Locke pulled his face from the dirt of the training floor with a slight ring in his ears. The moment the ringing stopped he heard the laughter of almost every person in the training room save and except his own men. Locke had a severe scowl on his face as he walked to the far end of the room. To watch the asinine elf perform his petty magic show.
Rayna was worried about the fallout from this incident but what could she do to stop a noble anyway. However, she couldn’t help herself and burst out with laughter the moment that Locke was sent airborne. She had thought to stop the guy once she realized what he meant to do but he was damnably fast and had already pulsed the final bit of magic through the magic circle before she could utter two words. After watching him cast the spell she was astounded at his power and accuracy and even more with the speed with which he managed to cast. Plus, she really hated Locke, same as most people in the guild did.
Shrane was doubled over laughing while Laren shared a more reserved chuckle and spent the rest of his time studying the elf noble whose casting form was almost flawless. He wondered how such a person could have passed out of the guild hall before without demonstrating their ability. He certainly wasn’t going to believe that this vaguely familiar guy had only been studying magic for a short number of eightdays.
Once everyone was done laughing and wiping the tears from their eyes in the case of the gnome, Ryuji really liked him now that it came to it, Ryuji went on with his demonstration. He left the cork, which was attached to the belt by a thin leather thong, hanging and opened his next vial over. This one contained a bit of water from the river and with this one he performed the first level water ball spell. He used air to draw a smokey white magic circle and cast a breeze spell that was strong enough to cause dust to climb into the air behind them and also cool them all off nicely.
The next tube over was full of what appeared to be a white powder but if anybody got close enough, they would see that it was crushed clear crystalline bits. For this spell, Ryuji needed something else, a focal point. He handed his sword to the increasingly impressed Laren and the sight of dwarven banded iron drew another gasp of awe. Dwarves were notorious for their disdain of other species and rarely sold their best items to them. Ryuji made the sword the focus of the spell and the brightly glowing circle vanished to be replaced by a blinding glow on the blade of the sword.
By this time, the rest of the people in the room were gathered loosely around watching the rare demonstration of magical prowess. As the sword flared to brilliance, many of the onlookers were so startled that they yelled or screamed in the case of one unfortunate fellow. Ryuji had to put the sword back in its scabbard to hide the blinding light. The flash of brilliance was bright enough to be seen all the way across the room where Locke stood brooding over his bruised ego.
His seething hatred of the tall sun-elf was something new to him. There were people that had bested him in the past but never had anyone humiliated him! He was supposed to be the only one who could humiliate other people. How dare that scrawny little knife-eared bastard!
Suddenly, a plan came to him. He would humiliate the little prick who thought his magic counted for shit! He would charge across the field and the room and swing at the stupid little shit’s head. He would use a blunt sword but he wasn’t going to hold back either. He figured there was an even chance that the little shit would abandon his fancy magic tricks and pull his sword which Locke would then break and maybe his hands too. If he didn’t, Locke just might have a training accident where he happened to crush the skull of the little prick!
With all the time he would have to defend himself, he couldn’t say it wasn’t training in battle preparedness. Locke grinned wickedly as he told one of his confederates to hand him the blunted training longsword. The guy just chuckled cruelly as he saw the direction Locke was looking.
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Ryuji opened his next vial and this one was dual purpose. It was a fine powder of coal dust. First up, Ryuji used his mana and cast a circle of fiery glowing red that culminated in a small gout of flame a shooting a meter from his outstretched hand. Technically speaking, this should have been a second-level spell and the war-priest didn’t miss that either. Ryuji had figured out the methodology of glyphic shorthand but didn’t realize anybody else there would know.
The next spell used the same powder and Ryuji had to wipe his finger on his dampened rag to get the previous coating of coal dust off of it first. As Ryuji withdrew the thin rod of black powder and began writing he noted something strange, the circle was black. It should be black because this was going to be a darkness spell however, this was also the exact same powder he had just used for his flame spell. It didn’t flare to life only after he pushed the final infusion of mana, the flame circle started red. That meant that the mana was being influenced by intent before he ever drew the symbol in the center. This was information not mentioned in any of the books he had read so far. They all said that the glyph in the center determined the magic but this experiment had proven that mana took intent into consideration from the outset of a spell.
As Ryuji was finalizing the last of the glyphs of the magic circle, he noticed a fast movement in his peripheral vision and spotted Locke rushing towards him from the other side of the room holding a sword. Ryuji smiled as he cast the spell and the entire area was shrouded in a cloud of inky black fog.
Without missing a beat, Ryuji stepped slightly to the side of where he was and wiped his finger on the rag. In one quick motion he dipped his finger into the first vial and withdrew the powder on his finger which transitioned smoothly into a meter-wide magic circle glowing brown but he had to mana flare to correct its edges. Ryuji followed this with a smaller circle and saw it wasn’t aligned so he briefly flared his mana again before drawing the pentagram inside the now perfect circles. The bellow of rage gave Ryuji the perfect targeting medium and he drew in his glyphs in under four seconds.
Just as Locke came into view and charged towards him, he flared his mana the final time and the charging berserker was met with something he never expected. In the heat of full rage, Locke had seen the cloud of fog block his vision and had to slow so he wouldn’t brain one of the other people from the guild instead. This infuriated him further. Then he spotted the sneaky little shit and it was on! he charged as fast as he could hoping to make his attack before the shit cleared out of the air. Suddenly, he found his arms and, a fraction of a second later, his head rebounding off of an unyielding surface. As he blacked out, he had a fading view of a giant stone wall that shouldn’t have been there.
Shrane saw the whole incident with only brief interruption. His god-granted abilities allowed him to see through magic obstructions. He was also positioned in just the right place to see the start of Locke’s charge and the moment he had activated his berserking rage ability. He was going to warn the young wizard but then he saw the look in his eyes. He knew of the attack and was acting accordingly.
Shrane watched as the sun-elf lord calmly stepped to the side and began preparing a second-level spell that he promptly finalized moments after. Locke was in the midst of a rage and didn’t notice the circle was pointed directly at him. how had the guy seen him? or did he see him? Suddenly, a stone wall a good eight arm spans across and the same high sprang from the ground in a cloud of flying dirt. The meaty thunk that could be heard on the other side was satisfying. Shrane began praying for a spell of immobilization for when the lug rounded the corner of the wall but he never did.
A short while later, Ryuji could be seen exiting the mercenary’s guild wearing a giant grin. There were a lot of people who thought it was because of the successful formation of his team. This earned him a lot of glares, especially from the male mercenaries in the bar of the guild hall. None of them would say jack shit to him however because another member had gone out ahead of him and relayed the whole story.
Some thought that he was exultant at the fact that he beat one of the guild trainers. Some were even sure of it because they had heard the interplay between the two men beforehand. These few were also wrong.
A few minutes’ walk from the guild hall, Kyarako finally asked the question that had been bothering them both. “Um, Milord, is it? Why are you grinning like the goblin that stole the crown?”
Ryuji couldn’t hold his excitement and was desperately waiting for somebody to ask him that question. “I just can’t believe it! I’ve never cast a second-level spell before and it went perfectly! Did you see it? That wall was huge!”