Chapter 47 - New Skill (1/2)
Knock! Luke knocked once on Ayumi Yamazaki's office door. Soon after, he could hear a chair dragging and quiet footsteps.
Before opening the door, the Matriarch of the Strogueher's was ready to kick anyone's ass for only knocking once. However, when she saw that it had been the novice Bodyguard, she just smiled and stepped out of the way, so he could enter.
”Hey, Luke. You took a while, didn't you?”
”Sorry, I was watching Shiro and Nathalia talk.” He said, bringing his hand to the back of his head in embarrassment.
The boy always got quite nervous in Ayumi's presence, that's because the first time they were alone, he couldn't control himself and kissed her.
”Is she progressing well? She says your fencing is great.”
”I exaggerate her, Lady Yamazaki. I am a mere beginner with swords too.”
”No need to be so formal, just call me Ayumi.”
The boy nodded, and at the same time tried to look away from the vast cleavage in the woman's clothes. When she was at home, she was usually much more sloppy than usual.
”Nathalia told me that you can't use your gene skills, explain that to me.”
”Until recently, I've been focusing on improving my physical and stealth skills, and since I always judged genes as cheap sorcery, I never thought of using them. However, an urge was born the day I killed the goblins and gained the skill <Normal Inventory>.”
The blonde Elf walked over to her armchair, sat down, and began to smooth her lips as she thought.
”Normal Inventory? That is a very useful skill, but I don't see how a beginner could learn it from scratch. Mentalizing it would be very difficult.”
”Mentalizing it? What do you mean?” Luke questioned as he sat down in one of the chairs that stood in front of the woman's desk.
”The so-called abilities of genes are not given, they are learned. Consider them as precognition.”
The half-wolf frowned and flicked his fuzzy ears, a little confused as to what she meant.
”What do you mean?” Although he had learned to speak well by Ynosuke, he still didn't know many words.
Ayumi pouted with her mouth, before answering, ”For example, many people think that genes give the ability itself, when in fact, it just gives you the talent to have that ability. Do you understand?”
”Does that mean that anyone can learn a skill from genes?”
”To a certain level? Yes, it could. However, these special skills are not like martial arts, which can be learned by anyone who is hard enough.”
Luke bent forward and questioned: ”How talented would a person have to be naturally to learn a skill without using ingesting a gene?”
”The most talented in the world, so much so that I've never heard of anyone like that. The most common thing is for a person, who already has a skill, to develop another stronger skill from the skill learned through genes.”
”That's interesting. Well, how do I mentalize the skill I want to learn?”
”I'm glad you asked.” The woman smiled and rose from her chair. As soon as she walked to the office door, accompanied by Luke's unknowing gaze, she turned and inquired: ” You coming?”
After they reached the training hall on the second floor, the half-wolf saw the same three training dummies he saw when he practiced with Nathalia there as soon as he arrived, however, now the first dummy was much more worn, counting several cuts.
'She's really putting in a lot of effort.'
Although he still didn't understand the reason for so much effort, coming from a person with her life already won, the boy admired Nathalia quite a bit.