For the next month while Nero was completing his training with Akiza, he decided to use his time wisely
During the mornings he sparred with Aurathia as usual, but now he asked her to train him not just in hand to hand combat, but how to use a variety of different weapons so that he would be able to more easily use the equip cards that he had, leading him to have a basic understanding of how to wield a much larger range of weapons over the month
During the day he would spend his time at the hostess of fertility as a way to earn his keep due to not going into the dungeon, (even though the Familia was well off enough that he didn't have to do so), with him training not only his psychic abilities when helping out with the washing up,(something that Chloe and Anya loved due to him being able to do 2 peoples worth of work meaning that they were able to slack off, until Mia found them)
Nero also took the opportunity to learn some recipes and how to properly cook from Mia as he had never actually been taught how to cook and had to learn on his own due to his dad being even worse than he was at cooking even when he was a child, even figuring out how to use magic to cook the food faster and being able to control the heat of the flames more accurately
In the evenings Nero would take the opportunity to learn more from Yumi and Rias, learning Yumi's basic movement technique where she would create ice in front of her feet and glide along the icy surface in order to move, having found that being able to use the icy floor to his advantage during his battle against the mutant monsters
From Rias, Nero learned different types of magic, such as how to set traps similar to how he would use trap cards so that he could combine the two in order to be able to trap even stronger monsters for longer periods of time, having learned that even a small amount of time was enough time to use his shinobi techniques in order to escape or give him enough time to be able to charge up a powerful attack to take out any foe he needed to
And at night he would spend his time learning from Akiza, his ability to materialize the cards having reached the point where he was able to summon some weaker monsters in order to fight for him, during this time he found out that he was not as good as Akiza was when it came to controlling the monsters and giving them orders
"You're more of a front liner rather than a summoner" Akiza explained "as such your mentality is focused more on fighting on the front lines where your focus has to be on yourself and your weapons rather than the other people or creatures on your side, compare that to me who is more suited to the backlines, I am able to focus more on my monsters and give them more complicated instructions due to not having to protect myself, as such even though I am better at materializing monsters than you due to my powers and experience being greater than yours, you are able to wield equip cards much better than I am, as such I think you should focus more on equip cards until you are able to summon monster that have the same level of power or greater than your power, as you will be able to rely on them more naturally and as such will be able to split your focus to be able to use them better"
"Sounds good to me, everyone has said I'm much more of a person who likes to attack head on rather than from afar, even though some of my most powerful abilities are long range attacks such as Yumi's black ice and Rias's power of destruction, I guess it's just how I am" Nero shrugged
Due to all of the different styles of training Nero was doing his stats were still continuing to climb day by day, the morning increasing his strength, endurance, agility and dexterity by a tiny amount, during the day his dexterity and magic increasing slightly, during the evening the stats that increased were based on who he was training with, Rias's training causing his magic and dexterity to increase and Yumi's training causing his agility and dexterity to increase, with his night training with Akiza leading to all of his stats increasing due to him having to fight against the cards in her deck, with him finally getting to the point that she was starting to have to use her more powerful monsters
"I feel like your training will soon be coming to an end" Akiza stated with a proud smile as she looked at Nero who was covered in scratches and burns and was panting hard, and then down at her deck which was down to only single digits worth of cards after their last battle
"Yeah, I'm nearly there but I've learned that I shouldn't try to force myself to pass just because I feel like I'm close to winning" Nero replied as the zone created a bottle of water for him to drink as his wounds slowly healed thanks to the influence of the zone and his own healing ability being quite high even for an adventurer due to the amount of injuries he had experience even during the short time he had been an adventurer (with most of them being caused by his training rather than from monsters in the dungeon)
"That's the best way to do things" Akiza smiled "can you really consider yourself to have passed the training if you can't repeat your success without pushing yourself to the limit, but I feel like you should be able to beat me within the next week so keep at it and Aurathia will probably let you level up and head back into the dungeon after you do"
"You're probably right" Nero remarked as he finished drinking the water "alright, let's go again, and would it kill you to stop using your rose cards against me and use a different deck, the smell of roses is nice but everyone keeps teasing me about it nowadays" Nero playfully pouted as the zone created a set of tessen for him to use as he drew some cards to use as backup
"Just do a better job of dodging, and if I used a different deck that I'm not used to it wouldn't count as you passing my training" Akiza giggled as she summoned her rose dragons and set some cards, something that Nero always dreaded each time she got a hand like that as the training with her began again.