Evren was cleaning his armor of the dead pieces of himself stuck to it. It was a daunting task, one that he didn't want anyone else to do. He thought back to the fight where he had gotten injured and realized how much of a challenge the drakes were going to be. They were smarter than wyverns. As it was about to unleash its breath, Harley had countered with a 'water ball' to hit the mouth of the drake to interrupt the breath. Instead, the drake moved its head to the side and turned towards Evren and Isobel who was behind him. Evren cast 'wall' and turned to Isobel to tell her to get out of the area quickly when he heard the 'wall' shatter behind him.
He dove towards Isobel and covered her up with his own body as the flames passed overhead. In the heat of battle, Evren wasn't feeling any pain, so he hadn't noticed at first that he had gotten burned. When he helped Isobel up and prepared to face the drake, he fell to one knee as the pain caught up to him.
As everyone had begun to react to Evren as he faltered, he issued commands as he should and coordinated the group into defeating the drake. Not taking part in the battle itself, once it was over, Evren collapsed and was brought back to Anbuton by the others.
But now that he had recovered to an extent, he wanted to get his maintenance done and help the others with training before their trip back down into the dungeon. As he exited the house, he came across Isobel and Harley who were coming to check on him.
"Mr. Evren! What are you doing up?" Harley called out to him
Evren turned to her with a smile. "I felt so good I wanted to check on everyone's training."
"Mr. Evren, you're recovering so you shouldn't be up!" Harley said, admonishing him.
Evren knew he was going to get nowhere, so he took off his shirt and turned around. There on his back were some scale shaped scars, but the wounds had already healed. "I can't see it, but I can feel it, and it doesn't hurt."
Both Isobel and Harley took a step forward to look at Evren's back. Although the scars were still pink and looked tender, they were healed as Evren had said. Seeing that they were satisfied, Evren turned around and put his shirt back on.
"How's your training coming, Isobel?" Evren asked.
Isobel, still in a daze, said, "I could use your help, Evren."
Evren nodded and started heading to the training ground. "Ok, let's see what you've got."
The two girls looked at each other then chased after Evren to the training ground. Evren tossed a couple of wooden knives to Isobel and said, "Ok, let's see what you've got."
Isobel looked down to the wooden knives then to Evren's bare hands. "Are you not using anything?"
Evren shook his head and said, "This is training. First I have to see your foundation before we move onto that."
Isobel nodded and went through the moves that Walter had shown her. When she finished, she dropped her hands down to the sides and looked at Evren.
Evren asked, "Walter taught you that?"
Isobel nodded and then Evren nodded in turn. "Makes sense. Those look more like moves made for a sword user. Here start again." Isobel got into her stance and was about to start when Evren stopped her, "Wait, from here pull your elbows in. Stand like this."
Evren showed her a stance similar to what Walter had shown her, but her balance was less centered and more forward. "I knife fighting, you want to stay in close. If you get distance, you'll lose to the bigger weapons. Plus, things are easier to block the closer to the body you are.
"As an example, swing at me." Walter instructed.
Isobel took a step forward and took a swing at Evren, however before she could, her right wrist had been trapped by Evren's left hand, and her right shoulder was held tight. Evren then said, "Now, if I push just a little, you'll be off balance, right?" Isobel jumped a little as Evren pushed back on her shoulder, dropping her left dagger and grabbing onto his arm.
"From here, I can push you back, pull you down or throw you. But before that, look at my arms, see how tight they are to my body?" Isobel nodded. "That's what you want. Don't ever stretch your arm out." Evren said as his left had disarmed her, "If you do, you're giving your weapon away."
He let go of her and picked up the dagger she dropped, handing both to her. "First thing we'll work on is called weapon retention. I didn't train you in this before because I didn't think you'd need it against monsters, but I think it'll help you keep your form."
Evren spent the next few hours working with Isobel on keeping her weapon. They went over the different ways to hold the weapon and the different positions, that would be used, along with strikes and blocks, all situations in which someone would be able to take a weapon from her. All had the same basic techniques, and he threw such a wide variety of methods in until the core of the technique remained. Once that happened, she was able to know when someone was trying to disarm her and would respond appropriately.
Then Evren did it all again with her off hand. It was a little more difficult, even though she knew what she wanted to do, it was awkward to do so. By the time the end of training came around, although she was still not comfortable with using her off hand, she was getting better with it. Fletcher, Walter and Harley were actually working with the new guards to ensure Anbuton was properly safe while they were out.
For the next few days, Evren worked with Isobel on her two-weapon fighting. Everything she was taught was mirrored with her opposite hand. Now, Evren was wearing thick gloves as Isobel swung at him. Occasionally Evren would say 'right' or 'left' to get Isobel to switch to the other hand to attack. Whenever she swung her blade, Evren's gloved hand would be there to receive it.
After some time, Isobel was sweating hard, but still maintained her stance and kept attacking. Evren told her to take a break and said they would be working on defense next. For the next week, Evren worked with Isobel on her defense. Towards the end of the week, he would spar with her and then afterwards he would tell her the good and bad of what she had done during the spar.
When Evren wasn't training with Isobel, he was training with Fletcher. Fletcher had gotten good at archery since he started using the bow, but he wasn't very mobile. Evren himself preferred to stand his ground but was very familiar with shooting on the move. As an individual in the military who shot weapons on almost a daily basis. He had a few tips and tricks he could give to Fletcher and had planned out some training for him.
He didn't have any pop-up targets and really wanted some, but that'd take a while to make, and he wanted to get back to the dungeon. Instead, he would make Fletcher walk and he would throw targets in the air, and he had to hit a certain color among all the colors. As Fletcher got used to this, Evren added a second and then a third color to be hit before the targets fell to the ground.
Walter would check in from time to time, the new guard recruits were doing well and had begun to do solo patrols around the town. Their training was proceeding well, and while they have yet to have a need for it, they trained daily and practiced with each other to improve their skills. Walter had also contacted Levi to help get them better equipped.
Evren had also met up with Levi to check up on his smithing. They would usually chat for a while, and discuss various things related to the craft. Occasionally Gallus would show his face at the forge and spent an uncomfortable amount of time around the runed tools and anvil. They couldn't figure out of the temptation to use the tools was strong enough to pull him completely out of retirement or not.
As they talked, both Evren and Levi noticed the metal in the forge was ready to use, but Evren halted Levi from getting it. As the two watched, Gallus finally noticed and looked to the two to see if or rather when they were going to be working the metal. Both men ignored him, and the billet in the forge until he finally burst.
"You damned fools! Don't you know if you let the metal get too hot you can't work it properly? Are you trying to melt this piece, do you even know how to make a pitchfork?" Gallus yelled and using tongs pulled the metal from the forge and started working them. Both of them noticed that Gallus had grabbed and only used the rune encrusted tools and was using the forge Evren brought.
Both of them watched Gallus as he worked with a smile on their faces. Evren said, "Guess he couldn't handle the temptation."
"It sure looks that way. Do you think he knows what he's doing?" Levi asked.
"If he hasn't learned from how many times he's watched you, I'd say he's an idiot." Evren replied with a smile.
Gallus lifted his head slightly with that comment but said nothing and continued to work on the steel. His work speed was steady, but occasionally his hands would falter when moving the metal around. He put the steel back into the forge, looked like he was going to say something and continued working the steel when it was hot enough. The two looked at each other with a grin.
Levi said, "So, let me get this straight, when you are planning on enchanting something, you feed magic into the hammer and the anvil helps to focus the magic on the metal you're working?"
Evren nodded, "Yes, and you have to have a strong image in your mind while you're adding the enchantment. The tool will work fine without magic poured into it, but when you feed magic into it the enchantment will take effect."
Levi said, "Ah, but what if you want the enchantment to work all the time?"
Evren shrugged, "You could either feed it magic the who time or set magic stones in the item. But you have to make glyphs on the stone specific to the tool and enchantments, or else it'll just be a decoration."
"How do you know which glyphs to make?" Levi asked.
"Oh!" Evren said, "I gave that book to Antrias, so if you ever want to enchant something, with the forge here and all the runed tools, you should probably get with Antrias about the magic stones. Discussing it with him prior to enchanting the item will make the process a whole lot simpler."
Levi nodded, "I see. I see. What about when you engraved something on the equipment?"
Evren shrugged, "That depends. Most of the time it's decorative. There are times, like with Walter's armor, when I wanted to reinforce the glyphs on the stones. And sometimes, I add runes to the weapon to give it an additional effect to the item, like I did with my spear. Although I haven't used it yet, I enchanted it with sharpness and sturdiness, and also flames."
"OH! That reminds me!" Evren suddenly said. "I wanted to make a bow for Fletcher like the one I have now from the ent wood and maybe the core too. But I'm no good at making bows. I don't suppose you're any good at making them?"
The hammer striking metal slowed down a little as Levi answered. "I could probably make something, but my skills in making bows are lacking. I can probably practice and let you know when you get back from the lower levels next time."
"What are you guys fighting now?" Levi asked.
"Drakes." Evren answered simply.
"Oh, is that where the burns came from?"
"Yeah. They're smarter than the wyverns and wouldn't fall for the same trick twice." Evren said, "The flame hounds I fought up in Plinth were smart too. I guess it depends on the species."
"Wyverns and drakes? What's after that?" Levi asked.
"Dragons, elder dragons and then dracoliches." Evren replied.
"Dracolich?"
"Yeah, from what I read when a dragon becomes undead it turns into a dracolich because its magic and intelligence are too much for a simple skeleton dragon. They're not as smart as dragons, but they're tougher to kill." Evren continued, "And after all the dracoliches is the lich."
Levi nodded and asked, "I've heard a little about liches, what are they?"
"Humans, or other races, who got so powerful in magic and so obsessed with something that they chose to become undead. They retain the intelligence they once had and gain an immortal body. Well, no, that's not true. They gain an almost immortal existence.
"When someone wants to become a lich, they tie their soul to something and that becomes what's called a phylactery. At this point, the liches then need to either have a body prepared, or must create one to live in. If the body is destroyed, the lich's soul returns to the phylactery. It can then create another body or inhabit a new one that it had created before.
"The phylactery has to be something personal to the lich in order to tie it to the world. Even though there are spells that are used to preserve the phylactery, it is most likely very fragile. If the phylactery is destroyed, the lich is killed."
"That sounds like you'll have a lot of problems when you get to it." Levi said.
"I doubt a lich from a dungeon has a phylactery. From what I heard from the vampire on the 45th floor, it'll return even if it does have one and it's destroyed." Evren said with a nonchalant attitude.
"Ahh." Levi nodded, "Wait, did you say vampire?"