Standing in the ring were two people. One of them was a delicate looking young girl and the other looked like a thief or more like a sketchy criminal
Around them, other spars were taking place, with trained guards supervising each one.
"Alright, you two ready to start?" receiving a nod from the girl the supervisor then turned to the sketchy looking man.
He looked down at the blunted hunting knife in his hands, this was a bit absurd but he could deal with it. Back when he was selecting a weapon for this spar, he was barred from using his own and could only select one that they had provided.
The racks held a variety of blunted standard issue swords and knives. The reason they gave for this was that,
"You won't always be able to have your personal weapons, so suck it up."
Despite not wanting too, Jeffrey selected a blunted hunting knife from the rack.
Leaving his rucksack and forced to take off the machete strapped at his shin, he placed them outside the ring. Of course, Jeffrey had made sure to stuff the little white chick into his rucksack, he wouldn't want it to die because of a fluke after all.
Facing his opponent. He turned and nodded at the supervisor, signalling his readiness.
"Alright, begin!"
Right off the bat, Jeffrey dashed straight at the girl. She seemed startled for a moment, however quickly regained her calm and parried the hunting knife aimed at her, using a blunted standard issue double edged short sword.
Suddenly, as if attracted to her, she was surrounded by a special type of essence. Jeffrey had seen similar occurrences, but not one as fine tuned as this. He was momentarily stunned allowing the girl to finish the ritual.
The special essence pooled together to form a silvery white humanoid silhouette. It looked like a ghost with a flowing waist with no legs, and arms that ended in nubs instead of fingers.
This was a star summon. Although it is called a summon, it would be more akin to the creation of an artificial elemental. This was a unique ability of one of the two unique mage archetypes of the Moonshine Kingdom.
The Star Summoner.
Capable of harnessing the essence of starlight and condensing it into minions to fight for them. However many have the misconception that they are only capable of summoning at night when the stars are out, however, Star Summoners are capable of summoning at any time, and can actually be said to be stronger during the day. It is not common knowledge that the sun can also produce star and starlight essence, and quite a bit at that, something that the Moonshine Kingdom capitalizes on.
The other unique mage archetype of the Kingdom is the Moon Mage, unlike the Star Summoner, they are generally weaker during the day and stronger at night, however, Moon Mages are capable of wreaking much more destruction than Star Summoners, as the moon and moonlight essence of which they utilize is much more potent than that of the Star Summoners.
In the Moonshine Kingdom, Star Summoners also have star rankings, however, the ranking works a bit differently. Each star that a Star Summoner has is multiplied by itself or powered by two to work out the threshold of summons that the Star Summoner can handle.
For example, a one Star Summoner would only be capable of summoning up to three summons, and upon being able to reliably summon four, they would be promoted to a two Star Summoner. And upon being able to reliably summon nine they would be promoted to a three Star Summoner, and so on and so forth.
Back at the battle, the summon smashed its right fist down at Jeffrey. He attempted to parry the strike, it worked, though its fist split around the knife and nearly struck him straight in the chest. Luckily, the girl seemed to not be experienced enough to do something like that, so it was rather sloppy.
Realising the threat if the girl could summon more, Jeffrey weaved around the summon, it was too sluggish to catch Jeffrey.
The girl panicked when he got up close to her, it seemed her mind was preoccupied controlling and keeping the summon materialised.
Kicking her shin, the girl fell to the ground. The kick was pretty hard, in fact, the girl felt that her bones might be broken. The kick caused her to lose to much focus, making the summon dissipate into the wind. It was pretty overkill, considering that the end conditions for the spar were if the supervisor said so, or if one was able to get a clean hit in, meaning even a light tap could do as long as it was aimed at a vital part.
"That's enough. You can stop now buddy," the supervisor stepped in, in case Jeffrey did something extra.
"I feel the both of you are good, so I'll go get you your guard tokens, and just stay back for Wills to make a speech." This supervisor was obviously impressed with the Star Summoner girl. Mages were always extremely difficult to train, so the fact that she was so young and could already summon guaranteed her position to join the guards, whilst the supervisor felt iffy about Jeffrey, he had shown that he was capable and was even recommended by Karl Koreen, so the supervisor didn't have any qualms with letting the both of them into the guard ranks.