfire in the long run."

  The servitor nodded politely, then returned to her immobile pose. Axl was still somewhat unsure of what to do, and looking at the servant puppet, wondered if she'd have insight into these things, since she'd apparently seen many cultivators like him before.

  "Actually, I have a question I'd like to pass by you," Axl started, to which the servitor slowly nodded, a small, polite smile on her face. "I can establish a fief from the Shrouded Crescent Valley, as part of a rift reward, and from getting a nobility title to this place. But I'm unsure if I should activate it now, setting this mansion as the fief center, or wait until I train my alchemy more, since I also have a reward that would help me with forming my cultivator’s core."

  The servitor paused slightly, as if conflicted. "And esteemed master does not consider practicing his fighting technique?"

  Axl paused, then exhaled, realizing that yes, that was another thing he should do. If only he had the time. "I'd love to, but I have this quest with a two-year deadline, so I need to prioritize things I can do quickly. This quest is more important than my life, it’s the reason I was brought over here."

  "I understand." The servitor paused again, now looking aside.

  "Please, tell me what you're thinking. I’d appreciate the help of your experience."

  The servitor looked at Axl, eyes hardened. "Your technique is beyond poor. When we fought, I thought you were a barely trained young scion elevated beyond his abilities, a wastrel given opportunities due to an accident of Karma. Apologies, esteemed master, but I speak so harshly because I need to warn you that if a limited fighter like myself in the middle of the F-Grade can best you in combat, you need to hone your technique, or you will die. Attributes can overwhelm, yes, but they must be effectively used to leverage their advantage, and without skill, it is but an unused resource, like an army with an overflowing battle chest and lacking equipment."

  Axl nodded, recognizing the analogy from a common losing condition beginners like himself found themselves in during Lomenkkar matches.

  "What do you suggest?" he asked. "Are there some facilities here that could help with that training? I got some instruction in an orcish longhouse that I could go over myself, but I'm not sure that will help very much."

  "I may spar with you, if the esteemed master would pardon my presumption. In two weeks of deliberate effort, I believe I could help remedy at least some of the gross errors I detected in your form and structure. From the diligence you showed at the tempering, I am now certain even such an abbreviated training will bear fruit."

  Axl smiled, glad the servitor offered, happy to have gotten a free trainer with his new house. He stood to face the servitor and bowed, eyes to the ground. "Student greets teacher."

  Axl felt a flutter of embarrassed confusion from her through [Mana Shroud], and had to stifle a grin at the servitor's reaction. How different than Moxlin's when he told her the same thing.

  Two weeks then—he knew that it would likely be worth the investment, that he needed this time to patch the holes in his growth. Mostly, he knew he was likely overestimating the effect of the delay, since it would cross the arbitrary line of two years until the quest had to be finished. There was something about that threshold that felt foreboding.

  Axl spent many hours practicing with the servitor in a fallow patch of the gardens, always without Skills and with matched Attributes, and the rest of his time he split between practicing using his daggers with [Minor Telekinesis] and manipulating metals with [Gastric Cauldron]. Aria never left her astrolabe, and Moxlin was deep in the study of her talismans and getting used to her new body. The small spider would still join him for at least one meal a day, always eager to talk about her progress.

  The fighting training was grueling, and starkly illustrated to Axl how woefully behind he was in his fighting technique. On the first day, they didn’t even get to cross swords, since the servitor needed to explain to him basic concepts of how to maintain a structure in his sword strikes, principles of how to balance and counter, using the flat versus the edge for parrying, and finally how to transition from two-handed grips to dagger and sword.

  By the end of the day, he no longer wondered how the wooden woman picked up the Okkar game so quickly—the multiple sword techniques she knew about and rattled off in detail were hard to follow, even with [Mana Shroud] doing its best to boost his Intelligence and Wisdom. She also took him to the library and gave him a dozen manuals with illustrated and detailed stances and forms for various types of sword-wielding, including the three she used for her own. He added the reading on top of his practice.

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  Whenever not fighting or engrossed in reading, he would try to use [Minor Telekinesis] to its fullest, holding books and opening doors, which was rather difficult at first and had him almost stab himself with a fork when he wanted to pick it up, but already by the first day, it reached the first proficiency step of the G grade.

  At night, instead of sleeping, Axl used the transmutation forge of his [Gastric Cauldron] to further practice his transmutation, starting simply by concentrating each of his three metals as much as he could, then duplicating the concentrated output. Despite his ambitious plan, in eight hours he barely finished concentrating a handful of Helkan Silver before the night was over, and had to resume his training with the servitor.

  This pace continued for four days, until soon he reached the third proficiency step with [Minor Telekinesis]. By then, he was able to spar with the servitor well enough to not be immediately bested in a single exchange, lasting at least five or six, and even winning one exchange out of ten. At that point, his body was already very familiar with the business end of her wooden practice rapier, his curved practice sword often ending up in the garden's soil, usually followed by his tumbling body.

  Axl found his performance rather abysmal, even as the servitor claimed he was improving better than she had expected. He hoped that was true, since the alternative was that she was lying to get him to feel better. However, soon he added only [Minor Telekinesis] to the sparring, the servitor wanting to have him get used to combining his sword-wielding with ranged attacks. It took many hours to get used to it, and he was basically only able to throw wooden daggers from his hand and bring them back, but it markedly improved his success in the fights.

  His metal alchemy, however, wasn't advancing quite as well. After concentrating the Helkan silver over an entire eight hours of the first night, the other two metals took much longer, the Ulmric Tungsten a full two nights, and the Lunar Fulger just as long. The tungsten was simply too dense and resilient already, so getting it stronger and denser was legitimately hard, while the fulger's concentration could be accelerated, but it would start emitting lightning that would course through his body, leaving rather annoying injuries behind and, more importantly, contributing to his tribulation buildup. So that metal he had to set aside.

  By the end of the first week, Axl felt he was far better at sparring with the servitor, both two-handed and with dagger and sword, seamlessly flowing between the two, including throwing practice daggers and picking them back up with his telekinesis Skill. But he was only barely done duplicating his three sets of concentrated metals, and worst of all, he felt he gained little from the experience, either in knowledge of the metals or his ability to perform the first two functions of his transmutation forge.

  So in day eight, Axl took time off from the duels and devoted himself entirely to metal transmutation. He took miniscule parts of each of his three metals and the red metal from the dead orc and tried to merge each combination together. Four starting materials, so mixing two would give him six combinations, mixing three together would have four combinations, and all four together a single one. So eleven mixtures to try, and he didn’t want to spend all day on each one, so he took the very smallest flake of each metal he physically could detect with [Mana Shroud] and took it in, starting the process.

  He planned not to guide the process as much as he could, simply observe how the metals melded into each other and what they became as they naturally congealed. He even used the cultivation chamber to do this, making use of the neutral environment so the process wasn't tainted by any foreign Mana he could bring in with [Mana Shroud] by accident.

  At first, the plan seemed to go well, two hours being barely enough to combine each pair of metals. However, problems arose when he got to the first trio, that one taking over four hours to complete, and he imagined the set of all four would be even longer. Not wanting to spend more time away from his training, Axl simply did the set of three without the red metal, then went straight to all four together, wanting to only get started with the process and continuing over the next several days.

  That was immediately scuttled, since it seemed like he could barely get started even after two hours of dense work, his body steaming with sweat and almost glowing with heat, his vision out of focus and red-tinted from the bloody tears.

  He set aside the alchemy, and in the last few hours before he had to restart his weapons training, healed up his body with some potions and focused attention on Vitality. But when he showed up for the duel, the servitor positively refused to fight until he washed himself and had his sheersilk armor set cleaned properly.

  Apparently, the continuous blood, soot, and heat he'd expelled the last day had entirely overloaded the self-cleaning array of the armor. Axl had wondered if one of the food stores had rotted away over a few centuries of disrepair when he walked past the hallways, but it was actually him. He reminded himself not for the first time that he had to remember to wash up, even if he didn’t actually feel dirty or anything. That clean water was abundant here was something he had to keep reminding himself of, used to just disinfectant sand once a week back in Ost.

  The ninth day's duels were cut short midday when the manor was attacked by some creatures from the outside. The servitor mentioned in advance that such attacks were an ongoing quest she had from the vale, one of the main ways she progressed herself. He offered to help, but she mentioned it would only diminish the rewards for her, so he returned to the house, and watched from an upper-floor window as she fought an onslaught of a dozen highly armored lizards that had somehow crossed the barrier.

  It was a long, brutal fight, the servitor's attacks poorly matched to the creatures' strong defenses, not to mention that the quest also took into account how much the creatures damaged the manor grounds, so she had to constantly keep any of them from approaching the house, which compounded the difficulty.

  Soon, Moxlin joined Axl to watch the fight below, having noticed the mansion switching to a defensive posture. Axl could sense it in his [Keystone pendant of Pelitrel's legacy], but there was a slight presence to the building itself that seemed to emanate the heightened state as well.

  "Damn," said Moxlin. "You actually fought her and won?"

  Axl shook his head. "I most certainly didn't. I only got the key to this place before she stabbed me in the heart."

  "Good thing she didn't aim for the head." Moxlin chuckled.

  Axl flicked her forehead, but the soft, pliant hit he expected was instead replaced by a strong wall of ironclad chitin against his finger.

  He turned to look at the small flufball, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

  "Not bad, right?" she said, a bit smugly. "I have a tungsten-enhanced exoskeleton now, in addition to my crazy new Lineage."

  "Oh? You got something good?"

  "You betcha! I'm now a Corrupted All-Weaver of Myriad Gold. I'm barely getting started exploring the all-weaving part, it's so much more flexible than being a simple orb-weaver! And I got a Rare Skill that boosts any array that I use myself!"

  Axl looked at her, a bit worried. "Gold, you said? You didn't deviate your cultivation into metal because of me, right?"

  Moxlin shrugged. "I thought so at first, but it turns out Myriad Gold is a manifestation of gold linked to the flexible conductance of all elemental forms. Apparently, gold is a very flexible metal, so much so that it seems like it's considered many different types of metal, not just one, like Unblemished Gold, Touchstone Gold, or Radiant Gold. So it turns out it’s an even better fit for what I was going for, which was a multi-elemental glyphic form that only the fanciest spiders back in the nest aimed for!"

  Relieved, Axl nodded. "You know you don’t have to keep up with my pace, right? I'm doing this because I have to. You have no stake in my people's war."

  "I know, but this is an opportunity for me too. My cultivation was largely out of steam when we met, and now I have a Lineage more powerful than any spider I know besides mommy? I… I also don’t want to stay behind. I promised to be your support, after all."

  Axl paused at the sadness of what she said. He wanted to promise her that they'd always be side-by-side, that he would ensure she'd always be able to catch up. But he knew these were just pleasant lies. Not only had he nearly died ensuring her ascension worked, but who could tell how the war in Sol would develop even if he managed to complete Terrania's quest?

  Terra was dark in the skies, and there were so many Vikam to kill, so much to claw back. And he would never drag Moxlin into the slitting hell that certainly awaited him as the war grew even further.