I’m not a fan of following orders just because I was told to, except in cases like this one. When I can’t find any fault with the command or I think that the one who issued said orders has a much better judgment of the situation than me, then I’m fine with doing what I’m told to.
This is such a situation. I’m facing an elven boy with strikingly similar features to my father, though these are basic elven genetics, in a magic training practice duel. The standard magic practice of ‘just cast spells’ didn’t pay off, so much so that after almost two hours none of my skills reached a substantial breakthrough.
Such a waste of precious time. I mean, it's still better than nothing.
[Mage lvl 24]
Yeah, he’s higher level than me, he has more experience and a Class a step above mine. It sucks but it's not that he’s too strong, I’m too weak. His stats seem to be focused on Intelligence, that's what the big attacks thrown my way tell me anyway.
Our instructions were to go all out. Almost all out. No need to pull our punches. If things turn dicey Martha can just step in and if by some miracle she were to be knocked out when one of our attacks lands badly the Fort is stacked with powerful healers. They earn the best. The last requirement was to be creative and unexpected.
Ohoho, I’ll show them creative.
We fired off magic in quick succession in the beginning to get a handle on one another. I’m only using the wind element for attacking and blocking at the moment, both because this way it's cheaper mana-wise and to hide my Blessing for now.
The boy fires pressurized lances of water in my direction constantly. His aim is horrendous and his defense nonexistent however the spells themself have a scary kick. My barriers of violent winds are unable to entirely stop the attacks so I’m mostly focusing on redirecting them and dodging out of the way. I send a few wind blades at him in retaliation. The attack is more impactful than the others using wind but still easy to launch, unlike a spear.
The elf starts to get impatient, maybe because of his failed attacks or because he’s running low on sweet sweet mana. He creates an absolute hailstorm on water bullets, a hailstorm in our strength category. The projectiles themselves are not too threatening, they are fast… yeah and that’s it. My wind barrier should easily hold them back, however I sense a trick here. He's not the brightest, still, even he should understand that this move is only a waste of mana on his part. Something’s cooking here.
I keep my guard up and take a few steps back preparing for his next move. As expected he dashes out from behind the curtain of attacks swinging to my left. I quickly throw out two wind blades to intercept the boy or at least slow him down. To my surprise, he slides under the incoming attacks avoiding them completely while barely losing any of his momentum. As he regains his footing I form another wind blade in my hand and use a gust of wind to propel myself forward, hoping to catch him off guard.
That’s when I spot his lips climbing into a smile. Shit.
The barrages of water he sent my way has soaked into the ground turning into mud, even so the water is still there. As soon as he gets into range, arms of water shoot up from the ground and take hold of my legs, making me fall head first.
By the time I hit the ground and reoriented myself, he was already standing in front of me, a water lance prepared and aimed my way. I lost.
“Fuck” I slam my fist into the ground in frustration, it’s not that I really wanted to win but I can’t stand losing.
[The class Skill [Mana Blade] has reached lvl 2 -> 4.]
[The class Skill [Mana Shield] has reached lvl 15.]
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Martha watches the fight between the two younglings. It's nothing special, a few barely aimed spells flying back and forth, some light dodging and a few defensive measures. Her point of view is not an optimal one to judge these two upcoming fighters competing. At their age she wasn’t even sure what she wanted from her future but the many many years in the Fist have hardened her, countless fights eradicated most of her soft and uncertain side. Most of it. She grew tired of fighting, seeing her comrades, civilians, brave and frightened soldiers lose their lives…
She had enough.
Throughout her career, she tried many times to make herself a home, to start a family… sadly work got in the way. Deployments, her being too unreliable to become a mother, the risk of someone using her family against her… There was no way. Her home is Fort Karon, her family the Fist, and still, she wished for children. So after she grew tired of fighting she withdrew and dedicated the rest of her life to nurturing the new generation.
This is her new joy, these little brats with all their distrust, haughtiness, all their good and bad traits… They are her children. Teaching can be entertaining just as much as difficult. Every one of them is different, except the blue twins, they are utterly the same. Different personalities, problems and questions all with their hardships and joy. It's exciting, and so The Thunderous Magister is now just Captain Martha, caretaker of the orphans.
She’s not bad and quite bad at the same time.
She observes the newest addition to her little mage training brigade.
The half-elf girl has barely any fighting instincts, slow reactions and no plan whatsoever. She’s the shoot first ask later kind of person. That’s not necessarily bad, it can save your life in unexpected situations.
She knows she shouldn’t be too harsh as this is literally her first time fighting against another person if we don’t count today's incident in the mess hall.
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At least she has guts, that’s one of her strong points. What she has for going herself is being observant and versatile. If she really wanted to, she could have dodged that attack using water mana. Albeit I did tell her to restrict herself to a single element. It's not good to flaunt her uniqueness and get too reliant on that skill.
Martha is a little envious, even if she doesn’t want to admit that to herself. Being able to use nine of the fifteen elements with a single class sounds ridiculous.
She did anticipate that Lucas had a plan but was unable to guess the extent of it and take proper measures. It's too early to judge… still, I think she’ll make a fine mage, not a menace of the battlefield but one of mind games. The latter is probably even scarier than the former from my experience.
The girl seems really pissed at her failure. Defeat is an integral part of the learning curve. Losing is a better teacher than always winning, less satisfying, yes but more impactful.
I sure as hell won’t let her slack off, she reminds me of my younger self. This doesn't mean that I’ll baby her, oh no, far from it. Martha knows that to be an efficient and professional fighter the kids need discipline and hardship, they need to be forged into soldiers but at the end of the day, they’re still kids. They need warmth, care and love to grow into proper humans, which is far more important than becoming effective fighters.
“Get up girl, you lost, deal with it.” She shouts at Elyssia. The girl frowns and huffs yet still complies. “Next Arthur, Benjamin the stage is yours.” Two new wanna-be mages step forth into the open area to have a go.
Two of the older boys. They’ve learned most of what I’m teaching here but they seem to lack motivation, which makes them stagnant.
“Elyssia, to me.” The girl trods over clearly grumpy because of the outcome, looking down at the ground and grumbling to herself.
Did she really expect herself to win? The odds were horribly against her. Martha just shakes her head at how delusional her newest student is.
“You really wanted to win, didn't you?” She asks the question without looking at the girl, instead observing the new heated battle of her students. Always careful not to let any of them get mortally wounded.
The girl raises an eyebrow like she just heard the stupidest question ever asked. She shrugs and acts like her loss is of little concern.
“Who wouldn’t? Going into a fight just to lose sounds really stupid. I lost but whatever.” She says.
You’re a few hundred years too young to act tough in my presence, greenhorn.
“If so then you can stay some extra after the sparring session, since losing is lame and you still look so fresh this should be a piece of cake, right?” Martha tilts her head and smirks, she knows she got Elyssia on the hook.
The other kids around snicker at the play. Everyone knows that’s what you get if you act cocky.
“I hear some people laughing, they must be full of energy too. Does anyone else wish to stay as well?”
Dead silence. Training is reasonable... to a degree. Nobody wants to spend whatever little free time they have practicing a few more Skills. Well, some do…
At first, Elyssia looks annoyed, then thoughtful and finally a vicious smile stretches across her face.
“A piece of cake it is…yeah. As a matter of fact, can we get back to it after dinner?” She asks, her smile changed to an innocent one.
Even the fight between the two boys comes to a halt at her question, only the training from the other groups breaking the complete silence.
What the hell is wrong with this one? I’ve seen that smile many times before torture sessions… Just what is on her mind?
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She’s the same as Bennett, huh? Bring it on you two, challenge me, throw me into any pile of poo and I’ll climb out and reach you even faster. You’re digging your own graves…
“You sound really eager to not get any sleep girly and I’ll make your wish come true. You’ll be begging for us to stop when the sun starts to rise.” Martha doesn’t back down as I kinda hoped so I’m royally fucked this time but the more the better.
I quietly chuckle to myself, with an almost crazed smile, walking away and returning to my practice.
If I could’ve used my other element I would’ve beaten that boy…probably. But the more you throw at me the faster I can class up and the faster I can have a proper rematch with that guy. So what if it costs me some sleep, what if I get beaten a few times, what if the others might think I’m crazy…Hold up, I really do sound a little crazy. Ok ok let's slow down, some additional training is fine for now, I really can’t wait to catch up with the others and there’s plenty of progress to be made with my skills. Yeah, this version is more sound-minded.
***
The training continued without anything interesting. I ran out of mana twice throughout the practice but that's exactly why the Fist was kind enough to place a massive Hadron crystal in the middle of the courtyard. To recharge.
The piece of white rock holds a ridiculous amount of mana and continuously draws in more at any given moment. We can just touch it and draw on some of the, compared to our own mana reserves, nigh-infinite supply. It should work kinda like the mana vessel of the body, the inside of the crystal provides a more comfortable, more stable spot for mana making it concentrate into its core. The larger the crystal, the quicker the process the bigger its capacity.
It's kinda like gravity from my Earthian knowledge, two Hadron shards don't have the same effectiveness as one with the equal mass of the two. The core of the bigger one somehow becomes more compressed the bigger the size making it exponentially more effective. All in all, the crystal as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Back to the training.
Martha asked me to keep my abilities secret from the others for now, so I’m only able to practice my Skills with the wind element. This limits my creativity with which I can train, reducing my effectiveness. It sucks. Mom and dad told me that the System likes it if you do something new and imaginative or when you’re in high-stakes situations. Since I lack the latter I have to supplement it with quantity and variety.
I sometimes glance at the ongoing duels and… Fine, I’ll admit most of them would probably wipe the floor with me. They’re faster, hit harder and are just more experienced than me. Sadly these duels do jack shit in terms of Skill progress or compared to everything that happened to me on the way here from Meliorport. We’re closely supervised and told to limit destruction. No danger factor or all-out situation, so in the end it's barely more than just shooting spells.
The real benefit of the duels is tactical experience. The lack of it resulted in getting my ass handed to me not too long ago by that boy, Lucas. He even deceived me, I thought he was a simpleton, that he’d just try to brute force his way through, nuh-uh. He led me by my nose, it was a clever trap from the start. Well looking back, it was somewhat obvious if I were to look at my feet back then… sadly I didn’t.
“Okay mages,” Sounds Martha’s voice. “It’s the end of specialized training. Gather at the podium for team exercise and mixed duels.”
Similar orders are being shouted at the other two groups making every kid move towards the slightly raised platform, its size is almost as big as the sandy area, leaving ample space for group combat. The thing is circular and made of rough stone with gibberish written on it that looks like it was made by a newborn.
Let’s see what the other fighters have in store.