The weeks had started to blur to Azura. Just a bunch of training and studying, with the Sunday events just being beatdowns by progressively older versions of his father. He lost the ability to properly compete with the man a little past halfway in the 2nd year, and by the 3rd year there was just no contest.Thankfully by the 4th year his father had learned restraint, and he hadn’t been completely totaled in an instant like he had against the 3rd year version. Though if he was honest the most annoying thing was that he could honestly say that his father had been fine throughout his time at this school, hardly the monster Azura was familiar with.
As if dealing with his father in some form once a week wasn’t bad enough though, the mission the headmistress had sent him on was ridiculous. 74 deaths in 1 month, that had to be a new record. Still he couldn’t say he was upset with the mission itself. Apparently the vault his copies had been dying in and exploring was 1 of 5. Honestly the most confusing part about it was that the headmistress still hadn’t told him what he was looking for down there, and she had waved away every valuable relic he had found. Not that he minded being able to keep them.
Still it would be nice to know what he was dying over and over for. The traps and monsters down there were clearly designed to keep out people much stronger than him. The only reason he was even able to get as deep as he had was because he had learned to bait the monsters into the traps. It would be fine if that was the end of it, but it seemed like whoever set up the vault found a way to not only spawn monsters, but make it so the monsters learn from their mistakes. Even the traps changed around sometimes. Needless to say he understood why the headmistress had never sent anyone to explore it before.
Aside from his attempts to follow through on the headmistress’ request he had been quite busy with classwork and his other preparations. One of which meant he was going to have to send a copy to the tundra he had found himself in during his trials. He had the agreed upon payment for the dragon, and wasn’t that a surprise. He never would have been able to guess that he’d have met the deadline, much less finished before the deadline despite being busy with a ton of other things. He didn’t love that all of the items would actually serve to make the true dragon even more powerful, but hopefully him going above and beyond would help the dragon forgive the broken contract. Not that he was going to risk going in person.
He was mostly just glad to be done with it. Whether the dragon forgave the shattered contract or not didn’t matter, he had fulfilled his end, and thus would have no need to concern himself with it anymore. Aside from all the truly dramatic things, he had finally figured out how to produce lightning magic without a shard, which had proven to be a major boon in more ways than one. It was too bad that space and time magic weren’t quite so easy to grasp, but he’d have to settle for ice as his next learning attempt. Unfortunate given how much he hated the cold, but it was easily his 2nd most used element.
His spars with his friends on Saturdays remained as brutal as ever, and the physical training he put himself and his friends through had only intensified now that Elismera had joined them. The 3rd year had her own training regimen, but they were all so far behind her that playing along with theirs hardly even winded her. He had admittedly even considered using his enchantments just to make her work a bit, but that would defeat the purpose as it would make the activity easier for him.
Despite everything going on, he still found time to use the boon the headmistress had granted him in exchange for his attempt to study the vault. The boon of course being access to the school “catacombs” which he had been told were actually previous versions of the school. The first 5… or rather the most recent 5 he supposed were fairly standard. Nothing really difficult to deal with, and he was able to navigate to the next fairly easily. However the one after that had monsters roaming the halls. He hadn’t yet gone back to try and clear the 6th iteration. Mostly because now that monsters were a part of it the exploration would take significantly longer, and at the moment he couldn’t justify having 2 of his copies exploring a place with monsters. Progress on those was too slow like that, and he had too many other things for his copies to be working on.
A knock on his door signified the end of the slight break he had been taking. He sighed and stood from his meditative position. He opened the door, and was quickly greeted by his friends. The malicious smile on some of their faces made it obvious what was about to happen. “You ready for our weekly spar?!” He sighed at Lily’s question. He was in fact not ready for said spar, but he knew how much he needed the experience.
“I’m sure you mean to ask if I’m ready to have my ass handed to me, and reluctantly I am obligated to answer that I am indeed ready for that to happen.” The malicious smiles only grew as a brief flash of light covered the group. So they stood once again in the Armory. This time away from the beautiful castle and city he had built on the floating island. They instead stood in the shade of yggdrasil with long grassy plains spanning in every direction with the occasional small river or lake breaking up the monotony. “Just don’t think I’ll make it easy for you.”
A quick blink spell got him some distance from his friends not a second before Elismera’s sword swiped through the space he had previously filled. Thankfully his friends were learning from these training matches as well, unfortunately that meant they were getting really good at keeping track of him regardless of how much he moved. So naturally he had to jump to the side to avoid the ice spikes that emerged from beneath him, and then deflect Luna’s spear that almost stabbed him in the face.
Immediately after her spear was redirected Luna jumped back, and he took that as his que to blink away. The explosion of Roran’s disintegration magic proved his choice to be correct. He reacted a second too slow to the vines that had wrapped around him the second he had finished his blink. He growled and used a fire shard in his vambrace to burn away the vines, unfortunately the second delay gave Elismera time to engage him in melee combat. He was barely able to get his shield up fast enough for her attack to send him flying instead of cutting him in half.
He stabbed his sword in the ground to slow himself down, and doing so ended up saving him, because Katy miscalculated where he would be and her slash missed him by a scant few inches. He quickly retreated to gain distance from his stealthy friend. He honestly hadn’t even known she was there. He had just gotten lucky because he decided to slow himself down. He didn’t bother trying to take advantage of the fact Katy had overextended. He jumped forward, which put him closer to Elismera than he’d like, but if it was between that or getting roasted by Lily’s flame he was fairly confident in his choice.
He blocked Elismera’s sword with his own, and used his shield to push off of her for distance, and to dodge the beam of light Cynthia had shot at him. Her attacks weren’t as damaging as everyone else's, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise so he dodged them as if they were just as fatal. Unfortunately he quickly found he chose the wrong direction to get space, because he immediately found Elismera and Luna on him and ready to push him into a melee. He cast a brief light spell hoping to trick them into thinking he blinked away as he rolled under Luna’s spear thrush to get her between him and Elismera. The trick worked, and the split second everyone took their eyes off of him to locate where he blinked to was all he needed. He shoved Luna into Elismera, tangling them up for a moment, and he casually stepped back dodging the fireball Roran had shot at him.
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Thankfully he had learned his lesson in an earlier spar, and was prepared when the fireball exploded. His shield and scales stopping him from taking any real damage. Obviously he wouldn’t be able to keep up this level of activity forever, and Elismera would only ramp up as the spar went on. His loss was inevitable, but his goal wasn’t to win, at least not yet. His goal was to stave off loss as long as possible. To that end he hopped slightly allowing the explosion to push him back as far as possible.
A quick ice spell had a pillar shoot up from below him and launch him further up into the air, which served to get him out of the way of Katy’s dagger, and keep some of his opponents occupied when it violently exploded sending ice shards everywhere. He smiled as he saw his friends moving around to properly position themselves from his current spot high in the air. He was really starting to get the hang of this.
***
Azura’s copy was not in a great mood. He supposed it made sense for him to be at least a little annoyed, he was probably going to die after all. He had been summoned to explore the vault for the headmistress, which was becoming an increasingly difficult task.The vault itself was fairly unassuming. It was big, but the walls were all gray stone, and there weren't exactly decorations down here. The floor was made of a brown stone that was a little weaker than the walls, but that was about the only other color in the whole vault. Or at least so far. Despite its drab appearance though the vault had proven to be a difficult challenge. In some ways it had gotten easier, but in others it was harder. It had gone from feeling like he was simply exploring a dangerous cavern, to feeling like a competition of who can adapt faster between him and whatever was controlling this place.
He’d like to think he was winning since he had pretty much figured out the patterns for all the traps, and no matter how the layout changed he could always spot and avoid the traps. Unfortunately the monsters weren’t quite so predictable. Or sometimes they weren’t? Most of the time the monsters were just mindless monsters driven by their instincts, but every now and then some would act with uncharacteristic intelligence. Which left him wondering if they were simply smarter versions of a normal monster or if there was a commander that was just very picky about its subjects.
He carefully jumped over what he was confident was a pitfall trap, and instantly dropped low to avoid the poisoned needles that shot out from the sides of the walls.After he was sure all the needles had stopped he stood up and continued on his way. Thankfully the general layout didn’t seem to change so much as a few small things got moved and or changed into something else. The walls would sometimes shift a little, but the general shape of the rooms and hallways was always the same, and of course that meant the stairs to go deeper were always roughly in the same place.
He idly wondered just what this had been built to protect. It was overly elaborate, and frankly a lot of the choices were a little odd. Like for example why even make stairs? Just have whatever you’re guarding buried in a vault, the rest is superfluous. Yet an entrance existed, as did a technically survivable set of challenges. Granted even his father might die in here if he got distracted after setting off certain traps. Not that it was likely, but the point was why design it like this? It was like they wanted the object to be stolen, as long as the thief was skilled enough to get to it.
That felt weird though. If whoever locked it away wanted someone to have it, shouldn’t it be passed down by family and friends? Thankfully he had gotten really good at not being distracted by his thoughts as he hid, doing his best to blend into the wall with light magic as an ogre walked by. It was easily the biggest one he had ever seen, roughly 20 ft tall, and pure muscle. Its arms were as wide as a mighty oak, and its legs were even wider. It lumbered by, the ground shaking with each step it took. He could maybe take it out, but certainly not without attracting more monsters, and he’d like to at least make some progress before he died, even if it was just a little.
Unfortunately for that goal, the ogre had been walking in the direction he wanted to go. Which left him with a few options, but none of them were especially appealing. He could turn left, and go the direction the ogre had come from. There probably wouldn’t be much over there, but he did still find valuable stuff sometimes even on the upper floors. Still it would be a minor detour at best, and it wouldn’t actually put him any closer to the stairs down. He could stay on his course and go across the hallway the ogre was on, it would take a bit longer, but he could almost definitely still get to the stairs from this route. Still if he went that way he’d have to be extremely careful, because there would be an ambush room at some point, and those were an awful way to die.
He sighed, so really it came down to did he want to risk an ambush room, or did he want to risk fighting the giant ogre that would without a doubt call backup. He took a deep breath and slowly released it. He hated it when he didn’t like the answer he came to, even if he knew it was his best choice for reaching the next floor. Maybe he’d get lucky and the ogre wouldn’t notice him.
***
He had in fact not been lucky, not that he had really expected to. He made it a pretty good ways towards the stairs before a hell hound appeared. Not a big problem on its own, easily taken out. The problem was that with its sense of smell it detected him immediately, and the giant ogre standing less than 15 ft away wasn’t dumb enough for the hellhound being split in 2 to not register as an enemy killing it, even if said enemy was nearly invisible. He couldn’t fight all that well if he was focusing on the light refraction spell, and the ogre was big enough that any wild swings would hit regardless of whether he was visible or not, so he dropped the spell.
The ogre screamed in rage swinging the giant club he hadn’t noticed it had been carrying. He dove to the side, thankful the halls and rooms were so big as the club crashed into the floor denting it severely. Then again if the halls were smaller he wouldn’t be dealing with a 20 foot ogre in the first place so, maybe a moot point. The ogre swiped the club at him in a sideways sweep, and he was so surprised he almost didn’t jump in time to safely clear it. He had been expecting the ogre to retract the weapon and swing again, but apparently the ogre was smart enough to know it didn’t need to hit him with full power to kill him, and so the beast was going for attacks it could chain quickly rather than power.
He blinked back to the ground to avoid the upward swing the orc had done to hit him after his jump. If he had any hope the teleporting would throw the ogre off it died when the beast casually swung down at him again. He grit his teeth, it was clear his normal strategy wasn’t going to work here. He blinked right in front of the ogre's face and made to stab it with his vambrace sword. The beast reacted quickly, stepping back outside of normal blade range and swung at him with its empty left hand. He shot his blade forward successfully cutting into the beast's eye before blinking back on the ground a good distance from his foe. His yggdrasil sword was much more powerful, but his vambrace’s ability to change its range still made it an extremely valuable weapon.
The ogre roared in rage. The sound powerful enough to physically push him back a few feet. He made the mistake of putting his arms in front of his face to block the force, which allowed the sound to burst his 2 more sensitive eardrums. He groaned in pain, and felt as the blood seeped from his wolf ears into his hair. He dispersed the ears, but the moment's distraction had cost him. He didn’t have enough time to dodge the rushed swing of the ogre’s club, and was only even able to block it because his arms had already been in front of his face.
Thankfully there wasn’t a wall behind him so he merely shot down the hall he had followed the ogre down rather than slam into a wall which definitely would have killed him. Unfortunately both of his arms were broken, so focusing enough to create magic circles to slow him down was an exceedingly difficult task. Still he managed to make a few magic circles to bleed his momentum and finally rolled to a stop. He groaned, as he slowly managed to get back on his feet, reforming his arms to get rid of the debilitating injury. The howls and other monstrous sounds coming from the direction he had just been fighting from told him that the reinforcements he had been concerned about had shown up already. “Here comes 75 I guess.” His hair blead white as scales and glowing symbols formed on him along with a ferocious smile. “Guess I’ll just have to make them work for it.