novelraw CHAPTER 359: Training
CHAPTER 359: Training
I awoke the next morning with a sleeping Nyx on top of me and Helena next to me. It had been a peaceful night, or at least nobody had raised any sort of alarm. When I left the tent I asked Kaito for a report.
"The night was quiet, there was no sign of any enemies." Kaito said.
"There was a cute fox peeking out of the woods." Rose added.
"Ok, keep up the good work! You did well." I praised my undead.
Once everyone was awake we had breakfast. It was simple and consisted of bread, cheese and hot coffee. After that we packed up and continued our journey.
Sadly, travelling was not the most exciting thing. While our carriage was comfortable, sitting for that long was strangely exhausting. Further, there was not much to do. Skadi and Cassie did have books to entertain themselves, while I had only brought a necromancy textbook. It was interesting but I did not have a corpse to experiment with. I spent some time chatting with my friends and practising shield spells, but the time dragged on.
Helena borrowed one of Skadi's novels and I noticed a slight blush as she was reading it. It did make me a bit curious.
I used our midday stop to stretch my legs a bit but we did not stop for long. In the evening I felt like doing something, so I proposed a sparring session.
"An excellent idea!" Kaito agreed.
"Keeping in shape is important, maybe we should have an exercise routine while we are away from the academy." Skadi suggested.
Cassie groaned.
"Sure." Helena agreed.
I nodded as well. We did not have to get up early and run every day, or something like that. We just had to do a bit of exercise to keep in shape.
"Let's do some sparring with weapons, followed by a bit of magic training." Skadi suggested.
I still was not that great when it came to weapons. I knew the basics and thanks to being a foxkin, combined with my mana circulation, I was decent. But that was not good enough to overcome Helena's training, or Skadi being a spellblade. Cassie was the only opponent I could beat with a weapon.
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We included my undead in the training and I was briefly hopeful I stood a chance against Rose. She lacked any proper training with weapons but being a vampire gave her an edge when it came to her physical combat. Especially since her getting close enough to bite counted as a win for her, which meant I had to fight very defensively.
Egon's mercenaries watched our sparring but did not join in. While we were busy I made sure that the tier twos stood watch and that at least one of us kept an eye on our surroundings at all times.
During our sparring session I ended up on the cold ground many times. We were camping on a patch of grass again, but the ground was not that soft. If it were not for my mana circulation I would have a lot of bruises tomorrow. Still, the physical exercise felt right after all that sitting.
"Ok, how about we switch to some magical training?" I proposed, while lying on the ground. I had just lost a fight with Hatsumi, who offered me her hand.
"Do you want to train your shields?" Hatsumi asked.
I shook my head, as I accepted the hand and stood up. "I think I should work on more offensive spells too. My current ice and necrotic water shield are good. I have started to use the infused water for attacks too but I should practice that more. I think if I create something like an ice spike and fill it with necrotic water it would be a great attack. Especially if I can shoot multiple of them."
"That does sound devious." Helena mused. "Even better, you can mix in normal ice spikes too. Magical hardened ice has good penetration and can do wonders against armour. Then you can have thin spikes where the ice mostly contains your water and injects it through any opening you have created."
"And you do have a lot of sparring partners who can be safely doused in necrotic water." Kaito observed.
"Meow!" Nyx protested.
Kaito looked at her. "I believe I saw you go fishing last night. You do have a water affinity, you cannot possibly complain about getting wet. You are even enjoying spending time inside the frozen boxes Chariot creates on his back."
"Meow!" Nyx insisted.
"I suppose there are enough non-feline undead to help Koyuki train." Kaito conceded. "I volunteer."
"I am ok with it too." Rose offered. "Maybe I can train some defensive spells at the same time?"
I scratched my head. "Sure. Did you learn a new defensive spell?"
Rose smiled. "I am working on a blood shield! I can draw blood from my body and form a round shield in front of me. It is a rather versatile spell, I can even shoot blood spikes from the shield and use them to attack! Well, in theory. I do need more practice…"
"Be careful when you use your own blood. You have a limited amount and running low will hurt you." Hatsumi warned.
Rose nodded. "I always have a potion from Cassie at hand for emergencies. I need to find a way to drain more from my enemies in combat. Biting is an option but that does require me to get close."
"You can borrow blood from allies too. Restoring the blood of a living creature can be done with water magic, at least to some extent. You cannot drain someone dry, obviously. How does your necrotic heal work, Koyuki? Does it also help with the blood of a vampire?" Skadi asked.
"It does, but not very efficiently." I replied. "The necrotic heal mostly restores undead flesh and bones. I think vampires are not very good at producing blood through mana and their body does not produce any naturally, that is why they drink it."
Rose looked slightly panicked. "I could never bite you, Koyuki! You are my Mistress!"
I shrugged. "If it becomes necessary in combat I don't see a problem. Nyx scratches me sometimes when I play with her and I am not fast enough."
Nyx nodded.
"I believe vampires have an instinct to not bite their master." Hatsumi stated.
"It's just an option. Let's continue training for now!" I said.
Rose's shield was not that large but it was very durable for a liquid shield. The amount of blood it needed was a concern but she could recover most of it after she ended the spell. Hopefully she could increase her efficiency a bit but blood potions might just be the best solution for now. Cassie agreed to make more once we arrived at Helena's home.
Overall sparring was a great success. Once we finished we were all hungry, tired and covered in sweat.