Azura felt a little odd just going back to training as if nothing had happened. Logically he understood that preparations would have to be made before anything could be done about the temples, but that didn’t make sitting on his hands any easier. Not to say he was slacking in this off time of course. He was training his ice affinity, to try and get to the point where its liquid and gaseous form were equally easy to control. He could use much more powerful ice spells if he could rely on the water already in an area, be that vapor or liquid.
His end goal was to create a spell that controls all the water in a given area. With that there would be a lot of things he could do that would be great additions to his skill set. He was making slow progress on it, ironically given that human bodies were mostly made of water, it was 1 of the most difficult elements to learn. Thankfully ice was easier, and worked as a great entryway. So he sat in a pool of water that made it up to his chest and meditated on the nature of water.
He couldn’t manually change his mana straight into water yet, but he could melt the ice he made and control that water which was already a major boon in his versatility and mana conservation. Mostly he was doing all this so he didn’t have to rely on his enchantments as much. Most of the time he dedicated to his enchantments was making new trump cards that he could use, so his standard combat abilities hadn’t really been increasing as much as they should have. Given that he was having to use some kind of trump spell in almost every fight he decided it was time he increased his general repertoire beyond using shards to throw elemental attacks in the direction of his problem.
Still evolving his combat style didn’t mean abandoning it completely. He was still a field control specialist at heart, so the answer he had come to reflected that. Too bad he had no idea where Auros had gone for the break, given Auros already had a similar skill set to what he was trying to achieve. In fact if Auros had worked harder on his own physical combat abilities, the older student would probably be much higher in the rankings for his year.
“Are you taking a bath in the training rooms?” He chuckled as he opened his eyes. He was in what looked like a giant bowl made of ice that took up about 10 ft diameter of the center. The rest of the room was the same as it always was with random training equipment scattered about.
“If by taking a bath you mean sitting in water, then yes. If you mean am I cleaning myself, then no I am not currently cleaning myself.” He didn’t have much need for baths anymore now that he could just reform his body free of any debris he might have picked up. Saved him a lot of time.
“Ok, so apparently I have to ask the obvious question. Why are you sitting in a pool of water in the training room?” He looked at Katy’s exasperated face and laughed. She had made it a point to start checking in from time to time after the whole situation with attempted murder of the royal family.
“For training of course. I’m trying to master a skill set that I can more readily use than my current one. I’ve been having to reveal trump card after trump card lately, and I thought rather than playing catchup and constantly having to find a way to create a new trump card it would probably be a good idea to master a skill set I could use to make me significantly better at general combat.” Plus he was thinking that Gareth's ability to make elemental creatures was incredibly annoying to deal with, and he hoped to be able to do the same. Auros was able to do a similar thing, but was a bit more limited. His guess was that Gareth had some kind of unique magic that made his spells so autonomous.
“I hope you realize how backwards it is that you need to learn how not to use super powerful one shot spells. Most people start trying to come up with finishers at this stage, not decide that they have plenty already and to work on the basics.” He chuckled, his friend wasn’t wrong, but he had been preparing to fight against stronger opponents for so long he had neglected his basic skills. His talent had helped cover that gap for a while, but eventually it got to the point where every opponent was stronger than him because he hadn’t trained his standard fighting abilities. A self fulfilling prophecy as it were.
“Well it's working out in your favor now isn’t it? You came for help on a finisher of your own didn’t you?” It was kind of funny how easy Katy was to read. She spent so much time training to be sneaky, but never learned how to be subtle. Her face and posture was an open book, her mood and intentions there for anyone to read.
“I have an idea for it, but I keep messing up the execution.” He had seen it, though he imagined she didn’t always fail as spectacularly as she had when he had interrupted her. Not that it would stop him from teasing her.
“A high speed strike right? Hopefully you’re not still blowing yourself up with it.” She hadn’t told him what the move was, but if he was asked what she needed most to make her stronger the answer was obvious. Not that he had told her that when she asked. He would give hints and advice, but he couldn’t always be there to give his friends the answers.
“I knew it! How long have you known this was the kind of thing I’d need to work on to complete my skill set?!” He whistled innocently. This was one of those questions he was better off not answering. At least he had something to offer up instead.
“I’d rather not say, but what I will say is I bet I know why you’re struggling with it, and I know how to solve that.” Intelligence wasn’t everything when it came to mages, but being able to work through problems and see things through different perspectives were skills every mage would eventually need in order to advance.
“Just give me your stupid advice, but I won’t forget that you’ve been hiding what I needed to do to really get stronger from me for a while.” He rolled his eyes. Not telling her wasn’t the same as hiding it, especially given it was an answer she could have come to at any time if she had really sat down and thought about it. Although he supposed in the end someone had given her the answer anyway, but at least it had come from an opponent she had fought against rather than from him. Maybe that would help her realize that people other than him could observe things and come up with solutions.
“You’re never going to be able to react at the kind of speed you’ll be moving at, so don’t try to. Set a distance for the skill. Master it at that distance, and then always do it from that same distance. Don’t hesitate to start slow, really get a feel for traveling that distance, and then just speed it up until you can strike at full speed.” Sometimes the best way to make a move work is to restrict the situations you can use it in. That way you put more legwork into setup so you are in the right situation to use the skill, which makes the skill itself extremely easy to do.
“What if my opponent is too far or too close?” He rolled his eyes. She knew better than that. He stared pointedly at her without answering. She flushed under the force of his chastising look. “Ok, ok I get it. That makes sense, but can I at least ask what a good range would be? Obviously being too close wouldn’t work, but if I’m too far they might be able to react in time.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
That was a good question at least. He had a similar attack using lightning rather than shadow, which meant he was actually moving a good chunk slower than she would be, but he made up for it with having way more power, and being able to go from 0 to full speed in an instant. “How far do you have to travel to reach full speed?” Ideally a range that gave them as little time to react as possible was best, even if that meant sacrificing some speed.
“About 30 feet.” He winced. That was a big chunk of distance, especially given it didn’t start at full speed. Still he of all people knew how fast light was. He rubbed his shoulder where it had once been pierced. Still since Katy herself couldn’t react at that speed, an early dodge would leave her hitting nothing, and once they knew about the skill it would be over. Then again with her illusions she might be able to manage it.
“Try and get that down to 20 ft, but if you can’t do better than 30 then be prepared to supplement the attack with illusions to make it look like you’re doing something else.Also if you can, try and seal the opponent's movements right before unleashing the skill.” That should be enough to eliminate the weakness of having to start so far away, or at least mitigate it.
“Sealing their movements might be difficult, but I’ve heard there is a spell for physical shadows based on the physical illusions concept. It’s a lot more durable though, so I’ll see if I can’t pick that up, that will definitely help with restricting an opponent's movements.” He hummed in agreement. She was well on her way to having a solid finisher now, that would make her a much more dangerous foe. He idly thought about how he would counter a move like that. Of course the best option was to not be hit by it, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could definitely avoid every time. “Any other advice for me before I get to work?”
“Not especially, everything else should be minor details that you can find on your own.” It was heartening to know all of his friends were hard at work, he couldn’t wait to see how strong everyone was when they went back for the new year. In the meantime he had to get full control of his still budding water affinity. That and he had some enchantments in mind to really complete the skill set.
“Alright, then I’ll leave you to your bath… for now, but don’t think I’ve forgotten that I could have been working on this skill way earlier.” He rolled his eyes. She was learning how to be a little less reliant on him, but it was like pulling teeth. Admittedly part of that was because he still helped her with a lot, and she didn’t know why he helped with some things and not others. Honestly the pattern was fairly simple, so it was probably only her expectance of some difficult rule that made it hard for her to find it.
He let her go without a response. She lacked any real heat, so she understood that it was for her own good that he didn’t just give her the answer, but that wouldn’t stop her from taking her frustration out on him at some point. He put it out of his mind for now, closing his eyes he renewed his focus on the feeling of the water wrapped around him. The slightest force could make the water move, but once it was moving it was not so easily stopped. Water was arguably the most important thing in the world, after all it maintained life, and it could take life just as easily. A mighty force of creation, but still devastating if used to destroy. Honestly he felt a strange attunement to it, even if his affinity was still in its early stages.
He had never felt that attunement with his lightning affinity, gaining it had felt wrong somehow, he guessed it was because lightning was merely a destructive force. Still it was too useful a skill to pass up even if it didn’t match him as well as water did. He couldn’t wait to show off his progress next month.
***
“I upped the guard on the temples as much as possible, but as you suspected few mages willingly took up the post.” Azura stood in the prince’s chambers listening to Xanders report on the situation. Overall it wasn’t looking good, which was well within his expectations.
“I sent copies to each of the temples to put in some defenses of my own, including an alert system so I’ll know if one is being attacked. Honestly the only real risk is them being able to move the altar. If the Altar can’t be moved then we could simply let them take the temples, and force them to play the defensive battle which is much harder. “ In the end he supposed it didn’t matter. They’d never get the book from him. As much as he’d hate himself for it even if they took his friends or his sister he still wouldn’t hand the book over.
“Then couldn’t we try to take the altars and hide them?” He’d considered it, but they lacked the information they would need to reliably pull that off. They couldn’t afford to take risks like that when they were clearly the weaker side in the contest. It would be a different story if things devolved to all out war, because that would actually force the nobles to get involved, but as it was it was really only the prince’s faction that was handling it.
“You don’t know when Genesis is going to strike so exhausting yourself on the defenses could very well be what they want as they take it from your weakened forces.” He groaned. He had sensed her entering the room, but part of him had hoped she would be a silent observer. Not that she said anything wrong, since that had basically been exactly what he was thinking, but he still wasn’t a fan of interacting with her.
“I see, what about us doing the same then? Let them steal the altar, and then take it from them after they are tired.” Unsurprisingly given the prince had to deal with her far more than he did Xander didn’t react at all to her intrusion to the conversation. Still it was a little surprising that Xander was so inexperienced with tactics like this.
“We can try that on the last tower they take, but we have no way of knowing which tower they’re going to attack early enough to gather the kingdoms strongest there for a proper ambush.” He could get there in time, but he doubted that he’d be able to take them on alone regardless of how weakened they were. Unfortunately by the last one they will be used to whatever the defenses in the temples are, and will be far less tired than the 1st time. Even more so if they pull back the defensive force to serve as an ambush after.
“Can’t we simply gather them here and you can teleport them to the temple with you?” He sighed. He hoped the prince didn’t feel like they were ganging up on him. He certainly didn’t like that he and the princess were certainly on the same page here. She had already opened her mouth to answer, and he didn’t see the point in interrupting her to say the same thing. Even if he might phrase it slightly gentler.
“Don’t be foolish brother, whether Azura could or couldn’t do that is irrelevant. No one who didn’t already trust Azura implicitly would agree to such a thing. They will view him as a child, and space magic is extremely dangerous. If he messed it up it's entirely possible they would die instantly. After all it doesn’t matter how strong you are, if your head and body are teleported to different places you’ll die.” That was true. Many copies had died that way while he was mastering his teleportation magic.
“Just in case you’re about to ask, I can count the people who trust me enough for this on my hands, and none of them are strong enough to handle this. Technically my father might agree on principle, but he wouldn’t agree to protect the temples in the first place, and would simply try and destroy them.” Which for once he was actually in agreement with. Unfortunately his request to simply destroy the temples was rejected. Apparently the temples generated a lot of the magic the kingdom used to run, but the method of generation was unknown, so unless they could figure it out destroying the temples would leave the kingdom extremely low on magic. At least he knew why this was the kingdom with the most advanced magic technology.
Xander sighed. His friend was looking more and more defeated, not that he could blame the man. They were in a tough position, and that was only part of the problem. They didn’t know anything about Genesis, and there was literally nothing to suggest they didn’t have any other targets in mind. They had already casually tried to kill the royal family, who knew what else they would come up with. “That isn’t to say we’re completely hopeless, if they manage to steal one of the altars, but leave the tower intact I can take a look inside, and maybe figure out how they are gathering mana. Then I can try and replicate it so we can destroy the towers.” Still on the back foot, but it was something they might be able to do.
“I might have 1 other idea, but you’re not going to like it.” He sighed. He rarely liked anything she had to say, but desperate times and all that. He just hoped he didn’t regret it too much.