They made their way through the corridors in much the same way as they did earlier. Sammie carrying Noah as they scrambled across the ceiling. In a short amount of time they found themselves outside of the training halls.
“Back again lad? I hope you aren’t going to wreck my bots again; it took a while for them to regenerate.” Heidithas joked upon seeing Noah.
“Oh, hey Heidithas! We are going to spar today; we won’t need the training bots.” Sammie explained with a smile.
“Ok, well we only have one hall free today, a whole bunch of soldiers are training today. You know the price Sammie; shall I leave it on your tab?”
“Yeah, you do that Heidithas, see you later.” With that Sammie bounded forward going through the indicated doors to their training room.
Noah followed quickly behind her leaving a “Cheers” behind for Heidithas as he held the button to keep the doors open. He entered the room as Sammie was moving to the opposite end of the room pulling out a pair of wickedly curved scimitars. Noah quickly pulled out his Glavenius and his two identified relics. Following the instructions that Jarthis gave him, he bonded the Nanite Chestplate to his DNA, and equipped it.
Double-tapping the rectangle on his chest a swarm of grey nanites flowed across his chest forming a sci-fi looking piece of armour. The edges were shaped to help weapons slide off and around the user. It was segmented to allow for a greater range of motion and under it all, peeking from the slight bit of space between the armour and him, you could see a pale blue glow emanating from it.
Noah looked at the next relic, the Belt of Titans. Before he equipped it, it looked just like a fancy belt buckle in the shape of some ancient mythological figure holding a sphere on its shoulders. Upon picking it up a short length of leather and metal extended from the side. Noah grabbed the end and pulled it around his waist.
The belt extended from the buckle as he pulled so it would fit his waist perfectly. Once he snapped the end of the belt into the buckle, he felt a surge in his mana. Looking inside himself, he saw that alongside the presence of the Glavenius, another object had appeared that was empty of mana.
“That must be how this belt works, I’ll try it at the end of the fight, don’t want the fatigue just yet.” Noah thought to himself. Refocusing his attention, he saw that Samantha was waiting patiently for him to finish with her swords in ready position.
“You ready Noah?” Sammie shouted across the room.
“Yeah, how are we going to do this, I’ve never sparred before.” Noah replied.
“I reckon we should start with only basic abilities, and as the fight progresses, we use more skills. It will be a good way to see how we are doing. Oh, and if either of us need to stop at any time, there are healing pills in the storage container on the wall.” Sammie explained to him.
“Ok, sounds good to me, lets fight.” Noah readied himself into the ready position of one of the techniques that he was shown in his vision.
Without replying Sammie used all of her legs to launch herself the length of the room, swinging her scimitars down in a brutal overhead swing. Noah stepped back and blocked with the haft of the Glaive. The strength of Sammie’s blow threw his arms downwards and he hurriedly took a step backwards to avoid falling over.
Using the swing of arms to generate force and momentum, Noah swung his arms in a circle bringing the leading edge of the glaive in a sharp swing towards Sammie’s head. Without moving her lower half, she just leaned backwards out of range of the blade edge.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Noah stepped forward bringing the glaive back into position as he activated [Dance of Blades]. Moving his glaive into a storm of unending attacks he wove a web of steel in front of her. She had to take a couple of steps back as she furiously dodged or deflected the blade and haft of the glaive. Slowly but surely, she began to put more pressure onto Noah as she started to send questing stabs and slices through to Noah who had to bend and contort his way around the blades.
The pair stayed like this for a long while, both of them gaining minor grazes and cuts as attacks slipped through defences. Deciding to step it up a bit Sammie started using her agility to add another dimension into the stalemate. Leaping onto the walls and the ceiling she started overwhelming Noah with the random directions that he had to guard from.
As he fought Noah was thinking hard about how he combine skills to improve his fighting ability. After taking a slightly deeper nick, the idea came to him to start incorporating [Spectre Step] into his fighting style. Sammie leapt through the air to go to land on the wall. As she did she swung at Noah, instead of blocking this attack, he activated [Spectre Step] and phased through the attack slamming a hammer blow of a strike into the chitin of her foremost leg knocking her out of the air and slamming her to the ground.
Sammie pulled herself to her feet looking surprised. She launched into another attack and now it seemed like every attack was just a little bit faster, just a little bit stronger and once again even with using [Spectre Step] Noah was starting to be forced backwards. As the fight went on longer and longer, her speed and strength kept increasing and Noah was frantically defending. Eventually a strike slipped through every defence he could conjure, and a massive blow cracked through the air and hit Noah in the chest sending him flying backwards several meters.
“Shit! Noah are you ok?” Sammie shouted in concern
Looking down at the spiderweb of cracks on his Chestplate Noah looked up and smiled “I’ll have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, but it looks like the armour took most of the hit” he replied happily. Taking a glance back down at the armour, he was shocked for a moment to see the cracks disappearing and then remembered that it had self repair as a function.
“Ready again Sammie!” Noah shouted across the room. Without waiting for a response Noah charged mana into the Glavenius and he swung it at Sammie sending a sparking red lightning mana infused blade flying across the room at her. She could barely react in time and just managed to block it with crossed scimitars. The force of the mana blade shoved her backwards, her claws scraping along the floor. She shivered as lightning was conducted through the metals and through her body.
She quickly recovered and her scimitars started glowing a sickly green colour. Rapidly a green dripping ball formed at the tip of her swords. Flicking them she sent the balls zooming across the room. Diving to the side Noah just dodged them and saw that they left a puddle of goop on the floor that was quietly sizzling away.
They both charged at each other sending projectiles flying. Sammie either dodged or deflected his mana blades, seemingly getting used to the lightning very quickly. Noah did the same, he was just more unwilling to have her projectiles hit him, so he mainly focused on dodging them. He deflected the last projectile with the flat of his blade and reached inside himself focusing his mana into the Belt of Titans.
An unimaginable strength filled his body, he felt like he could lift the world, with a roar he swung an overhead strike at Sammie. Their blades connected with a thunderous crash, sending shockwave around the room neither of them giving way to the other.
They began to swing at each other with abandon, every strike was blocked on both sides. Every time their blades connected a shockwave was sent out into the room. Both of them began to dig indents into the floor from resisting each other’s attacks.
Slowly Noah felt himself begin to weaken and he tried to pump more mana into the Belt of Titans, but he couldn’t. as much as he tried to it felt like that it had no more room for mana and yet he was still weakening. One last strike came from Samantha that threw him away as he blocked, knocking the Glavenius from his hands. As he flew through the air, he felt as weak as a kitten. At that point all the mana that was stored in the Belt of Titans was dumped back into his body.
He landed with a thunderous crash on the floor, groaning slightly feeling a great wave of exhaustion, but strangely enough not the immense weakness that he had felt as he flew through the air. Blearily blinking his eyes open, he saw a concerned Samantha standing over him, holding out a hand for him to grab onto.
“Are you Ok Noah? You look terrible.” She asked worriedly.
“Yeah I’m ok, the fatigue that the belt gives you is no joke though, I feel like I need to sleep for a week.” He grumbled half-heartedly. “that was a good fight though.”
“Ok let’s get you back to your room.” Sammie picked him and his glaive up and walked outside.
“Thanks, Heidithas we had fun in there, sorry about the room.” Waving at him she walked back out into the corridors.
“No worries, see you guys another time.” Heidithas took a look into the room. The room was ruined, the floor indented with footprints, puddles of sizzling liquid everywhere, huge rent carved into the walls and anything breakable smashed.
He sighed and motioned for the robots to start fixing the room. “That’s gonna take a while.”
Sammie received the directions to Noah’s room from his ACAS and quickly took him back there, shaking him awake just enough so he could let them inside, she put him in his bed, left the Glavenius next to it and left.
As she stepped back out into the corridor, she finally let the exhaustion show on her face, if only for a brief second.
“That was a hell of a fight, he’s only been in the system for a little while, he is doing really well.”
Smiling to herself she raced across the ceiling to her own quarters show she could get some sleep herself before she crashed.
They were both fast asleep hours later when a loud rumbling sound shook through the ship and it began to lift off. A monotone voice coming from speakers in the corridor said.
“Next stop Daltomir Capital”