Chapter 522: Insurmountable Wall of a Man

Things weren’t like the movies. Rocky had people helping with his training, but the best Argrave could muster was a psychopath who wanted to do unspeakable things to him.

Argrave learned within ten seconds that someone trying to kill him was not inclined to help teach him, and Argrave certainly wasn’t a natural combat genius. King Norman rushed, Argrave defended feebly with a ward, and then he got hit when King Norman used two hands instead of one. With that, panic erupted and Argrave teleported away. After all that bluster, confidence, all he amounted to was a slight distraction on the king’s day.

He didn’t give up on the loop, though—he ambushed the king time and time again, and yet at best he scored a hit on the head that made the king bleed a little. After that, Argrave scurried away like a rat the moment that the king made any attempt to subdue him. Argrave reminded himself that he was doing to this to learn, but that was small comfort. What the hell was he actually learning? It was what he’d always done—land a hit, get scared if they ran at him, and then run away when he was actually in danger. Sometimes he’d rely on his Brumesingers, but now they, too, were absent.

After the first loop, the result was clear. Good King Norman had a slight cut on his brow, and Argrave had exhausted all of his resources. He desperately scrambled to get the next part of the message to Anneliese and his people, then entered the next loop.

Norman 1, Argrave 0.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Argrave tried again on the next loop, and... a few... after it. Surely it couldn’t be this bad, he thought. The reality?

Norman 12, Argrave 0.

The best that Argrave ever managed was cutting King Norman’s throat. But that hadn’t killed the king—it’d only excited him more. He staunched the wound, hunting after Argrave all the while. Somehow, the king’s wound closed before he bled out. Confronting things objectively... Argrave hadn’t done anything different. He’d just gotten lucky. He was learning nothing.

This thirteenth go, Argrave confronted some facts. Fact one: he really had nothing prepared for true combat. [Bloodfeud Bow], [Electric Eel], [Nine-Tailed Bloodbriar]—they were good, hard-hitting spells, and the derivatives he’d made like the [Bloodarc Bow] were all the same. But Norman was faster than he was, stronger than he was. Argrave had no way to dodge besides teleporting with shamanic magic—brutally effective, but it would be a huge mistake to rely on that beyond what was necessary. Spirits were a valuable resource, not to be spent lightly.

Argrave thought about the skilled spellcasters he knew. Three stood out—Rowe, Castro, and the Alchemist. He excluded the third, because the Alchemist used his unique constitution to be a juggernaut every bit as strong as Orion. Argrave, fortunately, never had to face Rowe on the field of battle, but the aged elf had formal sword training and a divine weapon hidden in his cane that was more powerful than most. Castro, however, had beaten Argrave soundly in their spar. And how? Quick-thinking, an adaptable set of spells, and centuries of experience. Two others deserved mention—Onychinusa and Traugott. Their strength came from their A-rank ascension, but even still, they could endure people several magnitudes stronger than them because of their ability to avoid damage.

Each had ways to mitigate their lack of mobility. Castro masterfully used wind magic to dance with the grace of a peregrine falcon. Traugott fell through the Shadowlands to dodge even the strongest people like Orion with ease. Rowe had a dragon, naturally, but he also knew how to fight hand-to-hand as well as any soldier. Onychinusa could dissipate into magic to become immaterial. He didn’t need to throw himself against the wall that was Good King Norman until he succeeded. That was heading nowhere, fast. Argrave needed mobility.

Argrave let loop after loop end, delivering his plan to his companions piecemeal as he practiced shortening the time it took him to cast spells. He followed Castro’s lessons to the letter—complete the spell, waste nothing, and do it again and again while changing spells. All the while, he concocted ideas in his brain.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.

Argrave could copy Castro—controlled bursts of wind magic to move whichever way he pleased. He could just try and get good at hand-to-hand, like Rowe. But perhaps there was another option—the Traugott option, where he took full advantage of his A-rank ascension. Perhaps his blood echoes could become more than mere repositories for blood and magic.

At the beginning of a new loop, as Argrave’s companions made their way into their designated positions, he again manipulated a meeting with the king at the training hall. He didn’t spare words, didn’t taunt—he merely began the fight, hitting the king hard in the chest with a [Bloodfeud Bow]. As ever, the monster took them as if it were a thrown stone rather than an all-powerful magic projectile.

Argrave had intense focus, practice, and a newfound advantage. Good King Norman’s speed overwhelmed him at first, and Argrave could find no opportunities to attack. He dodged, teleporting about the hall rapidly. The king charged like a bull toward red. Argrave appeared in the corner of the training hall, on the walls overlooking it, or inside the castle doors, King Norman came, using his bare hands like wrecking balls. His fists were far stronger than any weapon of this era could hope to be, anyhow.

But after a while... Argrave had time and composure enough to make one of his blood echoes complete another [Bloodfeud Bow]. He waited, waited, and then struck the king hard in the back of the head. Argrave smiled when he saw blood flowing down the king’s head... but the good king merely touched the wound, and looked at Argrave with a fading smile. Then... it became obvious that Argrave had never been taken seriously—not once.

King Norman changed his strategy. He still rushed, yes, but he calculated more. He wasn’t stupid—he’d seen Argrave’s blood echoes, and tracked their locations with cold red eyes. He implemented projectiles, throwing bricks and rocks like a barbarian. Yet these bricks, travelling hundreds of miles in seconds, could destroy Argrave’s fragile and fleshy skull in an instant.

It was a matter of time before Argrave got hit, hard. All it took was Norman predicting his location once, and a brick came flying at his head like an artillery shell. His Inerrant Cloak protected him from harm by expending his magic, but his composure was lost. Good King Norman came again, faster than the brick he’d thrown, and that feeling of overwhelming power set in moments before Argrave escaped once again, teleporting to a blood echo and then sending others to help him flee as the king pursued.

Argrave travelled far, far away, sitting in a quiet grove many miles from the city with his heart pumping like it never had before. That battle, that concentration—it was enough it felt like his heart would burst. He had been so proud, so confident, and yet when the going got tough, the tough got going. King Norman came alive when the threat became real.

It took an hour for Argrave to calm—and by then, the loop was nearly over. His legs were like jelly, and he let the loop pass by without contacting Anneliese and the rest. Partially out of frustration... and another part out of fear.

Once on the other side, Argrave didn’t let failure haunt him, paralyze him. He calmed his shaky soul by a quick conversation with the adorable Sophia, and then left shortly after. Once gone, he replayed the fight in his head, confronting his failures squarely. The problem... it wasn’t his dodging, no. That was solid. It kept him safe for a very long time against that monster. It was his ability to deal damage, and to retaliate to attacks.

Simply put, spells like [Bloodfeud Bow] wouldn’t work against Good King Norman. Argrave needed more. He needed something better. He had mobility. Now, if he could get attack and defense...

It didn’t take Argrave long to find an answer. He’d found one in Traugott before, and now Castro offered one. In their sparring match, Castro had compressed wards into tiny, yet incredibly powerful, defenses no larger than his hand. With those, the wizened wizard quite literally caught spells. Argrave knew of low-ranking spells that replicated that, somewhat.

In one loop, Argrave scanned through an exceedingly simple yet brutally effective spell its maker had dubbed simply [Burst]. It was nothing more than a hand-originated explosion of fire magic, compressed into a small area. With spell segmentation, Argrave created several different higher-ranked versions of power magnitudes higher, one for each element. It was likely redundant, but he thought each might be useful.

The spell’s power certainly rivalled a [Bloodfeud Bow] cast from a blood echo. With blood imbued into the spell, it exceeded it—and not by a small margin. But only at A-rank was it immensely powerful. His blood echoes could cast it, yet without the same power as the A-rank version. Argrave suspected he could manage only four, personally. Despite these drawbacks, he could use it to deliver a devastating blow at short range, or even deflect a coming attack if he was skilled enough.

Argrave practiced teleporting and casting [Burst] as quickly as he could for six hours, though with a lesser C-rank version to conserve magic. Once again, the Flayer Knights became his test dummies. The spell dismantled them uncomfortably easily, and his dodging became yet more impeccable. Argrave felt a sense of pressure, almost, as his companions neared the positions that he needed them to be in. There wasn’t much time left before the final act.

Finally, Argrave returned to the reigning champion, the undefeated, the 13-0 master... Norman. He felt as insane as Norman actually was, having endured this weeks-long torment without even the vaguest hope of victory. Four uses of [Burst] to defeat this man, ostensibly. And if this didn’t work... his ideas were running as thin as his time.