Serenity swapped his Crystal Hilt into his left hand and used his right to pull his new Severing Wand out of his storage harness. He wasn’t as good left-handed, but that was exactly the point; if he needed the Severing Wand, he was going to need it quickly and it was going to have to work the first time.

A moment later, his foresight was rewarded; while he didn’t have time to fully analyze the spell that poured out of the mage’s wand, it wasn’t as simple as the Fire Bolt he’d been using. Instead, it looked like a white cloud that spread out; it even curved to follow Serenity as he slid through the air at an angle. There were several things it could be, but it was definitely a battlefield control spell of some sort.

Serenity couldn’t tell without taking more time whether it was intended to put him to sleep, shock him into immobility, or tie him up in spell-ropes, which meant he couldn’t afford to let it touch him. He could probably get out of any of those, but it would take time and he couldn’t afford to stop and work on it with Naomi chasing him around the arena. That would just invite her to hit him.

The spell’s structure was straightforward; there were several weaknesses that Serenity could see without searching. Before he second guessed himself, Serenity aimed the Wand of Severing at the biggest fracture point and pushed with his Arcane affinity. The wand responded; it seemed to begrudge his choice of Affinity a little, but that was probably the fact that the wand had to supply the Affinity it was designed for; Arcane would work, but it clearly wasn’t what the enchanter had in mind.

Whatever the spell was, it fell apart as soon as Serenity’s Sever spell reached it. While it hadn’t actually locked Serenity down, it did something almost as important; it kept Serenity busy with something and let his opponents act freely for a moment.

Naomi had stopped running; she’d stationed herself between Serenity and her party members. She’d clearly given up on attacking and was concentrating on protecting her teammates. Serenity was certain she’d have attacked if he’d fallen to the spell, but since he hadn’t, she’d taken a more cautious approach.

The mage was definitely also a healer; he was visibly casting some sort of channeled healing on the archer’s burnt bicep. It was on his right arm, which seemed to be his dominant arm; the healer was ignoring the tendon at the archer’s left elbow. That injury would prevent him from using a bow but not the knife that was already in his hand, so Serenity expected he’d need to deal with a second melee attacker soon. They’d probably try to pincer him.

Overall, Serenity was a little ahead of where he’d started. He’d pushed Daryl into a less preferred combat style and learned something about the others. The biggest thing he’d learned was that they had some trouble hurting him; they were going to have to use Skills to penetrate his armor. They’d probably figured that much out by now, since the arrows hadn’t stayed where they hit for more than a few moments. While it wasn’t as favorable an opening as he’d hoped for, it was about the best he could expect when fighting multiple opponents at a similar Tier.

It was better than almost anyone ought to expect. His advantage here was definitely a combination of flexibility and insane durability, while they needed to counter him with teamwork that narrowed his choices.

Serenity circled; the Silver Blades seemed content to defend and heal for a moment. He needed to interrupt the healing before he lost what advantage he’d gained, so Serenity tapped the Wand of Severing on the wand harness to put it away then threw a Death Magebolt at Daryl. He targeted the injured arm, since Death-Affinity mana infiltration would slow the healing until the healer pushed it out, but it only grazed the arm. Most of the bolt hit Daryl’s chest. It would help, but not as much as he’d hoped.

Serenity slowly circled the group. He threw several more Death Magebolts before the healer whose name Serenity still didn’t know decided he’d had enough, patted Daryl on the arm, and told him to “Get over there and pin that eel down.”

Serenity chuckled. He was pretty happy to be called an eel right now; it meant he was slippery.

That started the next phase of the fight, where Daryl and Naomi tried to pin Serenity in place while the mage returned to using his Wand of Fire Bolt. Daryl moved faster than Naomi; he pushed Serenity to move faster and faster. Serenity eventually realized that Daryl was actually slightly faster in a straight line than Serenity was with his Footwraps of Air Glide at a sustainable level. Serenity could push them to move a little faster; if the duration was short, it wouldn’t do too much damage to the enchantment. Serenity decided that he didn’t care for any damage, not for what was essentially a demonstration fight.

He could corner a touch faster, but that wasn’t his only option. Serenity led the two following him away from the mage; it wasn’t difficult, since they wanted to herd him away anyway. He then triggered the Slowness rune he’d prepared for the day using his Quickrune; it was significantly stronger than the ones he could manage with his Evoker Skills.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

It slowed Daryl down enough that he missed the chance to block Serenity when he turned and slid at the highest speed he could sustain back towards the mage. Daryl couldn’t quite keep up and Naomi was both out of position and slower.

The mage had enough time to swap wands. Naturally, that meant Serenity did as well; he fully expected the mage to do the same thing as earlier, so he was prepared to take apart whatever the tracking white cloud spell really was.

The mage did cast a spell that wasn’t a firebolt, but it also wasn’t the white cloud. It wasn’t even aimed at Serenity; instead, it was aimed at the arena between Serenity and the mage. Serenity tried to counter it anyway, but the spell reached its destination and started building a wall of ice before Serenity’s Sever arrived and canceled the rest of the spell.

There was a five foot tall wall of ice between Serenity and the mage, directly in his path.

Serenity grinned. The mage had clearly guessed that he couldn’t get more than about a foot from the ground with his Footwraps of Air Glide, but he’d missed a couple of things. One of them was that Air Glide could technically be used against any surface, though the mana requirement rose drastically if it wasn’t close to flat or had a steep slope. That effectively meant he could use them to skim up and over the wall if he wanted to, but it would cost him speed.

The more important thing the mage had missed was the fact that Serenity could break a spell as it went off. A wall that was shorter than Serenity wasn’t going to stop him from jumping over it, especially not when he could start nearly a foot in the air and still have the purchase to jump.

So that was what Serenity did.

As it turned out, he did have to give himself a boost at the top of the wall to finish clearing it, but he didn’t have to slow down. It was possible that the spell was supposed to put something nasty on top of the wall to stop that, but the spell didn’t get there before Serenity broke it.

The mage tried to put up another wall, but Serenity didn’t even try to stop it. He knew what was coming, since a wand could only hold one spell, and he also knew how long this particular Ice Wall spell took to actually make the wall. The mage knew that as well, but Serenity had trapped him in a difficult spot; he didn’t have time to swap out a wand and cast a spell, so he tried to make Serenity pause long enough to do something.

Serenity knew better than to stop in a fight like this; he also knew he didn’t have to. Serenity put the Wand of Severing away and jumped over the spell. It was little more than a foot high, so it was an easy hop. Moments later, he reached the mage. This time, Serenity already knew his manablade could punch through a Tier Nine shield, so he didn’t have to test it; he just had to pay the mana cost to restore it each time.

As he slid past the mage, still moving at full speed, Serenity stabbed his manablade into the mage’s chest. There were a number of different ways to foil the attack, but the mage didn’t manage to use any of them; he’d already tried what he could and was swapping wands when Serenity’s blow struck home. The sword burned deep into the mage’s chest, deep enough that the hilt actually connected.

If it were a physical sword, it would probably have pierced out the mage’s back, but the mana making up the blade was used up well before it got that far. Even so, it was a deep injury that ought to take the mage out of the fight. Since it cauterized on the way through, as long as he’d missed the heart, the mage should survive long enough to get healing.

Serenity had deliberately aimed to hit a lung but not the mage’s heart. Killing was definitely not the point right now, but he needed to make enough of an impression quickly that the mage would give up. He was flexible enough that he couldn’t be allowed to stay in the fight, and since he was a healer, a small injury wouldn’t work.

If this were a deathmatch, the mage would still be a potential threat. In a fight like this one, on the other hand, a punctured lung was bad enough that Serenity expected him to retreat or hunker down and heal. Either way, Serenity wouldn’t have to worry about him for quite a while if at all.

The impact knocked the Crystal Hilt out of Serenity’s hand. He decided that was a very affordable price for taking out the mage; at this point, the best play didn’t involve using the manablade anyway. He’d want to try to swing by if he had the chance, but for now he was going to keep running and pepper the other two combatants with Death Magebolts.

One down, two to go. Serenity was now confident he could win safely, since all he had to do was attack from a distance. He’d removed Daryl’s ranged capability and Naomi still hadn’t shown any. It would take a while, but success was almost assured.

A while was an understatement. Serenity’s Death Magebolts were very powerful for their Tier, but they were only Tier Four. He concentrated on Naomi, since she was Tier Seven and should be easier to wear down, but it still took nearly fifteen minutes of spellcasting to get her to the point where she was having trouble keeping up; during that time, they never caught up to him, though they came close twice.

The first time was shortly after the Slowness spell wore off on Daryl; the second time was when they managed to come at him from the sides and he had to dodge carefully between them. If they’d worked together a bit more, early on, they probably could have caught him. It was clear they’d never actually practiced how to catch something that ran faster than they did.

The mage hadn’t moved when Naomi fell to her knees then hit the ground, exhausted. Serenity was getting distinctly worried about his mana supply; he was past the halfway mark and knew he couldn’t afford to completely drain himself. There were two down and only one to go, but Serenity needed to change things up.