“Can I ask where you got that sword from?” I asked the boasting Adrian who was swinging a longsword with such speed and violence that I could hear the air being cut.
“From my chest, mate.” Adrian spun his blade around with a series of fast sleight-of-hand tricks.
It was curious how I didn’t spend that much time with Adrian, even though he was my roommate. Normally I would be either with Marissa or alone. And sometimes with Monica as she was the only other one in our group who went to the library on a daily basis.
“Then I’m bloody blind because I didn’t find a meter and a half long blade in our room.” His movements were so fluid and fast that I could only catch after images. “And besides that, you never told me you were a swordsman.”
“Ya’ never asked.” Adrian sheathed his sword and shrugged.
He wore a big black leather belt with a sheath of matching color. The humongous belt worked more or less well with Adrian, as he was the widest ellari I had ever seen, but I was mostly sure that if I tried it, it would plop to the ground.
“That excuse has never worked, Adrian. Literally never in the whole history of the world.” I scoffed at his words. “I presented myself as a soul practitioner when we met and you didn’t have to ask, am I right?”
“Ya’ making too much a fuss. It’s in the past~” He quickly draw the longsword and dramatically stabbed the air.
His handling of the sword was perfect, and the tip barely budged after such intense movement. Now it made sense how a capable person like him wasn’t as good with magic as he should be. He was also perfecting the way of the sword, beyond his magical training.
“Well, are we going to fight or not?” We were are the training grounds, so the question was rather rhetorical.
The problem was that we had to come at night, as my presence on the training grounds had become sort of a red flag for every freshman student or even seniors of the younger years. An exaggeration on their part, but I did take joy in the nightly breeze and the spar under the moonlight.
The teachers hadn’t done anything to solve this because according to them there wasn’t any problem, to begin with. Actually, to them, I was the instigator of these riots as they liked to call them.
Until now, the infamy from my duel had only provoked me with minor challengers and minimal trouble. But now I was being, more or less, prohibited from the training grounds. I know it was my fault for making such a ruckus, I should have shown more restraint during the duel. But it was infuriating that I needed to go undercover to not cause a scene, nonetheless.
“Are we going to fight?” I reiterated. “If we are playing with technicalities, like you are doing, then no.” I told him.
“Could ya’ elaborate?” Adrian asked in a half-confused, half-joking tone.
“Well, you are not the only one who’s going to practice combining different arts into one.”
A smile was plastered on Adrian’s face as he snorted. “Oh, now I’m heated up.”
It wasn’t difficult to deduce that he was going to fight me with his combined prowess in swordsmanship and aeromancy, but the specialist in dual-wielding different masteries here was me.
I sat down and began my conjuration as this was going to be a slow process. Combining spells or different schools of magic wasn’t a difficult process, at least with normal elemental magic. But here I was combining the pure state of mana with the primordial state of a living being.
I couldn’t just overlay one spell over the other; I wish it were that easy, but it wasn’t possible thanks to the soul's metaphysical state. I had to juxtapose the spells in perfect harmony, so they worked together instead of being two different spells that just happened to be used at the same time.
The first spell was the enhanced version of Astral Projection, a seven-star sorcery. The second magic was Arcane Blade, a seven-star wizardry. A mobility spell combined with an offensive one.
I wish there were some spell synergies between them, but as my father said a few years ago, those were rare. I had yet to find a spell synergy between any of my Arcane and Soul spells, which I didn’t really know if it was uncommon or it even existed, to begin with, as these elements didn’t have anything in common.
“Fancy,” Adrian commented as I finished conjuring Astral Projection and Arcane Blade in tandem. “What’s that glowing sword?”
“Arcane Blade,” I responded while I got up from the ground. “It’s nothing more than an overgrown Arcane Bolt. Tier seven, by the way. The only difference asides from the size, it’s the mana efficiency and greater mana density.”
“And that means?” Adrian played as if he was a fool when, in reality, he was just really distracted inspecting my spectral avatar holding a pointy stick vibrating with arcane energy.
I obviously had physicalized my Astral Projection, otherwise, my fellow mage here wouldn’t be able to see it. That reminded me I had to work on a way to 're-spiritualize' an Astral Projection that has already come to the physical plane.
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“Once spellcasted, the blade doesn’t consume extra mana and it hits harder than an Arcane Bolt. And it also stays for a long time.”
As he did before, my Astral Projection did some tricks with the sword, swirling it around like a madman lacking the finesse that Adrian had demonstrated.
“Nice hand coordination,” Adrian told. “Have you ever used a sword before?”
“Not really, it’s just that I can control my projection as I please, and there’s no weight or unresponsiveness of a meat body, so it’s easier to do things like this. I can even do a somersault with it, and I assure you I can’t do one myself.”
“That sounds like a ya’ problem.” Adrian snickered and proceeded to do a somersault far better than my projection would have done, then he unsheathed his longsword and brandished it at the high of his head. “Then, are you ready or not?”
“Interesting posture.” My posture was more conservative, just holding my sword before my avatar’s torso with both of my hands. I didn’t know if it had a name or something, I was just acting by instinct. “En garde!”
“What?” Adrian asked in confusion.
Oops, I did it again. Just by mistake, I spoke in that unknown language. “Ignore it. Here I go!”
This battle was lost from the start, this was something I knew from the very beginning. While a newbie mage on the battlefield could beat an expert one by overwhelming it with superior magic, that wasn’t the case in a sword duel. Mastery and knowledge were inescapable walls.
Adrian’s gaze overflowed with concentration and seriousness. This was the first time I had seen my roommate with such dedication to something. It was clear this isn’t going to be a talkative duel.
The longsword began hissing like oil in a pan. Wind gathered around the blade; a micro tornado surrounded it. Almost instantly, Adrian broke off his above-head posture and unleashed a wind cut towards my direction.
The solid and physical cut traveled through the air at astounding speeds, but my soul projection wasn’t limited by the constraints of a body, and it swiftly evaded it to the side.
“Hmm, that projection is really nimble,” Adrian muttered to himself at a high enough volume I was able to understand what he was saying.
Whatever spell he had used, it was good. It had a passive and active component. Firstly, it covered the blade with incredibly high-speed winds, then allowed to throw concentrated air bolts at will using the blade as a focal point. Normally such a spell would be easy to dissipate with my mana-weaving, but the second active component made it far more difficult than it should.
Either way, I wasn’t going to use my dispelling in this duel.
Adrian slowly walked toward me; his expression told me there was no need for a charge. My avatar got a better grip on the Arcane Blade as the time for the clash got nearer and nearer, even if the gesture was purely symbolic as the spells were conjoined and the blade couldn’t fall off the copy’s hand unless I wanted it to do it. I felt the passive winds around the blade getting stronger through my connection with my Astral Projection.
The longsword was going to have the first blow with its increased range as my arcane spell was rather on the short spectrum of weapon range, not too dissimilar from a gladius, a short sword, or so my memories told me. I readied myself to either dodge or parry his attack, not letting myself get affected by the remembrance assault.
Another wind cut was shot toward the projection, but this time there was less time to react. I ordered it to cover itself with the Arcane Blade. Thankfully the density of the wind attack was low, as my conjured sword cut through it like it was butter, passively dispelling the wind mana with the concentrated arcane energies.
What I was not so thankful about was the distance Adrian had obtained in the fractions of a second I had wasted to block the attack. His sword descended towards my soul-self, barely enough time to manage a successful evasion to the left.
Though Adrian’s sword was long, he moved it with ease. I didn’t know if that was out of his own martial prowess or of his air magic, but his onslaught continued. Evasion was out of the game, and I had to resist parrying the fast and continuous attacks from his blade.
I would like to say it was a back-and-forth, but I was cornered parrying every attack that came for me. He was slowly chipping away my advantage if I had one, to begin with. There had seemed to be an aperture, but when I tried to swing my blade, he parried without much effort and returned to one-sided attacks.
That was when I noticed.
Adrian wasn’t an aeromancer. He was a swordsman.
Not only his attacks exhibited finesse that I lacked, but they were ruthlessly precise. For a brief instant, I felt as if I was Saphar Nay back in our one-sided duel. Again and again, Adrian managed to chip away some cuts to my Astral Projection, slowly consuming the construct’s durability.
Then I lost my pacing after being thrown against the wall too many times and, without any hesitation, his sword decapitated me. What he forgot was that my clone was metaphysical, and I used my Arcane Blade to cut his torso. A cheap shot, I know. But I fear that was the only attack I managed to land. Adrian’s concentration didn’t waver after his unsuccessful killing blow and managed to deflect my attack, only receiving minimal damage himself.
This time, he charged his longsword with wind magic and bisected my Astral Projection by half. This outcome wasn’t a surprise.
“You literally just cut my soul in two,” I commented with nonchalance. “I guess I must up my game with Astral Projections, this was quite pathetic.”
“Ya’ think?” Adrian sheathed his sword in a satisfactory and smooth movement. “Ya’ made me sweat. I could only get such sparring back at home. I feel refreshed having had a solid sword exchange after so much time.”
“Well, I’m happy you enjoyed it. Because I certainly didn’t.” I looked at the golden moon, lightly tainted by the ever-present violet sky. Even at night, it shone with strength.
“We should make more of these exchanges from time to time, I have yet to find a swordsman in the academy.” I was impressed how he didn’t show a sign of fatigue even when I lost my breath even though I hadn’t participated physically in the exchange. Such was the intensity I had undergone.
“Fine by me… just not now. I need to recapacitate about my fighting style.” I sighed in mental exhaustion. “I really need to step up my game in close combat.”
“What fighting style?” He snickered. “Ya’ just moved the blade from side to side like a drunkard. Do ya’ want to be taught a lesson or two of swordsmanship?”
His confident speech wasn’t far off from your average Marissa boastings. I could tell he was happy to be the best one in the group for one time. I wasn’t even offended, actually, I wanted to congratulate him.
“I do lack a fighting instinct like Marissa, or actual martial prowess like you. I just take advantage of my privileged status as a mana-weaver and psychimancer to defeat enemies before they approach that I have no countermeasure when they do so.” I offered him a hand. “You know what? Sure. I need your lessons.”
“Well, then.” Adrian accepted my hand and responded with a handshake. “Then be ready for a hell of training and a trial by fire!”
Was I going to regret this?