(UPDATED CHAPTER)
Immediately, the two dashed forward at the same time, closing the distance between them in a second.
Whilst in mid-air, Zareth caught a glimpse of his father's shocked expression.
'He... matched my engage!' Drufus thought to himself, slightly surprised.
Their wooden swords immediately struck against each other, letting out a reverberating rattle which caused the both of them to back off slightly.
Now that they were within fighting distance, they circled around each other with their swords still ready to attack at any moment.
"Where did you learn to sword fight?" Drufus questioned.
Zareth smirked on hearing this.
"Of course, by watching you train father." He cupped one fist behind his back.
Tightening his grip on his sword, Zareth slowly neared his father. As he closed in, Drufus swiftly fell into a side stance and swept his sword toward Zareth's rib cage.
Zareth quickly adjusted his step, circling to the right -- just outside the reach of his father's strike.
"Oho? You're not bad!"
An eager gleam of excitement began to grow in Drufus, who had not sparred against someone in ages.
With another maneuver, Drufus thrust his blade straight toward Zareth's chest.
However, Zareth quickly parried the strike with ease - slightly breaking Drufus' balance.
Drufus immediately stomped his right foot on the ground and reclaimed his composure before releasing a fury of powerful strikes toward Zareth -- all of which he dodged, parried, and feinted with a nonchalant look on his face.
By now, Zareth had discerned Drufus' level of swordsmanship and had decided it was time that the fight came to a close.
With a slight retreat, Zareth positioned himself into a simple stance -- holding the blade next to his head facing toward his father who was straight in front of him.
After a little pause, Zareth lunged in with a forward strike.
Drufus was slightly caught off guard by the simplicity of this attack compared to what his son had shown previously, but he did not let his mind wander and prepared himself thoroughly.
As Zareth neared, his father reacted quickly, positioning his blade in front of him to parry the strike; However, Zareth suddenly disappeared from his vision.
Out of nowhere, Drufus' felt deadly; almost petrifying aura from behind his back which made him shriek slightly.
For that split second, he felt like death itself was lurking behind him.
Before he could turn around, he abruptly felt a powerful impact on his back.
With a concussive whuff, he felt his breath abandon his body. It was only an instinctive tightening of his lungs that prevented him from gasping for breath.
His sword dropped to the ground and he fell onto his knees.
"Are you alright?" Zareth quickly came to his father's aid. "You are not hurt too badly are you?" He was unsure of how much pressure he had put behind the blow.
"Yea-- yea I'm fine. I just need to catch my breath is all." Drufus said before sitting up.
He closed one of his eyes in exhaustion before speaking.
"You are truly something else kid. You have gotten better than me just by looking at my training. I don't even know how that makes sense." It seemed Drufus was still dumbfounded.
"And there was..." He paused to think. "Some sort of feeling when you were behind my back." He paused again as slight shivers ran up his back.
"It was scary, to say the least." He chuckled.
'Ah, my bloodlust. Seems I got a little too into the fight. '
A swordsman's bloodlust did not come from their strength, instead, it came from their intent.
One's intent to kill, fortified through many years, was enough to actually kill in some cases. Of course, this would only be the result of countless years of training and experience.
'Still, if he used some body-strengthening magic on me at my current level, I would not have stood even a chance.'
Drufus let out an exasperated sigh. "I just wish your mother was here to heal me from this exhaustion with her little stamina spells. Those sure do work wonders."
Suddenly, Zareth felt a light bulb click in his head.
"Stamina spells?" He said. "Are you telling me... the spells mother uses on you aren't healing spells?"
Drufus looked at him with a slightly confused expression.
"Well, sometimes they are healing spells, but most times all I need is some stamina spells to get me kicking again. Why? Do you want to learn stamina spells?" Drufus asked.
A grin slowly appeared on Zareth's face.
"Yes! Yes in fact I do!" He yelled.
Zareth teemed with excitement. He had no idea that stamina was even a sub-element of magic.
However, now that he knew this was true; it would also make sense that on top of adding stamina to one's body, taking away said stamina was also possible!
This was a monumental discovery!
If Zareth were to learn how to control the stamina sub-element, he would be able to put his parents into an almost unwakeable slumber, which would allow him to train freely during the night!
When Zareth's mother came back home that night, he asked her to train him in stamina magic.
At first, she was a little hesitant, questioning Zareth and his motives.
"Why do you need to learn stamina magic? I already told you that you cannot train in combat!" Freya complained.
"Please! I just want to be able to do even more chores after I finish my exercises! I want to help you mother, you should not have to do all of the chores in the house." However, Zareth's cute and impressive way of words easily swayed her.
First, Freya explained the basis of how stamina magic worked.
"As you know, a sub-element of magic is either a smaller part of one major element or the combination of two major elements. The stamina sub-element falls within the former, being a smaller part of the earth element." She carefully made herself clear.
"You must know that the earth element does not just allow you to conjure and control natural materials, but also allows you to accelerate the inevitable growth of things. To speed up the process in which one's stamina increases, you must use specifically the acceleration factor of the earth element. Here, let me show you."
Freya then made Zareth lie down flat on the bed before resting her hand on top of his chest.
"From all those push-ups, your chest must be sore."
After a couple of seconds, small amounts of blue magic which looked like thin strings began following her fingers as she lifted her hand up from Zareth's chest.
The magic strings flowed slowly and calmly around her finger as she twisted her hand in a circular motion.
"This is the rate at which your stamina increases. Now... let me show you how one speeds it up."
As higher concentrations of magic began entering the small strings of magic, it began swirling around her finger at increasing speeds.
The faster it spun, the brighter it glowed, illuminating the dark, candle-lit, room in the midst of the night.
Finally, she laid her hand back on Zareth's chest once again as the quickly spinning strings began swimming inside Zareth's meridians once again.
Zareth could immediately notice the speed in which his stamina increased - and from this hefty explanation - had already grasped exactly how stamina magic worked.
After this, Freya turned off Zareth's bedside candle before going to sleep as well.
Of course, her bed was in the same room as Zareth's so she could keep an eye on him.
As Zareth waited for the time to pass, he turned to the other side of his bed so that his mother wouldn't notice him staying up and began practicing the stamina magic.
Following the same process his mother did, it only took Zareth a couple of times before mastering the skill.
After doing this, Zareth began tinkering with the spell under the bedsheets.
He easily found a way to slow down one's stamina regeneration, however, he had a difficult time directly removing stamina from one's body.
His mother had shown him the bare minimum, however, even if one's stamina regeneration rate was absolutely zero, they would still have their base stamina left over.
After many attempts and failures, Zareth finally came to the conclusion that removing stamina from a person was possible!
Now, however, another dilemma stood in his path.
You see, Zareth did not just want to remove the stamina from his parent's bodies and throw all of it into the atmosphere, which he could easily do.
This would only be a waste of energy.
Instead, he greedily wanted to harness that power for himself; not only to have the extra stamina but also to have an effective new skill.
With several more minutes of constant failures, Zareth found a way that had some chance to work in absorbing stamina from another person.
Still, he did not know if this solution was a sure answer because he had no one to test it on, and testing it on himself wouldn't really do much since he would just be taking and replacing his own stamina.
So, he decided that he was going to have to take a risk and try it on his parents without a single test experiment.
Although he was slightly dreading this already, Zareth got up from his bed and quietly tip-toed over to his parent's bed.
As he did this, the thoughts of Freya catching him red-handed and banishing him from ever even going outside or having a breath of air haunted him, however, he still persevered.
On arriving next to his mother, he began the process of taking the stamina out.
Strings of glowing stamina magic started encircling his hands, however, the process was not finished just yet.
Now, he inserted the stamina into his own meridians through a process of controlling his breathing and allowing his body to be welcoming of the new energy.
After a minute or so, Zareth had finally succeeded.