"Too many squirrels!" Zavier cried as another electrical shock blasted him backwards into a tree trunk.
"Oh, quit being a baby," Tess's voice called out from the shadowed branches above him. He couldn't see her and she didn't seem inclined to help him. "You're doing fine, you just need to use the point more. You're just whipping it around and slapping them with it. Unless you plan on knocking them into senselessness and stomping on their heads you might want to consider stabbing them with it."
Zavier pushed himself off the trunk and whispered through gritted teeth. "It's a lot easier to say it than do it."
"Well done is better than well said, Love." He should have known her advanced perception would let her hear that.
"Can I at least get one of your knives?"
"You don't need it, you already have a knife. It's at the tip of the chain."
"Well it's a poor excuse for a knife, then, since I can't seem to cut a damned thing! My skill is back to Basic and I can't control it like I used to." He whipped it around to knock of few approaching Arcane Scamperers back into the brush, knowing they'd be back quickly.
"The problem is that you're thinking of it like a chain or whip, not as its own gestalt weapon. If all you're going to do with it is fling it around like you're knocking cans off a log then all you'll get better at is flinging it around like you're knocking cans off a log. Why aren't you experimenting?"
Zavier considered that. He'd always been the experimenter of the family, but Tess was currently the most advanced weapons user he knew. It was true that he didn't know any others to compare against, but that didn't make her any less right. "Okay then, oh helpful voice from above, what do you suggest?"
"Well, oh squirrel thumper from below, haven't any of your martial arts movies given you any tips? You have the strength and agility equal to just about any martial artist pre-System, why not do what they did?"
He thought about this and realized she was right. Even more, with his enhanced intelligence he could remember every scene from every movie in vivid detail. Scenes played through his mind of every… Rope dart? Rope knife? He was sure it had an official name but he'd never learned it. Whatever it was, he'd watched countless movies and videos of people using them to do exactly what he needed.
With slow, easy swings he began to weave it around his body, overlaying images of what he'd seen on his real movements. He quickly discarded the ones that had obviously been movie magic, those didn't end up with the results he wanted. Within a minute he had a series of basic moves primed and ready to follow. He moved his body into positions mimicking the videos that had been most true, and even managed to dedicate a part of his thought process to comparing his real-life body movements with the exact positioning and movements of the videos.
"Woah," he said.
"What is it?" Tess asked.
"I can basically use anything I've seen before as a tutorial for myself. I can see what I'm supposed to do."
Silence, then Tess's voice. "That is really cool, Love, and just in time."
Zavier looked up to see the Scamperers coming back into the copse.
Zavier spun and whirled, his chain wrapping around him only to fling outward an instant later. If he'd been a whirlwind of bashing links before he was now a tornado with teeth. It wasn't long before he realized he didn't need the videos as tutorials before, he could feel the movement of the chain across his body and could know the trajectory it would take as it left him. He realized he'd been discounting his Intelligence before, thinking of it only as a way to better access The System. Intelligence as an attribute allowed him to function at a higher level, grasp concepts and ideas faster, gather information almost instantly, and retain it perfectly. By actively concentrating on the inputs from all of his senses, rather than just letting them happen, he could parse the information in ways he never could have before.
He knew exactly where to kick the head of the chain to send it out in a perfect line, and he could feel the speed and angle he would need to wind it around his body to make it behave exactly as he wanted it to. What came naturally and instinctively to him when The System provided it could still be learned through practice and analysis.
This is what I've been missing, he thought with awe and satisfaction. I don't need The System to give me the skills, I just need to learn how to analyze them enough to learn them myself. By the time they found their third nest of squirrels the creatures had become child's play to him. Their movements were predictable, their attacks telegraphed. He understood their weight, mass, and speed now. He couldn't believe how much he'd overlooked while trying to focus too much on one specific aspect of his skills. He had always been great with pattern recognition, but now it was at a level he never could have dreamed of before. The creatures may as well have been following pre-drafted football plays, and he had the playbook.
Tess dropped down from the trees after he cleared the latest batch of squirrels. "Okay, I think that's enough of these. You seem to have them down pat. I think we need something harder. Follow me."
They walked through the dark woods in comfortable silence, listening for threats. They'd reached a level where most creatures here weren't a threat anymore and the denizens of the woods seemed to recognize that fact. Unless Zavier or Tess attacked them they tended to get left alone.
After a few minutes of walking something occurred to Zavier. "Hey, Love," he said in a quiet voice. "Have you noticed that we're leveling a lot slower?"
He saw the shadow of her head nod. "Yeah, I have. I haven't leveled since we've been back into the woods. I think everything here is just too low-level for us now."
Zavier considered that. "Makes sense, I guess. It likely takes more and more experience for each level, and The System obviously wants us to rank up our skills with more and more dangerous threats. Whatever they have waiting for us, they want to force us to grow to a point of being able to take out high-powered threats. We can't do that by stomping squirrels and wolves."
Tess sighed. "I've thought the same. You said that this is a military training program, so whatever a galactic, all-powerful System is fighting is going to be so far above us that we will probably either have to get god-like ourselves or die trying. Speaking of," she trailed off.
They stopped walking as they entered another clearing. It looked like any of the dozens of other clearings they'd entered. Zavier sighed with exasperation. "Squirrels again, Tess? I don't think I can do another round, they're so damned boring now."
"Not exactly, Love," she said and kissed him on the cheek. "Time to put those whip skills to a real test. You wait here, I'll meet you at home."
"You'll meet me at home?" His confusion was followed by a loud thump as a rock flew out of the woods and hit something solid in the trees. Loud, angry buzzing started and only moments later Tess's name dropped out of the party chat as she sprinted out of range.
Zavier slammed the front door shut, barely remembering to remove his muddy shoes before walking into the living room.
"Fucking mutated wasps, Tess?? Those things were the size of hummingbirds! There were like a million of them!"
"In here, Love," and Zavier followed her voice to the bathroom. Zavier's anger evaporated at the sight of her sitting in the bathtub. "Come on, Honey. It's an oat milk bath bomb and I have Calamine lotion."
He was stripping off his shirt before she finished her sentence. "We have healing potions, you know," he was hopping on one foot pulling his pant leg off.
"No potions for you, you know that. Now come here and let me help with those stings."
As much of a miracle as healing potions were, in that moment Zavier didn't miss them.