NOVEL NEXT Chapter 43:
Chapter 43:
I walked into the training room early—well, earlier than I normally did. I was perpetually running a little bit late because I was sleeping too little and studying magic so much. They probably just thought I was out drinking like they were, but at least I wasn't showing up hungover, which was one step above everyone else on my team.
I started sparring with Helga, the only other one here. She was always the first to arrive. I think she showed up an hour before we even started just so she could work on her swordplay.
As we practiced, I limited myself to just my sword instead of using my dagger as my offhand. She was pretty good, but clearly, all of her real practice was in fighting monsters rather than other people with swords. With my significant physical stats, I could have overpowered her at any moment. Still, instead, I worked on training my raw skills. I was pretty close to getting my sword proficiency above F grade, and it was a nice milestone to shoot for.
Slowly, the other remaining members of the team filed in and started warming up and practicing. Before everyone got too into it, I paused the sparring and got their attention.
"I have some good news and bad news," I said. "Well, I've finally managed to learn a couple of spells."
I got a round of smiles.
"The first is a movement ability that is a little bit odd. And the second, well, this is the bad news. I went for a healing spell, but it appears that I may have gotten slightly scammed. There was definitely a reason that spell was so cheap," I lied. "It's more of a self-healing spell. It might be able to do healing for others after I've fixed it up a little bit, but at the moment, I can only really heal myself."
I held up my hands as everyone else started to frown, but they didn't seem too angry at me yet. They believed my story.
"This is still good, as I'll be able to be hurt more, and Astrid won't have to worry about healing me. Not as ideal as we had hoped, but with my new movement spell and a bit of time to practice it, I hope that we can actually have a chance with those damn snakes today."
"Show us the spell," Jonas called out teasingly.
I smiled. Reaching deep, I cast my spell for the first time and stepped over to him. The world blurred as I appeared with one hand on Jonas's shoulder. Then it blurred again as I let go and moved quickly over to Bjorn. The afterimage of me, hand on Jonas's shoulder, hovered for about half a second after I left. It seemed that my range was at most five to seven strides for now, depending on how fast I was moving, and each charge took a significant amount of my mana. But I was fast. Very fast. It wasn't instantaneous, but it was ten times faster compared to what I could normally move. The flashes of light the spell let off left everyone blinking and slightly dazed.
"Nice. Now let's test out that healing spell," Bjorn said and sucker-punched me in the stomach.
I doubled over and sank to my knees, wheezing for breath. It took me half a second to activate the spell, and I could feel a warm healing energy radiate from my center and soothe the ache. All of a sudden, I could breathe again. Standing back up in a half second, I returned the gesture, though Bjorn was ready for it and braced.
Still, he let out a small "umph" as he was forced to take a step backward. Still, that was more than it should have been, seeing our size difference. I put a lot of strength into that blow.
"Pretty good, pretty good," he said with a slow clap once he recovered his breath.
"Well. Yeah," I said. "Anyways, I think I will spend the morning practicing my movement spell."
Jonas, Bjorn, and Helga rotated through sparring and doing drills while Astrid shot arrows at our target, and I flashed around. I could only step half a dozen times in a row before I was low on mana and needed to recharge, but dodging Astrid's arrows was providing me with decent practice. I kept trying to catch one out of the air by the shaft, but the increased speed didn't necessarily increase my perception by that much. Just enough to avoid crashing into things but not enough to do much while I was moving. It was fine. I kept practicing, though. It was a good thing to work on.
I got more and more controlled, being able to cast the spell quicker and more instinctively and being more precise with where I ended up. Controlling the path, though, was difficult, and controlling the afterimages and decoys that the spell let off at random proved pretty much impossible. We trained for a bit longer before we headed over to the challenge.
***
At my request, the others let me take a point for the entire run. I finished the first six rooms by myself, totally abusing my Dance of the Jester spell at every opportunity. Even with the level 2 to 3 cubs, I flashed through them, appearing and severing heads or stabbing deep one after the other. The first afterimage disappeared only after they were all dead. That half-second was all I needed. The ten young adult badgers fared no better, and the mother took a little bit of time, but she had no chance of catching me. I just hacked at her neck repeatedly from each side, easily dodging any snaps.
It wasn't until the spider that I actually required help. I injured it but was swarmed by the little helpers. The others stepped in to help peel them off me. I was left with several bites in uncomfortable spots. I shuddered from the feeling of the giant creepy crawlies all over me. Activating my healing skill, the wounds started to close, and a few of the nastier bites that had ripped away flesh vanished. Not all of them, but maybe 10% of them. I cast the spell a second time, and a few more bites disappeared. By then, I was pretty much fully healed. Getting back to my feet, I shuddered.
"That was deeply, deeply unpleasant," I complained to my team as they finished off killing the mostly wounded spider. But I was very pleased. The tricking the world into thinking that damage hadn't been done would be very lucky if I ever needed to regrow a limb. The fact that I could cast it repeatedly in a short time meant that it wasn't a once-or-nothing sort of affair.
Still, there was a pretty low limit on what it could heal if that special effect didn't occur. We sat and recovered, the entire trip only having taken under an hour. I had much less mana to recover than Astrid did, but because of that, it didn't take me very long to rest before I could go again. Each time I ran out of mana, I only took about five minutes of meditation before my meager pool was full again. This let us attempt the snakes extremely early. In fact, if we messed up here, it was very possible that we could even try a second time today.
This time, I had our three melee fighters stand even closer to Astrid, and I stood behind them, ready to use my movement spell. Ready to use Dance of the Jester to intercept anything that got past them and protect Astrid. As the snakes poured out of the walls and slithered along the floor, all three of them started hacking and slashing at the ground, more worried about getting a number of strikes in rather than killing every single snake.
The first one slipped through Jonas's legs, and I dashed my sword, impaling it in the back of the head. Then I danced over to the next one that was hanging off Bjorn's inner thigh. I cut it in half before skipping back to the center in the slightly whimsical patterns of my spell.
They were pretty good about not letting too many by, but every handful of seconds, another one slipped by. But I was quick. When I was using my spell, I was almost twice as fast as the snakes and easily able to cover for Astrid as she launched exploding arrows over our heads into the mass approaching.
Suddenly, with no warning, the snakes stopped, and we could move on.
As we walked out of the exit, the 20% came, and as soon as we were out of the darkness, we all let out a whoop and cheer.
"We did it!" Astrid jumped and hugged me while Bjorn slapped me on the back, and Jonas and Helga exchanged a high-five.
"Well done everyone!" I cheered.
We all went around and celebrated. Bjorn pulled out a flask and passed it around. All of us taking generous gulps.
After we all calmed down, I had to ask, "Should we continue?"