Chapter 3: The Invitation
THE next day, I woke up at the same time as always, even though I’d missed out on a bit of sleep. I could fight perfectly normally after three days of no sleep, so this was not a problem.
I finished my daily training, took a shower, then had breakfast before leaving my room more than an hour before my first class was meant to start. I had promised everyone we’d train that morning.
Eric needed to know about last night with Chris, but I couldn’t break the promise I made with the others. I had already sent him an overview via Message, and we agreed to skip our first class to talk. He didn’t seem to mind not going to class at all, probably because he regularly took time off from school to handle his royal duties anyway.
“Morning, Arius!” Vern called out.
“Right on time as always,” Milia greeted.
By the time I arrived in the training room, they were already there. Even Noelle was there, even though she hadn’t said she’d come today.
They’d already activated the Special Barrier and broken off into sparring pairs to practice, Milia versus Sophia and Vern versus Zeke.
“Good luck, Your Highness!” Sasha shouted in support of Zeke from the sidelines. Vern had higher-level stats, but Zeke was also strong as a love interest from Love Academy, which meant he put up a good fight.
“Ah, my good friend, I’ve improved significantly from yesterday,” Vern bragged. He’d abandoned his weird obsessions with “proper” fighting and reevaluated his style, even using magic in his fight against Zeke.
“Arius, was there anything you noticed about the way I fight?” asked Zeke. Maybe he didn’t like that he’d lost. Yesterday, he hadn’t asked me any questions after our sparring match, so this was a good sign.
“You fight with a single longsword. Is there a reason you don’t use a shield?” I asked.
“Uh…”
“I’m not saying you should use a shield, just that if you’re not using your left hand because you’re just messing around, you’ll be at a disadvantage. Milia has her shield fixed to her arm so she can attack with her open hand. Sophia has a dagger with a guard in her left hand, not for attack, but in place of a shield, because she doesn’t have the strength for one. If you want to get stronger too, you need to think about how you can win and adjust things, including your fighting style.”
“Huh. I see what you mean. Guess I might try a few things out.”
Zeke often acted like a bad boy because he was always being compared to his twin brother, Eric, who excelled at everything. However, he was a nice and open person.
“Milia, I’m going all in from the start!” shouted Vern.
“And I don’t intend to lose, Your Highness!”
Now Vern and Milia were starting a match.
There was something I’d noticed during our sparring match the day before. Milia was always high-specced because she was the protagonist of Love Academy. She could use a good balance of spells and sword skills, and even heal, making her a good all-rounder. Milia was diligent about her mana manipulation training, and she even went into the Academy’s dungeon when she had time. That meant, out of everyone, Milia had improved the most since starting school.
“Ah, I’m really understanding what Arius meant now,” Vern huffed after the match.
Milia had won by a landslide. She’d started by casting Strengthen and Haste, and she could freely use both sword and sorcery, meaning she overpowered him throughout the entire match. Even when Vern managed to activate a skill, he hit nothing but air as she dodged out of the way.
“Vern, you’ve got power and defense. You need to think about how you can make the best use of that. But you won’t win if you rely on your stats alone, even if you fight with force,” I told him. It was easy to just give him an answer, but in the end, he needed to use his own head to figure it out, or he wouldn’t be able to internalize it.
“If I’m fighting Milia, then maybe I need to focus on counterattacks. And it’d be a good idea for me to learn how to use support spells,” he pondered.
Maybe it was because he had high stats that he’d never learned support spells, but there wasn’t even that big a difference between them in terms of power and defense once Milia cast Strengthen. With her mana manipulation at the level it was, there was no way Vern could win against her in his current state.
“Hey, Arius, you don’t use sword skills in our sparring matches. That’s because you don’t need them against opponents like us, right?” asked Milia, sounding curious.
“To be honest, that is part of it, but I pretty much don’t use fighting skills at all. Skills have all sorts of limits. When you increase the precision of your mana manipulation, you don’t really see a need for skills.”
Fighting skills increased your offensive power using mana, but some skills had an elemental affinity. A Light-based skill would be good against undead monsters, but weak against angel monsters. They always had their pros and cons. But if you improved your mana manipulation, you could use that on its own to supplement your power and speed. So basically, if you went hard in on mana manipulation, you could be more certain you’d inflict damage using an attack of pure mana.
“Does that mean…you don’t think fighting skills are necessary?” Milia mused. “You really are in a whole different league from us.”
Everyone else looked surprised too, but from my perspective, yeah, it simply made sense not to rely on fighting skills.
“That’s just how far you can take mana manipulation,” I replied. “It has no limits.”
Even with the same amount of mana, a difference in the precision of someone’s mana manipulation could have a significant impact on power. And the same could be said about spells. When it came to the most intense offensive spells, if you took mana manipulation to the extreme, you were attacking with pure mana. My mana manipulation was nowhere near that level, though.
“My turn next, if you don’t mind, Prince Vern,” said Sophia. It looked like Vern was taking on a lot of matches to hammer out the details of his new fighting style.
“Shadow Thorns!” cried Sophia as she used the tier-two Dark spell to bind Vern. “Dark Missile! Darkness Spear!”
She fired off a series of Dark offensive spells. Dark spells weren’t the greatest in terms of damage, but they debuffed the target by reducing their stats or applying status effects like paralyze.
“Not bad, Sophia, but not enough. Fireball!”
Vern countered with the tier-three Fire spell. In terms of sheer power, Vern’s spell was stronger, and he had the higher level and stats, but the debuffs of the Dark spells were steadily slowing his movements. The Special Barrier didn’t protect against those additional effects.