There was a stunned silence in the training room as blood slowly dripped from Maya’s right shoulder. A few drops, not much more before the wound started to visible close, her fenrir genetics even when restricted to B-rank weren’t anything to sneeze at, especially when within the Dungeon’s influence.

Frost struggled to keep a straight face, his heart beating a mile a minute, his lips aggressively turning upwards as joy, pride and triumph bloomed in his heart.

After so long he finally managed to reach her, a defining moment between master and student.

Maya was stunned, her mind literally coming to a halt as she felt a slight pain and smelled her own blood. Her mind analysed the events leading up to this shocking result, Frost’s initial movements, fast, powerful but predictable. Even with early B-rank strength her hammer should have at least touched the back of his legs, but she missed completely and thus left her open for a counterattack.

He danced, stepping with a certain cadence, smoothly avoiding her blow and priming himself for his counter. She moved quickly and with nary a wasted movement but the power behind it made her hands numb, her mind stalling briefly in shock as he reeled back for a sudden thrust. He was too fast, his timing and angle too perfect...this wasn’t the skills of a man who recently entered mid B-rank. Her young master was talented but not that talented.

She quickly concluded that he must had done something that allowed him to keep up with her movements despite being less skilled and far less experienced.

Her eyes wandered over her joyful protégé soon finding a blue tinge slowly fading away in the depths of his eyes.

"....You learned the Niflheim royal family spear arts didn’t you?" She knew that glow and those steps albeit being crudely deployed were a hallmark for that particular weapon style.

"Hehehehe guess the cat’s out of the bag." Frost chuckled to himself realising he’d been caught, shame he only managed to land a single glancing blow before she caught on but a victory’s was a victory no matter how minor.

"To learn the [Lunar eyes] and master it to a useable level in so little time....I’m impressed young master." Maya revealed a toothy grin, her heart awash with pride as she took in the young sparrow’s first flight, his rate of development was always surprising.

"Hehe thanks." Frost blushed bashfully unprepared for her direct praise and that enchanting smile of hers.

"It’s a solid weapon style, pretty much ideal for someone in your position but don’t try to rely on the [Lunar eyes] too much. Frequent use not only leads to a build-up of strain and damage to your eyes and brain but can also cause a disconnect in your sense of time. You might move slow when you want to move fast or vice versa but for battle within the B-rank it’s a fantastic technique that can give you a massive advantage especially against those who rely primarily on their speed to dominate the battlefield." Since this was a time for training Maya donned her teacher persona, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the technique.

"Khione said something similar." His giant lover repeatedly stressed the dangers involved in the technique, never pushing his body beyond the point of recovery during their exchanges.

"Khione’s the one who taught you?" She didn’t expect him to be taught directly by one of the Princesses, nor his own fiancé.

"Yeah, since she a battle junkie like me Uncle Shivali thought it’d be a good way to connect."

"....Seems like it worked."

"Oh definitely hehehe." Frost’s smile turned goofy, giving Maya a strange sense of rapidly growing anger.

"I’m going to hit you now."

"Wha ahhh!" A hammer suddenly came out of nowhere smashing the left side of his face and sending him flying through the air.

"Hmm for some reason I feel much better." Maya giggled before charging after her student with her hammers held high, violently beating into him the lesson of never letting your guard down in the middle of battle.

"Ahhh you’re so petty ow! Ow!" Another couple hammer blows shut him up, a sadistic expression marring Maya’s beautiful face, demonic drill sergeant mode activated. His glancing blow enabling her to take her offensive to the next level.

A few hours later Frost was once again in the position he was most familiar with, his face pressed against the floor, every inch of his body screaming in pain as a pool of blood accrued beneath him.

"Ahhhnnn it feels so good to stretch my legs after so long." Opposed to him Maya was all smiles, her body feeling lighter as though she received a high quality massage.

"Demon."

"What was that?" She raised her hammers overhead, threatening to bring them down on his shivering spine.

"..."

"That’s what I thought hum hum hum hum hum hum" She felt so good, putting Frost in his place after the bedroom bullying was soooo satisfying. She even broke into a pleasant hum, her heart awash with joy completely unaware that her lover was cursing her in his mind, plotting his revenge.

’Now I’m definitely breaking open that ass.’

"From now on you should cut back on your skills, focus on developing the Niflheim royal family spear arts, improve your weapon mastery and spend an hour or so every day connecting with your aura, manipulate it until it becomes second nature." Before leaving him to slowly pull his body back together Maya gave some heartfelt advice, envisioning the perfect path for her student.

"What about magic?" Improving his weapon mastery would increase the maximum amount of strength he could summon through his weapon as well as reduce any wasted movement, the Niflheim royal family spear arts would significantly help with that thus there was no problem there. Aura control being integral to progressing through B-rank and for assaulting A-rank couldn’t be neglected either but the area he found himself most lacking was magic.

"Up to you but given your style in combat, magic will never be anything more that an auxiliary resource for you." Maya was much the same, preferring to pressure her opponents with her physical abilities and chakra over strategic magics.

"Haaaaa I thought as much." Frost let out a sigh, understanding Maya’s meaning clearly. He never used a staff or wand, never utilised the basic mana shield nor did he use his aura to amplify his spells. Even if he bought some 4th circle magic from the Dungeon menu he’d likely never use it enough to warrant the sky high price.

"If you still want to devote yourself to being a triple threat then look into support based magic i.e. buffing spells, crowd control spells , restraining spells and enchantments....also disruptive magic might work well for you."

"Disruptive magic?" He had heard of the other types but disruptive was new.

"It’s a fairly new field, recently recognised in the last couple centuries or so but basically it’s the study of spells designed to create chaos in the ambient mana thus making it much harder for mages to cast their spells sometimes even causing them to fail outright."

"But I can only use the ice element."

"I’m well aware of that young master but don’t worry the beauty of disruptive magic is its ability to use any element as a base. Of course the more elements used the better but as long there’s enough mana involved the end result will be the same."

"Your spells might be lacking but your mana is plentiful and robust especially within the confines of the Dungeon so if you manipulate mana equivalent to lets say the 3rd circle you should be able to interfere with spells of the 2nd circle. Somewhat inefficient but a useful ace in the hole for close combat fighters like us who generally neglect our magic side."

"Disruptive magic huh." Frost wriggled to a sitting position, resting his hand under his chin as he pondered over this newly revealed path.

’A fighter that breaks the opponent’s magic, sounds pretty bad ass.’

"Just don’t forget your priorities young master." Maya reminded, slightly regretting bringing up the topic of disruptive magic given the look in her lover’s eyes.

"Yeah, yeah I know." Frost waved her off, merely curious about the shiny new toy dangled before him.

Maya gave him a meaningful look before teleporting out of the training space leaving him to his own devices.

"Let’s take a look at some support style ice magic then."

Frost scrolled through the Dungeon menu’s list of spells, focusing primarily on the schools Maya suggested. Quite a few drew his interest so much so that he took note of them for possible future purchase but unfortunately he couldn’t find a single spell with disruptive nature which wasn’t all that surprising. A school with a little over a century of history probably wasn’t within Dark’s purview when he designed this system plus any gaps could be filled by them through personal creation or researched through the endless tomes prevalent throughout Nova.

He currently had no money to spend frivolously otherwise he might have immediately shored up his poor magic foundations but since that wasn’t the case he soon closed the menu and rose to his feet.

Crack crack.

With a set of dramatic stretches his bones and tendons released satisfying cracks.

"Much better." The healing magic Maya cast on him before she left cured 90% of his wounds, the final 10% were solved during his perusal and thus brought a fitting end to this training session.

"I’ve still got some time left." He glanced at the Dungeon menu’s clock, noticing he had a little over an hour left before he was due to return to the Lord’s manor.

"It wouldn’t be fair to spend time with just Maya...time for a little visit to the forges." He was a man with two lovers -soon to be three- thus fairness in affection was necessary to maintain balance.