Evelyn of the Forth P.O.V

As much as I may personally hate admitting it there were some things where experience trumped all. The ability to spot potential and opportunities was one of them and despite some of my personal opinions one the walking relic Balthazar had gained a lot of experience in his nearly four millennia of living.

I was the second youngest leader of the royal squads, not only that but the only one younger than me was the leader of the tenth and he was a lot weaker than the rest of us only being a squad leader because he was the future king's right hand man. I knew that in my pursuit of power I had to leave some things by the wayside but that didn’t mean I couldn’t befriend others to make up for it.

The kid Ajax was quite the phenomenon. He bore little interest for me specifically as I was almost four hundred years older than him but he was definitely stronger than I was at his age and yet the old man picked to back him and now I was going to benefit from it.

When I heard his hypothesis about how cursed mana worked I couldn’t suppress all the joy I felt. Out of the other three leaders of the numbers I knew I wouldn’t be able to outmatch the leader of the first and second squad. Simply put they were more than three hundred years older than me and would start to decline and retire before I could take their spots honorably.

Jekkle of the Third was different, while he was still one hundred and fifty years older than I was, the difference in our power wasn’t all that large, at least not when it came to fighting monsters. The problems came when it came to direct combat as his preferred curse mana attacks had very little research done on them so I had yet to defeat the cocky bastard in a duel.

“For now we should just observe your skill and see if we can learn anything from it alone.” Balthazar said. “What is the skill specifically called again?”

“[Curse Slash].” the kid replied.

“That’s good.” the old man nodded with a grin as he pulled out a strange weapon and tossed it to him. “You’ll be using that for at least our first few weeks of research. Safety when dealing with cursed mana cannot be overstated.”

The boy caught the long spear shaft with a look of surprise. The weapon was odd as the shaft had the length of a spear yet the blade at the end was as large as a short-sword. It took the kid a few practice slashes to at least get the balance of the weapon right before he executed his skill.

The curse mana trail that was left by the blade was so reminiscent of Jekkle’s skills. I had felt it a few times before but I never had the chance to truly study it as it was in the middle of a duel. Not to mention that Jekkle’s assassin inclinations meant almost nobody had ever seen him in action and lived to share about it.

“It seems like giving you a longer handle was useful in more ways than one.” the old man smiled as he started taking notes with his enchanted quills. “The curse mana is generated by you and then quickly directed to the blade by your skill. Tell me, do you feel and curse mana lingering inside of you? Also how much stamina did that cost you?”

What was also very telling was that the curse mana was generated almost exclusively from his hands. I would definitely have to get him to use the skill when he was dual wielding blades, if my conjecture that the skill only generated mana in the limb closest to the weapon I could use the generation of curse mana as an early warning signal of where the attack would come from.

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“There is nothing affecting me now, all of the curse mana generated was directed to the edge of the weapon.” the kid answered. “The skill also cost more than I had hoped, it took a hundred stamina.”

That was quite a shock, that little curse mana took a hundred stamina to generate? A hundred mana could generate three or four times as much elemental mana. To think that all these years that bastard had tricked me, I had always fought to end the battle as quickly as possible since a mage is known to run out of mana faster than a warrior runs out of stamina but from the sounds of it curse users bottom out even faster.

“We’ll go ahead and add some basic fire mana to it now in the form of a fireball.” the old man said, his three enchanted quills never stopped writing and had each finished with the first scrolls they were scribbling down and moved on to the next. “Throw a slow moving fireball, Ajax go ahead and to a slash just in front of where it will pass.”

The kid and eye glanced at each other and he gave me a small nod to let me know he was ready. I muttered the simple incantation and released a particularly slow moving fireball, the kid read the direction well and placed the slash right in the path of the fireball.

“Well, that certainly is not black fire.” commented as I watched the fireball explode harmlessly against the ground leaving a small scorched patch. Oddly enough the curse mana did seem to attach to the fireball but the flames didn’t seem to turn black, if anything it seemed to consume the fireball.

“Yes, it was rather anticlimactic.” the old man agreed as he rubbed his beard.

“Can we try it again, only this time try putting less power in the fireball.” the kid asked as he seemed to have thought about something.

I indulged him but the second attempt was just as fruitless as the first, if anything the one thing we did manage to figure out was that the curse mana actively consumed the power of the fireball as with this one having less power it was almost wholly consumed.

“Hmmm, maybe fire wasn’t such a good point to start with.” Balthazar said a little dejectedly, I fully understood where he was coming from as these results weren’t what I had been hoping for when I agreed to help with his experiments.

“ … but what if…” the kid was mumbling something to himself, his eyes moving left and right as if they were following some imaginary trail. “Can you do it again with the same power as the first one?” he asked after he seemed to have finished his trail of thought.

“Ajax, trying the same thing over and over until it works isn’t how you get good research results” the old man started to explain but I was intrigued and proceeded to start my chant again.

The moment my mouth opened the kid took a quick step towards me and started his slashing motion, it took every ounce of my willpower not to paste his on the spot for it. The only reason I didn’t was because [Incoming Attack] didn’t trigger, the skill was an Epic variation of danger sense that let me know every time an attack was heading towards me.

Sure enough the blade passed harmlessly two inches above my palm without even touching my robe, what it did was leave a trail of curse mana right above my open palm as the fireball started to take shape.

Unlike the usual process I felt all control over my own spell get ripped away from me. I had been able to change the specifics of my fireball spell right up until the moment it launched since I was thirty but now I lost control just as the ball was taking shape.

Instead the fireball that formed was made of black flames whose heat I could feel almost burn my palm. The ball of flames then launched and followed the initial path the normal spell would take if it had received no influence splattering against a bench at the side of the training ground.

“What were you thinking!!!” the old man screamed at the kid who at least had the good sense to look suitably chastised.

“Sorry, I got ahead of myself.” The kid apologized looking a little embarrassed.

“Well it worked.” I said as I watched the black flames consume the bench. “Though while I have to admit your deductive skills were good, I do question your survival instincts.”

The amount of water it took to douse the flames, the remains of the bench that was left not only scorched but also slightly rotten and even the ashes were all quickly looked over and documented by the old man.

“It is interesting, it seems that curse mana can only merge with fire mana when the spell is taking shape.” the old man seemed to have forgotten his earlier outrage but I knew from experience that he had only put it aside, the kid was going to be in for a scolding once we finished experimenting for the day.

As it turned out we were finished quite quickly after that, the kid could barely use the skill fifteen times before his stamina got too low so we called it a day at that. We didn’t find anything extraordinary today but it was a start. I could already feel the advantage Jekkle had over me had started to shrink. It was only a matter of time before I’d know enough to come up with a plan to win.

As I was walking away I did turn to look at the kid again. Despite him being too young to be of any interest to me from any point of view other than as a possible recruit when he got older he was definitely going to become somebody. It seems like I will need to go make a report to the royal family.