[Severed Divinity] 72. Rankings Update (I)

Tomnas brought Isen to a separate, mostly empty part of the weapons yard dominated by immobile practice dummies. Half elves visibly younger than fourth clade drilled strikes against them. Isen saw the Femera sequences’ influence in their movements, though it was subtle.

The others at the dummies were all adults. Rather than swinging frequently and repetitively, they tried out specific sequences of movements and more complex bladework. Isen suspected that the moves they tried were meant to be paired with techniques.

Tomnas poked the dummy with the blunted point of his sword. “This is your target. It’s made from tier two wood and is highly resistant to blunt force damage. Slashes and stabs will leave marks, but those will heal up in a few minutes.”

“What should I do?”

Tomnas chuckled. “Start by slashing at the dummy.”

Isen nodded, then swung, his sword leaving a thin, but obvious line on the target’s torso. He struck again, then again, lashing the dummy’s front.

Tomnas moved behind him and grasped his arm, shifting it while nudging his hips. The position felt slightly awkward. “Striking like this will give you better leverage while allowing you to lunge or retreat easier. It’s a bit corny, but the instructors liked to say that the sequences help you to ‘embody the shadows.’ High agility in direct combat, difficult to pin down, with strong opening blows when striking unseen from the shadows.”

Isen’s mind flashed to Jorin and Kelsina a few hours ago. They’d been on the defensive against the Aranite aggressors, forced to fight in the open. Thinking back, he thought the Aranites shared a similar combat style to theirs. Quick strikes, evasive maneuvers, looking for opportunities to deal a decisive blow. None of them had relied on heavy armor or weapons, instead leveraging daggers, swords, and later, bows.

Isen had been genuinely surprised to see Jorin at the weapons yard. He’d exhausted himself to the point of passing out, relying on Welco to bring him back.

If it really was Jorin, Isen thought. He technically didn’t know for sure.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t that surprising to see Jorin out and about. A single healing pill had brought Isen back into fighting shape. Isen was willing to bet that Welco had ample stores of pills to use on his best cultivators.

As Isen kept striking the dummy, he found it difficult to follow Tomnas’s corrections. His body wanted to move the way he was used to. Archery had come easier with Julra since he’d mostly learned it from scratch.

“I know it’s boring and frustrating,” Tomnas said, “but you need to develop the right muscle memory. It’ll help you in the long run, even if it feels like taking a step back now.”

Isen didn’t doubt him. Talis had proven the power of solid training and technique when they’d first met on the road. Against monsters, Isen’s weapon skills were sufficient, but with the way things were going... he’d need to hold his own against people, too.

Besides, it was starting to irk him that he couldn’t win against Freyan and Arthum.

A niggling feeling at the back of his mind said that the sixth sense was working against him. His intuition, instincts, whatever, guided him to make the best attacks that he could, based on himself and his opponent.

That was based on his current self, lacking training and muscle memory. It made sense, since if Isen needed to fight Tomnas to the death right now, he’d be better served attacking as he always did, rather than attempting to use the clan’s combat art.

As he drilled, he wondered if there was a way to change that. To make the sixth sense work with him.

It’s an issue of mindset, he reasoned, and my intent. His goal wasn’t to damage the dummy, or to win against an opponent.

His goal was to learn.

The change wasn’t instantaneous, but Isen gradually felt the movements coming more naturally. Tomnas had started his own strikes against a dummy to pass the time, so they both sank into a rhythm of stepping and slashing.

When Isen reached the two hundredth repetition, he called to Tomnas, who guided him through a new strike, this one a stab.

They trained until the tolling of the hour bell. One hour before class.

“You’re picking this up quick,” Tomnas said as he hung up his sword on the rack. “Jorin thinks you never trained in swordsmanship. Why didn’t you correct him?”

“I... technically haven’t,” Isen said. “I have more experience with spears.”

Tomnas turned and gave him a look. “Huh.”

***

Freyan and Arthum acted oddly cold to Isen as they left the weapons yard for the food hall. The rest of fourth clade followed behind them, keeping a bit of distance.

Isen overheard the tier ones speaking on the way.

“I heard there isn’t gonna be a clan ranking update this month.”

“That’s ridiculous,” a girl snapped.

“My older brother said it’s true!”

“I heard they’re just not going to update for ranks B and above,” another student added. “They’re calling the rank freeze because of something we’re not allowed to know about.”

A quiet voice spoke next. “Related to the mages leaving?”

The question was met by uncomfortable silence. 

Isen was starving, so he took three meat buns along with his bowl of porridge. Since it took him an extra half minute to grab everything, Freyan and Arthum beat him to getting a table.

They picked a spot with only two available chairs, so Isen was left in the cold.

He didn’t even care enough to be angry, and went to see if the tier ones had a spot, and they did. He ate quietly among them.

“Why did Tomnas pull you aside?” Lona, one of the girls, asked.

Isen swallowed his bite. Fourth clade had sixteen members including himself, so it was a bit uncanny seeing thirteen sets of eyes staring at him with curiosity.

“Because I’m behind,” Isen said. “I never learned how to swing a sword.”

“... Really?”

Isen nodded.

Fourth clade looked between themselves. “If it’s just swordplay, you’re better off practicing with us,” Lona said.

It wasn’t a bad proposition. Even though the rest of fourth clade was behind Freyan and Arthum cultivation-wise, that didn’t mean they were behind in everything else. In class, they seemed just as intelligent and knowledgeable.

“Is there something you want from me in return?”

Lona’s eyes widened slightly. “Uh... Well, we...”

“We want you to show up the tier two twats,” an older boy said bluntly, crossing his arms. “If we can help make that happen, we’re game.”

Isen spared a glance for the duo sitting alone. He didn’t care for the petty politics at hand, but he figured the fourth clade tier ones would be a lot more useful to him at this point than Freyan and Arthum.

“Sure,” Isen agreed.

***

After academic classes with Conrin, they went to the main ring. Rather than the typical cultivation lessons with Jorin and Meridia, they were told to stand in a line.

It was the last day before the end of the two month cycle before the clan rankings updated. It was time for the bi-monthly assessment.

Freyan and Arthum continued to keep to themselves, leaving Isen in line surrounded by the rest of the class. The students seemed a mix of nervous and excited. There wasn’t a lot to be worried about, other than falling short of their own goals. If the fifth and sixth clades were anything to go off of, everyone would eventually reach tier two... probably. The stakes were mainly prestige and social capital.

Freyan seemed determined to go last, after Arthum, so the tier ones started the procession of assessments. Meridia led them through a series of instructions while Jorin observed and jotted down notes. It wasn’t as formal as when Jorin had created the assessment stele; Isen figured that might happen annually, or at certain cultivation milestones.

The tier ones weren’t told to perform techniques. Instead, they were asked to demonstrate the Femera sequences, once slowly, then again at full speed. Then they were asked to cultivate and empower their body, then evaluated on how hard they could strike a visibly enchanted, vertical pole that had been speared into the earth, both with an arm and a leg. Finally, they were instructed to run through a short obstacle course that must have been set up in the morning. It was made from the same black ubiquitous cloth as the buildings.

“It’s for the tier ones only,” Lona explained under her breath. “Tier twos already take too long with technique demonstrations, so they skip the agility trial.”

The assessment seemed reasonable to Isen, and he watched with interest as the hollow formation cultivators took their turns. Isen’s clade-mates thwacked the measuring pole, then balanced over thin ropes, scaled spiked ramps, and tumbled through narrow tunnels. There was even a part of the course that bobbed back and forth, requiring the test-goers to time their movements just right to avoid being knocked off an elevated black-cloth bridge.

Warmth filled his chest as he remembered training with Ros as a tier one, hitting the great beast with everything he had and running over its body and through the depths.

“Who made the course?” Isen asked.

“Since most of the mages left, probably the patriarch,” Lona replied.

None of the half elves seemed slow or unmotivated; nobody treated the assessment like a joke. Each did their best, and from a lifetime of training in the clan, their best was... Well, much better than any of the children Isen had grown up with. It was hard to believe they were all just typical clan kids with the way they elegantly moved through the sequences, unhesitatingly struck the pillar, and zipped through the obstacle course.

His gaze flickered to Freyan and Arthum, and he just... wasn’t impressed. He doubted they’d worked harder than everyone else to achieve tier two first. And really, when it came to Arthum, it was only natural for him, as one of the oldest—if not the oldest in the clade—to advance first.

The issue really wasn’t Arthum, though—the boy just went along with his cousin’s antics. Freyan didn’t seem like a mean or cruel person. She never said anything unkind in class. It was her air of superiority and self-segregation.

Isen hadn’t planned to be third to last in line, but it had just happened naturally. Probably because nobody wanted to stand next to the “tier two twats.” Isen found it funny how even with him, Freyan and Arthum kept a five foot distance, talking quietly amongst themselves.

At one point, he thought Arthum gave him an apologetic look, but he wasn’t sure.

Finally, it was Isen’s turn. He stepped away from the onlookers and breathed in deeply, cycling at the same time, reveling in the flow of energy through his body.

Then, he began.