Chapter 110 Getting Schooled

During group sparring, Azi learned that Shizu's soldiers were not as strong or fast as her as they didn't utilize magic to reinforce their physical capabilities. He also noticed that Touma's students lacked any combat experience which led to them using their spells in an inefficient manner that Azi could use to his advantage.

From this, he had finally put the puzzle pieces together and realized why Shizu and Touma had him fight their students and personal soldiers. Giving Shizu a look, Azi saw her give him a nod and began walking onto the stone platform they had used for today's training.

"I believe they know how strong you are now and have got the point of the lesson." Said Shizu.

"Point? What do you mean by point?" Asked Sumi who was on her back gasping for air.

"I agree as well!" Said the mage lying next to her. "Just what was the point in having us thrown around?"

In response, all Touma could do was to let out a sigh of disappointment and also got onto the task of helping his students to their feet as he told them in a loud but educating voice so that all could hear.

"It's no coincidence that I brought us to a training ground rather than a classroom for today's lessons."

"And there is a reason why I introduced Azi to you all." Added Shizu, who patted Azi on the back.

Continuing the explanation, Azi nonchalantly kept the discussion going while checking his equipment. "These two wanted you to understand the importance of blending thaumaturgic and martial abilities. I assumed from our training today that neither of you practice each others arts of combat"

After getting them settled into a large group, the three saw that the soldiers and students were all still confused. Touma, Azi, and Shizu all sighed in exasperation and Shizu was the one to start to explain the point of today's events. "While I am not a thaumaturge, I still use basic spells like support magic and reinforcement magic."

Touma then cut in with a flourish of his staff. "And I, on the other hand, do use advanced magic as a mode of attack but I have been given martial training in hand to hand combat during my academy days. We wanted you all to understand that you need to break away from your prejudices and start learning from each other."

The group of people began to murmur and complain as they all thought that the reason why the military and thaumaturgic department were divided was so that each kind of fighter could specialize. This was in fact, a misleading idea due to how these people were relatively young and had pre-existing notions.

"We can try, but we can't truly succeed in learning two different skills. You two are the exception since you both have blessed lives. One of you is a daughter of a King and the other had the money to go to the academy!" As a student let loose his complaint this sparked a somewhat raucous murmur amongst the crowd.

With a small smile on her lips, Shizu silences the crowd's growing complaints with a loud clap and then patted Azi on the back to get him to step forward.

"I'll have you know that Azi here is a common peasant. He is both a capable fighter and a capable mage. While he may be 27 years old he has only learned magic and hand to hand combat for only the last 3 three months. So? What is your excuse?"

With a pointed glare and smug smile, the crowd's collective jaw dropped at Shizu's words. Some were about to rebut the validity of Shizu's statement, but it was silenced by Touma.

"I can attest to her claim. While Azi is not my apprentice, he has been under my own limited tutelage since his arrival in Shisayama. He, unlike the most of you, has fought side by side with us against monsters such as gengiri and kengiri. On the other hand, some of you have fought in small skirmishes with Uzuru and mock battles with each other. These do little in the face of large scale battles where the number of enemies goes into the triple digits."

Continuing, Shizu brandished her katana and pointed at them all.

"Skills and abilities can be learned through practice and lessons, but actually practical skills are forged in the field. The point of this sparring match was to show you all your shortcomings."

She then directed her eyes at Sumi.

"Some of you may already have experience in the field, but this is a reminder that there is more you can do to improve."

To this, Sumi's eyes became downcast as she began to realize her folly. In the past year since she became vice captain, she and some of her fellow friends in the group were veterans of the past war with Uzuru.

They had some combat experience but they grew prideful on the few small victories they gained. In all, their feats only amounted to a few battles with small enemy patrols. In these cases, they always had the element of surprise and they never met any opposition that was too much for them to handle.

This was a result of Sumi's cautious side which was beneficial in keeping her people out of danger but was a determent in growth as she avoided any challenges when it came to training or improving the teams overall ability to handle much more dangerous tasks.

Sumi also remembered how she had unfairly blamed a mage for not fighting on the frontline like herself and her comrades, but began to realize that it was her pridefulness that drove her to such unsightly behavior at the time.

A similar realization came to Touma's students. They were blessed to learn thaumaturgy and be able to learn it quite quickly, but they became drunk on the power they had attained in such a short time.

Magic was a practice not taught publicly, but to be taught by graduate from the academy was an even rarer boon. A boon that they came to understand that they had taken advantage of and used for their personal prides and agendas.

As the group of people began to internalize their thoughts, they became more depressed at the realization of their folly. Feeling that he should do something, Azi walked up to the group while thinking about what to say. Taking a deep breath, he let loose the best advice he could give

"I know that this will be difficult, but only by training like this will you be able to push forward from this."

Broken out of their thoughts, the group began to listen.

"If you need it, I'll spar with all of you again." Azi then put up a wry smile and jokingly added a comment to help incentivise the group. Pulling out his forging hammer from his toolbelt, he threw it up with a spin and caught it.

"In fact if you need equipment I'm also a blacksmith so if any of you need anything new equipment or repair I can do it for you at the right price as well." Indicating a coin with his other hand, he gave them a merchant-like grin but he was summarily smacked in the back of his head by Shizu.

"Stop shamelessly marketing yourself. Can't you see that they need time to think?!"

"Oh come on Shizu, it was only a harmless offer. Plus, I'll give them a discount."

Annoyed by his shameless offer and his smug face, Shizu began to wrap Azi into a hug but this was different as he began to feel a tight pressure around his neck as she choked him with her arms from behind.

The crowd of people began to cheer up a bit at the sight of this funny duo and began laughing at the silly sight of the two's little argument as Azi sputtered out a cry of surrender. Touma smiled wryly but began to direct his students out of the training grounds as they had another lesson he needed to teach them in a classroom.

Interested in something other than more physical training, Azi began to pry Shizu's hands off of his neck and ran as fast as he could to follow Touma and his students.

"HEY! AZI! Get back here! We have more training to do!" Complained Shizu, but Azi ignored her as he had that attentive look in his eye that she knew that she could not break him out of.

After heaving a sigh of disappointment since she wanted Azi to spend more time with her, Sumi came to comfort her with a few pats on her back. Noticing the pouting expression on Shizu's face, Sumi's brow raised in interest.

"Do you really like him that much?"

Stiffening up at her question, Shizu meekly answered as she fiddled with her two pointer fingers as they pressed against each other. "Maybe…. I mean he ummm is my potential fiance and he's a good fighter and all and well he is cute and huh?"

Seeing the smug face that Sumi and her personal soldiers had, Shizu's brows began to furrow in anger.

"ALRIGHT ENOUGH OF THAT! GET BACK TO TRAINING!"

Shizu then emitted an aura of intimidation at them but they were unaffected this time. Sumi and the rest just gave a laxed affirmation as they dusted themselves off and got back to sparring. Wanting to cool her head, Shizu went to the edge of the training grounds and placed a hand on a tree's trunk to steady herself and her rapidly beating heart.

When Sumi had asked her question so suddenly, her heart had skipped a beat and sped up which made her lose her dutiful and prideful attitude. She hoped that her soldiers would not make light of her in the future and made a commitment to thoroughly train them today.

Meanwhile, Azi was sitting in a room with the departed students as Touma began asking if anyone had any questions about what they learned during the sparring match. Students began to ask about tactics to use against fighters who are able to close the distance to a mage. Azi listened but over time was able to ask a question that was on his mind.

"During the fight with one of your student's, I noticed that they moved rapidly from one place to another. Was that a spell of some kind?"

"Yes, In fact it's a basic teleportation spell. It's a somewhat useless spell as the range is limited and I believe my student used it in panic as you were charging at him so quickly. Its uses are limited as you need a talisman to activate the spell and the amount of magic energy needed to use it is incredibly high. Nobles usually hire multiple mages to help supply the needed magic so that they could make a quick getaway, but hiring numerous mages is quite costly so only the most wealthy can afford it."

Touma then began to write up the images of the runes and magic circles needed to activate the spell onto a chalkboard at the front of the class.

Azi began taking this all down into his brown notebook and was thoroughly fascinated by how intricate the spell was. This was clearly the most advanced spell he had seen so far and his mind began to think about the wide scale application if he could find a way to make it more practical to use.

Instant teleportation was a fantastical idea that gripped Azi's attention but he soon had to come out of his musing as Touma asked him a question.

"If you don't mind Azi? Could you explain how your daggers work? Just how did they dispel the fireballs?"

Not minding, Azi took one of the two daggers out and showed them the runes he had written on the dagger's blade.

"When I supply magic to the dagger through the handle, it gets absorbed by the blood steel in the handle of the dagger. This then fuels the runic enchantments that help sharpen the blade's edge but the magic does not end there. After I was able to make blood steel, I found that it conducts magic energy very well and while this is possible for other materials, what makes blood steel different is that the magic energy stays stored for a prolonged amount of time. So much so that the metal becomes like a storage bank for magic energy."

One student then realized how the dagger was able to dispel the fireballs. "So because the blades contain magic energies, they are able to interfere with other magic energies?"

"Correct! As you all know, magic can be blocked physically with a shield or sword but not dispelled. Magic energy, say a fireball colliding with another fireball, will cancel each other out. My dagger was loaded with the magic energies of a fireball spell in order to cancel out the incoming magic. I'm able to activate the spell so quickly thanks to these."

Azi then took out a blood steel square that was resting in his toolbelt. He had expended his supply of charged blood steel squares but he had plenty of uncharged ones in a leather pouch on his toolbelt.

Raising up the freshly charged blood steel square for all to see, Touma and the students marveled at the small black piece of metal that seemed to emanate a small red glow from the cracks spread across the metal's surface.

Azi then passed it and the dagger around and went on to explain how this was a new creation of his own making that allowed for the easy use of magic for himself. This initially got everyone's hopes up as they believed they could utilize it but Azi had to shoot down that wishful thinking as he explained that they can only be created and used by him.

He told about how Shizu and Touma had tried to energize the blood steel squares when he was banned from using magic. They found that they could not utilize the energized blood steel as it would only work if the person using it was able to directly absorb magic energy into their body.

They could do what Azi did and make a slot or indent in their staves to indirectly manipulate the magic energy but Touma had tried this and got somewhat disappointing results. A simple fireball spell had less power than when Azi used the charged blood steel to do the same.

Touma hypothesized that this was related to Azi's innate ability to absorb magic energy directly into himself.

Moving on from how the blood steel was used, Azi then told the story about his work with Kajima when creating the new metal. He was somewhat perplexed by how the student's had fear in their faces when he mentioned Kajima.

After Azi finished his tale, Touma continued his lessons with a wry smile while Azi had to ponder why Kajima was so feared by the students. He knew that Kajima was quite intimidating but was wondering what kind of reputation he had in the Kujyuri army.