The surface of every inch of Pax’s skin burned with pain except for his head and what his shorts covered, both of which Solani 2-nine thankfully didn’t target with the ice shards.

  He could tell he’d already improved. But so many of the attacks still landed before he could get a patch of his ice shield up, in the correct position, in time.

  “And I thought this method close to my skin was the easier choice,” Pax muttered, shuddering at the idea of trying to do the same even a foot or two away from his body, despite what his new Ascendant skill promised.

  Still, the more he fought to protect himself, the more he refined his control of ice mana. He used less mana, making the shields just thick enough to hold together and cover a palm-sized area. His accuracy grew, too. He placed more of the small patches of ice in the perfect spots to intercept the attacks just before they hit them.

  Well, not always perfect spots. Despite that, Pax counted it as a win if an ice shard hit one of his shields at all, even if it was close to the edge. A block was a block. Minutes passed by unnoticed as he fell into a state of intense focus, managing his mana with increasing skill and speed until he was blocking over half of the incoming attacks.

  The fog of burning pain grew and covered him like another set of clothing. Pax persevered, pushing hard to focus on his surroundings and especially the slight swish of sound that heralded a new, incoming attack. Most of the ones that landed were ones he didn’t see in time.

  Pax desperately wanted to activate his usual combo of Haste and Sphere to detect them better, but knew doing so would handicap his progress in learning to sense and understand ice mana.

  Then, in a sudden burst of inspiration, he realized something crucial he’d been missing. He’d focused completely on the boost to mana manipulation provided by his new skill while ignoring its other aspects. Mana Sight had gone into the creation of his Ascendant Mana skill, but he hadn’t even tried to use the promised ability to sense the surrounding mana. That aspect of his skill should have improved as much as his manipulation ability.

  The moment’s distraction allowed another ice shard to hit him just above his right kidney. He cursed and spun, shifting one of his shields a moment too late. He hardly had time to think, much less adjust his techniques while attempting to use a skill that was too new to come naturally.

  Still, there was a lot of value in learning skills while under fire. The challenge brought breakthroughs and faster improvement than a more relaxed training with plenty of time to adjust and test things.

  But does it have to hurt so much?

  Doing his best to maintain his gains, Pax pushed at the skill to let him see the ice mana around him. There was a long pause where nothing happened. Well, besides him blocking another two ice shards while three made it through, striking him from different directions. Each stinging pain propelled him to find the answer.

  Come on. I need to see the surrounding mana. Then Pax thought of the mental twist he’d developed when he wanted to look at his menu without closing his eyes. It was an odd softening of his attention, where he split his vision to monitor two vital things at the same time. He’d learned to check his menu while also continuing to monitor everything his vision and other senses showed him.

  He’d developed the same method further while learning to handle the influx of information his Sphere spell inundated him with regularly. Somehow, he knew this method was exactly what he needed here.

  With a mental wrench, Pax split his attention, peeling off a small segment as he continued to do his best defending himself.

  Mana, he pushed at the free segment of his focus. Find the attacking mana.

  For a moment, his mind strained to hold the division stable with nothing for the new segment to see. And then, with a sudden blast, a flood of information exploded into his vision.

  He saw the ice mana around him. All of it. A maelstrom of ice blue energy burst into view along with other colors pulsing through the walls, ceiling and floor. He blinked, overwhelmed and feeling that his skill had dropped him into the middle of a storm powerful enough to shred him to pieces.

  Pax froze, staring for a long heartbeat, his mind throbbing. He felt himself balanced on the cusp of overwhelming information that could knock him insensate. And even with his sudden difficulties, Solani 2-nine didn’t pause her attacks.

  Pain flared from the thudding impacts, jolting into his body from all directions. His body jerked like a puppet. His adrenaline surged in response. A sudden instinct to survive exploded in him, drove the mental fog away and forced him to move.

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  Instinctively, Pax pushed the sight of mana to the background as he renewed his improved techniques of manipulating ice mana he’d developed in however long Solani had trapped him in the icy hell. As soon as he reached a balance again to block about half of the attacks, he felt his panic slow, allowing him to dedicate a fraction of his attention to seeing mana again.

  This time, much more prepared, Pax pulled that chunk of his awareness to the front of his mind, doing his best to superimpose it over his regular vision.

  It didn’t work.

  More of the attacks made it through as he struggled to juggle everything. He fought for long minutes to keep improving his creation and control of the small ice shields. The better he got, the more he could shift them to his instinctive control and turn more of his active concentration to the ice mana in the room that kept tugging at his attention.

  He’d only ever looked inside of people and beasts before this. Now, he found the ability to see mana moving in the real world was almost overwhelming. Still, the more he could focus on his newly enhanced mana sight, the better he saw the patterns and could figure out what exactly he was seeing.

  It reminded him somewhat of the chaos he saw in an unawakened child, so much energy going every which way. But at least here, he could see a preponderance of a single element, ice. There was just so much of it, along with all the movement and varying strengths.

  Still moving and dodging, Pax did his best to isolate a single ice shard racing his way. He only had a split second to examine it before he dodged to the side and searched for another to examine.

  Defending himself and teasing out what his new skill was showing him completely consumed all of Pax’s attention. He sank deeper into the two tasks he needed to accomplish at all costs. His focus drove all other thoughts and concerns from his mind. He let any sense of time drift away as he slipped into a concentration so focused that the rest of the world fell away.

  Slowly, so slowly, he progressed. As he tightened his attention closer around him, Pax found recognizable patterns in the storm of surrounding ice mana.

  The strongest concentrations of the icy blue mana focused inside the ice shards themselves. Well, until he could also see the flicker of power that created the shards in a split second before disappearing immediately.

  The more he worked, the more he learned to recognize the subtle differences in the strength of the ice mana attacking him. He eventually distinguished a weaker pulse of ice mana racing just ahead of the shards. He also saw flares of stronger mana driving the shards from behind, leaving a trace, much fainter, of mana trailing behind them.

  More time passed as Pax refined his ability to see the subtle differences of the energy behind him. As he improved, he detected the incoming shards with more speed and accuracy. With a progress so slow as to be almost imperceptible, Pax blocked more and more of the attacks.

  He finally realized how far he’d come when he blocked attacks racing in from his blind spots without even needing to look. And these were successful blocks, not missed.

  A thrill ran through him as he slowed down, no longer needing to dodge as his mana vision told him everything he needed to know. The creation of so many shields still challenged him. They burst to life just in time to block an attack before he sucked the mana back inside to create the next one.

  His shields popped into and out of existence all over his body with a speed that had to look odd if anyone had been watching. Pax couldn’t see the small, flimsy shields coming in useful in battle, but the control they represented was proof of a huge leap forward in both mana creation and detection for himself.

  When the attacks suddenly stopped without warning, Pax sucked in a breath. His tension ratcheted up to a new level, expecting something even worse to start.

  But nothing came as his breath panted out, leaving a visible cloud with each exhale into the chilly room.

  Solani 2-nine’s head popped up a few feet in front of him. “I’ll give you ten minutes to recover your mana and check your progress. Then we step it up to something a little more challenging.”

  His eyes almost bugged out as a wave of exhaustion made him sag and sit down on the floor. “More challenging?”

  “You didn’t think that was the hardest setting, did you?” She gave him an impish grin. “And you said you wanted me to push you until you get your ice understanding leveled today, right?”

  Pax gave her a reluctant nod.

  “Well, check how far you’ve come in the last two hours, and we’ll move on from there.”

  “Two hours?” His eyes widened even further, shocked at how much time had passed.

  “Well, I did bump up the difficulty a few times as I saw you handling things better along the way. So, you should have made quite a bit of progress."

  Pax felt a thrill of excitement as he checked his notifications. His ability to manipulate his own ice mana and then sense the energy of the attacks had improved tremendously during the session.

  ***

  Improvement to your Path of Understanding Ice: +27. Level 1 - 83/100

  Skill Boost: +12 to Ascendant Mana Integration Level 1 (Legendary-evolved) - 12/100

  ***

  “Yes!” He clenched a fist in excitement. Not only had he made progress on his fancy new mana skill that was all the way back to level 1, but he’d gained more than double those points in ice. The training room, with its icy torture, made for incredible gains, considering he’d only earned 15 points almost freezing to death from Mistress Nymali’s device and 17 points working with Incedis while running through the Wilds.

  “Good news, I take it?” Solani 2-nine asked.

  He grinned and nodded, despite feeling too tired to stand back up yet. “I’m at 83 already, so another session, and I’ll have my ice leveled.”

  She gave him a pleased look that, a moment later, turned sly. “I think I know just the thing to help you finish your goal.”

  Pax suppressed a groan, before quickly closing his eyes to Meditate and recover. He suspected that when Solani 2-nine said he had a ten-minute break, she’d already started the countdown.

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