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Chapter 133- Star Spear Revelations
🕑 Added 2024-02-01 23:59:01 +0000 UTCIssania stood before her student and took in his blurred form. With the system's obfuscation in place, Ward’s race remained unknown. Having humanoid proportions did little to narrow down such an expansive list. Nonetheless, the observations she’d made over the past four and a half hours meant she could make an educated guess.
His regeneration rate was definitely S-rank. The question was, how much of that came from invested stats and what innate abilities did his race possess that allowed such prodigious healing? She’d seen his poor attempt at forming a spear with a magical skill. Calling it poor was honestly generous on her part. It was downright pathetic. No one was that bad at manipulating ether, and her time spent tutoring Ward had taught her just how tenacious the man could be. He possessed a work ethic she’d rarely seen beforehand, a single-minded focus so sharp it was on the cusp of becoming a flaw.
A man like that would NEVER allow such a flaw to exist in his abilities. He would have fixed his poor ether usage a long, long time ago. Except he hadn’t. Issania frowned as she considered the conundrum. Ward was a puzzle that simply didn’t fit together. The stats he displayed suggested he was far beyond level 200 and yet his skill usage suggested he’d just unlocked his first class, two pieces of information that were diametrically opposed. All things considered, the only conclusion she could come to was that Ward was the last in line of a fallen noble house. He certainly had powerful parents, stronger than she currently was, most certainly but they were either dead or absent. Unless his family has a weird tradition where they don’t give their youth anything whatsoever, the only explanation that makes sense is that they were wiped out. Such strange practices had been proven time and time again as flawed and even the harshest of such traditions would never have allowed Mr Ward’s ether control to remain at such a terrible level. They would have taught him something at least.
If she’d been given a year or two instead of five hours, she would have taken him in as her true disciple in a heartbeat. The man was a cut above the nobles that tried to foist their spoiled children on her and what he lacked in talent, he made up for in sheer tenacity. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. With only five hours to work with, it was impossible to form an actual bond and anything she tried would come across as too forceful.
Her student hadn’t yet removed the cloaking magic the locus had placed on him, which showed that he didn’t trust her yet. If he had, she would’ve lost all respect for him. Only a fool would be so careless with their identity when their potential was so high, especially if her suspicions about his background were correct. None of this explained his regeneration, though. She knew of no humanoid race that boasted such capabilities and unless he came out right and told her, it would remain a mystery. Maybe his ancestor was a Hydra or something, she joked to herself. Issania would never know how close to the truth she came.
Arthur felt great, better than he’d ever felt before, at least physically. Issania had finally lifted the ‘endurance’ restriction that was omnipresent on the layer and breathing no longer felt like an unfamiliar exercise he’d just come upon. His reforged body truly was a work of magic. Even Issania had raised an eyebrow when he was good as new thirty seconds after their ‘training’ had ended, all the aches and torn muscles that had become his closest companion in the past few hours gone in an instant.
The mental fatigue remained, however, and so she mercifully hadn’t cut down his break. She wanted him in peak condition for their spar.
“I guess this is a graduation test of sorts,” she said, circling around him. “You were my student for a blip of time, but you were my student nonetheless. I apologise if I’m crossing any boundaries here, but it’s abundantly clear you're new to your skills or ether control in general.”
Arthur nodded his head. There was no point trying to keep it a secret. That ship had sailed the moment she saw him try and use his Soul Armament. No one would be so terrible with a new class skill unless it was their first class skill period.
“I suspected as much, but thank you for respecting my intelligence enough to not deny it.” She smirked at him. “We don’t have the time for you to master your skills enough to use them in this fight. That's an exercise that will take months if not years. True mastery that is. Anything less would be a hindrance in a battle with stats as high as our own.”
“That being said, I won't bar you from using your skills for this spar, but I ask that you refrain from doing so at least for the first five minutes.” She picked up his spear and passed it to him. “We’ll spend that time seeing how much you learned here and then you can let loose with everything you have. Twenty-five… twenty-four minutes should be enough to give a good showing of your full abilities. Okay?”
Arthur had no problems with that and so readily agreed. It was unfortunate, but he was already barred from using his most potent affinity as well as his pinnacle skill. Five minutes without using the rest of them wasn’t asking for much. Arthur didn’t want to find out if the famous ‘true damage’ inflicted by soul magic carried through a clone. The locus says it’ll protect us from getting hurt but soul-damage is known for breaking all rules. Arthur wasn’t the greatest guy around but permanently injuring his teacher after all the help she’d given him was a dick-move.
“System. Please initiate sparing protocols. Set it at stage three please.” Issania called out.
The locus responded to her words and a blue film of energy rose up to surround them. It hovered above their flesh for a second before disappearing, seemingly without effect. “I’m not sure if this is your first time in a locus sparing match so I’ll explain some things. The blue membrane of energy you just saw right now is a mixture of defensive and mimicry magic. It’s currently merged with our flesh and will replicate our body's toughness levels and health regeneration rates. Any injuries you take during this spar will look real and certainly feel real, but they’ll disappear the moment the spar ends. Stage three means you’ll still feel pain. I think that's necessary to stimulate a proper battle. Stage two would’ve meant our bodies actually took damage and stage one only prevents death from happening.”
“The spar ends the moment either of us says so or when one of us takes a critical wound they can't recover from. Even if we won’t suffer true harm, no one wants to feel the pain of imminent death for extended periods of time. Any questions?”
Arthur didn’t have any.
“Then let us begin.”
The moment the words left her lips, Arthur leapt forwards, spear extended outwards in the third form, ‘parting the tides’. He’d deliberated long and hard on how he should begin their exchange of spears and this was certainly the conclusion he’d come up with. Base stats alone, Arthur was certainly faster than Issania’s clone and he probably beat her out in the strength department too. Despite this, he was under no illusion of how this fight would go, at least the first five minutes of it. Irrespective of how much she downplayed her own abilities, Issania was a master of the spear with decades, perhaps even centuries of experience behind her. Comparatively, Arthur had picked up one for-and-a-half hours ago. This was a fight he couldn't win. And so he’d decided to come off as strong as possible, with an opening strike that pierced the sound barrier with relative ease as it headed towards the elf’s stomach.
Against someone else, Arthur may have gone for the throat or even the heart but right now, he simply aimed for the largest part of her body he had the most chance of hitting. Besides, a hole in the stomach was plenty damaging enough. Unfortunately for Arthur, Issania moved her torso to the left and used the shaft of her spear to deflect his strike aside, the defensive motion so smooth and precise, that it was as if they’d choreographed it in advance.
That was fine. He’d expected it. Issania, however, hadn't accounted for just how much force Arthur had packed into that blow. Unencumbered by the restrictions of this layer, his true strength began to shine through. Arthur was a stat monster, and his attributes numbered far higher than Issania’s. Eyebrow raised in surprise, she was pushed backwards half a step, her defensive manoeuvres still text-book perfect. Regardless, Arthur had put her on the back foot. It would last a mere moment, but the smallest of instances built the foundations of victory.
They also created the impulses that caused defeat. Arthur would make sure he belonged to the former group. The rhythm of the star-spear revelation came to him like prophesy and he followed its direction like a devout believer, each and every moment engraved into his flesh through thousands of repetitions. Twisting inwards in one of the transitionary movements he’d learned just two hours ago. Arthur swung the butt of his spear at Issania’s jaw at break-neck speeds.
Learning from the mistake, this time she decided to dodge the blow entirely without intercepting it, a perfect move, the best decision she could have possibly made at that moment, a testament to her experience in battle. Even then, Issania was still placed in a bad position, her weight distribution on her feet flawless but her centre of gravity off by a few degrees. This was Arthur's grand plan, more than a little crude but the one he thought had the greatest chance of success.
In simple terms, Arthur was currently subscribing to the age-old philosophy that the greatest defence was a strong offence. He’d thrown Issania off with the strength of his opening salvo, by the smallest of margins, yes, but he hoped to maintain that flaw in her fighting for the next five minutes. If he got lucky. He might even be able to hit her once.
Unfortunately for him, Issania wasn’t a master of the spear for nothing. Even as he began transitioning into his third strike, he saw the minor adjustments Issania made to her grip. Then she hit him back, her range of motion far shorter than the exaggerated manoeuvre he was in the middle of performing. He had to withdraw. This is gonna hurt, he moaned internally. Following the inertia of his cancelled strike, he tried his best to dodge Issania’s piercing thrust. It hit him on the shoulders instead of his chest, a crippling blow turned into a glancing one. He tried his best to get the fight's momentum back, first by continuing as he had been with a strong offence and then by switching up his tempo, rapidly going from wide sweeping strikes to sharp, precise thrusts.
Nothing worked. As much as he’d improved, he’d only been working with the spear for four and a half hours. It showed in his amateurish movements that whilst clinical, showed his inexperience. They were the very definition of textbook, and for someone like Issania who’d memorised the literature, reading him was easy. She had taught him everything he knew, not everything she did. Every attack he launched was countered with ease, his combinations dismantled in their origin movements. He came close to hitting her thrice and nicked her cheek, drawing a single, thin line of red.
It was a far better result than Arthur had expected, more a result of luck than actual skill, but he’d take the victories for what they were. Capitalising on your opponent's errors was the bread and butter of fighting and creating those mistakes had been his goal from the get-go. He didn’t know if Issania was impressed with his striking or not, but he certainly was. Arthur had done far better than he expected. He hadn’t reached the realm where the spear felt at extension of his limbs but it no longer felt like the clunky stick it initially had. By the time five minutes came to an end, he was covered in surface-level wounds that stung to high-heaven. It was time for the real fight to begin.
Comments
Benjamin Collins
This chapter is really short and literally nothing happened it should be part of the previous chapter and then continue from there, I like this story and your writing is great
Benjamin Collins
First
