Over the next few days, mom got to work designing magma spells suited for me while she had me run mock battles on the advanced methods of combat. In a nutshell, it all came down to spreading your opponent’s defenses thin with different varieties of attacks, then punch through with an appropriate one. Each battle was a delicate dance where each contestant is trying to drain the enemy’s resources and options at minimal cost.
In practice, that was a lot more difficult to pull off. Not only did you have to be coordinating all the attacks keeping your opponent busy, but you also had to protect yourself from their own attacks. This becomes exponentially more difficult to pull off when faced with a superior opponent, which mom was happy to assume as a given. When variables like the environment, collateral damage, and other enemies were considered, it made for a fiendishly difficult and complex task.
What made it worse was that since mom was busy designing my new spells and taking care of Madeil, she summoned autonomous ice golems to fight me in her stead, and the golems were winning handily. While I wasn’t getting stomped like in my fights against mom, the golems were still faster, stronger, and more durable than me. Eventually, on the morning of another day, mom had a challenge for me.
“I’ve completed the designs for the magma spells, but I am not giving them to you until you beat the golems without them. You’re not going to learn anything by beating the golems with brute force.”
I frowned but didn’t say anything. While that makes sense, it just made losing to the golems that much more frustrating.
I stood in the plains of the domain fields as mom summoned two painfully familiar ice golems. The golems looked lifelike, almost alive even, if not for the fact that they were made entirely of ice and had no need to breathe.
[Baudouin the Valiant]
Further Appraisal Denied.
[Elyscia of Indigo]
Further Appraisal Denied.
Baudouin had the visage of a knight in heavy steel armor and wielded a heavy battle-axe. His head, however, remained exposed with no helmet in sight. The young man didn’t look like anyone from the five nations I’ve met so far, with exotic features that looked a lot closer to my and mom’s human form. He had a well-groomed and thin beard and moustache, and his expression betrayed no emotion.
Elyscia was different from her compatriot. While she seemed to hail from the same place as Baudouin, the elderly woman wore a simple robe. In her hands were a small wand that looked like a tiny, squiggly stick taken straight off a tree branch and a tome so old that it looked like it would crumble, though the ice that made it up never did. She wore a strange hat that narrowed into a cone with a cotton ball, which leaned backwards like a slumping old man. The witch held a cheeky and easygoing smile which never seemed to grow old.
“Here we go again. Maybe I’ll take one of them down this time.” I sighed as I moved across the pair and waited for mom’s signal to start the fight.
As mom hummed a lullaby with Madeil in her arms, a small hailstone formed over her head and threw itself between me and the golems. The moment the hailstone touched the ground, I rushed forward like a hyena out of the abyss. As expected, Baudouin moved to intercept me, and his weapon had a large reach advantage against me. The knight was truly fearsome, and a single swing of his axe was enough to trigger [Abyssal Cockroach], both my HP and MP stock be damned. Despite being a golem, the knight was a cunning fighter, taking me down with practiced finesse even though he was capable of overwhelming with raw speed and power on more than one occasion.
And yet, I had no choice but to move forward and attempt to step past him anyway. Elyscia was a disgustingly oppressive opponent, and there was absolutely no way for me to win without taking her down first. The witch did not wield exceptionally powerful direct ice spells, with standard abilities from the ice branch like firing icicle bolts my way or freezing my limbs to trip me up against Baudouin. What truly made her a menace was a more insidious ability.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
As I was about to enter the striking range of Baudouin’s battle-axe, the witch activated her spell on me. The world suddenly sped up, and a faint hue of indigo colored my vision. Baudouin’s swinging axe was about to swing at me, and if I allowed it, it would move too fast for me to follow. Normally, this would be the part where he would bisect me in half. This time, I was prepared for him.
I activated [Force Lord] on the axe itself, having learned my lesson from trying to activate it on him the last time. Instead of being sent flying along with his axe, the knight let it go and switched to a two-handed strike at my head with his bare fists. Before he could swing at me, I activated [Almighty Push], sending him flying into the distance as I rushed towards the witch behind him.
Right as Baudouin flew, a massive icicle bolt took his place in an instant, as if the witch was trying to skewer the two of us at the same time. Fortunately, she’d already done that a few times before, so I was ready for it.
Since I had activated [Almighty Push], an [Orb of Devouring] was already activated in my right hand as I held it ahead like a buckler. The icicle vanished into the orb like a slice of cake in Jezibel’s mouth, after which I finally managed to break the witch’s slowing spell off my body.
Seeing the witch begin to step back, I yelled.
“Oh no you don’t!”
I activated [Destined Collision] between the two of us then began using [Mana Commandeering] to contest her ability to remove it. The witch was more skilled than I was, and the field of the fight was inside her own body, so I was never going to succeed in doing anything more than stalling her, but that was enough to allow my spell enough time to send us crashing into each other.
With a wave of her wand, it extended into a wicked lance which she pointed my way in an attempt to either force me to stop it with the devouring orb or to deal a crippling blow to me so that Baudouin could finish the job.
I grinned.
With my other hand, I summoned a second of orb of devouring, and I used one to devour the witch’s spear and the other to take her head.
We crashed into a pile of limbs and tumbled into the ground, but the witch’s body did not so much as twitch after we stopped moving. Soon, the rest of her exploded into wisps of ice mana.
Baudouin, however, was already running my way, and his axe was somehow back in his hands. I quickly got up and executed my plan for him. Right as he was about to reach me, I jumped and transformed from my human form into my base humanoid form, simply flying overhead with my wings.
The grounded knight halted and stared down at me from below. Normally, it was the witch who flew around to attack me from the air, then hide behind Baudouin whenever I went for her instead. I hypothesized that the knight was incapable of flight, and it seemed that my bet was a winning one.
Still, I had celebrated too soon.
Dropping his axe, Baudouin materialized a large javelin of ice in front of him. Realizing what he was about to do, I quickly tried to dodge, but I only partially succeeded. A large boom sounded over the meadow, and the javelin looked like it was puncturing the air itself like paper as the knight swung it for a moment. The next thing I knew my left arm was gone.
I winced; my health having been brought down by a third as I cauterized my wound with a simple flame. Waiting for regeneration was going to take too long and slow me down, so it would have to wait after the battle.
Baudouin raised his hand, and another ice javelin formed in front of him. There was no way I could allow him to launch another one of those attacks at me, I decided right then and there. With my remaining hand, I used earth mana to directly sink the ground beneath the knight’s boots, preventing him from using his body to throw the spear again.
Baudouin tried to raise his boots from the earth, and some dirt certainly wasn’t capable of holding him down, but I simply did it again and again, preventing him from getting a stable foothold.
I then began peppering him with fireball after fireball, and the immobilized knight was powerless to resist. By the time his upper body had melted, he too finally stopped moving before exploding into ice mana.
“Well done!” Mom said, clapping from the sidelines.
“While I am not happy that you took advantage of fighting the golems over and over to memorize their starting moves, a win is a win nonetheless, and I am a dragon of my word.”
I slumped down in relief and began letting my regeneration do its thing.
“Hehe, about time…”
At this point, I was happier with beating that duo than I was with the new magma spells mom was going to teach me.