Combat Prodigy

Tia heaved her sword to the side and dropping the tip on the floor. "This thing's heavy," sounding so fake a minute ago.

Ellis charged forward.

Clink! Bam!

Ellis parried Tia's cleave from the side and flew a little distance away. Ellis landed with her two feet firmly planted to the ground, her arms were numb from the impact. Tia stood there and waited.

Ellis knew that a heavy great sword like that would hinder her movement to a certain extent. So it was perhaps the reason why Tia didn't take the initiative to attack, remaining to stand her ground.

Another advance!

Ellis threw in multiple slashes from various angles with altered timing. Her swift movements and the mesmerizing patterns created a deadly blossom.

{Stream Blade: 12 Petals Blossom}

It was a basic technique that involved a continuous stream of attacks that from the spectator's point of view, had no distinguishable pattern what-so-ever. On the contrary however, the angles of each strike in the technique were fixed angles to improve striking efficacy. The essence of this technique was timing, it had to be confusing and unpredictable, fast and slow.

This outwardly simple move was something Ellis had been practicing ever since she started learning the way of the sword. Being the first ever complicated sword technique she was ever taught, her movements were utterly refined; the technique beautifully executed without any mistakes.

This was the result of countless years of training.

Countless years of slashing a wooden training dummy...

Against Tia however, this technique didn't do any good, it didn't flatter her one bit. The effectiveness of the technique was overshadowed by Tia's calm demeanor. Tia would raise her great sword with both hands to block each and every attack, unperturbed. Each time, sparks would fly and shrieking clashes would shrill. The number of times both blades came into contact continued onwards like pistols being shot at the fastest trigger.

Tia didn't move much asides adjusting her footing, which depended on the striking angles that she would need to guard against. Soon, she gradually found a pattern. Although Tia had seen Ellis use this exact technique on her multiple instances before, each time, the execution would be different. The angles each of Ellis' strikes were predetermined and fixed, positioned in a way that always required the largest change in movements to block against. This made it hard to counter the incoming blade between the intervals of two slashes. Oddly enough, Tia found that the best way to break it was to fight fire with fire, to grasp the correct timing to a strong parry.

Their blades clashed and separated. Tia made a cleave at the opportunity.

Ellis stopped the barraging strikes, lifting her sword to guard yet again another powerful side cleave. Tossed to the side with her arms screaming and sword vibrating at the impact, Ellis gripped her sword handle with all her might, feeling that it was going to fall off her hand.

She quickly repositioning herself while Tia was still in the midst of negating the centrifugal force brought by the cleave.

A vertical sweep; a distortion manifested in the air.

{Air blade}

Tia was about to react by countering with a magic skill when she noticed that the great sword lacked any sort of gryostone. It was magic-skill-absent! No wonder she didn't decide on this sword when fighting against Ellis last time! Using an alternative method, the centrifugal force of the sword was used to spin her around, dodging the deadly air blade by instinct.

It wasn't deadly. Even if it hit Tia, it would only feel like a tickle.

While the wall behind Tia exploded into chunks.

Just at that time, Ellis appeared in front of Tia with her sword. The blades clashed, a deafening sound reverberated in their ears.

{Wind Compression Burst}

Ellis' blade erupted with an unexpected momentum that defied logic. Just as the arrows nocked by Louise before had air condensed at the tip, it was the fine edge of the blade of the jade sword where the compressed air was being contained. Tia was blasted a few steps back.

"Barrier the floor!" Tia yelled at a sudden realization. With distance created, more air blades from Ellis were thrusted towards Tia. One air blade was already hard to noticed, however, with Ellis being unrestricted in regards to the number of magic skill usage, the number of slashes she could create would reach a destructive number. Tia had forgotten to consider Ellis' undulated magic skills since the start of the battle. Dodging could only do so much at this point.

Even if Tia tried to parry it, it would only bisect the moving projectile. It would do naught to actually stop it from moving forward. The only way to counter magic, was to use magic, which Tia didn't have! Her sword didn't have the gryostone that would usually be attached to negate magic attacks.

Curtis smashed his hands to the ground and channeled an insurmountable amount of mana into the floor. Gold ripples spread out in a circular expansion, climbing up the stone walls and converging at the center ceiling. The whole room in a similar effect as {Coat O' Arms}, glittering slightly with a barely noticeable distorting white-gold light covering the walls. Curtis rarely activated this spell at such a large scale. The mana crystals on his necklace were jumping wild.

Bam!

The first air blade from Ellis that was dodged by Tia hit the wall, the force was dispersed throughout the room. Curtis could feel mana sapped out of the mana crystals at the impact.

Bam! Bam! Rumble!

The room shook from the conversion of the sharp to blunt.

Ellis had forced Tia into a corner, unable to defend against the chaos of invisible blades. She won't be able to dodge for long!

{Quint Strike}+{Air blade}

It was a moment of deathly silence. The clam before a storm. The air churned; the pressure in the room dropped.

Tia raised her giant great sword. With both her hands at the handle and her eyes emitting an eerie glint. She swung the great sword down with steel rending might. The air cracked with an exaggerated ripple.

Two opposing forces collided. An explosive shockwave akin to a bomb detonated where the interceptions met. Curtis felt his mana pool shaking in discord. He instinctively halted his breathing, a sharp pain coursed through his body.

After the buzzing in the ears were reduced to serenity, most of the aftermath dissipated from the room with a ferocious rumble. It took a few more seconds before everything calmed to normalcy.

Ellis who was blow to one end of the room raised her head. Tia, still standing at the same place before the impact did the same. Their gazes met.

One word appeared from within the haze of Ellis' mind—Prodigy.

Even though Tia couldn't utilize any magic skills, she had managed to negate the effect with a counter shockwave. A counter shockwave created by pure brute force!

Ellis clenched her teeth and attempted her third charge against Tia.

A powerful swing was closing in when Tia noticed that her sword was firmly stuck to the ground. This must be the reason why she hadn't been blown away from the shockwave earlier. With Curtis' spell still active, coherently turning the wooden floor solid as steel, and Ellis reaching out for another slice, she had no leeway to pull the sword out in time.

Lowering her stance, and slightly lifting the inverted sword acting the as the pivot. As if it Tia was pulling a lever bound to the ground, she managed to parry against Ellis' strike. Ellis wasn't too prickly about her missed opportunity. When one door closes, another one opens.

{Wind Compression Burst}

Ellis' sword erupted, Tia felt her arm to limpid when her sword was blasted out of the ground. She desperately struggled to hold on to the heavy sword. Ellis used the rebounding force to make a twirl, creating an air blade. She wasn't going to give a Tia any chance to catch her breath! This was it!

{Side step}

Tia's figure shuttered then flickered beside her initial position, the air blade missed. Tia swung her sword in a horizontal upward sweep. Another side-way cleave.

Ellis wasn't a fool, she dodged the attack instead of partying it, unleashing her killing blow right after!

{Side step}

Trip.

"EH?!"

Ellis felt a bone breaking kick directed at her tibia. Adding the momentum derived form her swing, she lost balance and fell to the ground all of a sudden.

Without delay, the great sword was held right above her sweat drenched neck.

The disparity between them was obvious. Tia was probably the most powerful person with the physical enhanced talent Ellis had ever met so far. Though, Tia had spent most of her time sparing with knights and not creatures. Battling against creatures were different from battling against people. Two different sides of the same coin.

Different tactic and skills were required. Furthermore, half of what Ellis learnt was self-trained. So Ellis' loss was somewhat expected. It wasn't that Ellis wasn't 'good', rather it was that she had more experience fighting against creatures than against people. Or more accurately, she was being bullied by someone 3 years younger than her.

"I win," Tia said calmly. She withdrew her sword.

"Wheewh... even though I did my best. Ha, as expected. You're too strong for me after all," Ellis had a hurt look in her eyes when she got back up.

Ellis had her limitations removed while Tia took on an extra burden by not having any magic skills in possession during the entire fight, yet—

"Your attacks were quite scary. I wouldn't want to imagine what would have happened if I messed up," Tia was quite serious with her words.

"You were handicap to an extent though.." Ellis sighed.

Curtis who was standing close to the bench opened his eyes. His gaze ran to the centre of the wooden floor plan. There, a small trench was cut out with wooden splinters running around the broken jagged edges. Even though {Coat O' Arms} had been applied, Tia's attack broke through. Perhaps Curtis was just not able to fortify the entire room. The mana consumption was akin to a gushing tap, just trying to defend against the two fighting a battle of death had used up a lot of mana. His innate mana had also been sapped without his consent to compensate for the sudden influx of mana required.

Half-way through the battle, Curtis had to focus as to not allow his own mana to be used again.

Knowing that the spell was broken through didn't make Curtis feel happy. Tia showed that him that an attack strong enough could actually intercept this spell of his.

Well, it was a stretched barrier though.

"Oh-no," Tia looked at the floor in shock. In a pleading voice she continued, "Curtis.. you can fix that right?"

"Curtis, didn't you barrier the room?" Ellis was astounded at the dug out floor.

"I.. I did,"

"Then..."

"Tia's attack broke past the barrier,"

"..."

Tia's strength was immeasurable. Ellis could only shudder at the thought. Curtis' {Coat O' Arms} was able to defend against the shrieking pufferfish spikes before, which in fact already possessed tyrannical strength. Now, Curtis was saying that he wasn't able disperse Tia's attack because it was too strong?

Curtis glanced around the training room which was at least 400 square meters. He knelt over the bits and pieces of the broken floor and waved his hand over. His spell book flopped open as a golden light surrounded the area. The cracked wooden floor seemingly weaved together like fiber in the weirdest way. Wood fibers twirled around each other, overlapping until the gaps were closed up. Then Curtis proceeded to fix the wall.

Tia let out a sigh in relief. She understood that the magic Curtis used to mend the room was anything but simple. Even though she had no talent in magic, she knew the basics as learning it would help during battles. Whether it was to improve cooperation or combat between opposing niches, a little knowledge could spell the difference between victory and defeat. On this note, she had never seen someone as adapt as Curtis. Most of the time, mages that tried to fix things would modify structures into a rigid piece of work—akin to using super glue.

Although Tia had know Curtis for his remarkable skill, this was something beyond anything she had seen. The type of magic he was using shouldn't be any sort basic elemental magic. Then there was only another possibility, additional magic!

Curtis had pique Tia's interest.

"What magic is that?", this was one of the rare occasions where Tia would ask Curtis something in relation to magic.

"I think it's something like manipulation magic," Curtis' hand still hovered close to the spot. On the surface, it looked like it was all fixed however, there were still a few unstable pieces in between the wood structure of the wall.

"It's an additional magic right?"

"Veritable magic,"

Tia looked at Curtis dumbfounded.

"I don't really use the magic system utilized by the kingdom except the elemental magic ones. Though, I'm not sure why. It just doesn't seem to fit my understanding of magic?"

"How come? Then where did you learn your magic from then?"

"I remember reading through the fundamentals but when I saw the repertoires in my spell book, I knew that it wasn't right..." Curtis finished up the repair and proceeded to make a thinking gesture, "Huh. How did I learn magic?"

"Huh?" Tia spewed.

Something wasn't quite right about him.