Book 5: Chapter 45
The handful of dates they got to go on over the next few days were very nice. They had dinner twice, once in the suite by themselves and once out at a fancy restaurant Eleniah recommended. Both dinners were great and the few other dates they had, including a shopping date and a tour of one of the palace’s art galleries, were wonderful as well. Those stood out to Kay as “dates” because they were specific events they’d planned out ahead of time specifically for the two of them, but everything else felt just as exciting in its own way. It’d been a rare day over the last several years that Kay hadn’t seen or spoken to Eleniah at least once so being together regularly wasn’t anything new.
What was new was the added facet to their relationship that changed contexts and added possibilities. A casual touch now had added meaning to it and trying to hold her hand would have been a little odd before this. Meals together, even ones that weren’t planned dates, had a new sharp edge to them, a clarity and change that made a routine experience something fresh and new. They were taking things slow on multiple levels, but already Kay was feeling a sense of rightness from their choice to explore this possibility.
To sum it up, Kay was enjoying dating Eleniah and wanted to keep doing it.
Eleniah stepped forward and threw a punch at Kay’s head. He ducked under it and tried to stab her with one of his punch daggers but she deflected his arm p with her free hand and brought down her fist from her missed punch like a hammer on his elbow. He took the blow, twisting his arm in the same direction to try and lessen the impact, and brought his other dagger up toward her throat. Eleniah twisted her neck and the blade nicked her instead of stabbing deeply, and a tiny trickle of blood leaked out.
Kay pulled back out of the way of her counter and tried to set up another approach. Working training patterns, he though they might be called katas by martial artists and weebs, into real combat was harder than someone looking in from the outside might think, and he didn’t have the most practice with the punch daggers. They were a good weapon that rounded out his skill set when it came to weaponry, but his use of them had fallen to the wayside until recently. Eleniah had pushed him to use them in several fights recently, including the one against the giant asura golem, but a lot of other times they hadn’t been as useful. Because of that, even after years of sporadic usage he still hadn’t gotten a Class for punch daggers.
The Skill was at level five, which should have unlocked the Class, but it hadn’t, prompting Kay to question what was going on. Eleniah had some theories, and now they were testing one of them out through rigorous training, also known as high level sparring. Kay feinted with one blade and brought the other around in a slashing move. The feint slowed her down by a fraction of a second but she was still able to block the slash. When she did that it left an opening for Kay to turn his feint into a real attack, and he stabbed forward again leaving another thin trail of blood leaking from her arm.
They danced back and forth across the training area, not using their full power but instead keeping themselves limited so that the fight was one of skill rather than Skills. Kay kept himself focused, making sure that he was constantly using both of his weapons in tandem, creating a storm of attacks with both daggers instead of using one and then the other. Eleniah constantly pushed him to be on the move and respond to her attacking him, never quite moving to finish him off even when she had the opportunity. They deliberately stretched the fight out to get the most time and experience out of it they could.
A flashing notification light appeared in the corner of Kay’s vision. He disengaged and jumped back, signaling Eleniah to stop. “I think that’s it.” He pulled up the message, trusting Eleniah not to randomly continue the fight.
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