Roran was relatively annoyed at Azura’s prank. Most of the time when he talked it vibrated so loud he couldn’t hear himself think. Even worse, no one else seemed to hear the vibrating or what he was saying. He had eventually realized he’d have to speak quietly in order to be heard. This prank felt a little extreme compared to splattering him with mud, but he supposed that was the point. Azura didn’t want a prank war, so his friend made it very clear who would win if they started one.
It was partly because of how annoyed he was at this prank that he was rather eager to watch Azura be kicked around by Elismera, not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed it otherwise, but now there was just that little bit extra that comes with vindictive glee. Well that and his usual mix of curiosity and excitement. He had never seen an elf fight before. That on top of her being one of the school’s strongest students made him very curious.
Even more curious was the fact that Kaiser himself had come to watch. Elismera seemed equally surprised, and perhaps even more unnerved by the older student’s presence than he was. Not that he could blame her, that aura was frighteningly strong. He wondered if he would be able to emit an aura on that level if he was allowed to age properly. It was quite possible, his magic was way more powerful than a normal 12 year old’s after all.
Still, why Kaiser had bothered to show up to watch a first year get trashed was beyond him, even if Azura had managed to ‘best’ the man by a technicality. Even more weird was the fact he seemed to be giving Azura advice. So it didn’t seem like the older student held a grudge. So if Kaiser wasn’t upset then why bother coming here?
Elismera seemed to be meditating, waiting for all the spectators to arrive. Even Azura himself seemed to be calm about the fact he was about to fight one of the schools top 3 with another one watching from off to the side. Along with a surprising amount of the student populace. Elismera had apparently officially set the duel, so it was taking place in the colosseum. He hadn’t expected her to set it up through the school, especially since it was a 3’rd year challenging a first year. That seemed kind of embarrassing to him, but maybe the elves looked at things a little differently, since even as children 2 or 3 years is barely considered an age difference. It was like being 1 month or 2 apart for humans.
Aside from Luna who still seemed to be contemplating things the rest of them seemed fairly eager to see the fight. He was too, Azura said he hadn’t been holding back on them, but he felt that was a lie, and was curious to see what he was actually capable of. Assuming he went all out in this fight even. The only time he had ever seen Azura go all out was that spar with the ranked night in the capital.
Elismera opened her eyes, and stood up. She didn’t say anything, but apparently that was the cue because Azura walked to the opposite side of the arena, and Kaiser leapt into the seats around the arena. The fighters both seized each other up, and with the bang signaling the start of the match the fight began.
Azura immediately erected a barrier of ice, and it probably saved his life. A bunch of thorns shot toward him like bullets. They tore into the ice, but it bought him enough time to create a more solid ice wall that blocked the thorns more safely. He made a copy, and it ran to the side. Elismera didn’t wait to see what he would do though. While they couldn’t see each other because of the ice wall she ran towards it, and gracefully leapt over it. Melee range? He hadn’t expected that from an elf.
Elismera had a beautiful sword. It was the purest silver with elegant vines etched into the blade. He was sure the pommel was equally beautiful, but was too far to make out the details. The blade tore through the Azura that had stayed behind the icewall, not like it cut him but literally went through him. It hadn’t been a copy at all, merely an illusion. The ice ball immediately shattered, and an impressive amount of magic surged toward Elismera in the form of a great fire. Azura had charged the shot from his boy and released it immediately after shattering his ice wall.
Azura had gotten a lot better at controlling his mana far from his body. Azura had used to struggle with that. He and Luna had helped him out a little, but it looks like it was just one more trick he had mastered on his little trip. Unfortunately despite the perfectly timed trap Elismera didn’t so much as flinch as the raging fire approached her. Several walls of thick fines appeared in an instant. It disintegrated the first few, but only managed to set fire to the last one, which then shot towards Azura, who now had to focus on dodging the burning vines.
From most spectators' point of view the fight probably looked fairly even, but he knew better. Azura was using elaborate strategies, good chunks of his magic and elements advantageous against his opponent, and yet Elismerea was not only countering him, but using his strategies against him with ease. She didn’t even look particularly strained as she managed 10 vines without issue. Looks like this was going to be an uphill battle.
***
Azura was not happy. Of course he wasn’t, the goal of his opening gambit was to at least deal some form of damage to her, but she had countered it without issue, and now he was left doing complex acrobatics to avoid being hit by the burning vines. Thankfully at the rate they were burning it only took a few seconds before they were too short to hit him anymore, but he didn’t have time to relax, as Elismera was on top of him in an instant. He grimaced as he barely blocked her first swing. Melee was not where he wanted to be against someone stronger, faster, and more skilled with the sword than he was. It was only thanks to his shield that he was able to survive the first few exchanges.
A singular blade piece came off his sword, and landed between them before exploding, throwing both of them back, but he was disappointed to see that vines had covered her like armor, so though he got some space he had still failed to damage her at all. This was a pretty unusual circumstance for him. He had almost no practice fighting against someone who was far his superior in melee. Luna and Katy were arguably better, but not enough so that he couldn’t even compete if they closed in. That one exchange, merely 3 blows made it abundantly clear that any melee engagements were not going to be in his favor.
Elismera stabbed her sword into the ground causing several vines to erupt and shoot at him with frightening velocity. He blinked away, and watched as the wines tore deep into the ground he had been standing on. They surged up from the ground and headed for his new position 20 or so feet away. He quickly made 2 copies, and they all blinked to different spaces. He took a few half hearted shots with his bow to probe for weaknesses as his copies did the same. Each of them being forced to move several times a second. She had 4 vines defending her, and they had no issues deflecting his regular shots.
He wanted to try a stronger attack, but they took longer to charge up, and he’d risk being hit by the vines the elf kept on offense. Even split up as they were just being hit by a couple would deal some serious damage. He had managed to trick Gareth with a smoke screen, but only in the heat of the moment when no one knew about his copies. That trick wouldn’t work here, and Elismera seemed unnaturally good at detecting mana. Literally the second the mana left his body to become an arrow for his bow she seemed to pinpoint his exact location.
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Wait, that actually gave him an idea. It was a costly one though. He narrowly avoided the vine that reached him before he had even got his shot off. Costly or not it wasn’t looking like he had any other options. He unleashed all the magic his core was generating. Barely keeping any of it to refill his reserves. A thick pressure emanated in the arena. If his theory was right. For the first time in the fight Elismera dodged rather than blocked; she hadn’t seen the arrow his copy fired coming this time. He smiled, his theory was dead on. If everything was saturated in mana her acute senses became impairing rather than helpful.
He had actually learned that lesson himself when Roran had used his enhanced hearing against him in a spar. On the flip side it was a lot easier to make a ton of noise all over the place than to saturate the air in mana like this. Even with his new core recharging him far faster than normal he’d run out before long. Or at least assuming he wanted to fight at all. If he just hid he could probably maintain it indefinitely.
Unfortunately even with the huge disadvantage that was her crippled magic senses, she still managed to block or dodge all of his shots. She just no longer had the ability to counter attack easily. He’d have to use what little mana he could spare to try a real attack. Fire had worked fairly well, if nothing else it would force her to waste more mana making new vines to control. His gauntlet once again glowed with fire orange runes as he held out his bow from his position behind her. His 2 copies did the same from their positions on her right and left. She turned to the side and saw the glowing mana of the one on her left.
She focused her defenses on that side for a split second before she seemed like she was going to make more veins. That split second was his chance. All 3 of him released their shots simultaneously. The flaming arrow shot through a few magic circles to increase their speed. They were fast and condensed, an entire wildfire forced into the size of a single arrow that blazed like the sun. The arrow on her left impacted her preformed defense first and exploded violently, but failed to bypass it or do any real damage. The other 2 impacted with several hastily made barriers and pierced through, almost reaching her before finally being stopped and exploding violently. She used the force of the explosion to launch her towards her left, the copy didn’t have the man left to blink and was swiftly cut down, but the still on fire elf girl who then immediately shedded her vine armor to create more.
One tiny little burn on her arm. That was all he had managed, it probably wasn’t even bad enough to blister, but it was damage, and he was satisfied with that. He stopped saturating the air in mana. If he tried to keep doing that it would take him several minutes to recover enough magic to do anything. He dispelled his other copy for the smidgen of mana that would recover. Elismera shot towards them almost as soon as he stopped actively saturating mana. He was beyond impressed. How sharp must your sense be to be able to find one source of mana the split second the air wasn’t actively being filled with it. There was still a lot in the air, it just was no longer being moved around by more.
He was once more forced into melee, he was able to block the first 2 strikes, and was launched back into the wall, only alive because of his enchanted chest piece. Her sword showed its true value though because his chest piece had been pierced, only barely managing to block enough of the blow that he had been knocked back instead of pierced through. Maybe he should forfeit. He had achieved everything he wanted to. He was definitely familiar enough with her magic to track her now, and he had even managed to injure her, as superficial as it was.
Despite his line of thought he still engaged in melee again, this time blinking away before his defense crumbled. He had underestimated how much his copies had split her focus, because now the second he reappeared from a blink she was on him again, he couldn’t keep this up. Blink wasn’t super mana heavy, but it was enough that if he was having to do it several times a second like this he was losing mana rather than recovering any. His body enchantments hadn’t survived his body being reformed, and he hadn’t had a day where he could just lock himself away and reapply them, but he still had the extra mana he had stored away, which was plenty.
Honestly, using it would hardly be a problem now. With his core it recharged incredibly fast. His concern about losing it and not having enough in an emergency was practically invalid at this point. That being said all more mana would do at this point was drag out the fight, he didn’t really have any more ace’s he was willing to reveal. He barely managed to deflect her blade from his face with his own, and she gracefully spun around his shield bash forcing him to leap back to dodge her counter. She was back on him in an instant. It was then in the frantic flurry of blades and magic that he had a realization.
Who said he had to apply the enchantments on his body the same way as he did last time. He didn’t have to engrave magic into his body, it was magic now. All he had to do was shape it. He had some practice adjusting his body, but this would take more concentration than he currently had to spare, he needed space. How was he going to get that though? She was still toying with him, but even if she wasn’t using any magic aside from enhancement she was still far his superior in close combat.
He Pulled a lot of mana from his storage space. Enough to fill his reserves all the way back to half. More than he had ever taken at once before, but his new circuits were far more efficient, and if he damaged them it didn’t matter, because he could make more. He created 5 copies, a new record and lept back. His copies had arguably improved even more than he had thanks to the core. They could now recover magic on their own which increased their value exponentially.
Even 5 on 1 the fight was still one sided in her favor, but it was enough that they were keeping her attention for the moment. He focused, brought to mind the enchantments he would like to form on himself, this was a blessing in disguise really, because he had never been able to figure out how to safely improve upon his self enchantments, but now he could, and he was going to make it count. His body glowed as symbols began to appear as he willed them into existence. He had to pull some more mana from his storage to properly power up each enchantment as he made them. He had already applied the major ones like the one that automatically sent some of his produced mana into his storage space so he was never quite at full, and thus always charging mana.
That meant for now he got to focus solely on combat enchantments. He needed speed more than anything else. If he couldn’t keep up with her he couldn’t disengage normally and would have to burn mana blinking constantly. Strength would be the next order of business, and then a few more miscellaneous things to boost. His enchantments were far superior to what they were, yet he wasn’t confident his strength would be on par with hers. Honestly even the speed he had focused on so heavily did not quite match up. She was, after all, fast enough to keep up with 5 of him in a pure melee. He had really gotten in over his head this time huh?
He smiled. Nothing got his blood pumping quite like a losing battle. When you were set to lose, that was when you could surpass your limits and create a miracle, that was when a fight became worth fighting. Or that’s what he believed anyway. It took him 2 minutes, but he was able to finish his enchantments, none too soon it looked like.
Elismara stood glaring at him angrily as his 5 copies slowly dissolved from the vines that had impaled all of them in several places. “It seems you are as aggravating in combat as you are out of it.” Blood seeped from the copies, and surrounded Elismera who cast some kind of spell to keep it all away from her. The copies fully dissolved giving him the memories of the ‘fight.’
“So people keep telling me.” He was glad for the chance to talk for a second. It gave him a chance to recover some mana naturally, and engage his brand new enchantments causing golden runes to spread across his body. Oddly enough rather than glowing symbols like before they now looked metallic, like he had poured molten gold onto his body, and it was filling rune shaped molds. “So, ready for round 2?”