The clashing of swords rung out across the plains, along with the thundering of gallant laughter. Fel drew his simple longsword next to his face and aimed the point at his opponents face, assuming a standard Orchs stance. It had been two weeks since the disaster at the Cursed Fortress, and ever since then, he had been travelling with the Void Knights.

For the first half of the day, they travelled back to the capital while completing minor missions on the way. After that, Fel trained for two to three hours with the knights and at the end of the day, he practised magic with Siyla. Fel thrust out his sword, only to be easily countered, ending up with his opponent's blade on his abdomen.

Fel's opponent, a young Void Knight, took back his blade before viciously berating him, "You've been getting better, but you couldn't have made your stance more obvious. Even the wimpiest trainee would have seen through you in an instant!"

The Knights had been teaching him the way of the sword because, according to them, it had much more potential for magic than a hammer did. Aerl agreed with this, he had only agreed with the war-hammer beforehand as Fel had well, little skill. They walked back to their starting positions and rested their swords on their shoulders. Although the stance appeared to be loose and casual, it, in fact, had few openings and allowed the user to move into more complicated and specialised stances without any difficulty.

When there was a metre or so between them, Fel snapped out at the knight's head, intending to take him by surprise. The knight shoved the blade out of the way, allowing for Fel to pivot his sword around to the other side of the knight's head, bringing all of that lovely momentum around with it.

The strike forced the knight to use all he had to defend against it, and Fel, sensing the opportunity, thrust out a hand and grappled the knight's sword out of the way. Yet, before Fel knew it, the knight used Fel's grappling hand as a pivot and smashed his pommel into Fel's face. Though Fel was kitted out in full training gear, the impact knocked him off his feet and left him stunned on the ground.

By the time Fel had recovered, there was a shining blade on his neck. The knight made all those 'mistakes' to lull Fel into a false sense of security.

"You should have noticed that my spine was still straight and I had planted my feet on the ground, even worse, you didn't even try to keep your blade between us. Again!"

The reason Fel was being pummelled into the ground every which way was to consolidate a strong foundation of swordsmanship from which he could build off to create all sorts of wondrous sword-arts. Everything was based on the basics. Even the greatest Mage couldn't ignore the most basic energy manipulation techniques.

In reality, swordsmanship was far inferior to magic, but, when fused together, they became the bane of all traditional Mages. Though powerful, spells consumed great quantities of energy, while magic-swordsmanship was far more efficient, though it was very reliant on equipment. Without a good sword, how could a swordsmaster fully demonstrate his capabilities? However, it was rumoured that one could eventually surpass the need for a physical blade.

As the star-stones above dimmed, the knight finally let Fel go. Battered and bruised, Fel thanked the knight and limped back to his tent. Though the intricacies and practicalities of swordsmanship fascinated Fel, the mysteries of magic attracted him even more.

Before he entered the tent, Fel took a moment to cycle some divine energy through his body to heal his wounds. He slipped through the flap and sat on a nearby cushion. Siyla lazed in front of him, sporting a long, sparkling robe while plucking metal nuggets from a basket.

She had been 'cultivating' her energy for most of the day, hardly spending any time practising actual spells and techniques. For better or for worse, she relied heavily on her powerful innate abilities and could spare much more time to increase her Level. But Siyla's innate abilities were a part of her, unlike Fel who had relied on his advanced equipment.

They faced each other and cycled energy through their bodies. Tonight's session was on internal energy movement. It was an underrated skill as most Mages only cared about external energy manipulation. This was fine for traditional Mages as they 'weaved' spells and launched them from afar, learning to micro-manage internal energy would only decrease spell-casting time. With their busy schedules, they shunted this skill down the priority list.

However, for more physical Mages like Fel, and Mages like Siyla who had power innate abilities, this overlooked skill was a godsend. For them, efficiency was king. Perfecting this art would optimise their energy expenditure, decrease cast-times and even increase the power of their techniques.

Siyla placed her palms over Fel's to sense his internal energy. He was practising the 'energy thread' exercise where he had to condense his energy into a long string and move it around it various ways; spiralling, zig-zagging or just erratically moving it around. Siyla was also an exceptional teacher and had made great strides in improving Fel's technique.

When he almost undid his energy string after forcing it into a sharp turn, Siyla intervened and forced the string back together through sheer force of will before setting his hands down and grinding the basic knowledge into him.

"You know what happens when you move your energy at sharp angles right?"

"Yes. It causes the energy to become more destructive and uncontrollable."

"So what do you do after a sharp turn?"

"Unless I'm preparing a spell, I should either eject it from my body or force it into a spiral to re-weave it into a string."

"Now you've gotten that through your thick skull, let's try that again."

The days flew by. Noone approached them because of the void knights menacing aura and the missions they had to complete were simple. Slaying a Rank 1 monster here or retrieving a valuable resource there. They were more like glorified adventurers than anything. Fel had forgotten that most adventurers couldn't even rival the weakest apprentice Mage. The void knights were the only force the crown had to deal with these life forms.

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By the end of the second week of their journey, before they set out from the camp, the knights declared they were only two days away from the capital, Collesti, and that they'd be at the highway by the end of the day. They wouldn't be training today.

Fel was very proficient at using his movement technique at this point. He had managed to create a large ball of spinning force energy he sat cross-legged on, allowing him to cruise across the flat plains whilst looking like a sagely knight. Exactly as the black book had depicted.

Unbeknownst to the group, a cold, wispy pair of eyes gazed at them from the distance, so far away that not even Siyla could sense its gaze. Hours passed, the star-stones dimmed, and the group grew tired, their attention waning.

A dense mist rolled in, carrying along with it, the harrowing cries of lost souls and weeping ghosts. For five minutes, the group rode through the haunted mist. As the knights conversed in hushed voices to each other, the earth split beneath their feet, opening up like a gaping maw. Siyla plucked Fel from his ball and drifted over the bottomless ravine while the knights desperately tried to ride through the devastated landscape. They leapt over the expanding obstacles and weaved through stone shrapnel and thick dust clouds.

Pale hands rose from the earth, grabbing at the passing hooves of the knight's horses. A desperate knight waved his sword at the skeletal limbs, sending out a cascading crescent of distorted space, destroying a wave of undead that would've otherwise dragged him to the depths. Yet another wave of undead took their place and piled onto the exhausted knight. They never saw him again.

A few knights managed to outride the collapsing earth, leaving their unfortunate brethren to die at the hands of hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of undead. They rode and rode and rode; as far from the death-trap as they could. Yet they didn't get far.

A skeletal dragon burst out from the ground, landing before the fleeing knights and firing out a mass of grey energy at Siyla, forcing her to land on the ground.

"Aerl, Aerl! Give me the info on this dragon!"

"It's at peak Rank 1, you have no way to fight against it!"

Fel spotted the young knight that had trained him and the lead knight Brannen among the remaining stragglers, standing proud against the dragon. He grit his teeth, "Are you certain about that?"

"Well... If you use your divine energy and the holy sword Roland in your ring... and toss Siyla the divine lance Longinus, you could, perhaps, defeat it."

Without hesitation, Fel searched through his ring and took out a shining longsword. Its silver blade was wide and was longer than the average longsword while grand, golden wings wrapped around its hilt to form a magnificent cross-guard. A sacred, white leather, wrapped around its handle while a proud and aloof lion lay on its pommel.

Cycling his divine energy, Fel tossed Siyla a simple, yet beautiful lance. Its entire body was made of seemingly pure gold and a divine halo glowed below its long and broad head.

"Cover me."

A blurry mass of golden steel that crashed into the side of the mighty dragons head, taking it by surprise. It teetered to the side, but only received a few cracks on its skull. But, before it could gather its thoughts, a streak of silver and gold rocketed into the cracked section of its skull, further damaging it, before flying off to a safer distance.

Infuriated, the skeletal beast blasted out several bolts of deathly energy at the two points of golden light before charging at the one on the ground. Fel dodged the blast of deathly energy by pumping out force energy at his feet and swung a crescent of divine energy at the other. While the crescent destroyed the blast of deathly energy, the flow of internal energy in Fel's body reversed, causing blood to spurt from his mouth and ooze from his pores.

"Aerl, what's happening?"

"The Roland is a Tier 3 Artifact, even by using it's weakest ability you'll have to withstand a massive backlash. Power has a price."

While distracted, a flying claw caught Fel by surprise and smashed him towards the death wave. Using all he had, Fel fired out vast quantities of fiery energy from the vents in his back, propelling him back to safety. The massive inertia exceeded the capacity of his dampeners and tore open his internal wounds, the pain almost made him lose consciousness and caused him to crash to the ground.

Another claw swung at stunned Fel, but this time Siyla intercepted it and knocked it aside, jabbing out a dozen times, lightly damaging the skeletal claw. She then flew around to its damaged skull and thrust her lance through the cracked surface and used the spear as a medium to send out beams divine and metallic energy to destroy the skull from within.

Skull riddled with fresh fissures, the skeletal dragon shook Siyla off and fired a beam of death energy at her. Siyla weaved through the sky, avoiding the grey beam of energy, however, it tracked her down and forced her to use her lance to fend it off. Though it was initially successful, the dragon flapped its wings and sent out a gust of wind, laced with death energy, causing her to lose her balance.

The constant presence of the beam, along with her disrupted flight, caused Siyla to fall from the fly and become pinned to the ground under the beam, only able to desperately fend it off with her lance. Fel catapulted into the dragon and brought his blade down onto its skull. With another burst of divine energy, the skull crumbled apart and crashing to the ground.

Dropping to the ground, Fel took another glance at the skeletal dragon. Its ancient bones shook, before falling apart and turning to dust, releasing large quantities of grey light into its surroundings.

Seeing the wilting plants, Fel cried out in alarm towards the stunned knights, "Quick get away! It's releasing all its death energy at once!"

He sprinted over to Siyla and slung her over his shoulder. The excessive amount of death energy had penetrated her defences and was corroding her vitality, though Fel kept pouring divine energy into her, there was only so much energy he could spare. The cloud of death energy nipped at his heels, ignoring his thick armour and sinking right into his soft flesh. Unlike the energy used by the skeletons, this death energy was far purer and couldn't tolerate any living being.

Despite the moans of his body, Fel sprinted away from the death cloud until it gave up and dispersed into its surroundings. Fel lay Siyla on the ground and desperately pumped in all the divine energy he had into her, purging the contamination within. The void knights, on the other hand, were huddled into a small group, using whatever medications they had left to rid their own of the contamination.

Out of the 20 knights that left the capital, they lost eight at the Cursed Fortress and seven at what could only be described as a death wave. Brannen, tired and battered from the event, walked over to Fel.

"We must leave, that skeleton horde will soon catch up. One deathwave is a coincidence, a second is a sign. The highway is just up ahead, if we can get there, we can hitch a ride to Collesti."

Fel nodded and hoisted up Siyla in his hands. He drew on his final dregs of energy and joined the knights in a final run to the highway.