Training with Alice

The following day, I still feel messed up about Fabe’s ****. I decide to get my mind off of it by going to the Dark Dragon arena and work on my air magic. I have spent a lot of time perfecting my ice magic, enabling me to summon perfectly shaped ice swords and ice daggers, so I don’t really need to work on that any more. My air magic on the other hand could still use some practice

There are so many battles where for my ranged attacks, I am completely reliant on my water magic. But what if I come across a situation where water magic won’t be effective. I would have to find an attack based on air magic that would work. But [Gust] is not quite an attack spell. I can use it to affect objects and maybe people around me, but it won’t slice anything. The book on air magic Aelbrecht gave me a while ago did have an interesting spell. Basically, I start by casting a gust of wind around my blade, and then swing my sword with the intention of launching the air currents. The first few attempts don’t work so well, but after a while there seems to be improvement. I am still going to have to work on it a lot, though.

After some practice, Alice and her daughter show up, with Helena in tow, to witness some of my fighting.

“That’s very good Darx. I’m impressed.” Alice says. “I heard about your exploits at the tournament while you were away. I don’t care what the judges say, to me you are the B-rank champion. And you got rewarded by becoming an A-rank. You should be proud of yourself.”

“I know.” I say. “But I got disqualified in front of a whole crowd. That kinda stung.”

“Yes well. I would have loved to see your previous duels, but I wasn’t here.” Aliece replies. “That stings too. I guess I can at least content myself with watching you practice here.”

As we are talking, I notice the Dark Dragon necklace hanging on Alice’s neck. She rejoined the guild, so I guess she is back at being an active adventurer. Which reminds me, Amelia found a box in Alice’s old home and returned it to her.

“Hey Alice.” I say. “I don’t recall us ever having sparred. Like, 1 versus 1.”

Alice opens her eyes wide and cocks her head with a slight smile. “Darx … are you suggesting you and I have a duel?”

“I know, I am A rank, you are C, so if both of use joined the tournament, we wouldn’t be facing each other.” I explain. “But still would like to see what you can do. Maybe find out how long you could hold out.”

Alice squints her eyes and side-eye’s me. “Don’t you mean how long you can hold out against me?”

“Oh no.” Helena speaks up. “Is this happening? Alice is going to duel?” She then stands on one of the bleachers and yells out, “Hey, everybody! Alice is going to duel Darx! Right here in our arena!”

Before I know it, a whole lot of the other guild members are telling each other and spreading the news.

“Well, I guess I have **** now.” Alice answers. “Let me just go and get ready. I’ll be back soon.”

As I am waiting for Alice to return, more and more guildmembers enter the arena and take seat at the bleachers. It’s quite odd. This arena doesn’t usually have so many as spectators. Amelia too shows up and runs up to me.

“Darx. What’s going on?” She asks. “Everybody is saying Alice is going to show off her skills.”

“What?” I ask confused. “All I did was invite her to a duel. Not a show off.”

“Yeah, I don’t get it either.” Amelia says. “Anyways, I’ve never really seen Alice go all out. But you can take her, right?”

“Well yeah.” I shrug. “I’ve got my [Water Barrier]. That should be enough against her fire magic, right?”

Amelia, realizing that Alice has little chance against me, smiles and says, “Alright, I’ll be in the audience cheering you on.” She then gives me a kiss on the cheek and heads over to the bleachers to sit with Helena and Alice’s daughter.

When Alice finally shows up, she is dressed in all leather. Not quite the attire I expect from someone who has the mage class. She is also wielding that special weapon Amelia brought back for her, though it looks pretty weird to me. It is like a long rope which is tied to Alice’s left wrist with a dagger attached to the end. She recall Amelia calling it a rope dart. Though I feel rather confused at how it is supposed to function as a weapon.

“So, Darx.” Alice announces. “Are you ready to see a Dragonette in combat?”

I draw my sword and get ready in a battle position. “I’ve already seen my mother in a fight. I think I have grown enough that I can handle 1 of you now.”

“I will still do my best to make you eat those words.” Alice says.

Alice then starts swinging the rope with her right hand. She simply swings it in a circle, there is nothing special about it. Suddenly, the sharp end of her rope dart catches on fire. It’s not like she cast a fireball towards it or something. It just started burning out of nowhere. I remember fire mages having a spell called [Ignite]. It’s the kind of spell that can cause object at a distance spontaneously catch on fire. Alice must have used something like this. She then changes her routine by swinging the rope dart behind her. I must say it looks very pretty, but her fighting style seems to be more a performance then actual combat.

“Get ready, Darx.” Alice warns me with a sly smile. “I won’t go easy on you.”

Alice then maneuvers her rope dart in such a way that it is like she throws it in my direction. It can’t reach me of course. The rope is not long enough to get all the way to me, and it’s anchored to her left wrist. But for some reason, a fireball gets launched from the dart and hurtles towards me. Since I already knew Alice’s favorite magic element is fire, I already expected spells like that coming my way, so I was ready to cast [Water Barrier] on myself. I cast the spell and the fireball gets extinguished upon hitting the barrier.

“That’s a neat trick.” I admit. “But I’m afraid it’ll do nothing against my water spells.”

“Carefull, Darx.” Alice warns me, still with that smile on her face as she continues swinging the rope around her. “C-rank mages have 2 magic elements at their disposal.”

Alice then stomps her foot and a whole bunch of rocks broke off from the floor and floated next to her. With another launching of her rope dart, she launches all the small rocks in my direction. They may be mere pebbles, but they hit hard. With so many hitting my [Water Barrier] all at once, the barrier breaks and I am left without defenses.

With no protection left, Alice starts launching her rope dart me over and over, launching another fireball at me time and time again. I don’t have time to cast another [Water Barrier] now. I start running to my right, hoping my speed is enough to dodge all the fire.

“What’s wrong, Darx?” Alice laughs. “Mister A-rank can’t stand his ground against a C-rank?”

“Just wait!” I yell back. “All I need to do is get to you!”

“As if I would let you?” Alice replies, and after another stomp of her foot, a small rocky wall comes shooting up from the ground between me and her. It’s enough to get me to stop running lest I run into it.

This is when Alice changes up the movement of her rope dart and starts launching it upward a few times, shooting another fireball each time. Again, a strange tactic of which I cannot possibly imagine how it would benefit her. But then the fireballs she launches change direction. They arc down and start coming towards me. To avoid those, I have to perform a combination of dodges and water spells.

I must admit that Alice is a much more difficult opponent then I thought she would be. I am quite motivated in summoning my elementals, but this is supposed to be a 1 versus 1 fight. Even if summoning them is allowed, I would feel like I cheated, so I won’t. I also don’t want to use [Water Lance] because that spell not only eats my mana too quickly, it could also kill Alice. It is just way too powerful. Then I remember I still have the [Mist] spell.

While dodging Alice’s fireballs, I start casting [Mist]. Enough to create a thick layer so she can no longer see me. The mist makes the air around me so incredibly moist that Alice’s fireballs extinguish almost as soon as they fly inside. There, that gives me some time to rest and think.

I can’t simply stay in this cloud and hide. That will not lead me to a victory. I will have to move out, and then she will chuck more fireballs at me. I start with casting another [Water Barrier], just in case. Second, I prepare 3 times [Ball of Water] at my left hand. Maybe I can throw these at her and give her a taste of her own tactic. Finally, I use some air magic and wrap some air currents around my sword. Just like Alice surprised me with some tricks I never knew she had, I too have one for her.

I run out of the mist, towards where Alice was last standing, except I run into another [Rock Wall]. Fuck! Alice is such a brat. Or maybe it’s my own fault for not realizing the smartest thing she could do is put a wall inside my own mist. I then walk towards the edge of the mist. I will not be running into any other magically summoned walls. The problem is that the longer I take, the longer I need to maintain the water balls in my left hand and [Wind Strike] on my sword. I already have less mana then a mage, let alone an experienced one like Alice. The way things are going, I am going to run out and I don’t think I can beat her with just my sword.

When I reach the edge of the mist, and I can see the rest of the arena, I notice Alice has already moved. She is at the furthest edge, which means she can’t back up any more. I am going to have to deal with her like I did with Monica.

As soon as I break out of the mist I start running, though this time, I make my path towards Alice irregular and run in a zigzag manor. Alice quickly starts spinning her rope dart again while at the same time casting some [Rock Wall] spells. I manage to dodge most of the walls, almost running into only a few. Though the first one I run into did have my [Water Barrier] clash with the wall and it dissipates.

When I get close to Alice, she starts launching fireballs at me again. I throw my own water balls at her, but she summons another [Rock Wall] and my water ball’s splash harmlessly against them. I slash my word and send an air current in her direction, but it doesn’t have the strength to break through her wall. Looks like my attacks are useless.

Alice does seem to be getting exhausted, though. Her aim isn’t that good anymore and misses me all the time. It is getting a lot warmer though, and brighter too. I take a moment to look up and see something horrifying. A swarm of fireballs all circling above me. And the more Alice launches, the more of them join the swarm.

Darx!” I hear Alice yell at me. “Duck!”

I look up again and notice the fireballs above arcing down and coming right for me. I do as Alice told me to and duck. One fireball after another slam into the ground next to me. Boom, boom, boom. All of them raising the temperature. I fear that I may end up getting cooked. When the fireballs eventually stop I am sweating like a pig and thoroughly exhausted. Alice has extinguished her rope dart and is casually walking up to me. It is clear to her this duel is over.

“Not bad for a C-rank, wouldn’t you say?” She asks with a big smirk.

“Yeah, no kidding.” I reply, staring at all the scorch marks on the ground around me. “How in the hell did you do that?”

Alice looks over at the audience and yells, “Somebody throw me a fireball!”

Some random guild member does exactly that and throws a fireball at Alice. With just a flick of her hand, Alice makes the fireball change course and has it make 2 circles around her before settling above her right hand.

“I have a skill called [Fire Manipulation].” Alice explains. “It is a rare skill which allows me to manipulate the direction and intensity of any fire around me.” Alice then flexes her skill by making the fire above her hand triple the size and shrinks it back to its normal size again. “I do need an active source of fire to manipulate first, hence the rope dart. But rather then cast [Fireball] from the rope dart for a lot of mana, I use [Fire Manipulation] on it for a little bit of mana.”

Alice then leans in close to me and asks, “So, what have we learned about challenging a dragonette?”

I roll my eyes and reply, “To not underestimate them, even if you are 2 ranks higher than them.”

“Very good.” Alice says. “Though honestly, I figured you would have put up more of a fight.”

“Yeah, I could have summoned 2 elementals.” I admit as I stand up. “But I felt that would have been unfair. I mean, this was supposed to be a 1 versus 1 fight, not a 3 versus 1. Also, I was worried my [Water Lance] would have severely hurt you, so I backed out of that as well.”

“Awww, you went easy on me. That’s nice of you, Darx.” Alice Coos. “But I really could have defended myself. You saw me pull that wall up at the end, right?”

I look over and that wall is still there. I summon water from my ring and use it to activate the [Water Lance] spell. The water swirls around my hand at high velocity in the shape of a lance. I look over at Alice and say, “Watch this”. Then I launch the lance and it shoots towards the last [Rock Wall] Alice made. It blows clean through it, leaving a nice hole.

“Holy goddess.” Alice says with surprise. “Yeah, that would have been bad. Thanks for not using that spell on me.”

“So, it’s a draw then?” I ask.

“Sure, draw.” Alice smiles and shakes my hand.

Author’s note:

Hey everyone. I just wanted to talk a little more about Alice’s fighting style. Some time ago, after I started writing for this story but long before I got to this chapter, I came across a random youtube video about a woman who did some dancing with a flaming rope dart. I will be sharing the video here so you guys can see as well.

__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8uNnUFiLPg

When watching this video the first time I was thinking, “Suppose this woman had access to fire magic and employed it in her routine.” Then I remembered Alice in this story and felt it was an interesting way to improve her character. I of course discussed it with Darx00 and he approved of it, but it was difficult to find a good time to bring Alice back into the story, and in a combat situation. I hope I didn’t end up forcing it in but still allowed somewhat of a natural flow. A reason for her to show up at Riledo, rejoin the guild, give her some time to process the loss of Merton, …

It was also hard to describe the rope dart swinging the right way. The woman in the video regularly lets the rope wrap around her elbow to perform a launch, but I figured describing it in this much complexity would just be confusing.

Here’s another video from flow mayhem where she gives a tutorial of her elbow shots

__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7U9lHT9Cxc

So yeah, big shout out to flow mayhem for having inspired me and making Alice a more interesting character.