Azura was pushing himself to the limit. He hadn’t really understood just how much Elismera had been carrying the fights up till now… No that wasn’t quite right, he had known, he just underestimated the opponents. He was throwing out spells left and right just to keep him and Auros on the board. Enhancing water attacks, weakening his opponents spells. In some cases managing to use gravity or other means to completely deflect spells. Even with all that, they were barely hanging on. It was to be expected really 3 4th years against a 1st year and a 2nd year, they were only even holding out due to his magic being better for team plays than simply casting more attack magic.
Elismera cast a spell now and then forcing the other team on the defense, but for the most part he and Auros went back and forth with the enemy team while she stayed out of it. A wave of flame was shot from the opponent across from Elismera, and then the flame split into 6 arching beams of flame. 3 had gone towards him, and 3 towards Auros. He cast several magic circles that drained all the heat from an area. It wouldn’t be enough to stop the attack, but it would redirect it as the heat was drawn towards it. The opposite side of their formation was covered once more in a thick layer of steam.
He desperately searched for weaknesses in the other team, but aside from looking overly passionate the 2 boys across from him and Auros showed no opening, and the girl across from Elismera in the middle didn’t even have the same over-emotional look. He had tried to rile up his opponents several times, but she had always managed to calm them down before they could make a mistake. In other words they were losing, whenever it got a little too close to one of them being taken Elismera would step in, but she made no moves to end the fight.
He sighed she was being unreasonable really, he had wanted a chance to test himself, and he got it. Still he felt this was already enough to prove that he was lacking. Or rather he and Auros both were. Then again he still had a couple tricks left he could try. He was about to show off a secret skill of his, but his competitive spirit had been stoked. He wanted to win, to prove that he could. Before his copies could only be summoned physically, but once he had been reborn as a part spiritual entity it became possible to create copies of only his spiritual side. In other words there was no extra body, but 5 extra brains for him to focus and cast spells with. He had become capable of casting 3 spells at the same time, so all told 18 simultaneous spells became possible. His eyes glowed blue as he prepared to unleash his new finishing move.
The enemy team seemed to notice that he was up to something, and concentrated their fire on him. 4 spells were cast in an instant, one to draw heat, one to form a wall, one to disperse energy, and one to reflect some of the attack back on his foes. The enemy team was shocked to see their attack thrown back at them, even if it was only an extremely small portion. They didn’t have long to panic though, 14 more spells had been cast in the brief lull where they were focused on that. 14 magic circles in a small dome around their opponents. He panted as the purpose of each circle was revealed. “Return to zero!” Would he get made fun of for saying something like that? After casting something like this… he doubted it. Each magic circle glowed intently as they prepared to do their function… utter annihilation.
***
Elismera stared in awe. 14 simultaneous attacks, from all directions. Each one had the force of one of his stronger bow shots. More importantly they were all so far apart, that each one would have had to have been cast separately. Not dimension whatever spells he had used for defense. Just what kind of absurd concurrent casting was this? Not even her or Kaiser could come close to casting that many spells at once, and she was considered incredibly talented for being able to cast 8 spells at the same time. Her eyes sought Kaiser, only to find him grinning in excitement and obvious surprise. Though perhaps not as surprised as the 1st year next to him.
Just from the one look she knew Kaiser wouldn’t be able to pull something like this off either. Just how had the boy done it? She’d get him to tell her later. Still as impressive as it was, was it enough to close the gap in power? The answer was obvious. It was not.
***
Azura panted, being able to cast 18 spells at the same time did not mean his mana was infinite. He had pulled from his reserve to cast these spells at the same time, and had used the fact they were enchantments that gathered nature mana to attack as an excuse to use less of his own. Even still his circuits burned. Thankfully circuits existed as a spiritual force too, so while his copies didn’t have the physical part of circuits, they were at least able to ease the burden on his body. Otherwise his circuits would have burst instantly. He wasn’t out of the fight yet, but he was definitely on his last legs.
A fireball shot at him from the smoke cloud his attack had created, but thankfully a wave of water took it out from the side. He hadn’t heard shattering glass, so he hadn’t managed to take out any of them. He grimaced, so even that wasn’t enough to make up the difference huh? The smoke cleared to reveal their opponents. Of course there were no injuries due to the nature of the game, but they had lost life from that attack, and a lot of it. It probably wouldn’t take much to finish them at this point, but he didn’t have it in him for another exchange like that last one, so he wasn’t sure how they were going to pull it off.
He did his best to ready himself for the next attack, but found himself on the backfoot when instead of a fire attack Several spears made of ice were thrown at him. He was a bit slow to react to the complete opposite element. Normally Auros could probably take control of the ice, but this game wasn’t quite advanced enough for something like that to be possible in it. It was too late for a defensive spell, so he desperately attacked the ice with a bolt of lightning. His attack broke the spear into shards, but the shards still shot past him, shaving away some of his life.
Auros made a dragon sculpture of ice, and it moved to attack their foes. He quickly enchanted it with 4 spells. To enhance its speed, strength, durability, and heat resistance. Thankfully 4 spells at the same time didn’t put much strain on his body. He’d say he could probably do 8 without issue, but any more than 2 spiritual copies would be a waste given how quickly going full tilt had worn down his circuits. After his stunt where he went all out he didn’t think he’d be able to manage even 6. So only 1 spiritual copy remained.
Then the enemy did something I hadn’t considered, and I regretted my decision to focus so much of my attention on buffing the dragon. The enemy team had decided to take the hit, accepting the loss of a member so that all 3 of them could unleash a tsunami of flame at Auros. Neither he nor Auros were able to mount a significant defense in time, and Auros along with 1 of the members of the other team were simultaneously eliminated. With it’s controller out of the match the ice dragon broke into pieces of falling snow.
He groaned, their strategy had been figured out. Other than his big assault it was obvious that he was playing a supporting role, so taking Auros out left him mostly out of options, whereas if they had focused on him Auros would still be able to put up a decent fight. Or at least keep them on their toes as tired as they must be by now. Elismera glanced at him as if to say ‘is that all you can do?’ He grit his teeth. Would he need to call on her after all? He wasn’t out of options just yet, but without anything to distract the enemy team his bigger spells wouldn’t work, and he simply didn’t have the skill to match the power output of these older students.
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A fire wave approached him. Forming into a phoenix as it neared him. He smirked, what was one more hidden ace at this point? He threw a dagger at the flame. The fire was swiftly absorbed by the dagger which glowed a bright red before shooting at the center of the other team. This was one of the magic items he had made specifically for this tournament. Given the limited time he’d had, he only had 3 of them, but he was confident they’d be devastatingly effective.
The remaining 2 opponents reacted quickly, summoning a powerful ice wall, but when the dagger struck the wall it exploded violently. The full force of the inferno that had been meant for him tore the ice wall to pieces, and in that moment he created 2 magic circles that fired concentrated beams of light. Both opponents were struck before they could react, since their vision was blocked. The damage would be miniscule, but the ringing of glass told him he was right about how low on life they were.
He only got to celebrate his victory for a moment. A lightning fast arrow of flame shot him through the head the second he let his guard down. His light attack was too shallow. Glass shattered as his defeat was signaled. He winced, even exhausted as he was he normally could have blocked that, but had gotten cocky from his supposed victory, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“Thought you managed for a second, but overall not a bad display. Guess I’ll finish things up.” elismera glanced at him with a condescending smile. His blood boiled. He wanted to argue that he should have won, but he knew better than anyone that should didn’t matter in the real world. The biggest aggravation was that he had wasted one of the daggers he had made for cyvran, but he still had 2 for his fight with Kaiser, so hopefully that would be enough.
The fight was over fairly quickly once Elismera stepped in, not surprising considering he and Auros managed to take out 2 of them, and drastically lower the leader’s life. A quick storm of blade-like leaves, and the hastily made fire wall was pierced through along with the last of the enemy leader's life. She sighed as the leaves went through her. Shattering glass signaled the end of yet another battle.
“The matches are heating up now, in a startlingly close match team enchanted flower takes out team inferno core.” He still didn’t like their team name, but at least this fight had probably been entertaining to watch. So far every match with Elismera or Kaiser in it had been fairly 1-sided. This one probably would have been too, but since Elismera stayed out of it had been fairly back and forth. He had pulled out all the stops, and had only managed to draw even, that aggravated him a little.
Both teams returned through the gates so they could make it back to their seats. “2 out of 3 isn’t bad, all things considered. Those were 4th years you know, in a 1v1 any one of them would have mopped the floor with either of us, and yet in a basically 2 v 3 we took out 2 of them and gravely injured the 3rd, that’s about as close to a win as we could possibly get.” He smiled at Auros, who despite his earlier antagonistic behavior was trying to cheer him up.
“I guess, but I’ve never pulled out my secret weapons and still lost before. Those daggers are special items I made with a dagger I got in the capital as the blueprint. They aren’t as powerful as the original, but even despite that I was only able to make 3. If I had to put an estimated value on them, hmm it would probably be something like 500,000 gold each.” It was only even so low because they were 1 use items. If they didn’t shatter after use then they would sell for whatever I wanted to sell them for.
Auros and Elismera both sputtered in shock. “Why would you waste something like that! I won’t say they aren’t amazing weapons, but you could sell them, or at least save them for a situation that actually matters!” Elismera’s shock was obvious as she raised her voice while reprimanding him.
“It’s fine I told you they were just imitations didn’t I? I’m upset that I wasted 1 and lost anyway, but given some time I could make more, and the original itself isn’t a 1 use item, even if it functions a little differently.” He shuttered. He had removed the curse from the dagger, but the curse itself just made the user stronger based on how much blood the dagger had tasted. The effect of inflicting pain, and absorbing magic were part of the original dagger. He had no intention of using the pain aspect, but the magic absorption would be incredibly useful.
“So the rumors are true then? It goes beyond you being able to enchant objects, you can make actual magic items?” It wasn’t too surprising that rumors had spread about that. While no one had any actual proof, all of his friends had at least 1 magic item, usually more, and it was obvious none of them would be able to afford to equip that many people with magic items. Some of their parents probably could, but wouldn’t for various reasons. On top of that, he was in the forge constantly, and all the gear he forged and sold worked suspiciously well.
“More or less, the function is the same, but some magical items don’t actually seem to be made with enchantment so I don’t know the normal method of their production.” That isn’t to say that no discovered magical items were enchantment based, but it was probably pretty close to an even split.
“Why even bother with all this then? You could be rich in an instant. Magic items are, as you pointed out, ludicrously expensive, but they also always have a market.” That was exactly the issue, the market was insanely powerful and wealth noble mages, which was bad even of itself, but worse because they could try and pressure him into making them more, and if he didn’t have the skills to handle himself, he’d quickly find himself kidnapped unless he picked a strong group to reside under.
“Well I have a lot of reasons on that front, but the easiest to explain is that money isn’t really my goal.” To be more accurate he didn’t much care about it at all, for the most part money was worthless to him. It came in handy in specific situations so he still made sure to turn a profit when selling his stuff, but he didn’t come anywhere close to the absurd prices most people who discover or make magic items do. Still he had considered going to a school for artificers, but ultimately decided he would gain less from a school that was overly specialized in a skill he was already fairly confident in. While they surely had some tricks that he didn't, it was safe to say he’d learn more here. Plus his father would have never allowed it anyway.
“What is your goal then? I mean the more I learn about you, the more suspicious you are, but I don’t get any bad vibes from you despite it all. Which of course just makes me more suspicious.” It’s not that he didn’t understand where Auros was coming from. It was obvious he was suspicious, no matter how you looked at it. He had skills other mages wouldn’t even consider learning, on top of that all the 1st years were wary of him after the whole capital debacle. Of course all that was only the tip of the iceberg too, it was absolutely natural to be concerned about his motives.
“Even if I tell you, you won’t believe me. It’s simple really, simply the freedom to make my own decisions and the safety of those I care about. That’s it, no ulterior motives, no crazy schemes, no thirst for power. I just want to be able to live life freely.” Auros gave him a skeptical look, but dropped the subject. He understood, really he did, but he wished someone would believe that his motivations were pure. Not to say he wasn’t a schemer, but that was merely a means to an end. He was always sure not to mix up the goal with the method.
“You should aim a little higher. Elves have a saying that probably comes from our famous lack of motivation. ‘You should aim for the stars, because that way even when you fall short you still reach the sky.’ Honestly even being here in the academy for a few years I’ve done more than I have the rest of my life, but even still I think that proverb may hold some truth.” He chuckled. It was a novel idea. To aim so high that even falling short is an achievement. If he had anything he aspired to that he might not reach, no rather the one thing he never dared to wish for. It would be to defeat his father, and then even beyond that, the chance to see his mom again. The thoughts he had always sealed away came to the forefront, and he felt a burning motivation to succeed, even if he fell short he’d give it everything he had. Perhaps the elves were onto something there.