No Need For A Core?
277: Insight and Development

While 'Their Majesties' were having fun with the tournament, some people had real work to do.

Not that Bellona actually begrudged them any of their fun, she just enjoyed poking fun at them occasionally. Besides, there might be an exhibition match or three lined up for her. Not either of Moriko's teachers though; the first fight with Theodoric was bad enough, but seeing a pair of martially trained shapechangers using spell magic to back up their prowess was the stuff of nightmares.

Mordecai had one serious advantage in that fight: he had more forms and was far more fluent in blending different form combinations on the fly. Chaxiss could blend variations of her base form with any given animal shape, but mixing a dozen animals into a brand new form in the middle of battle was far, far beyond her, for now. She had said that she'd been rather inspired by the fight.

But even with that flexibility advantage, it had been clear that Chaxiss had more raw power behind her spells and strikes, much the same as when Mordecai had been fighting with Theodoric. Like that battle, this one ended in a draw, but the battlefield had been a very different sort of chaos. While the ground had been torn up and there were some elemental effects lingering, the worst part was the amount of blood and flesh spread across the arena.

When Chaxiss had bitten off part of Mordecai's clawed hand, Bellona had thought that the fight was going to end. But no, Mordecai proved to have more tricks up his sleeve. She had gaped briefly when he started shape-shifting right at the end of casting a healing spell.

He shape-shifted the missing part of his hand back into existence while using the healing spell to take care of the original wound and the general damage.

A regeneration spell usually took a while to do the same job as curative magics, which were better at 'filling in' and repairing than building out. It had taken Bellona a bit to work out that Mordecai had effectively shifted the injury to be 'internal' by swapping to an entirely different arm; his alternative forms had already demonstrated that he had multiple limb sets available such as having six limbs plus wings in his war form.

Tricks like that were part of why the man was so annoying to fight sometimes. By any simple measure of power, both Chaxiss and Theodoric were both stronger than Mordecai but he was able to fight both to a draw by having so many more options to pull upon plus an unfairly high endurance.

Bellona still hadn't seen him go all out yet, though these exhibition matches were making him pull on more of his resources at a time. She only knew about the war form because he'd demonstrated it previously, to make sure that Bellona and others with close ties to the dungeon would recognize him in any shape if he ever needed to use it in the future.

By these measures, she was pretty certain Mordecai would still lose to someone like Aia, let alone 'monsters' like Satsuki and Gil, though Bellona would never compare the two to each other out loud. She doubted Gil would care, but Satsuki's temper was much sharper.

But maybe by the end of their upcoming training expedition that would change with regard to Aia at least. Speaking of which... she turned her thoughts back to the training room where part of 'Team A' was waiting.

Bellona eyed the five boys in front of her, though her focus was really on only three of them. "Galan, you were already scheduled for this trip. Amrydor, Ranulf, you both asked to join." Naturally, Yugo and Taeko had followed along; whenever one of the three was diving headfirst into trouble the others were there to help.

"However, while you have tentative approval, I want to make sure that a particular topic is covered and any air cleared. You three have something in common: an interest in a certain young woman, and hopefully, that interest has been thoroughly laid to rest. But young men have been known to hold on to hope for far too long while hiding it from even themselves."

A circle inlaid with a complex series of symbols appeared on the ground between her and the boys; it had been prepped a couple of days before by Mordecai but had been left hidden and inactive until now. "This is a modified truth circle, specifically designed to focus on unveiling inner truths that one might hide from oneself. We're going someplace dangerous and I want to be completely sure that there will be no issues."

Yugo laughed softly and then grinned unrepentantly when the others looked at him. "Oh, this explains why the three of us were nudged into teaming up with you two. It was reasonably subtle, but I had noticed the manipulation."

Well, if any of them would figure it out, it made sense that it would be the young man who was most certainly not Prince Gou. Officially. Court politics were complicated and had been trained in subtle affairs since he was young. "Correct," Bellona said. "We wanted to build up some camaraderie before bringing this topic up."

Galan looked at her suspiciously and asked, "Was this also part of why my sister beat us up in the library?" He shrugged at the surprised looks from the other boys. "I didn't figure it out until the end, and it seemed pointless to mention it before now."

"To build teamwork by giving you a troublesome foe? Yes, it was," Bellona said. "Now, who is first?"

Ranulf stepped into the circle, his lupine features calm though slightly amused. "The proposal was my father's idea, I was never more than a little curious. I don't find skin particularly attractive; it tends to denote unhealthiness in my people. Fuyuko smells enough like a wolf that I could probably have worked around it if needed, but that is not my interest now at all. I am still intrigued, but it is more about puzzling her out, which I am happy to do as a friend and comrade-in-arms."

Galan was the next up, though he looked a bit nervous. "I, um, oh. Well, I guess I still have a bit of a wistful hope or dream, but, er, I have a lot of those." He blushed at that admission. "I, ah, like girls a lot. So, yeah, nothing serious here." That matched what Bellona knew of Galan, including his awkwardness around girls that he liked.

Amrydor had been looking thoughtful while the others went and that self-reflection seemed to have borne fruit even before he stepped into the circle. "I would say that my interest has been put aside successfully. Since then, I have made a date with an Azeria clan huntress trainee that I am sincerely looking forward to, and when I get back to Kuiccihan there is a girl that I had been talking with a lot lately who said she wanted to meet up with me upon my return and talk about my trip. I will be happy to see her again."

Bellona snorted with amusement. That fits his reputation pretty well too. While Amrydor wasn't exactly charming, he was calm, confident, and friendly without there being any sense of expectation from him. This had led to a lot of girls at or around the temples being very interested when they met him. Of course, Bellona had received a small dossier on him as well as the others she'd been assigned to train, so she knew he had not started that way. His height often had others treating him as older than he was with associated responsibilities, and Amrydor had simply grown into the role rather well.

She did note that Amrydor had said his interest was set aside, not that it was dead. Still, he'd been able to say it sincerely while under the influence of the truth magic, so Bellona felt that she could trust there would be no issues. "Alright," she said, "that'll do. Now, while you aren't forbidden from talking about this, I think it would be best if you didn't, especially to Fuyuko or her friends."

When Bellona had gotten nods of understanding, she moved on. "On to our next topic, and the focus of your training today. Fuyuko, her friends Shizoku and Derek, an acolyte named Allania, and a ranger apprentice named Rika, will be joining us before long. We need to work the lot of you into a cohesive group. Specifically, I want to make you into two sub-teams that rotate between lead and support. We're not going to form specific teams immediately; instead, you are all going to rotate through different team compositions each day."

If Fuyuko wasn't part of this, it would be best to have them delve as part of their training. But as a contractor, her presence in a delving team would disrupt the inhabitants' ability to fight as seriously and severely hamper the ability to give rewards to everyone else on the teams. So training for teamwork was the best option right now, and there were plenty of options available there.

Bellona formed them up and started basic martial drills until everyone else had arrived, then she broke them up into teams before beginning a new set of drills designed to coordinate their maneuvers during battle, such as giving a spellcaster some cover when a more complex spell needed to be cast. While some people could cast in melee so smoothly that the casting did not provide an opening, no one here had perfected that art, including Bellona. Despite her basic healing prayers requiring little more than a touch and a moment of concentration to form the prayer, she was not fast enough to ensure that she didn't expose herself a little.

But Bellona also wore heavy armor and was quick with her shield. She was not likely to be injured by a hasty strike.

As the teamwork training continued, Bellona was careful to compare Fuyuko's progress against the others. While the girl did not have the advantage of being able to pit herself against the dungeon, she had a distinct advantage in the form of continual customized training overseen by several people with distinct skill sets helping her to excel.

More than that though, Fuyuko pushed herself. She enjoyed the immediate competition of a spar or a challenge to set a new personal record for an exercise or drill, but she also had multiple long-term reasons to drive her forward.

At the same time, Fuyuko enjoyed the rest of her life and being with her friends outside of any sort of training. She indulged herself in the simple joy of living, and felt no guilt about it the way some driven people did.

This was the sort of balance needed to push a person ahead and was the reason Fuyuko was already past where Brongrim and Nainvil had been when Bellona had first met the couple. The two of them enjoyed a good fight and had the motivation to keep pushing themselves, but they didn't have the same level of inner fire. As far as Bellona could tell, they spent about as much time in training as Fuyuko did, they simply didn't get as much out of it despite part of their training time being delving.

Derek was similarly lacking in internal motivation. Sure, he had fun while knowing that this was more than a game, but he didn't have that inner fire burning. On the other hand, the cores had shown Bellona some illusions that captured moments of a spark showing through. Those moments all involved someone else being in danger, especially if Shizoku appeared to be in trouble.

If he could make a solid enough emotional connection between his desire to protect others and the process of training and sparring, those sparks might start burning brightly. The boy already knew this in his thoughts, but his feelings had not figured it out yet.

For now, Bellona's primary job was to make sure these disparate young folk worked together well enough to ensure no one got too badly hurt. Figuring out how to get a bit more fire out of some of them was secondary to that concern, but she would keep thinking about it as she observed their progress.