3

I couldn't experiment with magic right now because I didn't have the mana needed to do so. I stood up slowly. I needed to do something that to entertain myself for now. Sparring might be a good idea, and Sekka seemed willing. I raised my blade, and he raised his.

The distance between us vanished when I made the first move. It was tempting for me to rely on dominance over space, but I couldn't make a habit of it. Giving myself away as some one who could use magic was big no no right now. Spatial movement was an obvious magic user specific ability. Sekka's surprise was genuine.

I'd forgotten to slow down for him. I stopped before my blade could strike him, but the air from my sudden movement didn't stop. The air hit him in a wave. Knocking him off his feet.

"Sorry," I lowered my blade, "I forgot to slow down for you."

"No," Sekka stood up slowly, "I should have braced myself better. I know you forget to slow down for me sometimes."

I shrugged casually. Sure he did know that, but I didn't usually forget that he was just that much slower then me. I knew instinctively that I shouldn't kill him. When I forgot how fast I was I wasn't always thinking of what I was doing. My body had Letty's training nailed into so well that I literally didn't need to think when I moved.

If it wasn't for those powerful instincts I would have beheaded Sekka right here, and now. I breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly. Reminding myself to slow down to a level that Sekka could react to. I thought that his reaction time was slowly improving, but considering how fast I was, and how slow he was compared to me it was hard for me to tell. I allowed Sekka to make the first move.

I'd be able to gauge his speed, and match him from there. He always hesitated when we were sparring. As if he were afraid of what might happen if he actually managed to wound me. The fact that his fear showed in his emotional hues only made this unfounded fear irritate me more. I didn't care if he wounded me.

I'd actually be happy if he managed to wound me. It would prove to me that he was capable of landing strong attacks, and as a nice little bonus I might get another point in my damage resistance. Not that I really paid attention to my stats anymore now that the system was no longer issuing quests. Sure I still enjoyed the boosts I got with each level even though I hardly ever leveled up anymore. The amount of experience I needed for each level had gotten so high that even the defeat of creatures that gave me close to half a million XP hardly did anything to my experience bar.

I'd just barely leveled up before we started this little rescue mission. The amount of experience I got from winning spars with humans had dropped to just ten XP. It kind of made sense considering how much better I'd gotten at fighting. I hadn't noticed the XP shrink before because my fighting skills hadn't grown nearly as fast as they had in the last year. The amount of experience Letty had showed in every single one of his movements.

Even when I did manage to hit him it felt as if he'd let me. I wasn't even paying attention when he moved to strike me. My arm moved to block his strike. His movements were so slow it felt as if I had enough time to watch a few short videos while I was waiting. I knew that was kind of a mean thing to think, but it wasn't his fault that my heart rate picked up at the thought of a good fight.

I had to be careful to match the speed at which Sekka was moving. It took all his concentration to block my light strikes even though I wasn't moving any faster then he was. The main difference between the two of us being that I felt as if I had an eternity to map out his every possible movement while he was reacting to my movements as fast as he could. So while I had plenty of time to react to him, he had little to no time to react to me. I kept going until he was completely exhausted.

Finding kind of funny that I missed my sparring sessions with Letty. That crazy vampire made it his mission to beat the living piss out of me, and then spent an hour explaining every single mistake I'd made from the beginning of the fight to the end. I hadn't felt that kind of mind numbing exhaustion since I left the planet. He was so much stronger then me that it was starting to seem as if it would be impossible for me to actually complete his request. I shook off that feeling, and sat back down on the floor of the cavern to stare at the wall for a few hours as I went through all the memories I'd collected from the cores of the other dragons as well as the wealth of information Regala had left for me.

I knew that all the sparring I was doing with Sekka was helping him improve, but it wasn't helping me. I thought maybe one of the elves might have been able to give me some trouble, but so far they hadn't sent anyone that stood out to me. The base level of strength that a regular city guard had wasn't enough to give me a real challenge unless they completely overwhelmed me with numbers. The fact that I didn't allow them to outnumber me in a way that could put me in danger, and chose to run when I started to get overwhelmed had kept me relatively safe. You'd think my pride would be wounded from the act of running, but so far I'd only considered running when I was being attacked by twenty or more elves at once.