(One Month Later)
I sidestepped Tessia's blade, and spun around and kicked her in the gut, she used wind magic to stay up right, we faced each other, about ten yards apart. "Use your blood magic." Aldir instructed me.
I nodded my head, as I activated "Blood Oath" and then buckled Tessia's knees out from under her, and then used my new spell "Blood Acceleration" which speeds up the movement of my blood, which makes me faster, to top it off I use wind magic to push me far beyond my normal speed.
I launched myself at Tessia, appearing in front of her in an instant and swung my sword down on her, as she brought her sword up to protect herself, I numbed her hand, making her drop her sword. I held my blade against her neck and stared down at her.
"Your blood magic isn't even fair!" Tessia told me, as I reached out a hand for her to take. "There isn't anything I can do about it."
"Very good, Virion." Aldir spoke up, as he approached the two of us. "Tessia, I just wanted to see if he was getting better at controlling his magic, which I would say you are." Aldir's third eye felt like it was staring into my soul, still wasn't used to it.
"The new spell Lance Aya came up with was genius." I told him, "Blood Acceleration" was her idea. "I think I've got it down."
"I would say so." Tessia exclaimed. "I wouldn't have been able to get my sword up in time, even if you didn't make me drop it." That might be true, but I wanted to practice using multiple blood spells at once.
"And how is your training with Lance Aya going?" Aldir asked me.
"Good, I'm starting to get the gist of it." I was able to create illusions, but very, very small ones. "Should we go again?"
"Yes, Virion only use your ice magic." I nodded my head and started to walk away from Tessia.
"Without your blood magic, you are nothing." Tessia said jokingly with a smile on her face. I started to surround my blade with a cold blue frost, and the bottoms of my feet were covered with ice, so that the floor froze in every place I stepped.
"Let's see then." I smiled as I launched myself at Tessia, swinging my sword at her, with only my body reinforced with mana, no blood or wind magic in effect. My cold blade connected with hers, and I reached for her wrist, Tessia quickly shot a vein at me from behind. The floor beneath us quickly started to freeze, and as the vein got closer to me, it froze solid. Tessia backed away from me, before I could grab her.
I spun and swung my blade at her, they connected again, and I pushed the ice from my blade to hers. "Ahh." She shouted, when the icy mist touched her hands, and then I pulled back my sword, fell to the ground and swept her legs out. She fell backwards but kept herself up using wind magic and glided away from me. "Master Aldir, can I use my Beast Will?"
"Go ahead." Tessia smiled as green runes started to glow from everywhere on her, is she really trying this hard, while I am limited to only ice magic. I clapped my hands before she could finish transforming and a cloud of mist covered the field, making it impossible to see anything. However, for me, since my connection with water mana is so good, I can feel whenever ice touches someone or something, so I can track Tessia and Aldir inside of the mist, even if they try to hide their presence. I called this spell "Ice Domain."
"Really!" Tessia shouted from in front of me. "You have to hide, to win." I launched myself at her, as she finished the sentence, pointing my sword at her chest.
I could sense the veins around her, but it didn't matter, I was going in headfirst anyways. A vein reached out for me, and I spun and cut it down, then I did it again, and again. I stood four yards from her, and swung my ice covered blade at the veins surrounding her, the blade cut through them with ease, but as my sword got close to her real body, a vein grabbed my knee. I decided to just keep going, and Tessia's vein started to pick me up. I dropped my sword as I was lifted, and quickly grabbed the vein and sent ice throughout it, then kicked it to set me free.
I fell to my feet without my sword. "Virion, use whatever, besides blood magic." Aldir told me, and as soon as he did, I summoned fire around my body, but kept my sword and feet covered with ice. I then raised my hand and summoned water scythes and covered them with ice and placed wind behind them and sent them at Tessia. The veins reached up to block the attack as they got close to Tessia, causing an explosion that shook the room.
I got ready to shoot myself through the debris but was stopped by a person shouting. "Please do not break the training hall!" Tessia and I stopped, and as the debris faded, two figures appeared. "Lord Aldir, can I take Tessia away from you." Elder Virion spoke.
"We were done here anyway." Aldir told him.
"Lance Varay." I bowed to her as she stood next to Elder Virion. "It's good to see you." My favorite Lance, every time I saw her, I had to greet her. If I didn't want to learn illusion magic, I would have liked to train under her.
"Virion." Lance Varay said with a plain face, she was a very serious person.
"I'll see you later, Veer, and thanks for the session, Master Aldir." Tessia bowed to him, and then left with Elder Virion and Lance Varay.
"Are you not going to leave as well?" Aldir asked me, and I shook my head. "Why not?"
"I have training with Lance Aya soon, and I was just going to sit here and meditate for a little." I told him as I started to sit down. I wanted to get to the first level of silver core, and to do that I needed to just meditate. It would be nice to have a mana core or something, but the only way to do that is to go to the dungeons. I wanted to get to silver and then go to the dungeons, at this very moment I could kill mana beast with a wave of my hand, I just wanted to make sure I could do that, and fight Alacryans if we came across any without using up all my mana and passing out again.
"Alright." Aldir said simply and started to leave.
I closed my eyes and started to meditate, and absorb the mana around me, the training hall was placed here because of all the mana in the room. It made absorbing mana very nice and easy. I was preparing myself for what was to come, I was excited to fight the mutated mana beast in the dungeons. I don't know why thinking about that made me want to go sooner.
There was only one issue with meditating, and it was that every time I closed my eyes and started to think about everything, the only thing that came to mind was the people at Xyrus who all died in front of me and talking to Lance Alea and not warning her. This was a good thing though, this made anger rise in me, and I felt a sense of joy letting that happen. I don't know if it was the Serpent's taste for blood in me, or my own, but new feelings were growing in me each day, and I liked it.
I was slowly taking away more power from the Serpent's Will, as well as absorbing the mana in the air. What else could I do with blood magic? I've been asking myself that for years now and can't come up with anything else. The people around me have been having all the ideas.
When my mana control increases, I should develop more abilities. I could feel mana flowing through my body, there has to be a way to speed this process up.
I sensed the presence of danger, when a mana signature I knew too well walked into the room. I opened my eyes and pointing her bow at me was Ellie. She released an arrow straight for me, and I quickly rose an ice wall to deflect the arrow.
"What the hell?!" I shouted at my sister.
She slowly started to walk toward me. "I just wanted to see how your training has been going, since you basically live in here."
"I don't live in here."
"You spend half the day in here, or in your room sleeping or meditating." Ellie said aggressively. Damn, what's gotten into her.
"What's your deal?" I gave her a confused look.
"I don't understand why you are in here all the time, you aren't fighting in the war, so why are you pushing yourself?" She stopped five yards from me, and as she did Boo walked into the room, he was still a cub, but he grew a little and could walk now.
"Is my sister worried about me?" I said jokingly, trying to change the mood. "Ellie, I train in here all day, because it's the only thing I can do."
"You could spend time with mom, dad, or even me if you wanted to, but you don't anymore. You just have short conversations with us, and then disappear." Ellie actually seemed worried for some reason.
I walked up and hugged her, she was shocked by this, but hugged me back. "Ellie, if you are worried because you are afraid of what is to come in the future, don't be. Arthur will protect us, and I'll be a second level of defense." I just noticed that I was half a head taller than Ellie now, my chin was basically on her ash brown hair. "And don't act like you don't train every day, maybe not as long as me, but close to it."
"Yeah, but I train around mom and dad." She pushed herself away from me. "Just make sure to take it easy once and a while, as your older sister I insist on it."
"Oh, thank you, big sister, for your wise advice." I said sarcastically. "I'll hang out with you tonight, okay."
"Fine." She stormed toward Boo and picked him up, which she struggled to do just a little.
I shook my head and sat back down. I needed to figure out how to speed up the process of moving mana throughout my body, not looking for new abilities right now. My blood magic allows me to speed up and slow down the blood in me, what if I used that to transfer mana through my body and into my core, where it can purify it. This would increase the amount of mana inside of my core, allowing me to purify more at once.
I activated "Blood Oath" and then "Blood Acceleration" and had my blood heading towards my core that had mana in it travel faster, and faster, this caused a burning sensation in my chest, but I kept on going. I could feel the mana in me increasing as I absorbed the mana in the atmosphere into my body and used my blood to transfer it to my core.
It hurt.
The burning sensation continued, as I kept on going with the process. "Stop." Aldir shouted at me, from the doorway. "Are you causing this change in mana, I could feel it from the council room?" Aldir seemed concerned by this, something I didn't think he could feel.
"Possibly." I stopped and deactivated my spells. "What's the issue?"
He walked closer to me. "If you absorbed too much mana at once, it could rupture your mana core." I doubted that. "And what I'm guessing is that you used your blood magic to move mana around."
"Yeah." How'd he know that? The burning sensation continued to burn, even though I wasn't doing it anymore.
"Don't do it again." He told me. "You could hurt yourself."
"Is the burning feeling in me a good thing?"
"Burning feeling in you, can't be good, child." I knew that already; I closed my eyes and looked into my core.
"Oh shit!" I exclaimed loudly but bent over in pain as I tried to stand up. My insides were a mess at the moment. "My goddamn core is silver now!"
"What?" Aldir said questioningly. "That isn't possible."