Azotreh continued her training for the rest of the week while the administrator began scoping out certain facets of it. Diana was seldom present after the first two days. She got Azotreh onto a stricter training regimen once she had recovered, then said she had other duties to attend to and left.
A week was barely enough time to make much physical progress, though it did push Azotreh hard enough to continue her basic progression. Her strength and speed potens both reached F-grade by the end, and she had gained no small amount of poten depth.
She still apparently wasn't in the shape the administrator wanted for the AZ-03 experiment, but keeping her cooped up was not useful to any of the plans both the administrator and whoever he worked for had for her.
On the ninth day of the week, she once again pulled the administrator into a talk about her advancement. While the analysis ability was no longer locked by the brands, she couldn't use it. Every time she tried to focus on the power as she did on the Eyes of the Black Dragon and Red Dragon, she simply felt a small pain behind her eyes. Not even a flickering screen, though a broken voice echoed through her mind. It had quickly stopped her from even trying anymore.
So she called on the administrator. The gold-ranker had an incredible amount of multitasking capability. It wasn't infinite, but enough to let him help her once in a while.
As it turned out, the stack of skill books he'd given her was the absorption ritual, which she had no need of for now, though apparently would need later, and six fighting styles.
"Since they want you as a solo operative, I'll have to teach you to operate not just as one person, but as six. The great dungeoneers, hunters, and adventurers could always fill more than one role, but six is far beyond most. But you're not going to be great; you're going to have to be better.
"So I've given you the first forms of basic combat for the ways of all six roles. Wall, brawler, saint, sage, strategist, and jack. Only the wall and brawler have real fighting styles, while saint and sage are focused on precise movements, and the ways of the jack and strategist are about observation. They all have a lot of overlap, but will still be difficult. I can augment your early training, at least."
The administrator pulled a gorgeous black iron sword from the empty air. It was slightly curved, single-edged, and encrusted with glittering rubies. It was thicker at the top, and when he handed it to Azotreh, its tip landed hard on the floor, slightly unbalancing the small girl.
"I'll start you on the way of the brawler and its subform, the way of the brawling blade. It covers swords, knives, axes, and many other conventional bladed weapons. Other weapons will come later."
The administrator picked up the second book from the top. It had a sheen of gold and glittering maroon light. With her aura senses in use for more than five minutes, she could sense a fraction of the power held within it. It innately gave off a level of strength she hadn't felt before. Clearly of her own rank, but unlike when she'd felt Diana display her skills, this thing felt weak.
She couldn't imagine something weaker than this. Now that it was separated from the others and the power they gave off was differentiated, she couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the object now held before her.
"This is only the basics. It'll teach you how to move like a brawler and some of the basics regarding your fists and that sword. Hopefully, with this ritual, I can make it hurt less than it seemed to last time."
The administrator placed the book on a shelf again before grasping the absorption ritual book. It was substantially thinner than the way of the brawler's book, but still rather hefty. The administrator made it look like it weighed no more than a baby bird as he handed the fresh book to Azotreh.
"I don't want to overwhelm you. Even the most basic combat books usually end up with some pain, ignoring your specific circumstances."
"Why can't you just remove the collar?" Azotreh asked.
The administrator sighed, "It's part of the requirements pushed on me. If I burn the rest of your throat and remove the marks of the collar, I'll have violated my vow. I'm not willing to suffer that kind of backlash."
"Could you at least tell me what the runes on the collar do?"
"Broadly, they cut off your perceptions. One for your aura, one for your system power, one for your own body, and so on. It's not as bad as one collar I heard of, since you can still feel your basic eight senses, but it isn't great."
Despite the hollow, cold voice of the administrator, Azotreh could almost feel the strange sympathy of the powerful being before her. His voice didn't truly echo emotions often, and when it did, it was most often curiosity. But it seemed he felt something wherever his heart was supposed to be.
"Why? Doesn't it go against that purpose you keep mentioning?"
"They want you strong, but not too strong."
The administrator reached out and poked a specific rune in the collar.
"If you hit aluminum-rank and hold no perceptions of your body, even normal poten progression won't be enough to make you stronger. That's for far later, since even hitting ruby-rank normally takes between a decade and two."
The spinning irises of Azotreh's eyes suddenly shifted, and a voice the administrator didn't recognize emerged. It spoke Scinparic, but echoed with the raw might of a dragon's voice.
"Why have these not healed, then? Brands such as these should eventually vanish, and my other tells me you have not reapplied them in her memory."
"They're deeply traumatic to apply, and as stated, fundamentally hurt something about you. As the mind and core regenerate the body after damage, they won't regenerate them."
The echo of draconic power fled from Azotreh's voice, and she spent a moment panting. The administrator pulled a vial of water from the empty air and handed it to her. Azotreh drank eagerly, her voice hoarse from the empowered voice of a dragon.
The administrator pulled a notebook from nowhere and wrote a few things before turning back to her.
"Now, absorb that book like you did the last one. After that, I'll give you the materials to make the ritual for a simpler absorption. It should hurt less."
As a droplet of water escaped her lips, she shot a wary look at the administrator. She distinctly remembered him talking about how pain was good, how it would help her advancement. She and Nicholas had discussed at length whether there was any truth to his words over the last week, and while it didn't grant an ability or anything, the pain had granted her a resistance. She wasn't entirely sure about what it was exactly, but the increased numbers did imply advancement.
Why would he want it to hurt less if making it hurt more was helpful to his apparent aim of making her stronger?
She didn't ask. Despite her insights into the enigmatic administrator, she was still unwilling to ask him about himself. Instead, she focused on the book in her hands and, with a short intake of breath, opened it.
Just as before, the words, still written in Scinarchtic, removed themselves from the book and drove into a spot between her eyes. She felt them burst again, spilling blood down her face. Her hands moved up to cover them on instinct, only to find cold metal grasping her wrists and pulling them from her face.
A bottle was pushed to her lips, already open. Inside was a warmth she'd experienced far too often recently. It had the same flavor as all the other ones. The ones sharing a family name with her instructor, Diana.
Her mind was flooded with information about the new ritual. How to conduct it in multiple common environments, its material changes between ambient mana and essence densities, and something about altering it to local alignments. Most of it was information she doubted she'd need, but it was still being crammed into her mind.
As the healing power of the potion infused her head, she felt it. Truly felt it. The way it repaired damage, not just as her eyes regenerated, but the actual underlying power. She felt that power rising from within her body, but only felt it once it passed the brands.
Information continued to be forcefully implanted into her skull, but it hurt a little less than before. She wasn't sure if that was because she was more used to it or because of the resistance listed on her status, but she was certain the pain was lesser than before.
The energy worked its literal magic to regenerate her eyes. When she regained vision, she found the administrator standing over her, observing her with those cold crimson eyes.
"Do you have a theory as to the consistent loss of your draconic eyes?" He asked.
She could only let out a soft groan of pain. The healing was still working, but her mind felt flooded with information. Most of it she barely understood, though the way to create and undergo the ritual was clear.
She sat up, her head still pounding. Even so, she shook it. It only made the pounding worse, feeling like a dozen ogres had somehow gotten ogre-sized sledgehammers and were now beating the insides of her skull with them.
"I'll have to make inquiries with the AA and AB experiments…" She heard the administrator murmur before she found a second book in her hand. "Whenever you're fit, conduct the second ritual. I want to get you out in the field ASAP."
She felt her aura flicker strangely again. Something in the administrator's words had caught his curiosity, though she wasn't sure how.
She did as commanded, sitting up once she had breath in her lungs again.
She was handed a small piece of mana quartz and an inkwell filled with pulsing gold and blue fluid. She looked up at the administrator in slight confusion.
"Your blood is diffused by the room into its components. I can turn that function off."
She nodded. Watching her own blood turn to a crimson mist was strange at first, and seeing sweat turn into an almost clear mist was stranger, but she didn't have the headspace to care about that. Only about her ritual, and then back to training.
Diana had been a bit frightened by her determination to keep training even during her downtime. But Azotreh didn't care.
She carefully dipped the quartz into the inkwell and began to draw out an intricate circle. Her hands as steady as ever, she slowly drew symbols she barely understood into patterns she only knew in their totality. It felt wrong somehow. Something in the core of her being told her that lack of knowledge was dangerous. But she could learn when she didn't have immediate tasks to complete.
The moment the main circle was finished and she began drawing the secondary circles, she heard the jingling of something. She looked up to find the administrator counting out tin-colored, semi-transparent coins. They were all hexagonal, and all carried a symbol resembling one of the administrator's own eyes.
He didn't respond to her curious gaze, and so she eventually went back to work. The ritual required two sub-circles. One centered on a rune for absorption and the other on a rune for assimilation. While the smaller runes around their edges were beyond what the book had offered, those two were plain.
The quartz left perfect trails of the gold and blue ink across the black metal floor, following her exact movements with an ease never found in regular inks. She wanted to see this ink again, partially for her curiosity, and mostly for the part of her that screamed that she had to have more. She hadn't even realized when the small voice had complained about giving papers to the administrator instead of keeping them.
She didn't pause to think on the small voice in her mind telling her things she wasn't used to. What did stop her was a deep purple system notification, her first properly whole message since the system assimilations.
She stopped in her tracks, just staring at the message. The administrator noticed a moment later and asked, "What happened?"
"Do you have another skill book I could absorb?" She asked without hesitation. She didn't know what the entity that had offered the task was, but she did know that tribulation always brought gains.
The administrator stared at her before pulling a book from nowhere and placing it atop the stack beside her bed.
Azotreh waited for a moment, then nodded and returned to the task.
Finally, once the circle was done, the administrator placed ten coins into both sub-circles, then gestured for Azotreh to enter the central ring.
Azotreh stepped, then sat in the circle. She wasn't willing to fall over during this ritual and perhaps mess something up. Despite the pounding headache and mass of information still being organized by her brain, apparently with some active work by Nicholas if her aura's strange fluctuations were any sign, she wanted to get this done.
She opened the book, expecting pain. Instead, the circle lit up brightly and the book simply dissolved into motes of gold and red light. Shapeless, yet endlessly shifting in dimension. Focusing on a single one was incomprehensible, let alone attempting to observe them all.
They began to glow with a bright black and white light from the core of each mote, still wrapped in gold and red. Then, after half a breath of waiting, they began to softly drift into Azotreh's mind.
The information was softer, but far more quantitative than the painful mass of ritual knowledge.
She closed her eyes, feeling them start to tremble as the motes continued to drift into her body. She instinctively shifted her posture a little as the information suffused not just her mind, but her body. She couldn't feel the arcane energies circulating anywhere but in her head, but she could feel the regular sensations of her body.
She unconsciously reached for the sword she'd placed on the ground. Her hand moved across the grip of the black iron blade, seeking a natural point of stability. She was no master of the art, not even close. But the book granted some basic instinct and information.
She'd have to really start training from here to make true progress, but she was eager to put in that kind of effort. She still had to get out of here before she was sent to the war, and apparently her timetable had been forcibly moved up.