Fate was swinging an on-loan sword against a metal, animated, humanoid training dummy in a room of pure white. This room was a Dilation Chamber, currently set to stretch one second outside to last one hour.
Master Geifong told him he needed to become capable of perfectly countering and anticipating a mindless automaton like the one he was sparring with before he was ready to move on to a living opponent.
Considering the bot regularly knocked him on his ass, he couldn't find a reason to refute the argument.
It had been three months since they had entered the Dilation Chamber. Fate was instructed to say within until he had bested the dummy one hundred times in a row against each weapon. He wasn't allowed to use knives, his Manifest Power, or his Divine Grasp, limited only to his body and his sword. In the corner of the chamber was a white bed, with a pillow but no blankets.
Resting on the floor next to it was an aluminum tray that, an hour ago, held his lunch. At the foot of the bed was a rack, which held a spear, a halberd, and a staff, and had three empty spots, which were reserved for Fate's training sword and the dummy's own blades.
In another corner was a shower, and the rest of the room was without furnishings.
Princess Dinan was kind enough to bring him food and a change of clothes now and then, either herself or in person, although the time difference meant he sometimes had to skip a meal or two.
If it weren't for the princess's repeated reassurance that their Earth, Water, and Light Embodiments had long since managed to mass produce food, so much so that Venlanz often had over twice the food necessary to feed the entire population every year, Fate would've been worried about eating them out of house and home.
With an hour here being a second outside, three days here was barely over a minute out there, meaning he ate a week's worth of food every two and a half minutes. It was a logistical nightmare, to be sure, but Dinan had assured him that the farming Embodiments were more than capable of quadrupling their production, if necessary.
He did have to go without meat for several of his meals, as that was one thing they couldn't increase the yield of, but Master Geifong told him that the nutrients within food were less important to an Embodiment than the energy it gave was, which fruits and vegetables had in spades.
On the first day of the first month in the Dilation Chamber, Geifong taught Fate how to care for a sword properly – how to sharpen it, polish it, oil it, and clean it, and how to cleanse it of rust. The rest of the month was spent drilling every single form of the Miao Dao into Fate's head until he could use them instinctively.
The first week was riddled with sharp whacks from Geifong's wooden rod as the master forced Fate to break the habits he developed from wielding knives. The biggest one was Fate's tendency to avoid the enemy's weapon altogether, as knives were typically for offense.
Geifong had whacked Fate until he was dripping with blood from his bruises, beating the habits out of him. But Fate didn't complain. He knew how valuable the man's experience was.
And unlike the cold, cruel 'masters' of the Advanced that taught the members of Styx their knowledge of martial arts, who had less emotion than even the automaton Fate was fighting now, Geifong was a compassionate man that truly cared for his students, despite his attempts to appear as an unfeeling, enigmatic master of the mysteries of the world.
When he wasn't thwacking Fate for a mistake, Geifong was singing praises of each of his students, as well as of Fate, who Geifong told he was sure would do great things. For Fate, who lost his father figure at a very young age, Geifong was the closest he could call to a parental figure.
Even cold-blooded murderers like Fate had feelings.
The second month, Geifong left him to his own devices, partially to give him autonomy and test his resolve to learn the way of the blade, and partly because feeding two people confined to a Dilation Chamber was reportedly causing King Rathna to lose many of the hairs in his large beard from the stress.
So, here Fate was, on his own with no human contact except for when a servant delivered his meals. It was peaceful, in a way. The lack of distractions allowed him to focus entirely on the stinging of his muscles, the sweat dripping down his face and back, and the training dummy in front of him, which was currently spinning and slashing like someone had thrown a drawer full of razor blades into an oncoming tornado.
Luckily, the blades the bot wielded were so dulled as to be normal steel rods, but the weight behind them could still fracture and break his bones. The bot's programming prevented it from landing a mortal blow, stopping the blades an inch away from his neck or the right side of his ribs, but it was still more than capable of sweeping him off his feet and pinning him to the ground with a sword pointed at his face again, and again, and again.
It was almost embarrassing, losing to a robot, one specifically designed to be incapable of innovation, every five minutes for two months straight. Almost, but not quite. Autumn kicked his ass worse than this machine did. At least after fighting the robot, he kept most of his bones intact.
It was then, in another battle that had already lasted well over ten minutes, when Fate's back was drenched in sweat and dripping into his eyes, that he finally bested the robot for the first time.
Fate shoved the Automaton's blade away with a flourishing twirl of his own, the bot using the momentum to allow its torso to rotate a full 180 degrees on its joint, bringing the other blade forward with quick and deadly efficiency. Fate continued his own movement, raising his hands above his head and bringing the blade around in a vertical circle, knocking the bot's second blade away, and continued the swing, tilting the blade and guiding the momentum forward, straight into the automaton's neck.
The thing's head was cut clean off; unlike the bot, Fate's sword was sharpened perfectly.
The head sailed through the air, bouncing against the ground and rolling before it came to a stop against the wall next to the door. The bot lowered its arms and headed to the weapon's rack next to the bed, carefully placing its swords onto it before it went to grab its head.
It had just plopped it back on, featureless face staring at Fate, when the door to the Dilation Chamber opened.