[Whisper from Sheral] "I don't remember giving your permission to die"
[Whisper to Sheral] "So I didn't die (:"
[Whisper from Sheral] "What happend"
[Whisper to Sheral] "Ambushed by 2 elites in Dusk falls, direwolves like Hunters pet"
[Whisper from Sheral] "Howed you handle it?"
[Whisper to Sheral] "Did okay enough I guess. Need more training."
[Whisper from Sheral] "Hell yah you do, id still kick you're ass"
[Whisper to Sheral] "How could I ever beat such a nice old lady"
[Whisper from Sheral] "Sure buster. See you soon okay? Stay safe"
[Whisper to Sheral] "I drank my potions, ill be fine. Have a good one"
[Whisper from Hunter] "You K?"
[Whisper to Hunter] "All good"
By morning I was fine.
Zach wasn't.
It was probably that he hadn't seen a real battle yet, at least not against an elite. The whole walk back he looked a little off, like part of him was still in Dusk Falls with the direwolves.
"Are you ready to head home?" I asked, getting up while still holding my side a bit.
"Yeah, sure," he said, getting up as well and following behind me as I started to walk.
"I figure elites will get more common, so you should get ready for that."
"Mhm."
He didn't say anything for a few seconds.
"I think the fighting life isn't for me."
"Huh? Why do you say that?"
"I was just useless there. Plus, man, it was scary if I'm being honest."
I sighed.
What else could I do here.
"If it's what you want, fine, but you should at least keep at it for now. We're getting to about the same level, so we could probably spend today training and tomorrow exploring the Crooked Hills."
I gave him a light pat on the back.
He shrugged and gave me this defeated look.
"Yeah, sure."
The rest of the walk was mostly silent, and I got why.
His level was high, and I'm sure he understood magic to a decent degree, but what he didn't have was the time I took to really get it.
I had spent weeks testing magic, messing it up, nearly dying, then messing it up in a better way. I'd thrown spells at things way stronger than me just to see what happened.
Zach was just kind of winging it.
Once we got to the mage tower and into a training room, I sat down right on the floor.
"So um... make a spell," I said, like I was tossing an idea out into the air.
"I can't just make a spell, man," he said, giving me a bad look.
"Why not? Our Intelligence should be comparable."
"It's just not something I can do! I don't know?" he snapped.
"Whoa," I said, putting my hands up. "Then let's just go off what you know, okay? The Frostbite spell."
"What about it?"
"Make it affect the area around you."
He looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't. Instead he closed his eyes and started to think.
After about ten minutes he put his hands together, a magic circle forming in front of them.
A second later the temperaturearound me started dropping to genuinely stupid levels.
"It's working, can you please stop!" I yelled, already worried I was about to get frozen solid.
"Oh, my bad," he said, cutting the mana to the spell.
"It's okay. Did it show up in your spell list?"
"Um... yeah. Cold Snap."
"Okay, that's good. Do you have any ideas on how to add to it as a spell?"
"I don't know, man. I could do a lot of things I guess."
"Then do them. It's magic. Use magic."
I tried to egg him on a little.
Spells were interesting. Fun, even. They were the purest form of doing something beyond humanity. No sword. No tool. Just making the world listen to a thought.
"Fuck, man."
He closed his eyes again. This time a thin layer of ice started forming around his body.
"There. Ice Armor," he said with a snap.
"Okay. Anything else?"
He rolled his eyes at me for asking, but went back to thinking.
It took a while, but sharp spikes started appearing on the armor.
I was about to congratulate him, but he still didn't open his eyes after that.
So I waited.
And waited.
It took a very long while before he finally opened them again.
"Alright. You good to be a test dummy?" he asked.
"Sure." I formed my shield, about a foot and a half across. "Aim for the shield, please."
"Okay."
He held his hand out and started building a spell.
This one was much more complicated, taking almost five seconds before it stabilized.
Immediately I noticed the cold spreading through the room again, and then a burst of ice shards slammed into my shield hard enough that I actually had to brace.
All in all, it was a really good single-target spell.
A terrible spell for ordinary mobs, probably, but amazing for a boss. The mana cost had to be disgusting.
I waited a second, thinking it was done.
Then he changed it.
The circle expanded downward and settled across the floor, covering almost the entire room as ice shards started spinning around at an insane speed.
The only reason I wasn't getting shredded was because the training room wouldn't let it actually hurt me.
That and the infinite mana.
Still, freezing to death in fake safety was getting old fast.
"Zach! That's amazing, man! But I'm cold!" I yelled.
He opened his eyes and cut the spell, taking a deep breath after.
"...Better than anything you've made," he joked.
"Yeah right," I said, punching his arm lightly. "You ready to finally do the fun part of being a mage?"
"And what is that?" he asked, already sounding suspicious.
"Optimization. You have to make sure all your spells aren't stealing your mana."
He threw his head back toward the ceiling.
"Fuuuck, that sounds boring."
"It is..." I admitted. "I guess we could try to optimize while sparring?"
"Is that possible?"
"I mean, yeah. A few times I lowered the cost of spells in battle just by finding tiny little tweaks."
He shrugged, smiled, and lowered his stance a bit.
"Can you limit yourself to just Magic Missile and your defensive spell? Just while I'm getting the hang of things?"
"Yeah, sure."
I formed two two-foot-wide disks of mana on either side of me, then raised ten Magic Missiles overhead.
He stared at the whole setup for a second.
"That's your idea of limiting yourself?"
"I'm being generous."
"Asshole."
"Keep crying"
Then he moved first.
He opened with Ice Bullet, exactly like I told him to use when killing mobs, but I wasn't a mob.
THe thing he did right though was he fired three of them, one even coming from his feet so I would have an array of angles to block from.
That alone was enough to make me smile.
He was learning.
I shifted one shield to the left and the other high, blocking two, then let the third pass by my shoulder so I wouldn't have to waste the positioning cost.
It was still a habit to conserve mana even knowing I had unlimited.
Right after though I sent one Magic Missile at his chest.
Not enough to matter, just enough to force him to react.
He did, stumbling sideways and raising a patch of ice like a wall in front of him.
The Missile shattered against it but left a good dent.
"Okay, that one was decent," I said with a bit of a mocking tone
"Shut up."
He tried Ice Lance next, but much quicker than before. Not quick enough to catch me, but quick enough that I actually had to move the shield on instinct instead of casually.
The lance cracked against the disk and spun off to the side in pieces.
Then I sent three Magic Missiles at him in a spread.
He panicked a little and reactively covered himself in ice.
For what we were doing it was fine, but in a real fight it would be a massive mana waist
"Dont reactively use such a big spell, next time try to just cover the part getting hit"
"Thats your shit"
"Then just maintain your defence and push the advantage!"
This time he didn't respond.
Instead he backed up and layered Ice Armor over himself practically turning into a sculpture.
It was a good move, ice was real and once he made it he wouldn't have to pay a continuous mana cost for it.
While I was thinking of how I wanted to break it all down though, he sent a barrage of ice bullets at me.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to block them all with my current setup, so instead I ballooned my shield out to five foot wide to block them all.
"What? Using your big spells already?"
"Okay," I said. "That was actually good."
Aside from his boasting, he was definitely breathing heavier now, even though mana wasn't the issue. Spell strain still seemed to be a thing, even here. Thinking that hard for that long still wore you down.
So I decided to push him a little.
I used the rest of my magic missiles to drill a hole right into his defense, forcing him to act.
Seeing my plan though he made the very smart decision to just move out of the ice and formed another layer of armor.
Then, instead of stopping to complain, he instantly started forming that big shard-storm spell again.
It didn't surprise me much, but in all fairness I had no idea how to counter it.
The floor circle spread out, ice shards rising and spinning faster and faster.
I dropped both shields in front of me and shoved them outward, turning them broad and thin.
The ice hammered against them.
Not enough to break through, but enough that I had to actually focus to keep them stable.
I had to think for a second, then I decided that the best way to deal with this would be to completely surround myself in my shields, forming a box.
So I made a total of 4 more before starting to assault him with magic missiles.
The bane of these kinds of spells should be having to concentrate on them, but the spell seemed to reinforce his armor in a very symbiotic way.
So I decided to call the fight there.
"Hey! That's enough now!" I yelled, but it was clear he couldn't hear me.
Shaking my head a bit I did the only thing I could, and just left the training room via the system