Bergstrom went up to the control room after signalling for me to wait at the centre of the training room. "Okay, Kevin. We are going to work on combat today. Artras adapt in the heat of battle which is why this training room was invented. The techniques you need to fight lie in your DNA and by fighting you are activating those abilities. So I am going to program a scene and you will take out all any every enemy that I throw at you. I advise that you do not use time magic unless completely necessary. Here in Armensia, time magic is difficult to pull off for reasons that I will explain later after this training or another day. Oh and one more thing, I want you to yell, 'Jeremy, combat suit,'" Bergstrom said from the microphone. I looked at myself and noticed I was still dressed in my clothes from school.
I knew exactly what Bergstrom was implying, but it felt strange simply yelling a command than going to put it on manually, "Jeremy, combat suit," I yelled.
"Yes, sir," he replied and I watched as light enveloped my body and noticed my clothes were replaced by the red and black attire of the artras when it vanished. I flexed my fists getting a feel of the fabric. The suits were made to optimize movement and they looked cool.
"Get ready," Bergstrom said. The training room began morphing. The once white room began to glow with different colours and vibration until it was a thick forested area with a clearing at the centre of it and at the centre of the clearing is where I stood. I was wide open.
"So back in my day we used to train with elves at some point. We found them to be formidable fighters. Even the mages weren't back at close combat, so in the scenario, you are completely surrounded and you have decided to take a stand in this clearing. From what I have said I think you can understand the rules of this training session. You are not permitted to leave the clearing and you will have to finish every enemy that comes your way. Do your best. Good luck," he finished sounding a loud horn that signified that the training had started. Three elves came dashing out of the woods immediately from three different directions with murderous looks and worst of all, the wielded combat knives. I remembered one of the Training Room's amazing features was that every injury caused within it was healed almost instantly and the pain one was allowed to feel from such an injury could be set in the control room. I had no idea what pain setting Bergstrom had put, which meant I had to make sure I didn't get injured.
Super-speed had become my strongest ally since it was the first kind of magic that I had ever learned. Activating my super-speed, I smiled as the elves before me began to slow down. I dashed to the first one and delivered a hard fist to his gut. He looked male to me so yeah. The other two were female which didn't make much of a difference when they wielded such sharp knives. I dashed to the first lady elf grabbed her wrist and twisted around using her own force against her to send her flying over my shoulder and slamming her onto the ground. I barely paid attention to her before dashing to the third elf with a fist aimed at her face (don't judge me).
My fist connected with nothing and I looked back to see that she had barely dodged it. But how had she.... I barely had time to think as she changed the arc of her knife and swung it towards my stomach. I jumped as fast as I could. But not fast enough. The tip of the knife managed to graze my skin causing a terrible burning sensation. The pain setting was at maximum. I wanted so badly to explain, but the elf immediately started pressing forward. How she was moving so fast was beyond my knowledge, but she seemed to be straining her hardest to be matching my speed. And as such she was doing her best to make sure that I did not recover. I got up just in time to dodge a downward arc that was aimed at my shoulder.
The elf immediately adjusted her footwork and began another horizontal arc. My heartbeat kicked into overdrive as I adrenaline got into my system. I increased my magic supply to my super-speed and watched the elf slow down even more. I moved in and delivered a palm fist to her gut pushing her backwards. She looked winded form the attack and her swing had been disrupted. I was about to relax when I noticed her shifting her leg further behind to keep her stable. I knew this would allow her to launch another volley of deadly knife swings. I immediately got down and swept her feet to trip her. As she was still airborne I joined my palmed and slammed her back downwards.
I almost relaxed when I heard footsteps. I looked around me and saw four elves running towards me all armed with combat knives. I hadn't even noticed. The two who I had knocked back had recovered while two more elves had emerged from the woods. I got into my fighting stance and got ready to tangle.
….........
It had been two hours since I had started training in the training room. I had fought a sum of over fifty elves which Bergstrom had tried pointing out was below standard for a Siege. Besides, these elves weren't real, so everything they did was controlled by a single system, so it was like fighting one person. This warped magic didn't help me at all. I had thought that I was purely fighting until mages came into the mix. I had been seared by two excruciating fireballs already and they seemed to only be getting started. The tables mainly turned when the elves managed to adapt to my super-speed. It then became dangerous because the moment I stopped using my super-speed their moves became freaking fast. I therefore had to stay moving fast if I was to keep up. Worst of all, I couldn't leave the clearing so running was out of the question.
The time I had actually tried running from the clearing I had noticed many more elves within the woods. Eventually archers were added to the mix. Now after two hours the elves had finally subdued me. The pain from their attacks had been set to last five whole minutes. My body was covered in bruises and cuts and it hurt all over. Four elves were holding me down while another pointed an arrow straight to my face. He let it fly. I closed my eyes, but the impact never came. I opened my eyes and watched the training room morphing into a beautiful scene of a waterfall. I lay at the river bank at the bottom side of the waterfall panting heaving and heavy with exhaustion.
I heard footsteps and laughing coming towards me. Bergstrom had enjoyed his show quite a lot. "You have a lot of work to do," he said.
"Could you at least have reduced the pain settings. And why were there no end to those elves? Was I even supposed to get through that training session alive?" I began blurting out all the questions that I had for him without even giving him time to answer them.
"Calm down and stop thinking out loud. He said amidst his laughter," I waited for him to stop laughing before I spoke up.
"So was that punishment for missing your training session yesterday?" I asked calmly.
"No, it wasn't," he said while he took a seat beside me. The constant sound of water splashing against the rocks at the bottom of the water proved to be quite soothing. After a while of silence, I decided to proceed with the questions I had for him. After all he was supposed to be helping me learn more about Armensia.
"Why do I have to go through this? Aren't I supposed to train with the other artras so we can all get stronger?" I asked him.
"The Siege has a lot of power and the more inexperienced or trained you are, the more unstable that power is. You need more training compared to your friends because you need to learn how to control a large amount of magic compared to them. So they don't have to go through what you are going through. So with that said, you will only begin to realise your strength when you have enough control over your powers. Right now all artras can beat you in a one on one battle just because your unstable magic makes you unable to reach your full abilities," he explained.
"Wait, this whole time I thought my magic was just fine," I complained.
"Of course you thought so, then let me ask you this. How long do you think it took the others to get used to teleportation?" he asked even though I kept quiet. It was embarrassing for me to talk about how dizzy I became and hard it was for me to teleport. It was like trying to jump off a merry-go-round that was turning at a hundred miles per hour. He then decided to continue, "Since the artras come from a different world that is not magic activated. They don't usually know the basics of magic, so they have an ability to transform thought into power. This isn't the easiest way to do magic. You guys don't notice it because of your large magic reserves. But it takes much more magic to cast a spell from just thought alone. Take the teleportation for example. It contains a locating part of it, a portal part and a reposition part. All this has to be interpreted from the thought for the magic to complete the command. But for your unstable magic, things like locating a place that is not currently in your line of vision is hard because of the unstable magic and thus when you try teleporting, you can't be exactly precise with where you might appear unlike your friends who can even just appear seated in a chair if they wanted to," as he explained this I seemed to understand where he was coming from even though he was only proving to me that I had to work even harder from now. One thing he had been right about though. The fighting techniques that I needed to fight were in my DNA and throughout the whole training session I kept coming up with tactics and strokes as though it was muscle memory of a practice I had only forgotten about a long time ago.
"That still feels unfair."
"Think of it what you may. But when you do master your powers or at least grasp a reasonable amount of control, you'll understand then what I mean. For now, just bear with the situation," he said summing up the lecture.
"So get ready," Bergstrom said abruptly standing up and walking back towards the control room. The control room had two entrances. One was from the floor above the ground floor where there was a magical door that was programmed to open straight into the control room. This mainly explained why it was suspended in air at the centre of the training room. The second entrance was right beneath it. When one stood beneath it and was allowed by Jeremy to enter they were instantly teleported into the room. "Since you are the Siege, I am totally positive that you are no longer tired at all," the evil ma n said as he reached the centre of the training room.
It was true that I wasn't tired anymore, but I was not in the least thrilled by what he was implying. The only thing that stopped me from retaliating was the fact that I needed to get stronger. I never wanted to feel as helpless as I had when Texan attacked the school, or when my cousin was killed. I was going to get stronger and if this was how, I was willing to. An entire magical nation had me and my friends as their only hope and I didn't wasn't it to be all for nothing.