This wasn’t going well. The duel had only been underway for two minutes, so far, and I was already on the back foot.

  After his little declaration, Venix had stopped playing with me. I got the impression he wasn’t bothering to hold back the strength in his blows as he sought to cow me. He wasn’t going full force, I think, but he was no longer holding back.

  The results were predictable.

  I was getting my ass handed to me.

  I grit my teeth and dodged out of the way of his right blade, only to need to interpose Terractus in an immediate block on my left. The force of the blow from Venix’s left blade was enough to break my stance, sending me staggering in the dirt and dust of the inn’s practice yard. I didn’t even get the chance to recover my root before the Antium man was upon me again.

  His chitinous, sandal-clad foot rocketed out into a front kick that hit me right in the face, blowing right through my defensive vines. The force was great enough that I felt my nose break and blood start to flow from it, even as I was sent flying backward in a flip. I grit my teeth in mid-air, and in a split second move, threw out a hand and cast out a Thorn Grapple.

  The length of crimson thorn sailed straight at my assailant, as I touched down upon the earth below, not far from the ring of surrounding watchers. I hoped the unexpected move would be enough to surprise Venix, at the very least. At best, I wanted to rapidly re-engage with him.

  It didn’t work.

  Venix didn’t even blink before I saw him activate something of his own, holding up two fingers from his lower right arm in front of him. I didn’t know what it was, but a brief glint of steel erupted in front of him. My length of vine entered into it and was immediately shredded.

  Ah.

  I…think that was a Cultivator Art, judging by the faint impression of Ki I could feel in the air. I didn’t see those often.

  I took a deep breath and upped the ante myself. I had initially only activated Might of the Wyrdwood at only about fifteen percent strength. Not…because I didn’t want to be strong enough to stand toe to toe with Venix. Not at all.

  But because the Skill was too strong for me to use comfortably.

  In my testing, I’d discovered that the strength multiplication effect of the evolved Skill was far, far greater than Sylvan Vigor’s had been. To the point that I had felt severe soul strain bearing down on me when I had tried to use it at the same level. I had nearly passed out when I pushed the Skill to even forty percent. I’d felt the crystalline branches of my soul tree creak and groan from the strain, and had to hastily deactivate the Skill before I hurt it.

  I think this was another case of my Virtues just not being high enough to support my Skills, in much the same way that I’d lost my middle ring.

  But…I think I could push myself just a bit harder.

  I carefully cranked up the Skill to twenty percent, as Venix dismissed his Art and advanced on me once more. Shuddering at the resulting rush of power that ran through me, I put the sensation aside and sprang forward, Terractus poised to my side in a chopping blow.

  In the split second before impact, I saw Venix’s chitinous eyebrow raise in mild surprise.

  Before he blocked the blow one-handed with his left katana.

  The next few moments were a dizzyingly fast whirlwind of exchanges between the two of us. Every time I tried to strike out against the Antium, he would block and then try and counterattack, usually with his other blade. With my enhancement Skill cranked up higher, I just barely had the ability to react to these blows in time.

  The impact of those blocks was still enough to send shockwaves through my entire body. Nevertheless, I grit my teeth and bore through it.

  Something I noticed, though, was that he was no longer using either of his two lower arms. They were crossed together across his chest, unmoving in all of our exchanges.

  The sight of them only made my frustration grow larger.

  Was I not good enough, for Venix to even use all of his arms? It was the equivalent of fighting a Human with one arm tied behind his back, and yet still holding me off easily.

  It made me want to be reckless.

  I cranked Might of the Wyrdwood up another five percent and felt my bones creak even more within my body.

  If not for another reason.

  My speed and strength increased even more, and my blows fell upon Venix with even more power.

  He noticed.

  Not enough to change the tide. But he noticed.

  “A worthy effort,” Venix said evenly, blocking another strike from me with the ringing sound of clashing steel. He never relented, even as he spoke to me in the middle of battle. “You fight far above what your level would indicate, Hart. Your training has been paying off.”

  I panted heavily, dodging and weaving and blocking desperately. “Thanks….I…think…” I managed to get out between heavy breaths.

  Oddly, he stopped in his assault then, withdrawing his blades. I staggered backwards, feeling the strain of holding Wyrdwood at only one-fourth of its potential and gasping for breath. I don’t know why he had stopped, but I appreciated the breather, even through my frustration with him.

  “Your form has not suffered, either, for your increased strength,” He continued, not responding to my words. “In fact, it has truly improved, since our coming to these isles. Tell me, have you achieved General Weapons Proficiency yet?”

  I eyed Venix oddly, still panting, but eventually nodded. “I…have…”.

  And I wasn’t lying.

  I hadn’t neglected my weapons training and had stuck to the plan Baldric had laid out for me, all those months ago.

  Spear, Longsword, Knife, Stave, Longbow, Shortbow, and Throwing.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I’d put in the time with both Azarus and the local tutors within Hinaga, to level all of those Proficiencys to the max of seven. It had been a pain in the ass, but it had been worth it. It had taken me three months of daily practice, to one degree or another, to finally achieve that. Once the final one had been done, that being Throwing Proficiency, I’d gotten a pop-up on my Status about combining them. In an echo of how simple it had been to evolve Sylvan Vigor, all I’d had to do was select those seven Talent's and hit confirm.

  And so I’d finally achieved what Baldric had set out for me.

  The resulting weapon sense that General Weapon Proficiency was…odd, to say the least. I now had an instinctive ability to handle weapon types I’d never even trained with. Not to a great degree, to be frank, but enough to fight. The first time I had picked up a fork, of all things, and sensed how to handle it in battle I had nearly choked on my dinner. However, even with all of that, I had noticed that I was still far better with the seven I had actually trained with. I suppose that might be why it mattered what seven Talent's you fed into the General Weapons Skill.

  But I no longer had to level seven different Talent’s to get better with them. Just the one.

  “An even worthier accomplishment,” Venix unexpectedly praised me, dipping his head briefly. I blinked in surprise, as he continued. “I have known warriors who have taken double or even triple the length of time to achieve such a thing. Talented ones, at that. To gain General Weapons Proficiency in only five months of dedicated practice towards that goal is impressive indeed.”

  A brief murmur of agreement ran through the crowd, and I felt a flush of embarrassment run through me. I…wasn’t used to public praise, in this manner. It made me a bit… self-conscious.

  Might have been a contributing factor to why I was so eager to get out of Herztal, now that I thought of it.

  Venix’s posture unexpectedly hardened and he raised his right blade to point straight at me. “But you are still holding back,” He said, eyes narrowed. “Fight me at your full potential. Put that blade away. It is a side-arm for you, at best, and you have yet to unleash your true power. You know of what I speak.”

  Another flare of anger ran through me at his words. Not…about Terractus. He was right about that. I might have trained enough with the longsword to be comfortable with it, but the blade wasn’t where I was more comfortable.

  I sheathed it and reached behind me for one of my daggers. Drawing it, I thumbed the activation switch causing the hilt to expand, leaving me with the full length of one of my spears. Only the one, though.

  At heart, I think I would always be a spearman.

  But I didn’t mentally reach for the other thing he was talking about.

  Venix scoffed across from me. “Cease your dithering!” He barked, suddenly furious in a way I had never seen from the samurai. The Antium exploded forward, faster than he had moved in the entire duel.

  My eyes didn’t even have time to fully widen at the level he had just escalated to. I desperately managed to bring my spear up into a blocking position before both of his blades crashed down on it.

  Despite the increased strength from Might of the Wyrdwood, I couldn’t withstand the force of it. Even my spear flexed from the collision, creaking ominously in a way I had never heard from my Oninite weaponry.

  I lost my footing, crashing down to one knee. The sheer weight pressing down on me was enough that I think my kneecap outright flattened, nearly shattering.

  The air in my lungs was driven out of me all at once as I desperately held on.

  Leaning down towards me over our crossed weapons, Venix spoke. “Despite all your advancements,” He said in a low tone. “You cannot continue in this manner. You run from the curse that was inflicted on you, never allowing yourself to face it head-on. Even now, when it is the only thing that presents a path toward victory, you are hesitant. Do not be. You must seize this affliction by the throat and make it your own, or else you might as well give up now.”

  I ground my teeth together both under the weight of Venix’s swords…

  And his recriminations.

  “It’s not that simple,” I hissed through a clenched jaw.

  Venix pushed down harder, nearly sending me down flat on my back. “It is,” He insisted. “You may not have asked for or sought your curse, but it is yours now. It will be your willpower that earns you mastery of your fate, and your willpower alone. I pass these words down to you now, as they were to me.”

  I swear I saw a faint white glow appear then, shining from behind the Antium man’s compound eyes.

  “It is never over, while will remains,” Venix said, in the fiercest tone I’d ever heard from him. Conviction dripped from every word he spoke, and I somehow knew that these words rested at the core of who he was.

  Something…something about what he said reached me then. I…

  I…

  Alright.

  I briefly closed my eyes, before flaring them open wildly. I met Venix’s own slightly glowing eyes. “Fine then,” I snarled. “You want all of me?! Then here I come!”

  Vis Maledicta Exactoris.

  In an instant, a flash of pitch-black, corrosive mist swept over the entirety of my body. Venix had to leap back from it in order to keep from being scalded. While underneath it…

  I changed.

  I didn’t wait a moment to adapt to my newly monstrous form, after I had switched to the monstrous Skill form I’d been cursed by Rhazal with.

  Instead, I leapt out of the mist with a roar that echoed out of my changed, reptilian throat. I was propelled forward by my pair of batlike wings now growing out of my back, covered in jet-black scales up and down my body. The increase in height and muscle mass that I gained through the transformation had been a grudging concession to my new fashion sense these days, as I now filled the formerly baggy robes out completely. I spun my spear in my clawed hands rapidly enough that it sounded like the blades of a helicopter cutting through the air, before the weapon crashed into Venix’s crossed katana’s.

  This time, it was he who was knocked back from the force of the blow.

  I was…a bit surprised by that, through the rage now coursing through my veins. I hadn’t thought my enhanced strength in this form was enough to stagger someone as strong as Venix was. But I retained just enough awareness to see that Might of the Wyrdwood was still active, the crimson vines crawling all over my reptilian scales. The Skills seemed to be working together.

  But the drain on me was enormous. This strength…it might be enough to win me the duel, but I don’t think I could keep both Skills running for more than another thirty seconds at most.

  I had to act fast.

  Luckily, I had an idea.

  Crouching, I flapped my wings downward as hard as I could, sending me skyrocketing into the air. I had never actually practiced flying in this form, considering my reluctance to use the Skill, so I was incredibly unsteady. But I wasn’t exactly trying to take a leisurely pleasure flight.

  Instead, I wanted to dive.

  At the apex of my leap, perhaps several hundred feet into the air, I angled myself downward to see the distant practice yard of the inn, flaring my wings as widely as I could. Below me, I could see the watching patrons had leaped to their feet to point up at me in either amazement or fear. Among them, I could see my companions easily, thanks to my enhanced eyesight in this form.

  Azarus and Liora were still sitting, drinking their tea, and looking unconcerned. Meanwhile, Renauld had joined the other patrons and was on his feet. Unlike them, he seemed to be whooping in excitement.

  But it was Venix that caught my eye the most. The Antium samurai had regained his footing and was looking up at me. I thought I saw the barest trace of a smile cross his chitinous features before they firmed. He set his feet, and then oddly enough, sheathed his two katanas. Instead of facing me with blade in hands, he instead opened wide all four arms, and across the distance between us, met my eyes.

  The taunt that I could see in his set my blood alight.

  I snarled, an entirely monstrous sound that echoed across the rooftops around us.

  And folded my wings, falling into a dive directly at Venix, the point of my spear aimed straight at him. It only took moments to reach Venix, and in the split second before my spear tore through him, he clapped all four of his hands together.

  Directly onto the blade of my spear.

  In an instant, I halted in midair, suspended by the point of my blade that Venix had impossibly caught. Despite the severity of the situation, I couldn’t help but gape a mouthful of sharpened teeth at the maneuver.

  Venix smirked at me.

  And then twisted, still holding the blade of my spear, throwing me off to the side. The motion was abrupt enough that I entirely lost my grip on my weapon, leaving it behind between the Antium samurais hands.

  As I impacted the dirt of the yard, my grip on both Vis Maledicta Exactoris and Might of the Wyrdwood slipped as well. I reverted to my normal human(ish) self, lying motionless in the dirt at my own failure.

  I closed my eyes in resignation, frustrated for…many reasons.

  Before they flew back open wide in shock at the words that penetrated the dust cloud I lay in.

  “I concede.”