Alacryan Arthur

Chapter 21

4 Years later

Arthur Leywin POV

I was sitting in my room, purifying my core. I could feel that I was close. Just a bit more.

'Just a bit more? You haven't moved in 6 hours. I'm bored,' Sylvie complained. She was right. I had done nothing but meditate since I woke up. But I was almost there.

And finally I felt it. How the last bit of mana purified my core and pushed it over the edge. I could feel how the distinct yellow color faded in a chain reaction, leaving me with a core at initial silver.

'Finally. That means we can go and do something fun now, right?' Sylvie asked.

I agreed. 'Now we go have some fun.'

We headed to the training arena.

As I opened the door I had to jump to the side.

Dragoth flew past me and was buried into the wall.

"Hey kid!" he greeted me. "How about you help me get my revenge on Cadell?"

"Good idea, although even together you won't stand a chance" Cadell exclaimed from the inside of the room, exhilarated by the dent in the wall.

I nodded. "But let's make that a 3v1, Sylvie has been bugging me the whole day, that she is bored."

Sylvia jumped off my back and transformed into her dragon form. She was about 3 meters tall in that form, her growth accelerated by her training with her father as well as hundreds of cores of mana beasts Agrona had asked for.

The whole country went nuts in their search for beasts with powerful cores, as he promised that the person with the strongest core would have their blood named. With how rare it is for a new named blood to appear, as well as the chance to gain the attention of Agrona himself everyone, from mages with just a single mark up to individuals with multiple emblems or even a regalia had started the hunt.

Cadell conjured a sword, a weapon I was all too familiar with. I have trained almost every day for the last 4 years. I had fought against all of the scythes and retainers, who of course limited themselves to my level. But this way I was familiar with all kinds of fighting forms, spells and techniques.

Cadell preferred to use a sword, as did I. Dragoth used a ginormous hammer, while the other three scythes preferred to use different kinds of spells and fight from a distance. Of course, all of them were proficient with a weapon too, since it was quite hard to fight against a mage of equal strength only with spells. Once he was getting close enough, the battle would be over.

Cadell dashed towards Dragoth, who met him halfway, also gaining momentum for his first attack. I activated my blood, but decided to let my will rest for the match. I wanted to be able to fight without relying on its power and didn't want to overextend its usage all the time. This form should really only be used in dire situations or to experiment.

I channeled lightning through my body, increasing my reflexes. I also started running toward Cadell, but my movements were still too slow. So I used wind mana to boost my movement and some gravity mana to lighten myself, while casting a spell to increase Cadell's weight by around four times his normal weight. I continued to cast an earth spell, but used a bit of decay mana from my horns to cast a shadow spike in my hand to use as a sword.

Meanwhile Sylvie had started to gather mana in her mouth, preparing for a mana beam, while flying out of Cadell's range, who couldn't fly to her, because Dragoth kept him occupied in combat.

I reached them and started attacking Cadell from the side, beginning with a sweep at his foot, to bring him out of balance. He saw it coming and jumped, while blocking Dragoth's hammer from above. The amount of force this attack unleashed on Cadell forced him back to the earth, where I had started to freeze the ground to further immobilize him.

He landed in the center of the spell and ice crystals started to cover his shoes. I continued with a lightning spell, that was just a bright flash, trying to blind him and get his attention on me. I followed that with a sound spell targeting his ears. The enormous amount of noise even caught me off guard, even though I had augmented my ears before.

The disorientated Cadell needed a fraction of a second too long to get his senses back together to dodge Sylvies breath attack. The wave of mana flooded over him, and he had to use a lot of mana to augment himself enough to be left unharmed.

I saw his focus shifting from Dragoth to me. He used his sword and started with a wide swing, forcing me out of my preferred range. Now he had the range advantage.

While he was circling around me with enormous speed, he made sure that I was always between him and Dragoth. If this continued it could also be considered a 2v1, with our strongest man out of the picture, leaving only Sylvie and me.

I jumped out of the way, while Cadell was busy casting a fire spell. I countered with a water spell, while Sylvie preferred to simply evade. But, in contrast to us, Dragoth just stood there, maniacally looking toward Cadell.

What was he doing?

I altered my water spell, so it would also shield Dragoth, but that had its price. Because I could only use half of the spell on myself, Cadell's spell managed to break through the water barrier I had erected.

While I was hit by the fire spell, giving me some smaller bruises, the part that hit Dragoth lit him on fire. I watched as his entire body lit up in flames, until he looked like a human torch. I quickly started to use a combination of water and ice to try to put out the fire, while taking a closer look.

Wait, something wasn't right.

Cadell had also stopped with the spar, and the three of us all continued to watch as Dragoth was standing there, fully covered with blue flames but not flinching a bit.

He started to laugh. "If you could see your faces." he pointed at Cadell, who stood there with an expression of surprise and confusion, with a little bit of worry for his colleague.

I activated my will, to see what exactly was happening. As mana flooded my rune I began to see the mana particles in the air. I saw the pink mana left on me and Cadell, while yellow mana flowed throughout my body. Sky blue mana was still holding Cadell in place, while the last marine mana particles fought against the abundance of red mana in the air.

But the interesting thing was the silver particles that Dragoth emitted. I saw how the wind mana collected air from the area and brought it to him. There it formed a small shell of air between him and the fire. Instead the fire burned on top of this layer with such ferocity, that the normal fire mana couldn't. No, something was fueling the fire particles. Oxygen!

"How do you do that?" Cadell asked Dragoth.

"He splits the air into its different parts. I guess he uses nitrogen to create a barrier around himself, where the fire can't burn, while the oxygen and other flammable gasses burn on their way into the barrier, creating the illusion that he is on fire himself. The good thing is, that once set up by forcing pure nitrogen around himself the reaction is much easier to control, as he only needs to draw air in, instead of only a certain part of it." I theorized.

That earned me confused looks from Cadell and Dragoth.

"I was about to say with my new Emblem, but it seems like you have a greater understanding." Dragoth said. "Can you explain it to me in more detail?"

I released my will, and tried to cast a spell similar to this one. I concentrated on the air, the molecules that surrounded me. I tried to sort the particles, like Dragoth did. I could feel how the air warped around me.

Sylvie rolled her eyes, as she turned back into her small form. 'Of course you would immediately steal his spell.'

'Of course, it seems like a good one. I just need a bit more training'

"I hadn't noticed until now, but congratulations to your silver core," Cadell said. "I was surprised how strong you were. And you even managed to use your decay mana a bit, even though we haven't looked into it yet. But since you advanced to silver I guess it's time to start with that now."

Finally, I will learn to control the full extent of my decay mana art, and not only the small bits I had found in books and through my own experimentation.

***

>1.4k words

A bit of a slow chapter to catch up to where Arthur is after the timeskip.