Chapter 43: Potential
The sounds of swords clashing could be heard in the small opening of the forest, it was me and Arthur sparring for what seemed like the thousandth time these past couple months. This clearing was one Jasmine showed us after our dive into that dreaded spider dungeon, my body shivers slightly and I can see Arthur's eye twitch. Oops he thinks I'm not taking him seriously, which I guess I'm not too much.
He picks up his pace and begins making too many mistakes as his body is still not in tune with his past life's swordplay. He feints right before quickly spinning on the ball of his foot to come at me with a slash, but I just elbow his sword arm at his elbow. Sweep his legs with my feet that he tries in vain to dodge and then using the flats of my 2 Kukris i slam them on his back. Foot on his sword hand so he knows to stop, I hear him groan slightly.
"You're lucky Jasmine will still be gone a couple days. Her punishments are a lot worse than mine." I said while looking down at Arthur, finally removing my foot. He growls slightly, but grabs his sword and sits in a meditative position and I follow suit.
"Grr. What do you expect when you're not taking this seriously." He spats out while trying to calm his breathing, I just smile and chuckle at him.
"If me shivering from a terrifying memory is enough to completely throw you off then why are we even out here training?" He grumbles again in response and I bite back another laugh, no need to upset the former king too much. He begins purifying his core, while going over the battle in his head, and I can only smile every time he winces at his mistakes.
However there is something I've noticed, but I haven't thought of a way to bring it up. I can only assume it's because of his past life and how they cultivated Ki, but he only draws and purifies the mana inside his body and not the mana outside as well. Besides the mana that comes in through mana rotation, but that's what made me realize it and I can't believe he hasn't yet.
His core progresses much faster when he brings in new mana through rotation.
"Arthur." I call out to him.
"Hmm?" Still focusing on meditating this is all I get.
"Why do you not bring in ambient mana when you meditate, it's almost like you don't do it on purpose?" He opens his eyes in surprise before quickly closing them and I can see him focus on bringing in more mana than mana rotation normally would idly. Stale mana that hadn't been purifying as fast as the new mana was taken out and fresh mana brought in. His eyes widened and jaw dropped.
"I just passed into orange stage… I was already close, but I still had another month or 2 before I expected to breakthrough." I smile brightly at him and stand back up.
"That's great! Now lets get the spar started again so you can get used to your new core." He quickly jumps up which makes me laugh internally because it feels like he really is only 9 years old the way he hates meditating. Though I guess when you do something your whole life and then have to do it again in a new life you start to dread it.
Flourishing my Kukris as I hold them out in preparation, Arthur unsheathes Dawns Ballad and takes his stance. Mana fuels into our bodies and our spar begins again. He does a quick slash at my stomach, but I step back, though he takes another steps forward to stay in my guard. He still hasn't learned that the Kukris are also a deception.
They look vicious and dangerous, so opponents will try to prevent you from using easy slashes or stabs, but their true strength lies in, like daggers, they are easy to use hand to hand combat skills with. Now inside my guard Arthur brings his sword to his chest for a stab, but I just punch out at his head with my fist. He tries to continue his stab while leaning out of the way of my fist, but misses my other arm coming up to deflect his sword away from me.
His eyes widen when he sees the tip of my blade enter his vision then push his sword back out, now it was his turn to take a step back but I chased him now. Putting him in the defensive with a series of slashes, some with both Kukris at the same time and others chaining them to hit in different positions, or the same just a little later. He parries, blocks and dodges the best he can, but the inverse blades of the Kukris provide a unique challenge.
He can't block it the way you would a normal blade because if it catches just right the blade could cut over your own sword. I started incorporating more martial arts style movements and using my flexibility to add even more unpredictability, until I caught Arthur by surprise by the same move that got his father, and Kaspian when I dueled them.
Leg sweep that he had seen before so he leaped over it only for me to use the momentum to push off my hands and slam my feet into his chest. This sent him flying across the clearing and I heard the crash of him hitting a tree. Standing up I jog over to where he hit to see him rubbing his back and groaning from the pain.
"Well I guess we better call it for the day on sparring, tomorrow I'll use the bo staff." I said while reaching out a hand to Arthur and when he grabs it I lift him up causing him to groan again.
"Ya you're probably right, I'll do a quick meditation and then relax until bed time." He began hobbling toward where are stuff his and I follow beside him, then a mischievous grin pops up on my face.
"That's the spirit young Art!" I say loudly as I swing my left arm around smack him on the back in 'congratulations', he immediately drops to his knees with one hand on his back seething in the renewed pain. He glares up at me, and I just look on in faux concern.
"Oh! Your back! I completely forgot, I'm sorry." I said and he just scoffs and stands back up and I slip his right arm over my shoulder.
"If I didn't know you as well as I do, I would have believed you. Your acting is scary good." I chuckle cheekily at him as I set him down on his sleeping bag.
"Sometimes the sharpest weapon is a silver tongue, I just try to master all my weapons." I say as I flip down on to my pack, but then I look over at Arthur or specifically his back. The aura around it is mostly normal, but it's tinged in red. Looks like he will be fine after meditating and then rest, so I turn back to look up to the sky with the sun setting behind us.
"It definitely is a useful tool, I find myself wishing I could lie half as good as you." Arthur says in response and I just click my tongue at him.
"Tch, it's called acting Arthur. Lying is easy to see through and has many flaws. Acting however, if you yourself believe what you're saying enough then it becomes truth and it's harder for them to discredit it." I try to explain, but Arthur just laughs softly.
"Sounds like madness to me, but I can see it's uses." I nod to that, and we welcome the silence in the clearing as we meditate. As the sun sets and the stars start to come out I start to fall asleep.
It's been a few days and Jasmine is back now, and she comes with the mission of a dungeon dive with 3 other adventurers in an A rank dungeon. This is also a new dungeon and they want me and her to help guide the other 3, who are mappers, through it for potential future use.
"Sounds like fun, and good practice for Arthur. We'll let him take lead and me and you can just focus on protecting the mappers." I say as I rise from my sleeping bag and begin putting on my Rez outfit. Jasmine nods as she waits for both me and Arthur to get ready, he just looks at us weirdly.
"You want me to lead a dungeon dive on a brand new dungeon?" I look to Jasmine, who also looks to me.
"Ya? Why, can't handle it Mr. Note?" I say teasingly towards to which he just scowls slightly.
"Of course I can, I'm just surprised you're having me do it so early." I just shrug as I pull the last of my outfit into place.
"Well at least if you fail, it's only 3 people you lost instead of 9." I said it sort of jokingly, but it also accidentally brought up memories of my first journey. A frown crossed my face and it catches them by surprise as Arthur was about to retort, Jasmine seemed to understand the frown but didn't know what to say.
Placing my mask on to my face I turn around toward the direction of the dungeon.
"Well it's not like I'll let them die even if you do mess up, so don't worry." It was a bit childish but I began to walk forward since they hadn't moved yet. We would use wind when they caught up to me as we are supposed to be at the dungeon by tomorrow. As I was walking, since I always have mana costing my ears in case of sound based attacks, I hear Arthur ask Jasmine a question.
"What was that mood change about? He seemed to be joking around and then got that complicated look on his face." Arthur placed his mask on and Jasmine didn't answer at first.
"You know how he went on an adventure when he was younger?" Came her soft response.
"Ya, that's how he met you guys was during that head king trip." Arthur responded and I could heard their footsteps ass they finally started to walk after me.
"Well that's not entirely true, we only met him at the halfway point of the journey. Meaning he traveled the first half with a different group that we were supposed to take over for in Etistin." Her voice took on a sad tone as well, thinking back in their friend Durk.
"Supposed to?" Arthur asked trying to get her to continue.
"Yes, except they didn't make it to Etistin. Jaron didn't tell me until later into the second half of the journey, but they were betrayed by another member in their party who didn't like Jaron. He hired a hundred bandits to attack their caravan. Even then Jaron was strong, but he didn't have the same kind of control over his flames as he does now.
Some of the things he can do now would have harmed his teammates from the ambient heat of the flames. Meaning he wasn't able to save the remaining members of his party." They didn't speak for a few moments after that, until Jasmine spoke up again.
"He places the blame on himself and I think that's one of the reasons he's trying to get stronger, even though he's the strongest person I know, if not in all of Dicathen. I don't know if he's told you, but he save mine, the Twin Horns and 4 others in a dungeon that was way out of our league.
At the end of the dungeon our escape was blocked off and we had to fight 12 A-AA class mana beasts, and he killed 9 of them himself and then defeated a S class Wyvern while we were all knocked out, only Clara our healer was awake to see the battle. That's who you really should hear the story from as i doubt Jaron remembers it much or would even care to explain it.
But Clara, the way she describes it you would think Jaron was invincible. All I know is that we all have Jaron to thank for being able to still be alive. So whatever you do Art, learn from him as much as possible. You'll be amazed with the things he can do with mana, and together I think you both have the potential to become the strongest people Dicathen has ever seen."
(AN: I know this was super wordy, especially for someone like Jasmine. But she has a sort of reverence for Jaron because of this, so it felt appropriate. Plus I needed someone to tell Arthur more about Jaron as Jaron tends to try to deny praise when it's genuine. Just wanted to throw that out there.)
"Wow… I had no idea he was so strong, and that was almost a year ago now. I wonder how strong he is now if he was to actually fight." Arthur trailed off, but no more words were said as we finally started earnestly making our way to the dungeon with wind mana powering us.
We reached the dungeon just before sundown where we saw 3 people sitting around a small campfire. Each of them were almost the perfect visualization of a thief, bland and ordinary faces that would blend in with a crowd. No individualizing features, just brown hair, brown eyes, and an even stare. All of them were about Jasmine's height, meaning they were about a foot taller than me and foot and a half taller than Arthur
They all stood up creepily simultaneously and walked towards us.
""Welcome."" They said in unison and I felt a shiver go down my back at the eeriness of it.
"Are you 3 the mappers?" Jasmine was the one to speak and she didn't seem near as creeped out as I felt. They nodded at the same time and pointed back to the campfire.
"Yes we are the Mahpurs' brothers." The one on the far left said as we made our way to the campfire.
"Mappers?" Arthur asked as he took a seat in between me and Jasmine. The 3 nodded as spoke in unison again.
"Yes, the Mahpurs'" Arthur tilted his head most likely feeling like he was missing something and I just tried to not think too much about. Why do I always get such weird people for my dungeon dives I groan to myself.
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Author's Note
Today is the day I stock some chapters for you all for the weekend. I'll check the comments from time to time, and try to respond to a few, but I'll mostly be enjoying my mini vacation.
The next few chapters will be based on this dungeon they are diving in, and should probably be finished Sunday or Monday. Haven't quite decided how long to make it.
Hope you enjoyed the interactions between Jaron and Arthur this chapter as MC continues to help Arthur prepare for future enemies with his knowledge of the books.
(That was only a slight jab at the people that complained about my previous synopsis. Sorry I'm petty lol)
The next dungeon will be a little different than the previous few have been, so I hope I can do it justice.
Thanks for reading.
-SocioPhobia
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