The great Mivelo family had always carried a distinctive tradition. They regarded the ice element as their primary symbol, which meant every skill book and combat style they favored always tied back to ice, and to fighting on slick, treacherous terrain.
That made them exceptionally reliable fighters when it came to cold battlefields, or against Invaders tied to similarly frost-based elements.
Thanks to that upbringing, Kina, having watched her siblings train ever since she was small, watching how they wielded their swords and how they trained on icy, slippery ground under freezing, snow-covered skies, had ended up developing a fairly solid grasp of the ice element herself.
Which was exactly why, the moment Kina got the chance to claim a Skill Book of initial D-Grade quality, she immediately went looking for one tied to ice, an element she was already fairly familiar with.
Today, having finally found time to train alone in a quiet park, beneath a large, shady tree.
Kina flipped through page after page. Unlike Flash Step, which she’d managed to pick up so quickly, a D-Grade skill would obviously demand far more time, given the sheer difference in quality.
The skill Kina was studying was called Frost Edge. An active skill that channeled cold Mana along the blade’s edge. It wasn’t just about "coating" the sword in ice, it lowered the Mana’s temperature along the entire edge, so every slash delivered a sharper attack, leaving a lingering chill within the wound, gradually freezing the affected area, and ultimately capable of dealing fatal effects to the Mana flowing through that wound.
Its function was fairly similar to what Lukas possessed, the difference lying only in where and how the attack’s effect actually took hold.
Where Lukas’s skill focused entirely on raw destruction, Kina’s version could be described as delivering destruction too, just gradually, over time.
Kina lowered the book for a moment, closed her eyes, and picked up a random stone. This time, she tried forcing her limited understanding into actually using the skill.
’First, I need to channel my Mana into this stone.’
Once her Mana flowed smoothly into the stone, Kina moved on to the next step.
The hardest part of understanding any skill book always came down to one lingering question: how exactly could Mana produce cold air strong enough to actually form ice?
Crack—!
The stone cracked, then shattered into countless fragments. Kina’s brow furrowed as she let out a sigh, she’d been studying this for several hours now and still hadn’t found any real breakthrough.
"...Maybe I should just ask Master about this."
Well, who knew, maybe her Master had some experience with this sort of thing himself. Kina looked a little impatient, and the moment she realized it, she pressed her lips shut tight.
Meanwhile, not far from where Kina stood, right beside another tree just as massive, Kina had no idea someone had been watching her this whole time.
Sitting up in that tree, arms folded, was Lurker Zoldia, watching Kina train.
Since it would take some time before Obey returned with those glasses, and Linna, the female Rank-C hunter, had her own assignment down in the Slums, Lurker had no choice but to keep watch over Kina himself.
Only a few hours had passed since Kina started training, yet in that short span alone, she’d been steadily, continuously pushing forward, one small step at a time.
That kind of progress alone was borderline absurd. At this rate, Lurker wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she mastered an F-Grade skill within a single day.
"Well, I suppose that’s just how the young are, always in such a hurry."
Lurker hesitated for a moment, then climbed down from the tree. He deliberately let his footsteps land heavier than necessary, letting Kina finally notice his presence.
"....?"
Seeing Kina’s confusion, Lurker ignored it and simply launched straight into an explanation.
"Don’t rush it too much. You’ve got plenty of time, at that pace, I’d guess you’ll master it in a month at the latest, or a week at the fastest."
"Ah," Kina let out a small sound of confusion, of course, she recognized the man standing in front of her. "What are you doing here, Lord Lurker?"
Kina remembered they’d crossed paths once before, in the past. But their connection had amounted to nothing more than a brief glance before parting ways, nothing had happened between them, not even a single word exchanged.
Hearing that, Lurker shrugged, leaning his shoulder against the tree with his arms crossed. "I was watching you train. Isn’t it only natural to keep an eye on a student who shows this much promise?"
Kina wasn’t particularly surprised by that, she just hadn’t expected Lurker to approach her so directly like this. Besides, weren’t great families supposed to carry themselves with a certain pride, coming across as somewhat arrogant?
Lurker apparently was the exception.
"That skill book, Frost Edge, I’m not an ice-element user myself, but I do know a few things worth pointing out. Want to hear them?"
’Guidance from a Rank-B Hunter, how could I possibly turn that down?’
Listening to a Rank-B’s explanation wouldn’t directly raise her Skill Progress. Knowledge could be taught, but genuine understanding of a Skill still had to be earned on one’s own.
Still, at the very least, someone with far more experience could point her toward the right direction, and if Kina managed to grasp something from that guidance, whatever insight she gained would remain entirely her own.
And Talent, in this regard, played a significant role in determining just how quickly someone could grasp a concept, how much they could absorb, and how far they could eventually adapt it into something uniquely their own.
As luck would have it, Kina had always had the edge in exactly this area, thanks to her hidden potential, meaning even the brief lesson Lurker offered would likely be more than enough to hand her a genuine breakthrough in understanding.
’The concept is, Mana isn’t literally transformed into ice, instead, it has to be shaped to follow a certain pattern or property that produces a cold effect.’
So the real question became, what pattern or property allowed Mana to produce that effect in the first place?
Kina turned that question over in her head for an entire day. The question Lurker had given her kept nagging at her mind, whether she was sitting in class, eating lunch, or lying in bed at night before sleep.
The next day, a distinct spark flashed in her eyes.
Kina finally understood, she didn’t need to "create ice" outright. She needed to make her own Mana mimic the property of cold itself, until that Mana began actively drawing heat out of its surroundings.
Only then would it produce genuine cold as a natural result.
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