Unruly Summon Chapter 22: Battle Aura (Patreon)

Echoes of clanging metal resounded throughout the courtyard as I exchanged blows with Christine at superhuman speeds. With my superior base stats and mana, I'd hoped I could have dominated our mock battle, but despite her youth, her experience was not something to be ignored so lightly. Able to predict my parries, and the path they would leave her weapon on, she placed herself perfectly for a follow-up attack. She was obviously thinking three or four moves ahead, correctly predicting my reactions to her reactions.

But two could play at that game,

I felt like I was riding a bicycle for the first time in a decade. A long disused skill, never completely lost, being pulled back to the surface. The experience was strange, but exciting. If only quantum mechanics back in university had been so intuitive.

I ducked under her swing and swept with a leg. She back-stepped with perfect timing, simply stepping over my sweep, but it was what I'd expected, and I'd already followed up with a thrust. She twisted to avoid it, but was momentarily off balance, so I turned my thrust into a swing. She parried, but it left her further off balance. I let my sword bounce off hers, reversing the direction and pirouetting, attacking from her other side before she could recover. Off balance and with her sword out of position, there was no way she could escape.

She raised her arm, placing her gauntlet in the way of my swing. A decent option, given the situation, but armour had its limits. It could only absorb so much force, and we were both using body strengthening. I'd already crumpled the breastplate of a knight with my bare hands. There was no way she could simply block my swing; more than likely, she'd suffer a broken arm. Thankfully, we had two healers available.

My sword impacted her wrist with all the effect of a moth flying into a brick wall. Despite the booming impact, her arm didn't budge an inch, nor did her gauntlet receive a single scratch. The impulse of striking such an unmovable barrier was so unexpected that it knocked the sword out of my hand, sending streamers of burning cold up my arm.

"My win," declared Christine, holding the tip of her blade up against my throat.

"What was that?!" I complained.

"Oh, Master! Your fingers!" shouted Mary from the sidelines.

... No wonder my arm felt so weird. Two of my fingers had obviously been dislocated when my sword had been ripped out of my grip, bent backwards at an angle no healthy finger should experience.

"Sanatio," I chanted, causing them to snap back into position.

"I wish you'd rely on me for healing," grumbled Mary. "I need to learn Sanatio."

"That was battle aura," belatedly answered Christine. "An advanced technique, but a useful one. It's something you need to watch out for if you ever see an experienced melee combatant wearing light armour, like mine, or even no armour at all."

"Oh? I assumed you were only wearing that instead of heavier plate because of the whole harem thing."

Christine looked down at herself in confusion. "You think this outfit is sexy?"

"Well, you are wearing a lot of leather..." I pointed out.

"Skin ripped off an animal and soaked in urine? You consider that appealing?"

"... Not when you phrase it like that, no."

Wendy snorted from over on the sidelines.

"I don't think you should be laughing," I called over to the woman who was still going commando in a maid's dress. That was a get-up straight out of a porn movie!

"Your strange views on leather aside, let's get back to battle aura. Since you've obviously mastered body strengthening already, let's have you learn it next. I suggest you cast Magus Visus and watch me."

I nodded, my mana sight having worn off a while back. "Maius Magus Visus," I chanted.

Wendy whistled. "Not just Magus Visus, but the strengthened version. How did you know the image?"

"Same way as I did for Miraculum," I answered.

"Oh. So in other words, you simply made it up and let your hero bullshit fill in the blanks."

Mary didn't snap back 'language', like usual, but instead looked over at Wendy with a sad expression and glistening, disappointed eyes.

"Uh... I'm sorry, I meant to say, your heroic blessing filled in the blanks."

"Wow. It was super-effective," I muttered, impressed.

"What?" asked Christine, the divine translation apparently not having helped with that one. "No, never mind. Swing at me again."

I did so, and expecting the block, I managed to not dislocate anything in the process. My mana sight showed Christine pulling in mana from the air, forming a shell over her gauntlet. When I struck it, my attack blasted away a chunk of the mana, but caused no physical damage.

"It's like a temporary enchantment?" I guessed. "Ablative mana armour?"

"Exactly," confirmed Christine. "As I'm sure you can imagine, it's a lot easier with a rigid material as a medium. More advanced practitioners can use it on slightly flexible leather, or even cloth. Personally, I can use it on leather, but it's stronger on steel, which is why I always wear these gauntlets and greaves. A true expert can use it on their skin, although such a person would need to be supremely confident, given what could happen if it went wrong."

"Why? What could happen?" I asked.

"Imagine casting Ignis Pila, except that instead of forming the fireball in front of you, you form it inside your body."

I imagined that, and decided I wouldn't be using battle aura on my skin anytime soon, or maybe ever.

"Naturally, being a hero, I expect you to have completely mastered battle aura on any material, including yourself, by the end of today's session," said Christine.

"Whu? What happened to playing safe?!"

"I intended to teach you body strengthening today, but it turned out you already knew it," answered Christine. "To have managed that without anyone finding out about it, you must have been secretly practising it at night. Now that you know of the existence of battle aura, I must ensure you master it completely here, while under supervision, lest you once again decide to risk your life by trying it in your bed."

"He'd need a helper to use it in bed for what it's usually used in bed for," giggled Wendy.

"Uh... Wendy? Please don't make that sort of comment while dressed like that, or I'll ask Mary to look disappointedly at you again."

Wendy looked down.

"Oh, I forgot I was wearing this. No wonder it's so breezy."

"... What is it usually used in bed for?" asked Christine, sporting a look of genuine confusion.

"Oh, you poor, naïve little knight," laughed Wendy.

"What is happening right now?" I sighed. "Since when does Wendy make sex jokes?"

"Since I could relax a bit! Do you have any idea how tiring it's been over the past couple of days, needing to walk on eggshells and watch everything I said, in case I accidentally gave away something I wasn't supposed to? I'm glad you saw through it all."

"You did slip up on the bath," pointed out Christine.

"I was excited!"

Yes, so excited she'd rushed through the castle naked. The bath slip up was minor in comparison.

"Putting Wendy aside, shall we proceed?" asked Christine, taking a large coin out of a pocket.

"Your armour has pockets?"

She didn't grace my surprised outburst with a response, instead handing me the coin. "Balance this on the back of your hand, then reinforce it. Don't actually test it; just use your mana sight for now, while I go and find a metal bracer that will fit you."

Thank goodness she was still playing at least slightly safe; we were starting with rigid materials.

Christine turned out to be correct, too; I did pick it up quickly. So quickly that by the end of the training session, I was still able to count the number of times my arm had been chopped off on the fingers of a single hand.

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Fang Zorzomon stared at the missive on the table in front of him, almost as if he expected it to jump up and bite him.

"That bad, huh?" asked Claw Thazremath, shifting slightly to make the most of the morning sun that was shining into the tent. "With Fort Mertti having fallen, I was expecting us to sweep as far west as the coast with no significant further resistance. What happened?"

"I have no idea. It's an offer of surrender. Not unconditional, but they agree to our broad terms. They're offering an admission of guilt, with the corpses of the humans involved handed over immediately, and the punitive land divided into packages, control to be gradually transferred over the next thirty seasons."

"Huh? So it's a realistic offer, with this timing? That makes no sense. If they were going to surrender, either they should have done so weeks ago, when it became obvious they couldn't win, or else they should do it after we've shifted our campaign south and culled enough of their population that they could withstand the loss of land without widespread starvation."

"Exactly. So you see my concern. There's something we're not seeing here."

"Maybe the hero kicked their king's arse and made him surrender?"

"We still haven't confirmed there is a hero," sighed Zorzomon. "If this is hero related, I suspect it's a way of buying time; the offer is serious enough that I'll need to take it before the other fangs, but asking for a delay on the land means there's a good chance it'll end up going through multiple rounds of counter offers."

"Hah. Sometimes, you give the distinct impression that you wish you'd never been promoted."

"Was it only an impression?" snorted Zorzomon. "I meant for my opinion to be broadcast far more concretely than that. Anyway, what have we had recently from their capital? Tell me everything that's even a little out of the usual, however unrelated it may seem."

"There's definitely something going on in the castle. Our spies have overheard castle servants gossiping in taverns about how the entire west wing has been declared off limits, and how all the doors into the area are guarded, but none of them know why. As much as I hate to admit it, they're good at hiding their secrets. Yesterday, they slipped up, though. There was a massively powerful spell cast in the castle, and it wasn't shielded at all; our spies felt it even from the outskirts. We assume it's related to the closed wing."

"The heck? A spell powerful enough to be detected from half the city away? Why was that not already reported to me?!"

"It was white magic, so we know it's not anything useful for attack or defence purposes. There was no discernable effect from it. Our spies are still trying to gather information on what happened, but there hasn't been time yet for the castle workers to meet outside and gossip. All we can say at the moment is that no-one is running around in a panic."

"White magic? Oh... Surely not..."

"You have an idea?"

"Use those brain cells of yours for a moment, you fool. Why do you think they might suddenly be willing to give up land the day after a white spell powerful enough to echo across their entire capital?"

Claw Thazremath spent a moment using his brain cells. "Err... In that case, there's another bit of information you might find interesting. A spy who's acting as a slayer reported that a mission was posted in the guild last night, escorting a taskforce of court mages into the corrupted lands. It didn't go into any detail as to what the mages would be doing, but it did mention them being relatively defenceless, so the requirements were for a high ranked team despite not going deep into the corrupted lands."

"A group of defenceless mages? Probably not a hero, then, but the timing is massively suspicious."

"Is it possible they ended up with a healing-orientated hero? Or maybe simply one who refuses to fight, but offered to help in other ways?"

"Maybe. Either way, if it's true that the humans have developed a method to reclaim corrupted land, we certainly won't be accepting that surrender. Confiscating their farmland would cease to serve its purpose as a punishment. Make sure our spy joins that mission. We need to confirm our suspicions, and besides, a hero with negligible combat ability could prove an opportunity."

"You want to assassinate or kidnap them?"

"Assassinate, no. If they've figured out a way to purify corrupted land, we must do nothing that could possibly result in the knowledge being lost, even if that requires leaving it in human hands. Kidnap... Perhaps. But not yet; we have nowhere near enough information. Wait and see what information our spies can gather, but have a team deployed and ready to act. If an opportunity arises during that mission, we must be ready to seize it."