033 Defensive Water

"I have to try; I need some sort of defensive ability. I was lucky he was so focused on defense. I could win just by attacking back, but if he had even one ability to increase his speed. I would be helpless." Liam said to Ralph, when they we're nearing the training field. There was still light of day, their stay in the Golden eagle's faction did not last long.

"Just don't expect this to be as easy as the water arch, water is not a defensive focused element, performing defensive skills will be a lot harder." Ralph said to Liam.

"I'll just copy what William did, but use water qi instead of metal." Liam said.

"You won't succeed. The metal is a solid and does not generally exist in the world, he had to create its intricate structure to make the metal wall. While you only have to summon the water and make it keep its shape." Ralph said.

"And because water is not usually meant for that, I'll have to use a lot more qi to keep the shield up?" Liam asked to see if he understood correctly.

"Yes, that's why I suggest to either keep it small or use it at the right interval and then remove it." Ralph said, but their conversation had stopped as they reached the training valley.

"I'll try, if I can't do it by tonight, I'll try something else." Liam said before he went to an empty grassy field.

"If he can do it by tonight without any help, I'll use my next batch of credits and the ones I have been saving to buy him an element gathering formation." Ralph said to himself jokingly.

"William put his hands up and a bit apart, then a metal beam just appeared in his hands and a split second later, that beam went down to the ground. Nothing to really help me, this will be a lot harder than the water arch." Liam thought.

First, I'll make a sphere of water, then make it rectangular. "Liam was attempting to make a water shield.

"It's so difficult, why does it require so much strength to make it keep such form." Liam struggled.

"I can't wait, I have to test it out." Liam dropped the water shield in front of him and went towards the area with dummies meant for this purpose. There was a big field with a gray dummy, that had its hand raised forward and there was a dummy every few hundred meters.

Just when Liam got close to one of the dummies and he wanted to set it up for his use, he heard an explosion a few kilometers away from him. When he turned, he saw a massive 50m high cloud of smoke.

Luckily the smoke subsided pretty quickly, and with Liam's improved vision he could only see a man with a fully scorched black dummy in front of him.

"This is why there is such a huge distance between each dummy."

Liam quickly ignored the man and returned to his training.

"This dummy will shoot out a pellet every minute. I have set its strength at the first human realm." Liam said when he got a few meters back. Waiting for the dummy to shoot at him.

Liam counted the seconds, and when there we're only a few seconds left before the dummy shot, Liam started preparing. He put up the blob of water and made it take the shape of a rectangle. Then he waited.

"Three, two, one, now!" Liam counted down the bot's shooting time. A small pellet flew out of the dummy's raised up hand, it reached Liam's water shield and the pellet stopped almost immediately.

"I can increase its strength" Liam thought, then he set the dummy to the third human realm and walked back to try out again. A short minute later, a much faster pellet shot out of the dummy's hand and it stopped half way inside Liam's shield.

"This is so difficult." Liam exclaimed as he dropped the water to the ground yet again. He had been making large rectangular blocks of water, similar to William's metal sheet.

There's no way this will be viable in a fight, if it costs me this much energy just to block a few shot's." Liam said, as he began to wonder in what ways he could reduce the energy intake of this skill.

"The things that make me loose the most energy is keeping the form of the giant block, so if I just make it smaller, I won't use nearly as much energy." Liam thought, but he had no clue how large the shield should be. What thickness, it needed to be to block the shot, how wide it needed to be to easily block the shot and not miss.

Without buying a book, where someone has already done all of the work for me, I'll just have to go on trial and error until I figure it out." Liam thought to himself.

He set the dummy to the fourth human realm, where the pellets we're a slight threat, but not too bad if he messed up.

And Liam also set the dummy to fire every 20 seconds, not giving him a lot of time to rest to truly see if his technique worked.

Luckily, the bot fired at the exact same spot every time, so Liam did not have to worry about predicting the bullet and razing the shield in the correct spot.

The pellet shot out of the dummy, Liam blocked it with a lot smaller shield this time, but still it was about 20-30 cm across. As soon as the bullet hit the shield, he would drop the water to the ground, the pellet falling with it. And later just a second before the pellet shot again, Liam would summon his water shield and block the shot. Three minutes later, he fell to the floor.

"I can't, my energy is spent. Even with the shield being smaller and optimizing it, using it for only a second or two and then resting for almost 20 seconds, I could only last 3 minutes or 9 shots. In a fight, I won't have nearly as much rest time and will probably have to block a lot more than 9 shots. Not to mention all of the other stuff I'll need to do. Is this water shield technique just not viable?" Liam thought, as he was on the verge of giving up, the sun was setting and he didn't really know what else he could do to optimize the energy usage.

Liam looked at the setting sun, using his hand to cover the still strong sunlight. It's spherical shining form, it was quite amazing. That's when Liam thought of an idea.

"Water naturally curves to form a sphere and I always blocked the pellet with the center of the shield, never once did I use the corners. Why spend so much energy and qi deforming the water, when I can just let it hold its natural state. At the center where the impact is the strongest, the shield will also be the thickest." Liam felt an idea light up in his brain.

Then, he confidentially increased the dummy's strength to the fifth human realm, and he also set it to fire every 5 seconds, making it simulate a more realistic fight.

Liam prepared his sphere of water, which was a lot easier to make and hold, then a pellet flew at high speeds towards him. The pellet hit the sphere right in the center and made it three thirds of the way.

Liam did not have a lot of time between the pellet shots, he dropped the water shield and prepared for the next one.

Soon, ten pellets were shot in quick succession. Liam thought that it was too easy now, that's why he began moving around, to get the feel to use the shield subconsciously. It won't be much use if it required all of his focus to use it.

At first, he was slow, but by the time the moon shined up in the sky, Liam was able to move around freely and even use his attack skills in between the shields.

"It still takes more energy than I would have liked, but I can use this in a fight." Liam smiled. Then he started walking towards his and Ralph's usual meet up spot after training, before going to the villa together.

When he got there, Ralph was already waiting for him.

"How did it go? With the water shield." Ralph asked.

"Come and see for yourself, throw out an attack at me." Liam smiled confidently.

"If you say so." Ralph smiled as he threw out his hand forward and from it, a spear of golden flames flew towards Liam.

"This is so much stronger than the pellets!" Liam said in panic, he knew the shield he used up until now would not be able to stop the fire spear. He put up his hands and a water sphere a meter in diameter was formed. The fire spear shot at the sphere and a large cloud of water vapor was formed. Once the water vapor disappeared, Liam could be seen with a small sphere of water, that was only 10 cm in diameter.

"Impressive." Ralph said.

"You're the one who's impressive, I used such a big shield and I barely came out of it. I can see that, that was a relatively light attack for you, you could throw out two more before the vapor of the first one was gone." Liam said. Even if now, they were both at the fifth human realm, it was quite apparent that Ralph was a lot stronger.

"You're being too generous. That is only because of the strength of my phoenix flames, if you used your murky spirit water instead of the general, your defensive power would be a lot greater." Ralph commented.

"I should really experiment more with it." Liam thought to himself.