So, it begins…almost.

John looked at the blue ball above the dwarf fortress. It was about the size of a grown man and slowly gaining more, shining with the intensity of a small, blue sun. The Arcana Strike had been hovering there for about four minutes.

Compared to the fortress, the size of a hill and the shape of a mountain with walls carved from it and reinforced with lots and lots of metal, it wasn’t exactly big though.

“This is so d-u-l-l!” Rave complained; “Why are we doing this again?” “We are testing this skill’s power,” Lydia, who had an eye on the clock, reminded Rave; “We agreed upon a five-minute charging period at John’s maximum mana. Which is about…now.”

With great interest, John unleashed the attack with the ease of a thought. A straight line descended from the orb in the sky to the fortress below. Then, with supersonic speed, the giant mass of arcane power hit the ground. There was a deep, technologically enhanced sounding noise, like the beat of an old techno song, accompanied by a gust of wind that everyone in the group to take a step back.

The explosion spread outward, ripping apart particles and scattering them into the air in a rising blue mass of magical energies and dust. A pillar of power in turmoil, layers upon layers of translucent energy, like ripped blue satin wrapped around an iron rod, the shape roughly equivalent to a cone, broad side at the ground, tip where the Arcana Strike had been. An upside-down, blue hurricane in appearance, just that there was no safe eye of the storm here.

John looked at it with a bit of worry as the energy became less volatile and finally was little more than a blue hue over a crater the size of the fortress. Actually, it was slightly smaller than the fortress; the outer walls were still intact, giving the impression of some ancient civilization building a wall around an impact site.

The reason why he was worried was that they had positioned Thana inside the fortress to test for friendly fire. John hadn’t been a huge fan of the idea, but she had insisted once Lydia had presented it. They all knew that she could take it, but that didn’t mean that it was a pleasant thought.

A human sized dot flew over from the around 500 metres away impact site. Robe fluttering, Thana landed about a third of the way before making a second and then third jump. “I actually thought I would need new fucking clothes there for a moment,” Thana said and shook fine particle dust from the black cloth, “but this shit is made to survive the next holocaust, which is bitchingly awesome if you ask me.”

“So…you took damage?” John wanted to know. He tried paying close attention to her health bar, but with her regeneration, he could have just blinked and whatever damage she took would have been gone. “Oh yeah, seared my skin a bit before I did some magic-fuckery to protect against it,” Thana waved off before the apocalyptic background; “I would say it would probably outright defeat the weakest one of us…so, Lydia, stay the fuck away.”

“Pardon?” Lydia asked. “Ya heard me, anal queen,” Thana laughed, “or are you saying you aren’t?” “I am…” “Because you sure as fuck are weaker than me,” the blood mage interrupted; “John and his elemental gallery would tear you the fuck apart as well. Aclysia and Momo would need to make their bodies out of something non-metally, but I think they ate enough cock-sleeves to become rubber.”

“I am in agreement with that statement, but…” “Rave wouldn’t spank you quite as hard, but she would win like 9/10 times. In a fighting context, your powers are really not that fucking great, unless your opponent relies heavily on something made from metal. Like swords or armour or some other shit…” Thana chuckled; “Khahaha, for a noble you have some majorly supportive powers, miss princess of steel…”

Looking over to John, she froze, “The fuck are you looking at me like that for?” John wasn’t looking at her at all, instead he was sighing and massaging the bridge of his nose. “You aren’t wrong,” he told her, “that was just pretty blunt.” “Well, blunt is best, no use to hide the fucking thing,” Thana defended herself. “Ja, actually agree with that,” Rave said.

Lydia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I find myself unable to refute those claims,” she admitted; “In a vacuum I am going to lose to all of you. My powers are more reliant on external factors than any of yours are.” “Well, I guess ya have the highest potential power in a metal rich environment though,” Rave said, feeling that the princess may have been cut down a bit too far.

“The environment isn’t of a huge concern; people like me fight under the theory of control zones,” Lydia said. “Let me guess,” John said and started counting; “There is the zone of total control, where basically all metal is under your control, which is the closest one to you. Then the zone of partial control, where you can get anything under your control but not everything. Last and least the zone of no control, where you would have to get massive efforts to get even the slightest bit of metal under your control.”

“That is largely accurate in its description, yes,” Lydia said; “But for the sake of clarity, let me give you a demonstration.” The buttons of her uniform unhinged from her clothes without any problems. They were her emergency projectiles. More plate and other pieces of small metal surfaced from her clothing until there was a swarm of scrap. If John had to guess, a total of 8 or 10 kilogram in mass.

“This is about the amount of metal I can comfortably control within my zone of absolute control. It’s easier to control things in a big unit than as several small things,” as she spoke the swarm became first a solid, neatly organized shield and then a spaced-out formation, cage-like, around her; “That zone reaches around three metres around me, once we get there…” she moved the singular pieces further and further away, and one by one they started to fall down until only half of them remained in the air.

“As you can observe, my control slowly fails. Talking in general terms, at about 50 metres my partial control is gone. Depending on the size, shape and weight of the object this number may vary. Bigger objects are easier to control but less useful due to requiring more energy to move. It is a precarious balance between concentration and exertion.” The metal cloud flew back and slowly became part of her clothes again. Then the pieces on the floor also made their way back.

“Drinking mithril greatly increases my powers in all ways, as you already were able to see.

“Lastly, while we call it the ‘absolute’ zone of control, under enough pressure, everything breaks,” she took a firm stance and looked down at Thana; “Your assessment to call me the weakest one here is therefore largely correct. In a vacuum I would lose against all of you. Therefore, the style of the tournament is largely to my detriment. I will, therefore, be taking enemies I have an advantage against and leave the hard fights to you.”

“Well, as long as we are clear on that shit,” Thana stretched; “Just put me in front of something and I will fuck them up.” “Anyway, we should be on our way now,” John ended that particular discussion and started walking towards the former fortress. He still had to touch the endpoint.

It was about 3 hours before the tournament would actually start, but Lydia insisted on arriving at least two hours early. Well, that worked out since that attack just now had taken all of John’s mana. He still had Momo’s as a back-up, but that wasn’t quite as reliable. Because he couldn’t ABSORB Momo’s mana but instead had to use it to cast stuff instantly, using it was a slight pain.

It was basically going through a bureaucratic program of resource assignment. First, he had to make a request, then Momo had to will that request, and then he could use her mana to cast the spell. If the elementals wanted his mana, they had to add the extra step of asking him beforehand and…well, the picture was quite obvious.

It wasn’t a long interference whatsoever, it resembled a ping of roughly 100 per involved instance, but it was existent and the faster their fights got the more important these little things got. It was like the difference between amateur and professional e-sports. Eventually the split-second became the deciding difference.

They circumvented a lot of that problem by having Momo’s assignment be mostly Mana Protection. While John wasn’t able to absorb Momo’s mana, there was no cost involved to her reinforcing a skill that was already active. Therefore, she could build up the pre-emptive barrier whenever needed or, if it was full, could simply have her mana flow continuously through the barrier. If it wasn’t needed, it simply returned to her. This way, John freed up a lot of his own mana, which went to the elementals with a ping of about 1.

He finally reached the centre of the crater and the magically unharmed throne. Touching it awarded him an absolutely measly sum of experience. ‘I get the feeling that this is calculated based on the amount of damage we did to the structure and its inhabitants…’ John thought. He would have to conduct further research on this another time as this reality broke like a shattered window.

They walked towards the edge of the island. “Urgh,” Momo sneered after a few metres, “after you get to fly, walking sucks...I could jump off and fly to the arena within a fraction of the time you guys need.” “Look at you, being all happy with your new ability,” John said and gave her a warning glance, “but you don’t get to fly, because…”

Momo picked up on the fact that he wanted her to finished the sentence. “…because we don’t want to reveal our hand yet, yes, I get it.” “Also shut the fuck up about you being there faster than me,” Thana told Momo with a displeased face; “I could jump, fall, and then run there before you.”

Well, that was a bold claim but they wouldn’t get to test that. “Stop bickering,” Lydia told them; “We have enough to do as is.” “Lylytina, ya really need to learn to just let people duke it out,” Rave suggested; “It’s fun.” “Arguing is not a form of entertainment!” “Yeah, no, it really is,” the techno-lover waved off; “Ya will see eventually.”

Lydia just sighed and turned away, stepping on the mana street. John, in the meanwhile, spoke to Aclysia. The guardian was on extended housekeeping duty. Originally, John had wanted her to come along to the tournament so she could at least watch, but they now had a visitor that needed to be attended. In other words: Aclysia’s job was to make sure Nathalia didn’t do anything stupid.

“Should you be threatened while you are shopping, don’t hesitate to use Defensive Teleportation to get out of there,” John reminded her. “Of course, master,” Aclysia nodded; she had a slightly saddened expression. She wasn’t absolutely happy about this arrangement either. “I will have food ready when you come home and will be following the events over television and our connection,” she stepped close to him and kissed him goodbye; “Good luck and until later, John.”

“Until later,” he said, and then they walked off. “Man, ya remember when she was the size of your hand?” Rave teased once he caught up to the group, already sliding down the mana street. She grabbed his arm after whirlingly stepping towards him, unbothered by the several hundred metres of airspace below them.

“Good times,” John mused; “It was fun making her grow up.” “It was fun to see too… man, she used to be very inquisitive about stuff,” Rave said. Indeed, the days in which Aclysia had riddled them with questions had passed; for the most part she had now figured out her place in the world. There were still occasional fits of confusion but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Kind of miss it,” John admitted; “When she asks questions nowadays, she mostly wants to hear me talk.” “Like ya don’t like that either,” Rave giggled and poked him in the side; “Ya love the sound of your own voice.” “Not true!” John defended himself; “I love the sound of your voice. I merely like how my enthusiasm of things makes Aclysia happy, is all. We all win.”

“How do I win in that arrangement?” his girlfriend wondered. “You don’t have to listen to me talk about something like Dota 2,” John explained. “True, that game’s balancing is cray-cray and I don’t wanna hear it,” Rave agreed; “How about we watch some anime soon?” “Again? We just finished Log Horizon…I mean that one was pretty good, but the part about the twins in the second season was really boring,” John said. “Yeah, well, it’s not all gold all the time, now issit?” Rave said; “I suggest we watch Dragonball next.”

He knew that name, how could he not, and he knew that it had around 600 episodes. “All of it?” he croaked. “Ja! That’s something to do for a while, plus I want you to watch it so we can watch the abridged. Pretty please?” she said in a voice that she KNEW John couldn’t say no to. That cute tone that made his heart flutter.

“You will not get your way every time if you use that too much, you know?” John asked. Rave smiled; knowing that she had won the argument, she leaned towards his ear, “I could suck ya off instead next time.” While that offer should have lost a lot of its lustre by now…it didn’t. “Deal, but I get to eat steak off Nathalia’s back while you do it,” John said.