Watching as the Spell shape formed, Vaunce bubbles with excitement. The last few weeks he had been focusing on shedding all emotions to get rid of any of his feelings about void mana that remained deep inside himself. He turned his heart into stone, he became a stone and would maintain this feeling of absolute non-emotion state until he stopped casting void spell shapes. It also required the patience of three stones, but it was all worth it for being able to actually form void based spell shapes. The last few days he had even caught up to the others in the class and was able to cast smaller scale spell shapes with void mana outside of this ‘stoney heart form’, or so Vaunce referred to it in his mind. The more he practiced casting with it, the more excitement he felt about it and the more the excitement burned away at his prejudices with using void mana. The feeling of being able to progress was wonderful and it permeated his entire being.
“Okay everyone, class is starting so shut it” Mr.Lenkil snapped his fingers, causing a pulse burst and snuff out any sound in the room “It has been a few months and everyone is starting to get the hang of using their void mana, so we will begin to start dueling”
A quiet mummer began to sound throughout the room, slowly building until it was an excited chatter. Vaunce turned to Tim and began to say something when Mr.Lenkil snapped his fingers, silencing them all once more.
“Follow me to the dueling platform” He walked out of the room with everyone streaming behind him in clusters.
Arriving at the dueling platform, Vaunce looked around awestruck. He had never been into this area of the stronghold before, and the sheer size of it left him speechless. He bumped Tim on the shoulder.
“Hey, how large is this place? I see at least 4 or 5 platforms but it gets to small for me to see near the end”
“I have no idea, this is my first time being here as well” Tim replied looking awestruck as well.
“Okay class, Please sit in the stands nearby and I will go over how this is going to work” Calling out to all the students Mr.Lenkil pointed to some stands nearby and guided the students to sit there.
“I will call out peoples names, and then they will duel until one side forfeits, or dies,” Pausing to see the reaction of the students, he laughed “I’m joking, well about the second part at least. The duel will last until someone concedes or someone lasts a solid enough hit to make their opponent fall, or bleed. We are just practicing, so there is no reason to try to kill them”
Staring at them to make sure they understood, they nodded.
“Good, first up is Tim and Frieta”
Getting up from his spot next to Vaunce, Tim went down the steps and onto the dueling platform. Seeing them start, Vaunce watched completely mesmerized by the scene. He had never seen void mana used in actual combat before. This was all new to him, and before he realized it his heart was pounding as Tim managed to sweep Frieta off her feet and land on the ground hard. Hearing some winces from the audience Mr.Lenkil announced the duel over and sent them to another section of stands where some healers that Vaunce hadn’t noticed before waited for them.
It was another 20 minutes before Vaunce heard his name called. Getting up and walking down he saw Ash walking down as well. Sighing in relief, he walked over to the starting spot on the dueling platform they were using. While he had only recently begun to be able to use his void mana for spell shapes, Ash had only been able to around the same time as him.
It looks like Mr.Lenkil is matching people based on their skill level. Which is probably a good thing. It would be pretty terrible if I had to go against Tim or Vivian.
Vivian was the best with using void mana in spell shapes. She wasn’t very creative for the most part, preferring simpler spells that were already established, but she was very fast at casting; or forming spell shapes and triggering them for her desired effect. How powerful a spell was is based on the mind of the caster.
Tim on the other hand, was decent at casting speed, but was very creative when it came to effects. He always had weird and out of the box ideas for how things should be done or work.
Either of them would win against him very fast, so he was glad to see that his teacher understood and placed him against someone at roughly the same level.
“Begin!”
Hearing the command, Vaunce formed his first spell shape in his mind. ‘Devouring Barrier’. Flickering to life dully around him, he felt multiple impacts almost immediately showing that putting up a barrier had been the right move. He felt a trickle of mana enter the barrier reinforcing it. This was the best part of the ‘Devouring Barrier’ that Vaunce had developed; It used mana from the spells that hit it to make it stronger so that he didn’t have to constantly feed his own mana into it. The only issue was that it could only be strengthened so much, depending on his own strength and will.
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Taking a second to analyze his situation, he began to focus on what he wanted the spell shape to do and he poured mana into it. He preferred the ‘Power’ style of casting, which focused on maximizing how much mana was pushed into spell shapes to make their effects more pronounced and powerful. There was also ‘Fast’ style, which was focused on casting as fast as possible to overwhelm, and ‘Efficient’ style, which was the balance between the two but also focused on lowest mana usage for the most powerful effect. None of these were the official terms, but they had been around so long that only scholars knew the real terms.
Feeling the spell shape start to vibrate in his mind, he released it towards the ground. He was trying to tunnel under his opponent to throw them off balance, but he felt it hit a hardened area of earth. Realizing that Ash had reinforced the ground beneath him, he started forming some simple arrows of void mana to see if he could break Ash’s defense. Pouring void mana into them, he checked his reserves and saw that he was about a fourth of the way through it. Cursing slightly under his breath he began to convert all the other mana types in his body to void while still filling up his spells.
About to launch the arrows, he smiled to himself slightly and changed one of them in his mind. One of the arrows changed slightly darker than the others, forcing vaunce to spend more mana to add an illusionary effect to make it appear the same while still letting it have the ‘Devour’ effect that his barrier had. Launching the arrows, he felt a cracking sound. He suddenly was laying on the ground. Groaning, he realized he had stopped paying attention to how much damage his barrier had taken. He had just assumed that the incoming feed from the constant barrage Ash had been launching would be enough. Getting to his feet, he shook hands with Ash to show it had been an honorable duel and walked over to sit next to Tim in the stands where the other students who had finished dueling were.
Laughing, Tim began teasing Vaunce about it. “Take a nice nap on the ground?”
“Shut up Tim” Plopping down in the seat next to him, Vaunce began sulking about how it had gone.
“Hey man, no reason to be down, you'll get better plus you got me to help you” Pounding his chest with his fist, Tim started talking almost nonstop while they watched the other students duel.
“You did pretty decent, but your spells could have been stronger if you formed the spell shapes outside your body instead of your mind”
Vaunce turned his head to look at him “What do you mean?”
“Did you see the way Ash had all his spell shapes almost constantly firing? He was able to do that because the ambient mana was helping fill up the spells. It kind of like a temporary enchantment that is held together by your will instead of the material”
Vaunce nodded and then thought for a second inquisitively “Doesn’t the mana type get changed when ambient mana is absorbed thought?”
“No, ambient mana doesn't really have a type until it gets attached to something. Some ambient mana does, but you can make it so your spell shapes only pull in the typeless mana.”
Spending the rest of class watching the dueling and talking about ways to increase the power of his spells, Vaunce felt satisfied as he left the stronghold to go home. He was finally able to freely use void mana to do things. He still was restricted to only using it in the stronghold but that was good enough for now. As long as he could use it at all, he was satisfied.
Spending the next several weeks working at his apprenticeship, then going to the stronghold to practice void mana and dueling other students, Vaunces' days were filled to the brim with activities and he had very little time for anything outside of his schedule.
Splitting his attention so that he could feel his barrier but also fill up what the spell he had started calling ‘earthquake’, he pushed harder to make the mana flow out of him and into the spell faster. Feeling the attacks dwindle slight, he saw his opponent start to float above the ground.
“Fuck me dude” cursing under his breath he reshaped portions of his spell, instead making it shoot lances of void from underneath Vivian. Looking at her, Vaunce saw her eyes squint slightly, focusing on the changing spell shape in front of him. This was one of the main issues with casting outside of your body like he currently was. If you could recognize enough portions of a spell shape and it wasn’t being actively concealed, you would know what effect the spell would have.
Seeing several more spell shapes pop into existence around Vivian; Vaunce blanched, almost stumbling while he moved around trying to avoid some of the spells that were being flung at him. She already had 5 spell shapes constantly shooting tiny orb-like missiles of darkness at him, and it looked like she had just added another 5.
“Really? 10 void missile spells? Isn’t that a tad extreme?” Vaunce barked at her while taking a few hits on his barrier. It wouldn’t last more than a few minutes at this rate.
“If you feel it’s unfair, feel free to concede. I'm not giving up my win streak because you asked me to” Vivian replied, looking almost bored while moving her hand in a circle as if to say ‘Get on with it’.
Vaunce kept quiet and focused on finishing his spell. If all he did was defend then he would eventually lose. Jagged spikes shot up out of the ground beneath Vivian forcing her to pull the mana from a few of her void missile spells to reinforce her own barrier. Seeing some of the dark orbs shooting towards him at high speed, he pumped mana into his body to move faster so he could dodge them. Thinking hard, Vaunce came up with a plan and started to implement it even as Vivian started to up the tempo that orbs were shooting at him.
Grunting with frustration clearly on his face, Vaunce started forming another spell. ‘Void Fog’ was a spell he had recently been inspired to try. It was based off of the water version ‘Fog’ except it used void mana instead of water mana, and produced a thick black mist. Vaunce hoped that this would block enough line of sight that her void missile spells couldn’t target it. Unfortunately, as the thick fog rolled onto the dueling platform, he felt his barrier shatter and sighed. Dispelling the fog, he called out.
“I concede” He had seen enough of Vivian dueling to know that if he didn’t concede as soon as his barrier broke, he would be visiting the healers very soon.
Seeing multiple small black orbs pause a few feet from him, he shivered as he walked off the platform.
“Vivian wins, she keeps her perfect win streak” Mr.Lenkil announced.
Hearing everyone groan, Vivian gave them all a scornful look.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, Vaunce heard Tim.
“Good try man, you’ve improved quite a bit since you fought her last time. Her void missiles are just too oppressive at the speed she can cast them. It’s absurd”
Vaunce nodded “Well at least I can’t lose rank since she’s at the top”
The ranking system had been implemented a week or so after they had started dueling in class. The only thing they had been told about it was that if you were in the top 5 percent of the class, you could request a small favor from the council. Vaunce was 40th currently, which wasn’t bad but he wanted to improve it, if only to get better at dueling.
“We will get her next time man, I’ve got a few new ideas for spells”
Tim nodded at him and they began to walk home. Dueling always happened at the end of the day, and if they weren’t injured Mr.Lenkil let them leave for the day after they were finished.
Walking in silence with their own thoughts to keep them company, Vaunce waved goodbye to Tim as they split off from each other. He wasn’t quite sure how to accomplish the spells he had in mind yet, but he knew what he wanted.
He wanted to win next time.