Abernathy: Slow it down there, Chanter. I can’t go that fast for long! It’s burning through my mana!

  I slowed to a walk, breathing deeply. Katarina laughed, slightly winded.

  “You sure can move in that form,” she quipped, slapping my back as Abernathy rolled to a stop

  “Almost lost control over that last bend. It’s dangerous to go this fast around the mountain.” Abernathy lectured. “Sorry but I’m just worried about using up all my mana. I’m already half drained. We were going almost double the comfortable speed for my ute.”

  “And its getting dark,” Katarina added. “Probably a good idea to slow it down.”

  “Alright, I wouldn’t mind getting some lute practice in anyways. Want to go a little further before making camp?”

  I turned my back to them, changing forms back to that of a wood elf and equipping my smaller clothing. The system allowed me to equip it beneath the larger set of leathers I had for my alpha arctic kobold form. I returned the larger set of armor to my inventory, happy that I wouldn’t need to be naked for future transformations. I just needed to equip the larger clothes and unequip the smaller set before transforming. It would be awkward at first, but at least I wouldn’t need to worry about flashing my friends.

  “Oh cool,” Katarina said as I turned back to face them. “So you can equip more than one set of clothing at once. Interesting. Good way to avoid accidental nudity for shapeshifters.”

  “I wonder how it would work for clothing that provides equipment bonuses.” I replied, pulling out my lute. I began playing Cahl’s Tatsu as we resumed our travel.

  Abernathy, who was maintaining pace in his ute, said “the equipment with the highest stat will apply. If they have different stats that are higher, the stats will be prioritized based on class preference. There is a breakdown about it in the crafting menu, though actually crafting gear with stats is difficult.”

  “Why is it difficult?” I asked.

  “Several reasons. It requires special, rare reagents. Kinda like mana cores, but more rare. Also damned hard to successfully craft, very high failure rate. And the recipes are fluid. It takes intuition. You gotta feel the crafting process and add ingredients as you go. Can’t just follow a standard recipe.”

  “But you crafted Wind’s Edge,” Katarina half turned, looking back at Abernathy. “How’d you do that?”

  “I found a dex core in the guild hall. There should have been way more, I was really hoping to stock pile them, but that was the only one left. I don’t know if they got destroyed during the… the red mist madness, or what. I used it. Since I am so familiar with working on the prosthetic, the recipe kinda spoke to me. I just… knew what to do. I added a few ingredients as made sense to me and the leg was created.”

  “That’s incredible.” I mused, missing a few too many notes and ending the invisibility.

  “We need to get you some more of these stat cores then. I wonder how you get them.” Katarina tapped a finger thoughtfully to her lips.

  “Some strong monsters can drop them, rarely.” Abernathy replied. “They can also be recovered from deconstructing magical equipment.”

  “Wow, good to know. Haven’t been finding much magical equipment though. Wish we would have had more time to scour Verdantbrook.” Katarina sighed.

  “That place was a blood bath.” Abernathy’s voice shook as he shuddered. “I couldn’t have stayed a minute longer. It was awful.”

  “Sorry to bring up bad memories, Abe.” Katarina’s voice had a softer edge than normal. “It was really bad…”

  “But we made it out.” Abernathy spoke more to himself than to us. I glanced around and he was looking down and away, at the path just ahead of his ute.

  “And we will stop the next attack.” I added.

  “Damn right.” Encore agreed from my shoulder.

  He was so light that I had forgotten he was up there. I reached up and scratched behind one of his ears. “Encore, want to try your new form on Radiant Winds? I’m curious to see how your music changes.”

  “Sure. I am rested enough now.”

  Encore leapt from my shoulder and shifted into a wisp, floating in front of me. I performed Radiant Winds. Encore accented the song with the melodious chiming of bells, a counter melody to the motif. It was beautiful, entrancing almost. We completed the song at 97% and a dozen large glowing spheres emanated from the soundboard of the lute. They looked slightly different, with a bluish hue reminiscent of Encore’s wisp form.

  I stored them into my lute’s Songcache and examined the stored song.

  Winds of the Sacred Fox

  These orbs have retained their ability to heal, but no longer cause direct damage. Impact with a detrimental focus will now cause mild confusion, which can be compounded with multiple orbs affecting one target.

  I sent the description over chat.

  “So they don’t do damage like that? That seems like a downgrade.” Katarina’s words were tinged with disappointment.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I disagree.” Abernathy spoke with careful consideration, drawing out the words as he spoke. “They never did a whole lot of damage. Messing directly with their heads… That’s nasty business.”

  “Yeah. Unless the enemies are super weak, the orbs don’t really do much damage. I use them to distract while you are punching other things to death. I actually think this will be a lot more beneficial. And they still heal.”

  “True, true. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Good point. Nice job, Encore!” Katarina laughed. “Alright, let’s keep going. We should go a little further before stopping, yeah? Still got a lot of training to do too.”

  Encore popped back into his small fox form, growing to his normal size and walking alongside me as I began practicing Cahl’s Tatsu once again.

  We stopped after another half hour or so of walking. Katarina put me through two hours of grueling training. We began the session with stretches. Satisfied with my basic punches, she shifted her focus on my footwork, correcting my stances with her beloved willow branch. She then started showing me different fighting combinations. She called them ‘katas’.

  The next morning we noticed the mountain pass beginning to slope back down. The day came and went uneventfully. We spent the early morning and late afternoon hours, when the pass was cloaked in shadows from the rising and setting sun, walking quickly. I practiced the lute during this time. We took advantage of the sunlit mid-day to travel as quickly as possible. I switched over to my alpha arctic kobold form and we maintained a swift pace for several hours before Abernathy called for us to slow down.

  That evening Katarina trained me for another two hours. We slept and broke camp. A few hours into the following day, we began to see a vast expanse of brown and yellow desert in the distance.

  I looked over my skills, pleased with the advances I had made over the last two days of travel. My Stringed Instrument Mastery had risen to 20/100, Harmonic Concordance had moves up to 47/50, my bond with the Lute of Azure Skies had grown to Rank 3 25%, my Transform (Expert) had risen to 5/100, and — what I was most excited about — my unarmed combat has risen to 49/50.

  Katarina had been shocked when I hit the last level on unarmed combat. We had stayed up another hour practicing, but couldn’t get that last level to evolve it. Something seemed to be missing. I was hoping to figure it out.

  “Looks like we are almost through the mountains! And there is a village down there!” Katarina’s voice pulled me from my reverie. There was a small village nestled at the base of the mountain trail that was barely visible around the curve of the cliff and a distant peak.

  “Think we can get there before the end of the day?” I asked, doubtful.

  “I don’t think so.” Abernathy replied. “It looks a little far.”

  “Not with that attitude, we won’t!” Katarina exclaimed with a laugh.

  “We could probably push ourselves, but who knows what we will find there?” Abernathy was stretching his legs, taking a break from sitting and driving his ute all day. “Wouldn’t it be better to approach the village in the morning? Fully rested?”

  “We are kinda in a hurry, Abe.” I eyed the mountain pass warily. It looped out of sight to the right, and I could see it in the distance on another part of the mountain far ahead. “But I think you’re right. We could probably make it if we travelled all night, but I don’t think it would be worth it.”

  “Works for me.” Katarina had a look in her eyes that made me nervous. A familiar fire. “I had a thought about breaking you through that last level of unarmed combat.”

  “Oh god. What is your plan?” I didn’t want to ask, but I did anyways. I already knew what she was going to say. She confirmed my fears with one word, which she spoke with a small grin.

  “Sparring.”

  We made camp several hours later amidst ruins of an old tower similar to the first ruins we had encountered when beginning the mountain trail several days prior. This ruin was empty, with no signs of travelers, beast, or anything of note. Katarina hurried us through a light dinner so we could start the sparring match.

  “I don’t think you can evolve a combat skill with technical practice,” she spoke around the final mouthful of sandwich she had been eating. “It’s great that you can gain skill levels through practice, but we spent an hour last night doing the same thing that got you ten levels in the same amount of time. It made no sense. So I thought about it a lot. And I think you need to put what you’ve practiced to the test in real combat.”

  “Sparring isn’t real combat though.” Abernathy chimed in. “How do you know it will work?”

  “He has a valid point.” I agreed.

  “Oh, it will be real combat.” She looked mischievous.

  “You… you’re looking forward to this way too much.”

  “It’s gonna be fun, luteboy.”

  I sighed, stood, and prepared myself for a world of pain. Katarina was happy to bring it to me.

  We squared off in a ten foot by ten foot square with torches burning at each corner. I stood in the Cat Stance, balanced on the front of my feet, legs slightly bent, arms forward and hands open. Katarina readied herself in the Mountain Stance, facing me with her shoulders squared, bent over at the hips, with her legs spread out.

  Abernathy watched from beyond the edge of the ring. He spoke. “Ready. Set. Go!”

  Katarina shifted to the left, then the right. I reached for her, throwing a punch to the left and missing completely as she dodged to the right and drove a knee into my midsection, right into my solar plex. I doubled over, unable to breath, falling to my hands and knees.

  “Maybe you should change form to fight?” She asked, walking around me.

  “I… won’t be able to change freely. Around people. Need to know how to… fight like this.” I forced the words out between gasps of breath.

  “Your funeral, lute boy.” She threw a kick at the side of my head.

  I pivoted, bringing both of my arms up to block the kick. I held them at an angle, as she had instructed, deflecting the blow. It still hurt like hell, but the force was redirected up and away. I stepped into it and tried shoving her, but Katarina pivoted in the air somehow and hit me across the side of the head with her prosthetic leg. I saw stars and tasted dirt.

  “Are you okay? Are you okay? I’m so sorry Chanter, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

  I blinked, barely understanding what she said as the world came back into focus. Katarina was helping me up, and Abernathy was yelling at her.

  “That was too far, Kat! I didn’t make Wind’s Edge for you to hurt us with!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to!” Her voice cracked with emotions. She embraced me in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  I looked at the notification that had appeared after the impact and laughed softly. My head was throbbing, but I took a Minor Healing Potion and it melted away. “It’s alright Kat. It worked! Unarmed Combat evolved!”