Xarakas had started to stand as she suddenly sat up, ready to push her back into bed as Katze had instructed, but he slowly sat back down again as she began to speak, listening with a small frown.
He had to admit, he had assumed that on some level she was interested in fighting because she decided it would be fun, but after spending over a week with her, he had realized she must be driven by some other factor he hadn't considered. So to hear her confess her reasoning behind the training helped fill the gaps.
"I see..." he murmured finally as she finished speaking, taking a few moments to consider her words.
"I understand what you're trying to accomplish, but cutting sleep and skipping meals while doing the amount of physical exertion you're doing will have you dead within a week or so, whether from simple exhaustion, malnutrition, or carelessness," he explained.
"I started you out on those assigned exercises to build your strength, knowing you'd struggle initially. But you need to build a baseline before you push yourself to do more. You can't just go from nothing to that in a day and expect fast results. Besides that, skipping meals and sleep is what's killing you." He paused her, giving her a hard look.
"The more you exercise and train the more energy you use, and the more rest and nutrition your body needs to maintain itself. If you've been skipping meals, your body has been eating itself to stay functional. If anything, you need to be eating more than three square meals a day, or at least larger portions."
Xarakas shifted in his seat slightly to better face her. "I understand you have other things to concentrate on, Princess, other responsibilities. But if you are going to continue your training with me, I insist that you stop skipping meals and cutting sleep, or else you'll have to find a new instructor, because I won't contribute to you killing yourself. And no more doubling the exercises—that's just making things worse."
Xarakas was being surprisingly... well, soft wasn't quite the word for it, and yet, compared to how he usually acted, that was almost how it felt even though he was essentially lecturing her.
Which, given what had happened today, she probably deserved, so Asha sat and listened silently, though when he finally made his demands, her eyes lifted to his immediately. She opened her mouth, as if she would respond, then seemed to think twice and closed it again, pressing her lips together.
Finally, she sighed.
"You'll have to be more specific," she said, seemingly unhappy that the words were leaving her lips. "Stop as in what I've been doing the last week or stop as in you're telling me I need to fix my long-standing habits? I'd love to assume it's the former, but I'm afraid if I do that, you'll quit. And if it's the latter, we may need to negotiate what your definition of cutting sleep is."