nope, you've got the place to yourself

You had expected to see Three around somewhere, Stephanie's order had been to train you each morning not just weekdays, but it's the weekend to you expectation wasn't huge. There also wasn't a waiting bucket of swords for you so you decided to to on unarmed fighting.

You let out a breath as you slide your body into the stance. At this point you should be going all out when you do this. You're in a game were **** and your **** could be possible half measure's in your training will just make you weaker if it came to a fight. However the last time you went all out was when you were still recovering and even then you melted the sand into glass around you.

You didn't want to ruin the training arena again, if nothing else replacing all the sand must be pain, you were near the coast but carting fresh sand here every day must suck even with magic. You slid out of the stance. Well you could work on magic. You had been wanting to avoid your disintegration becoming your only trick. Now was a good a time as any to think of an alternative. You had no target to aim at so this would be a more theoretical practice than practical.

First the weakness of your disintegration. It only affect a single item. If someone is wearing armour or even a shirt that is what will be hit not them, if you only get one shot that means it's useless. So you need something that can penetrate. The other weakness of disintegration is that it is a cascade failure, meaning that all it takes to counter is simply removing the possibility, cutting away affected fabric, creating a simple air gap between atoms all effective and easy counters. So you need something that can last beyond a first strike.

Heat is a good option but easily overcome. You melt sand with movement but aren't incinerating yourself or your clothes in the process, provided you protect them appropriately. Stands to reason any of the other champions would have similar methods developed.

There is cold. Cold removes energy from atoms, maybe if something is cold enough it can also limit or remove magic, however that can also be overcome in a similar method to heat even if you haven't had to do it before. Which is a good point in itself, you have a possible open weakness.

You close your eyes and focus on your magic. Cold is just removing energy from atoms, you can use magic to add energy so stands to reason you can subtract as well. The obvious problem is that unlike adding subtracting is a totally different field. Add is just making the magic inside outside, the inverse requires you too ... you aren't sure how to conceptualize this and that's a problem, if you can't conceptualize you can't do. You could try pulling inside you however that isn't the totality of the problem. There is natural magic around you but not enough for it's removal to substantially effective.

You drum your fingers against your leg as you think. The sensation gives you an idea. You open your eyes and hold out your hand. If you can get your hand cold enough it can cool the air, it's not much its something to build on. You use your magic to hold the atoms that touch you still creating a layer of ice so cold it should actually be nearing absolute zero. You flex your hand shatter the ice and returning energy to the atoms. So much for that.

This would be easy if you had a method of externalizing properly. Your external shields are just that but you need them to be able to move or else they won't be good shields. The problem is that anything you think of requires movement, and movement provide energy, you can make things cold no worries, you could probably make the area around you freezing but that is hardly useful. You could overcome that by just using your magic to keep your atoms moving. If it isn't as close to absolute zero as you can get it's easily overcome.

You can't think of way around this. Something that can coat a battlefield but is still usable in a large area. If it's too small they can throw magic at you from range or not approach and wait. The obvious solution is a magical miasma. That would require a lot of focus but it would move with you, you could also limit it's location, if you freeze the air into a solid in certain parts you could control someones path to you, the solid wouldn't really be effective, air is just not dense enough for a solid to form in any decent size but tiny patches could be do able.

You close your eyes again and let you magic out, little tendrils spreading out halting every atom they touch. It's not enough, you'd need so many tendrils it wouldn't be possible to control them, this is just a preamble to a miasma but it shows a problem. Total area control will need focus, at least until you learn enough to off load it onto your nonself-consciousness. And even then combat will make you need to refocus to make sure it still works. No time like the present.

You pull your magic back and change tact. Instead of tendrils you just use a bubble. You can feel he air freeze around you. about double your height in all directions. It will need to be bigger, significantly so to be effective. You keep growing it until you feel it's limit. The edge not quite able to hold the atoms around it still. About the size of the sand arena, not bad but against a champion pointless, far too small to counter someone that can move across it in a fraction of a second.

You focus on the magic inside it, you can feel the entire area and with your magic like this you can move the atoms as will. You are even able to make vacuum is parts which isn't something you thought about but could be incredibly useful.

You spend half an hour working at your dead zone before stopping. You weren't exactly expending magic to do this, at least not much beyond simple entropy, but it was a lot of mental focus. Feeling every atom, well there are a LOT of atom. Open eyes and a breath that you can see. Not bad it was lasting even after you pulled your magic back even if only for a moment. You took a step and your foot slipped.

You'd frozen the sand. Right you went with sphere, obvious problem really. You jumped out of the frozen sand and looked at it. You're sure it'll warm up quickly enough to not be a problem. You hadn't come up with an alternative offensive spell but this is fine. You preferred defence anyway, if you get into a fight you want to try and talk your way out first then resort to combat only as necessary.

You wondered where you should go now. The people you'd normally spend time with, read have sex, all had other commitments. You could go and get Edin from Blue, would be nice to spend the day with him but Blue seemed to be getting more pissed at you rather than less so interrupting their time together might not be a good idea. You could go looking the sisters and Cynthia but well that ends one way.

You started walking to your room. You were still wearing your uniform since cleaning it with Clare so you had to change no matter what.

As you climbed the stairs and heard people begin to stir for breakfast there is one option that occurs. A promise by a certain someone to show you around the city. You threw on the more plain looking outfit you could find, you could go with the blue one from last time but maybe you should expand your wardrobe preferences. You settled on a dull red tunic and pants with similar shoes. They were actually more sedate than you expected but as you left your room they caught the light and you saw the fabric shimmer in a pattern you didn't see long enough to identify. You decided it was unlikely Anastasia would have gotten you something too racy and the pattern didn't amount to a 'property of Anastasia' brand across your butt. Now if it had been bought but Asune or Vatarie there would.

You walked down to the dinning room and ate quickly. You didn't see Lucia but she was exhausted from Wednesday so you figured you'd be going to get her from her room. You also ate quickly so the sisters couldn't intercept you as you ate.

Reaching Lucia's door you knocked lightly. There was no response so you knocked louder. When you heard movement from inside you backed away. At that point you wondered if Auria had to pay her kinda girlfriend a visit and you were interrupting morning sex.