Unsurprisingly it had been Azura’s stamina that gave out first, and he had once again been beaten mercilessly by his friends.Still he had been lasting longer and longer, so that was good. “Is it really necessary to continue attacking after I’ve exhausted myself?” It was probably good exercise, but he didn’t really need that anymore. Technically as far as physical strength went his was entirely dependent on his mana control when he reforms his muscles. So while working out would still work it would actually take longer than just doing more of his magic based training. He should brag tol Lily about that, he knew how much she hated joining them for physical training.
“Your father doesn’t sound like the kind of guy that would let up because you're tired.” Elismera didn’t miss a beat in her response, but he narrowed his eyes. She wasn’t wrong per se, but there was no way she would miss the flaw in her logic. So was she baiting him, or was that just the best excuse she could come up with?
“He’s not, but it’s only a fight where I have to injure him once. If I get to the point where I’m exhausted and the fight’s still going, I've lost.” Honestly the likelihood of him lasting until exhaustion weren’t exactly high either as much as he hated to admit it.
“Not always, the best time to turn the tables is when the enemy thinks they’ve won.” He chuckled mirthlessly. Luna's logic while sound didn’t apply to his father. His father already thought he’d won, and nothing save for him actually scoring an injury would make the man think otherwise. Sadly his father easily had the power and intelligence to back up that arrogance.
“My father doesn’t ever let his guard down. Even when he’s sleeping. That’s not an exaggeration, I've literally seen him cast spells while he’s sleeping that wake him up if anyone approaches. One of the servants tried to clean his room while he was sleeping once, and the poor boy almost got himself killed.” Thankfully his father had been feeling merciful that day, and he let the servant off with a warning. He was fairly sure the flaming dragon that had gotten inches from biting the kids head off was more than enough punishment.
“It’s true, his dad is scarily good at being aware of his surroundings. No matter how good I got at hiding whenever me and Azura played a game where I had to be sneaky if his father walked by his eyes would find me immediately, and even if he couldn’t see me he somehow always knew it was me and ignored me.” He winced. She didn’t know that he was punished everytime that happened, both because he was ‘wasting his time’ teaching a servant, and because if he was going to spend so much time on her she should be ‘significantly better’ than she was. He wouldn’t tell her that of course, she didn’t need to feel guilty about it, it was his choice.
“Ok so maybe the extra practice fighting while tired won’t help you in that way, but if you’re able to keep pace and think clearly while super tired, won’t that help you in fighting while your energy is full too?” He narrowed his eyes at the elven princess. She really did just want to beat on him. That was slightly aggravating, especially given that at least half of his friends looked just as eager to find an excuse to keep fighting after he ran out of energy.
He gave them an unamused look. “I appreciate the help training, but there is a point where it is no longer helpful going forward If I say to stop, stop.” Part of him considered letting it continue, considering it was good stress relief for his team, and he did owe them quite a bit for the help, but more than the pain the biggest issue was the time wasted. A few minutes getting beat on, and then a few more reforming his body properly. The fruits could restore the damage, but he found it more efficient to fix the damage himself, and use the fruits to restore his energy so he could train more.
Lily pouted. “You’re no fun.” He rolled his eyes. He should turn the tables and see how she likes getting beat on by the rest of them while she’s exhausted. “Well whatever, you gonna eat a fruit so we can go round 2, or you got something else for today?” That was a good question. He’d gotten pretty good at evading their attacks, but he could always ask Elismera to ramp up the difficulty. He wasn’t sure the others had much more to throw at him though.
“Yeah I figure… Give me just a sec.” He winced as his latest attempt at the vault entered his memory. His copy could definitely say he didn’t go down without a fight. He had even managed to kill the ogre. Even if the over extension that did so was the reason he was torn to shreds by hellhounds. Bladed variants were the worst. They had a mane of what were essentially extremely sharp daggers, and their claws and teeth were far stronger than their normal counterparts. “Ok so I’ll eat a fruit, send a copy off to probably die, and then we can go round 2.
He had told his friends about the vault as soon as he started exploring it. It didn’t really have anything to do with them, but he was making an effort to be less secretive, and was probably taking it too far. Still his friends had told him they’d rather know some of the random stuff he did than risk not knowing some of the important stuff he did. Which he supposed was probably fair. He did always seem to find a way to get himself into trouble.
***
Despite Azura’s best efforts the time still seemed to be flying by. He was now at 207 deaths in the vault, but at least he had gotten a lot deeper. Still it was starting to get to the point where he was questioning just how deep the stupid thing went.. At least everything had been going fairly normal aside from his exploration of the vault. He trained, studied, hung out with his friends, usually doing one of the former 2 things, and he meditated. Sleep was no longer something he explicitly required, and he could usually get away with just meditating for a few hours. He still actually slept at least once a week though if just because it was a bit more relaxing.
For example, he had just woken up from sleeping properly last night. Unfortunately the reason he had decided to sleep normally was still here, and he wasn’t exactly excited for it. He had finally found the tundra he had been teleported to, and it was time to send a copy to deliver on his promise. The only problem was he had no real way to get there. His long range teleportation magic only worked to areas he had set up a magic circle in, and he had no such skill back then. Funny how long ago a single year could feel.
His copy could try and fly there, but the 2 biggest issues with that were the distance, and the conditions. Ignoring the possibility of running into other dangerous monsters before he made it there, he had never tried flying for that long, and had certainly never flown through a biting cold, much less a blizzard. He supposed he could ask the headmistress to open a portal for him, but he had asked a lot of her recently, and he wasn’t so sure about pushing his luck.
Thankfully he had a very big something that could help him with his traveling issue. Yggdrasil’s vast storage of spatial magic could probably help him teleport there if not back, but since it was a copy that hardly mattered. Not to mention the fact he had plenty of teleportation circles around here he could use. Still he had yet to actually attempt any form of teleportation using yggdrasil as a base, and the fact it was in a separated pocket dimension now may very well make it even more complicated.
Well if he was good at anything, it was magical theory. Calculations like these were well within his ability, and thus the abilities of his copies. So he made his 5 and assigned each of them their duties. 2 of them would be off the table, 1 to explore the vault, and the other to get ready to hand off the items to the dragons, but the rest would be either attending class or working on his various other projects. There was only 1 month left until school was out for break. He still wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do for those 3 months before his 2nd year would start up.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
It was too bad his father and Cynthia’s mother opposed each other, because otherwise he and Katy could go there to ‘build relations.’ It would still really be to avoid going back to his ‘home,’ but it would fall under things the ‘ideal’ heir he had promised to be might do. He supposed he would probably have to go to the capital. He’d have to deal with the princess, but his sister would be there, so it should even out. Plus if he was lucky the princess might still be cowed from his rogue copy’s actions.
Well it wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do. For now he would focus on the tasks he had at hand. It was time to go to class after all, and he was really looking forward to his first class of the day. Efficiency of movement was a very important skill, and certainly one he could stand to improve on.
***
The copy assigned to deliver the magic items to the dragon was bored. He had gotten the worst task, or at least until he actually got to the tundra. He sat before the giant tree with his eyes closed. His magic senses had improved leaps and bounds since he got into the academy at the beginning of the year, and as such it was fairly easy to grasp the powerful spatial magic the tree was emitting. Unfortunately feeling it, and understanding it were 2 very different things.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he was just trying for a general area, but he wasn’t especially fond of the idea of spending hours in a tundra trying to figure out where in that tundra he was. Which unfortunately meant he’d have to be very careful with the spell work, which meant he needed to understand which threads of spatial magic to pull on, and which ones were connected to places he didn’t want to go. Unfortunately, that was a near impossible task. The actual calculations would be something an analyst would be better suited for, but they lacked the ability to properly feel the magical currents in the first place.
Now of course like most things difficult didn’t mean impossible. He was capable of doing the calculations, it would just take him far longer, which was honestly fine. He still had 4 months before the agreed upon time was up, and he knew it wouldn’t take him that long, or at least he hoped it wouldn’t. He sighed, that was probably a long enough break. Back to work he supposed.
***
Reign was bored. Azura had been busy lately, which meant he had very little to do. On the bright side Azura was also being unusually generous with letting him do whatever he wanted. If only there was more around here to do. He’d gone to the place his partner called the Armory, and while it was quite beautiful there wasn’t really anything for him to do besides fly around. The academy itself was slightly better, but he could only amuse himself on the panic of the students for so long before that too became boring.
Perhaps it was time to explore the world some. Most dragons tried to avoid moving around too much, because it meant both that their hoard was unprotected, and that they were more likely to run into people or monsters that were strong enough to actually hurt them. He however had neither of those problems. His hoard was safe within the armory, and he could simply retreat to said hoard if he was ever under attack himself. Not that there were many things he would have to flee from.
The more he mulled over the idea the more appealing it sounded. He could trust his partner to take care of himself for a while, and it’s not like Azura wouldn't be able to reach him if he needed help, and vice versa. They were an odd pair in that way. Both of them usually preferred to do stuff on their own, but they were fiercely protective of those they cared about, and despite his best efforts his partner had fallen into that category. At least Azura wasn’t a human anymore, or at least not completely one. He hadn’t liked the idea of having a human partner, they were fragile things after all… well most of them were anyway.
***
Azura had finally mastered the ice element, and was honestly debating on trying to learn a rd or not. As far as elements went the rest he only really used for very specific purposes, and thus rarely had to replace shards for. He used fire some, but not really to the extent he felt it would be worth the effort, and while wind was very useful, it was also usually fairly low mana cost so the shards tended to last a long while. It’s not like learning those would really close the gap he was currently dealing with anyway.
His opponent was afterall a master of elemental magic, and with the restrictions on using both shards and weapons he was easily being overwhelmed. It was honestly thanks to his earlier class on movement techniques and his trial by fire mastery of ice magic that he hadn’t lost already. Still he didn’t want to lose to his rival even if the situation was so clearly stacked in Gareth's favor that anyone could see it.
The fire birds bombarding him were blocked by a half dome of ice, but he didn’t make the mistake of staying still, and the backwards jump ended up saving him as a giant rock worm jumped up to consume his icy barricade. Taking a page out of his opponent's book he created wolves made out of lightning to jump at his opponent. Unlike Gareths that actually gained some form of autonomy his were merely shaped for aesthetics. He didn’t have that level of control of either of his elements yet, so shaping them and releasing them was about the best he could do.
Lightning was fast, but Gareth’s reflexes were faster as a rock wall rose to tank the attack. It exploded violently from the force, but left Gareth completely unharmed. He technically wasn’t restricted from using enchantment magic, but given they were in a class about better controlling and understanding elemental magic he decided against it, even if that made the handicap he was fighting under even worse. “I’m honestly not pleased to have been paired up with you for this. I want to beat you, but this hardly counts.” It wasn’t really surprising Gareth felt that way. If the situation was reversed and they were fighting with elemental magic restricted he wouldn’t feel great about that win either.
“Don’t act like I’m going to make it easy for you.” He fought people stronger than him all the time, and this wasn’t that. Sure he had a huge handicap, but that didn’t mean he was out of options. He had beaten Gareth while at a disadvantage before, granted that was with his copies that he also doesn’t have access to at the moment, but that didn’t mean the fight was hopeless.
“You never do.” The slight smile on Gareth’s face annoyed him slightly, but he understood it. They weren’t friends, but there was a mutual respect for the other that was rare among nobles. As such he decided that he was going to give it his all, even if that meant slipping into some of his magic that wasn’t really related to the class at hand. Gareth made a steel bull to rush at him. He froze it solid with a powerful enchantment fueled by ice magic. As long as the enchantments were element based he figured it was fine.
Unfortunately Gareth proved his superiority in elemental magic again when the bull started to glow red hot as the ice quickly disappeared into steam as small bits broke off freeing the steel bull. With only 2 elements for him to choose from it was fairly simple for Gareth to plan around those 2, but he had 1 more trick up his sleeve before he accepted his loss.
Lightning began coursing through his body as the enchantments he had setted up guided it. It was a theoretical skill that as far as he knew no one had ever actually safely managed. Elemental enhancement. He was cheating, using enchantments to make up the difference in his concentration, and it was still a rudimentary version that he had little time to practice, but hopefully the surprise would be enough to net him the win.
With the electricity surging through his body enhancing his muscles and his reflexes he shot forward faster than he had ever moved before hoping for a single shot to take Gareth out of the fight. He appeared in front of Gareth shrouded in lightning, a loud boom following behind him… and barely managed to twist out of the way fast enough for the rock spike not to impale him. Too off balance from his last dodge, and not allowed to blink he was slammed into the ceiling by a rock pillar shooting up from below him. He groaned as both the pillar and the ceiling cracked when one smashed him into the other