Running into Rebecca, Lothur tried diagonally swinging his ax toward one of her shoulders while using his movement technique.
He was already quite fast at his current level, and the green-haired woman soon realized this, opening her eyes in surprise at Lothur's first move in this match.
'He can move pretty fast, but one can tell that fighting is not his focus...' She moved as well, first defensively, since she wanted to give him a chance to attack her first to understand her opponent's fighting style.
Meanwhile, Rebecca immediately realized that Lothur was more skilled in his spiritual professions than in terms of battle.
But the situation was not that simple. While spiritual professions depended heavily on mental attributes, Lothur's strong point, battle skills depended more on physical attributes.
At the same time, as much as mental attributes had the potential to increase a cultivator's speed of comprehension and mastery over techniques, this did not happen overnight.
That is, Lothur could directly use his mental characteristics in his professions. But when it came to his combat skills, such attributes only affected him indirectly. So, he needed to train his techniques a lot to learn how to behave in the best possible way.
? In other words, it was not a direct thing and depended on a training time that he simply had not had so far!
Thus, as much as he demonstrated above-average skills in those first two professions already tested this day, he seemed to lag far behind when it came to his combat strength.
After a few moves, Rebecca realized this right after noticing that Lothur had unbalanced fighting skills that made his performance poor.
But he was not a bad fighter, far from it. Rebecca could see that no one below the 8th Transformation would stand a chance against him. But he had set such a high standard with his other abilities that she could not help but consider his combat strength average...
"Don't take this wrong, but you need to train more..." She said to him with a smile on her face when she finally decided to start pressing her opponent after his first few moves.
Lothur was not offended by this, and as soon as he saw her making an offensive stance, he prepared to defend or dodge.
"Guide me." He said as he used his visual ability to see that she was using her energies to strengthen her muscles while attacking him.
'Spiritual Warriors can manipulate their spiritual energy beyond the moment of meditation. They do this by using their soul force to temporarily elevate their physical characteristics...' He thought about this as he 'danced' with Rebecca, noticing everything she was doing.
With the primary soul development that comes when the 2nd stage is reached, soul and body cultivators would differentiate, with the first failing to have significant advancements in their physical attributes.
But that would not mean that one would necessarily be much weaker than the other regarding brute strength, speed, etc. As Lothur was experimenting with Rebecca, a soul cultivator like her could temporarily use her soul force to improve her body.
She was not obligated to do this because a soul cultivator's strength was in their spiritual techniques. But in cases of brute force disputes and hand-to-hand battles, someone like this had the option to at least temporarily face physically strong opponents this way.
And with that, he soon noticed a superficial improvement in Rebecca's speed, slowly becoming a little faster than him.
"We're warming up, uh?"
...
After a while, Lothur was sitting in the middle of that fighting area, hurriedly breathing as he felt sweat dripping all over his body.
Rebecca looked at him incredulously as he recovered from their fight, with his regeneration quickly recovering the bruises on his body.
Not only had Lothur shown evolution in combat proficiency during their hour of training, but now he was shocking her with hard-to-find super-regeneration.
"Surprise, eh?" Annaliese said while having a proud smile on her face. "Lothur has an amazing body, which can recover from even serious injuries in a few minutes..."
She stopped next to Rebecca and showed off a bit of her man. "Believe me. You haven't seen anything yet. He already had suffered some heartbreaking defeats where doctors thought there was no hope for him, yet he recovered after a night's sleep."
Rebecca did not doubt the words of this annoying brunette, feeling that it even made sense that he was like that, considering his exceptional resistance to poisons.
'In that case, I think he'll eventually be able to...' She clasped her hands together, feeling that Lothur might be able to help her regarding something she wished to achieve.
But as she thought about it, Lothur's eyes opened, and he saw how much he had improved after this training session with Rebecca.
[+0.2 in all physical attributes.]
[+0.2 in AGI.]
[+0.6 in WIL.]
[+0.4 in CON.]
[+0.2 in DEX.]
[+0.4 in STR.]
...
[Name: Lothur Ritter]
[Physique: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger]
[Bloodline: Life Devourer]
[Cultivation: level 8]
[STR: 25.1] [CON: 53.6] [DEX: 21.3] [AGI: 29.4]
[INT: 68.8] [PER: 70] [WIL: 73.6]
[EVF: 247]
After seeing this, Lothur quickly ignored his current improvements to turn his attention to those two women.
"Becca, thank you for your help. If it's not too much to ask, I'd like to continue training with you over the next few days between my match times." He said as he stood up.
"Okay." She smiled, no longer doubting this fellow's ability to handle competition and still train at this level.
With that settled, Lothur quickly used the bathroom in that training room to clean himself up and then made his way alongside Annaliese to this woman's competition site.
As for Rebecca, she had only come to the coliseum because of her mistress' order, and she did not like to get involved with nobles. So after saying goodbye to them, she wasted no time and returned to her mistress' house.
...
About an hour later...
"Annaliese Frost wins the second round of the competition for spiritual carving and moves on to the second day of trials!" The match referee announces the result of Lothur's sister-in-law and soon after authorizes the addition of another point to House Frost.
[... 12th. Frost Family: 18...]
Upon finishing her match, which had been a bit more tiring than she would like to admit, Annaliese ran to Lothur's side, tired but pleased that she had gotten more points for her family.
After hearing Lothur's words, she regained some of her breath in that place before they left for the site of his third event of the day.
It was time for the competition for spiritual tailors!
Then, they left that competition area for sculptors under the eyes of Annaliese's many opponents, quickly making their way to where Lothur would soon see some acquaintances of his...