After Sofia shared some of her stat lines, she was bombarded by questions again. ‘Why is your mana so high? Doesn’t your class name imply you summon saints? Your age is locked?’ and more. Her answers were about as short as the questions, this was not meant to be a class about her. At the first occasion, she changed the subject, asking the students to follow her to the classroom’s courtyard. The training courtyard was an enclosed square area of about twenty meters each side, surrounded by tall gray cobblestone walls separating it from the rest of the academy. The ground was made of smooth stones laden with active ritual circles, covered in a fine layer of coarse sand.
This barely counts as outdoors, but it’s not bad. Just a bit small for five students. I’ll probably need to request to use the underground arena later.
“Do you know what the enchantments on the ground are?” Sofia asked the class.
No one answered.
“I see. Well. Probably safety stuff I assume, we shouldn’t need them anyway. Pareth’s ready to take your hits, who wants to go first?”
“Me!” En almost screamed, jumping in place.
“Alright, Miss Totemist. Let me set up everything.”
Sofia’s [Bone Dominus] had enough range to cover the entire courtyard, so she dumped a bunch of bones out of her storage and moved them around without lifting a finger. She made two circles on the ground ten meters apart to show where Pareth and the students should stand at the start, and a life-sized statue of herself in armor behind Pareth. She preemptively silenced the incoming questions about what she had just done. “Don’t worry about the details of how my skills work, else we’ll still be here next year. Focus on your own magic.”
Pointing to the ring for the students, Sofia explained the rules, “En, you stand there. Pareth stands in the other circle, he can only defend and grab you to throw you away, and will try to limit himself to the skill and speed he had when he was around your level. You have to try to hit or topple the statue behind him. Of course you can move around however you want, and so can he and the statue. I will tell you when to stop. All good?”
“Yes!” En enthusiastically confirmed before leaping to the circle in a single jump.
“That statue moves?” Lola whispered to herself.
Of course it does.
I know you couldn’t do shields back then, but use that instead of a sword, maybe just a small buckler. I want them to be able to focus on the task. Sofia communicated to Pareth as he walked to his position in the other circle. His weapon of light appeared, taking the form of a small round shield.
“Do you need time to prepare?” Sofia asked En as a final confirmation.
The small girl shook her head in response, and took a punching stance, fists clenched.
“Then start!”
Let’s see what a Totemist can do.
Three totems sprang from the ground much like Sofia’s gravestones, they were like small wooden poles carved to resemble animals and covered in enchantments. One was right next to En, it looked like some kind of cat. En dashed forward, much faster than someone her level should.
Speed boost.
The next two totems were just a few meters away from Pareth, one in the image of a bird spreading its wings right in front of him, the other taking the likeness of a big slug standing upright on his left. En closed the distance to the winged totem, grabbing it when she neared Pareth instead of trying to attack. The totem shot up into the air, taking the small girl with it.
Interesting. The totem on the ground is slowing Pareth down I think, the mana around his feet looks a bit like the cursed petrification air from Zerei’s dungeon.
En used her advantage of her flying totem to jump over Pareth and tried to attack the statue from above. As she was still in the air, mana gathered around her right fist. Pareth turned around, raising his shield above the statue’s head. Sofia tried to move the statue a bit with [Bone Dominus], but the slug totem actually made it too slow to be useful. Still, with the shield in the way, it looked like En’s punch would never reach the statue even if it turned out to be a ranged attack.
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Then En disappeared, replaced by the slug totem. She appeared where the totem used to be on the ground, rolling toward the statue to cancel her momentum and unleashing her punch in a single fluid movement just a meter away from the statue.
It was too sudden for Pareth to lower his shield or move to intercept her, at least with his limitation of pretending he was level 99. All he could do was to extend his other hand to barely meet En’s punch.
The mana-charged hit was heavy, blasting away the sand in a cone from En’s position. Pareth took no damage, and the statue was intact as well, but the air pressure from the punch toppled it over.
“Stop! Well played, En. Good job,” Sofia praised, "That’s a strong start. But be careful about using this in a real battle, that second when you land on the ground and need to break your fall could be deadly against fast opponents. For the purpose of this exercise, though, it was perfect.”
“Understood!” En answered with a smile, her tails happily swaying behind her back.
“Alright, take your totems back and come here. Lola you’re the second highest level, you go next.”
[Supporter - Lv. 61]
It’s interesting that she’s a supporter. The dwarf is an Artisan, the sprite caller is a Mage, while En and Erian are Warriors.
“Yes, teacher. May I have a minute to prepare?”
“Of course, what are you going to do?”
“My summon can only attack souls unless I give it a physical shell, so it cannot attack the statue as it is now. I need to bind it to an armor,” Lola explained while bringing out a tall orichalcum armor with mithril-coated weapons out of nowhere.
No storage item? The magic feels just like my bone storage. She has a generic spatial storage skill? That’s handy. Also, she sure is a rich kid, Daughter of a Marchioness, right? Erian is from a Ducal family too. En is a princess from her race but her totems were still just regular wood. I guess they were just mana constructs though, but she doesn’t have any fancy gear that I could spot.
Sofia observed as Lola put her hand on the back of the armor, slowly filling it with mana. There were strange mana movements around her that Sofia couldn’t trace back to Lola. That must be the ghost. It’s really sneaky.
Activating [Graveyard of the Righteous] Sofia had a graveyard skeleton grab her ankle to bring her halfway into the spiritual plane, giving her vision into it. In the blurry white world of the spiritual plane, she saw a tall and lanky, vaguely humanoid form, hovering around Lola’s soul. It turned toward Sofia for a second before getting sucked in where the armor was.
Interesting. Before cutting her vision of the spirit plane, Sofia observed the souls of all of her students. They all look nice and smooth, no injuries. I know Alith said my soul looked weird, but even through Pareth’s vision I can never see it. Well it’s not particularly worrying. If there was anything wrong with my soul surely Aphenoreth would have fixed it when he put his mark there. Maybe it’s just the aftermath of hosting a Soul Parasite for a while.
Seeing Lola’s soul move inside the courtyard, Sofia dismissed the graveyard. The young Exidian girl was followed by the heavy orichalcum armor, now controlled by her strange ghost.
“Start!”
The following fight was underwhelming. Lola stood still in her circle while she ordered her spirit around through a soul-link just like Sofia gave commands to Pareth. She looked confident at first, but her countenance slowly crumbled throughout the fight. It seemed her skills weren’t very combat-oriented, because she did not do much at all herself, only worriedly watching her summon try and miserably fail to get past Pareth’s defenses in close quarter fighting.
Her only interesting move had been a [Confusion]-inducing skill that got instantly canceled by Pareth’s share of [Blessing of the Deep].
After a minute, Sofia stopped the fight. The statue hadn’t suffered a scratch, the possessed armor never even got close. Lola seemed disheartened, looking down at her feet as she walked back to the group.
“Don’t be discouraged by just this. I assume your skills aren’t very focused on combat for now?”
“They really aren’t…” Lola dejectedly confirmed, “the armor is usually strong but it could not do anything against your skeleton…”
“It’s alright, my job here is to make every single one of you into a summoner competent at fighting. I haven’t seen much of your [Spiritist] class yet, but I’m confident we’ll make it work. Erian will be up next, then Shaily, then Guerand, and we’ll have a quick look at everyone’s skills before the second round. I assure you that as far as I know, there are no bad classes; I even once fought a [Stonemason] who could destroy mountains with his skills.“
“If there are no bad classes then does it not mean I’m the one who is bad?” Lola answered with a bitter smile.
“Not at all, Lola. At your age I was still stuck at level one, spending all day reading religious books in a decrepit library. Do you think you’re bad in comparison?”
Does she have self-esteem issues? She looked the most confident when I announced the exercise, was that just a front?
Anyway, good job Pareth, three more.
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