Mal’s lungs burned. His arms stuttered along as if they were being held down by massive iron weights. Sweat seemed to pour out of every square inch of his skin in buckets. A drop slipped off of his moving arm and landed onto the stone flooring, the spalatter so big and wide that it made a popping noise in Mal’s ear.

  "Come on, ape! Keep up!" Philo stopped his run and jogged in place. He looked back at Mal with a confused expression.

  Mal glared daggers at the draconid. How was it that he wasn’t even winded!?

  He came to the point where Philo was standing and stopped. His palms dropped onto his knees and he took several deep breaths.

  "Aren’t you —" Mal gasped for air. "— bright and chipper—hah!"

  Despite the fact that he’d changed the robes for a simple tunic that Lusia had prepared for him, Mal felt as if he was going to suffocate. The two had been jogging for what felt like hours, though Mal was fully aware that it was probably not more than thirty minutes. They’d started before the sun had even risen. Now, he could feel beams of light hitting his arm, and the telltale blue color of the sky told him that the day was just starting.

  Mal was beginning to wonder why he even agreed to this. Way back when he’d first talked to Philo, it seemed like such a great idea. Get some physical exercise. Become stronger. All that good stuff.

  But Mal was pretty sure that it would be hard for him to become stronger if he died.

  "You’re not going to die, Mal. It’s just a little bit of running."

  Mal clicked his tongue. "I didn’t mean to say that aloud. This shows you how dangerous this is for me. My judgment is slipping."

  Philo frowned and his eyebrows furrowed. "Honestly, Philo really didn’t expect for things to be this bad. Philo knew humans were slow, but he didn’t think they were this slow."

  Mal took his hands off of his knees and pushed on his rear, forcing himself into a standing position. He let out a groan as each of his muscles ached in turn.

  "Well…" Mal wiped some sweat off his forehead with his arm. It didn’t really help since his arm was also covered in sweat. Really, he just kind of redistributed where the sticky liquid was. "Two things: you’re a freak of nature."

  And Mal meant it. The draconid had been slowing down. It was abundantly clear based off of his tepid movements and the way his arms twitched like he wanted to go faster. Yet despite the fact that he was intentionally taking it easy on Mal, Philo had still easily outpaced Mal to a ridiculous degree.

  “Philo’s actually below average for his species," Philo said.

  Mal rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah." Mal looked at his palms. "But the second thing is that I really am just that weak."

  Mal hadn’t been expecting himself to be as unfit as he was. But frankly, what had he expected? It wasn’t like he’d had any physical hobbies as a nobleman. There were some who did—his father enjoyed hunting, which helped to keep him in shape. But Mal? Mal had been far too lazy to ever do something so strenuous. The end result was that Mal’s body was built like a twig, and his heart had all the power and vitality of a particularly lively mushroom.

  Mal suspected that he’d been able to ignore it due to the fact that his body had somehow been in even worse disrepair in the future. In the last days before his defeat by the heroine, he’d undergone so many core modifications and drank so many potions that he was in almost perpetual pain. With that in mind, it’d been easy to ignore his moments of windedness or when his muscles had been aching.

  But with prolonged exercise, there was nothing else to focus on. Besides that, his standards were starting to change now that it’d been a few weeks since he arrived.

  Mal focused on his breath. There was one thing Philo didn’t know, though.

  Magic flooded his limbs like little electric shocks. Some of the fatigue disappeared.

  Mal clenched his fist. Mana circulation—the most basic technique for Spellswords and something every mage worth their salt would practice. Circulating your internal mana in a loop to reduce fatigue and increase your physical capabilities.

  “Philo thinks it would be for the best if we stop here," Philo said, his face straight.

  Mal waved him off. "You can just say that I have the body of a skinny five-year-old. I won’t take offense."

  Philo blinked, then quickly waved his hands back and forth in front of him. "That’s not what Philo meant at all! Mal, everyone starts somewhere. And if Philo were to shame you for being weak compared to him, he would be the world’s biggest hypocrite! Philo was the skinny one back home!"

  Mal smirked. "So you admit that I’m weak then?"

  "W—what? No, that’s not—" He stared at the smirk on Mal’s face. "You’re messing with Philo, aren’t you?"

  Mal chuckled. "Sorry, couldn’t resist." Mal quickly thought of a topic to distract Philo. "Do you do this often? Or—rather, did you do this back in your homeland?"

  "Oh, Violeko?” Philo’s vision seemed to turn distant. "Yes, I did it every day. Ever since I was young."

  "Even when you were a kid?" Mal said. It was an odd pursuit, given Philo’s bookworm nature.

  "At first," Philo said. "It was just about proving myself. Philo wanted to become stronger—he was the skinny one, the runt. He still is, despite all his efforts. Philo thought if he simply worked as hard as he could, one day he would match and perhaps surpass his peers."

  "But that didn’t happen."

  "No matter how hard Philo tried, the differences between him and them were simply too great. There was something wrong with him—not necessarily a condition. Philo’s parents tested that multiple times when he was younger. No, Philo just didn’t make for a particularly good draconid."

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "And that’s when you discovered wizardry."

  "And that’s when Philo discovered wizardry." Philo opened his hand and an arcane sphere shimmered into existence. "Finally, something Philo was good at. It was a dream come true."

  Despite the positive words, his tone was flat and his lips were taut. Mal raised an eyebrow. There was a story there.

  "You don’t sound very happy about it."

  Philo froze like a deer who just spotted a hunter. He grimaced, then shook his head. "Perhaps at a later date," he said.

  Mal was tempted to press, but there was no real benefit to that. His curiosity wasn’t worth sabotaging his relationship with the future Herald.

  "What about the exercise?" Mal said. "Why keep it up?"

  An invisible tension rolled off of Philo’s shoulders. “Philo kept it up out of habit, but it eventually changed. He wants to achieve a goal."

  "I thought becoming a master wizard was your goal."

  "Incorrect. It is but one aspect of Philo’s goal. The physical training is another aspect."

  Mal tilted his head. He’d never heard this before. Which made sense, Philo didn’t exactly have a lot of friendly conversations with him in the original timeline.

  "You see," Philo said. "It’s said that the greatest of draconids achieve something impossible. It’s a myth, a legend. But I happen to think there’s some validity to it."

  "What exactly is this myth?" Mal asked.

  "It’s said that draconids, along with all Beastpeople, have a small amount of divinity."

  Mal vaguely recalled these legends, but he knew that they were just that—legends—and so he hadn’t bothered to look further into them.

  "What does that have to do with exercise?"

  "The legend goes as such," Philo said. "When Eternus drove out the Archons, some of them fled to other worlds and other dimensions. Some went to the farthest reaches of space, where they hoped that they would be unnoticed. But a select few surrendered their divinity in order to hide amongst the mortals. Among these fallen gods, a few intermarried with humans and elves. However, their pairing resulted in… unpredictable effects."

  Mal vaguely recalled hearing about that back when he’d been a child. Someone—his nanny perhaps—had told him the story.

  "What does this have to do with Beastpeople?" Mal said.

  "That’s what we are," Philo said. "The reason why there is such a wide variety of types of Beastpeople is because we’re the descendants of those fallen gods."

  "A little bit self-congratulatory, don’t you think?"

  Philo shrugged in response. “Philo thinks that there’s a grain of truth to these myths, at the very least."

  "But what does this have to do with physical exercise?"

  "I was getting to that part." Philo looked up at the sky. "What all the myths say is that the reason we are not like our divine forebears is because of division. We have become imperfect, our souls and our bodies split apart. If we were able to reverse this imperfection by strengthening our bodies and our souls, we would become —"

  "Divine. I get where you’re going with this." Mal raised an eyebrow. "You are aware this is utterly insane, right?"

  "As I said, I believe that there’s always a grain of truth to any myth. If nothing else, it gives me a goal to shoot for, right?"

  Mal shrugged. That was true. And it certainly wasn’t a bad goal. On the off chance that Philo was right, too, hey—a one-way ticket to divinity. Sounded like a pretty sweet deal to Mal.

  "It does feel a little bit off, though," Mal muttered.

  "What do you mean? Off in what way?"

  Mal hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but it was already too late.

  "I mean…" Mal rubbed his chin. "Well, because the soul and body exist on different planes, we’re able to affect both worlds. The physical and the immaterial. That’s the whole function of magic. If you were to collapse it all into one unit, wouldn’t you lose the best parts of both? It’s like mixing together a salad and a cookie." Mal cringed at his own analogy. "That was horrible. But you get what I’m saying."

  Philo appeared in front of Mal. His eyes shone with an eerie light and his hands were shaking. "You’ve read the work of Saint Augine?"

  "Saint who now?"

  "Saint Augine? The person who formulated the very argument that you’re stating?" A wide grin appeared on Philo’s face. “Philo had no idea you had such eclectic interests, ape. Philo, too, is a student of his work, though Philo more favors the interpretations of his detractors. Philo believes that for all his brilliance, Augine failed to understand —"

  "Er, Philo, I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about."

  Philo stopped in his tracks and blinked. "You don’t?"

  "Sorry, I’m not a theology buff," Mal said. "I’ve never even heard of who you’re talking about."

  "Then did you think of it all on your own?" Philo sounded genuinely mystified.

  "Not entirely on my own."

  The reason Mal had thought about these things was because during his final days, he’d spent a lot of time contemplating death and the soul. Given the fact that even if he won, he would be dying in a few years, it was kind of a prescient topic for him. As such, he’d read over his magical textbooks and what they’d had to say about the nature of the soul.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t really say much. What was a soul? What relationship did it have to the core? There was a relationship, most experts agreed on that, but the specifics were unknown. Was the conception of the soul even accurate? There was some limited evidence that it existed, but it was possible that wizards were adding in their own assumptions due to the existence of the church.

  So, Mal had slightly more ground to stand on compared to your average layman. But he certainly wasn’t as educated or sophisticated as Philo was.

  "Mal?" Philo said, uncertain.

  "Let’s just say that I had good reason to think about the nature of death and leave it at that."

  Philo opened his mouth, presumably to ask more questions. Mal beat him to the punch. He looked over at the central hall.

  "We need to get going, it’s almost time for class," Mal said.

  "What are you talking about? Classes aren’t for another hour—hey, wait, where are you going!?"

  Mal sped away. Truly, he was the paragon of stealth and misdirection.

  Mal ended up meeting back up with Philo and the rest of his classmates at the next class—combat class.

  For the past couple sessions that Mal had showed up, Vigil had mostly been walking them through the bare basics of combat. Mostly, it was footwork. As Vigil had said, Mal had been grouped in with other students from higher years to give him a hand.

  Surprisingly, his most frequent partner wasn't any of them, but the princess herself.

  He caught more than a few looks of jealousy in the direction they practiced basic drills. The princess herself was completely unreadable, her polite smile unnerving to Mal.

  Despite this, he decided to maintain a polite front. He treated her with respect and even gave the occasional pointer when he noticed that she was doing something wrong. She would nod back with that smile and correct herself, and Mal would breath a sigh of relief that the interaction hadn't resulted in his death.

  Mal was desperately hoping that soon enough, Vigil would realize that Mal was supremely untalented and put him back with the rest, though he doubted that would happen at the current pace. Maybe he needed to tip the scales out of his favor? Mal's body was extremely uncoordinated, but his mind had no such limitations. He was able to account for the unstructured nature of his movement and was able to do moderately well.

  He couldn't say the same about most of the other classmates. He saw one person trip over their robe and hit their head against the dirt. Vigil had looked particularly disappointed.

  But today…

  Today there was a strange gleam in Vigil's eye. As the rest of the students filed in, he waited for five minutes before he finally spoke.

  "Welcome to class," he said. "Today I have something… unusual in mind for you."

  At that, a few of the students looked at each other. Philo seemed to tense, Rolam had his eyes wide and a small smile looking on the sides of his face. Nima looked about ready to break off in another direction.

  Vigil clasped his hands behind his back.

  "Every time you come here, I walk away more and more disappointed," he said. "I saw such potential on the first day, but it seems as if many of you aren't giving your all."

  Vigil's gaze sharpened.

  "I don't think you seem to understand what's at stake here. And I don't think any amount of words will change that."

  Mal smelled the sudden concentration of mana. Tingles ran down his spine. He looked down and noticed he was stepping on a chalk seal that had been colored the same as dirt!

  They lit up blue and Mal felt his body break away from its current location.