Chapter 24: The bald patches of the [Paladin].
The next morning, I woke up in my small room in the guild quarters. Michael was still sleeping in the extra bed the servants had delivered last night. I tiptoed to my day clothes and put them on, before quietly leaving the room. When I arrived at the mess hall, I found Doran already there, eating a hearty breakfast.
I ordered the same from the cooking staff and took a seat next to him.
"Hey there, Doran. Up already? You really don't break that habit, do you?"
He got a small smile on his face and paused to reply, putting his honeyed waffle back down on the plate as he did so.
"You should be well aware of my daily schedule by now, Arthur."
"Thanks for delivering that 'triangle' to the guild for me, by the way." I said in gratitude.
"I am not owed thanks for that task, the guild master paid me handsomely to have it delivered from the capital branch."
I was about to reply, but Doran quickly changed the subject.
"I see that the child is not with you."
I smiled ruefully. I supposed that he didn't want to go into more detail about the delivering job, so I followed along.nove(l)bi(n.)com
"Yeah, he's still sleeping. I didn't want to wake him up, he had a hard time falling asleep last night."
Doran took on a pensive look.
"The sudden change in environment has probably been quite a shock to the young man. Speaking of, now that we have some spare time, why don't we head to the training yard to do some light sparring? You can tell me about what happened during your quest in the meantime."
I smiled back at him.
"Sounds good. Did you receive my new status screen from the guild master yet?"
He nodded. "I had the chance to peruse it last night. You have gained some interesting skills, however, they are outside of your usual strategies. You will have to practice with them if you want to become proficient enough to use them reliably in battle."
"That was always the plan, blondie. With my new skills, I'm confident in beating you this time."
He had a large grin on his face. When it came to fights, the normally uptight paladin always lost his cool.
"We shall see about that, Arthur. Your overconfidence shall be your undoing."
About two hours later, Doran and I found ourselves within the clearing of a forest. We had dropped Michael off at the orphanage as we left the city, where he had been welcomed by a young woman who acted as the [Caretaker] of the place. After waving him goodbye, we had continued our journey. By using our stats and movement skills like [Shadow apparation] we had crossed a lot of ground in just a few hours. Apparating continuously was a serious drain on my mana, but with my new core a short rest was enough to recover each time. This made for great skill progression as well, both for my core and my apparation skill.
The forest we had found was mostly filled with tall trees and dense foliage. It was a forest you could find anywhere in Roa, due to its moderate climate. Birdsong and rustling bushes brought the forest to life, and all of this gave way to a small plain of grass, as we found ourselves in an empty clearing. It was the perfect place to go wild, though we would probably tear up a large part of the forest in our fight. Oh well, we were planning on using this site regularly over the next week, so at least only one location would be destroyed like this.
When we were done inspecting our surroundings, both of us wordlessly readied ourselves for a proper spar. We were getting used to each other's movement and character by now, so when I saw Doran immediately use his light-based skill, coating his sword in a holy aura, I knew that he meant business.
Luckily, thanks to [Dark Form] I didn't need to charge up to fight him toe to toe. I was ready before the fight even started. Still, the point of this spar was to test my new skills, so why wouldn't I?
I pushed my core and body into overload, starting the familiar process of breaking and reconstructing my body for the sake of a little more power.
It took a few seconds before the mana was abundant enough, probably because there wasn't much dark mana here, forcing me to rely on my core sucking up other mana.
Thankfully, Doran gave me time to do so. I knew he wouldn't the next time we sparred like this, but I would take what I could get at this point.
When the amount of mana coursing through my body reached a satisfactory amount, I expelled it all in one, immediately starting up the process of overloading again afterward.
I grabbed onto the wave of mana surrounding my body and forced it to become tangible again, creating a maelstrom of black wind around my body. That was also the exact moment when Doran decided he had given me enough leeway. He charged straight at me in a thrusting motion, flying sword-first into the barrier I had created.
I focussed all of my willpower into my overloaded shield in hopes of blocking his strike, which had mixed results. My wind succeeded in blocking his strike and even caused some cuts on his arm when he got close. None of the wounds were deep, but considering I hadn't been able to scratch his terrifying constitution before, it was an improvement. The issue lay with his affinity. The light elemental mana coating his sword forced any mana I had overloaded to dissipate almost instantly, which in turn forced me to reinforce the front of my shield with mana from the other sides, localising my supposed AOE attack. In other words, because so much mana was wasted, my elementary technique lost its main advantage.
Doran kept pressing into his attack when he noticed my shield running out of mana, but luckily the second dose of overloaded mana was expelled from my body and core a moment later.
I rebuilt a part of my shield and centred the rest of the overloaded mana into my palm to charge up [Overloaded orb]. I pushed as much overloaded mana as I could grasp onto into the skill, creating a small black marble in my hand. Without hesitation, I threw it at Doran before he could counterattack.
Noticing the small black orb that I had launched at him, he created some distance and planted his sword into the ground. A moment later, a golden, slightly translucent barrier was formed out of light mana. He could have easily dodged the relatively slow projectile, but chose to meet it head-on to test its power.
It turned out that orbs made of concentrated unstable dark mana were slightly more volatile than your typical tier 2 skill. The moment the marble made contact with the shield, it shattered. Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, until a powerful black shockwave erupted from the epicentre of the blast. As it erupted outward large parts of the shield shattered, unable to block the explosion. Even I was thrown back into a tree, even though I had been quite far away from the attack when the shockwave occurred.
Coughing a little blood, I waited for my dark form to heal whatever broken ribs I had before standing up. As the dust settled, I called out to the other side of the clearing.
"Doran! Are you alright?"
Instead of receiving an answer, I got my answer in the form of a very angry, very blond, now slightly bald man catapulting himself out of the dust, golden sword raised to the sky.
"Pay for what you did to my hair, you faithless cur!"
I whimpered a little in fear.
"Oh, crap."