The war was still raging on. The priest and the necromancer had made quite the name for themselves. The priest was an avid healer and an even more potent killer. He rained death and destruction on the enemy Hunters with his sea of light arrows.
The necromancer was less savage. He just made every body, no matter on which side it stood before death, rise back up again. As a result of his hasty spells, and his not working on the corpses beforehand, the end product turned up to be of a supremely low quality. As a consequence of that, however, he now had tens of thousands of zombies assaulting the living.
The sight was so nerve-wracking, no one wanted to partner up with him, and he had to fight alone. Well, he wasn't truly alone, but he was the only living being in his little squad outside his familiar, a black crow.
The proxy war was going hot, and the actual war wasn't far behind. On the Battlefield, the soldiers were starting to deploy their mages, and the tide of the battle was turning. The Kingdom had twice the amount of mages of the other two nations combined, and every single one of them served in the military.
Auroria was known as the kingdom of magic and faith for a reason. They worshiped their Goddess openly and fanatically, and their patron was the Goddess of Magic. They considered themselves followers of the right path, the path of magic, and they declared all magic sacred.
The rest of the world forced them into hiding their sacred art from their children for eight years, and every single citizen of Auroria hated this fact. What they found even more detestable however was their neighbors.
The Empire hid magic from their children for far longer than the norm. Outside the Academy, children only learned about magic in their twenties. Auroria hated them for it, and a clash of political views brought on a fierce war between the two nations.
For now, only the regular armies had been deployed, but there were talks of sending in the elites.
If the Empire was to deploy their Academy students and graduates, the Kingdom would send in their equivalent, members of the War Colleges. After that, things would truly get ugly.
None of that had anything to do with the duo. They were leisurely strolling around the edges of the Tundra, seeking an opponent for Ciaran.
The boy was monstrously strong for his age, but only if you counted his magic in the equation. Without it, he was still part of the elite, but he was bottom of that barrel.
"You can beat most Rank Ones here, so we will get you a Rank Two fight. But no magic and I will not allow you to have prior information on it, there will be no point if you just toy around with the poor animal." Diana said.
Ciaran looked at her shocked.
With a hand on his chest, he wiped a tear from his eye.
"Do you truly think so little of me that I would cheat in an exercise, the purpose of which is to make me stronger? Words hurt too Diana, words hurt too." He said, giving her a sad and dejected look.
She was used to his theatrics and usually, she would humor him, but now they had a task on their hands, and she just saw the perfect candidate for the job.
She grabbed him with both arms and threw him to the side. He collided with a seal. It was barely at Rank Two, and it was out of the water.
"Do your best, and bring home dinner." She said.
He wanted to retort that they had meat for months if not even years to come, but he held his tongue. He sighed and took out his katars. It was time to get his hands dirty, in a literal sense for a change.
He didn't know anything about the animal, other than it was Rank Two. He would have liked to study it a little before they engaged but he was right next to it, and it was pissed about the bruise the kid had left upon his landing.
The boy opened by coating his body in moisture and sliding upon the ice. It made his acceleration much faster, and he was able to get a stab in. The boy thought it was over, but suddenly he felt the poison on his weapon freeze.
He wanted to jump back but before he could he was smacked with a tail in the ribs. Ciaran flew back on the ice leaving blood trails every time he ricocheted off the ice.
The animal stood up and clapped with its front legs, making typical seal noises. It was clearly nocking him, as all Rank Twos could speak the human language.
For a very brief moment Ciaran let go, and a light breeze was present on the ice field. All the boy had to do was give the command, and it would tear the animal apart, but he held.
Overpowering with magic or outsmarting his opponents were his usual strategies, but he came here for something else.
He needed to fight, struggle and overcome. He was no Warrior, he had come to accept that, but he had to advance his body quickly if he wanted to advance his magic. And for that, there was no better way, than to duke it out in a death match with a superior opponent.
He charged again, this time applying the methodology of water. With great fluidity he staked at its head, fins, and lower body, all at the same time. He aimed one of his katars at its eyes, and the other at its fins, while stomping his Water-infused leg at its tail.
The problem was that the things blocked with equal fluidity. It used its teeth to block one of its weapons, and grabbed the other one with its front legs, while also infusing its tail with Water. It was a Rank up on the boy, so the attack turned out to be a complete failure.
With a headbutt to the face, the boy flew back again, this time with a broken nose. In that exchange, he had thought about nine ways to kill this thing, without the need to feel a single note of pain. And yet all he did was charge.
He needed to push his body to the limits, to be faster and stronger, so he just charged. With each attempt, he infused just a little more water into himself. For two hours the seal beat him. It stopped all of his charges. And finally, it stopped him, and was about to end it all.
"Ok, this has been fun, but I don't feel like playing with my food anymore." It gave him its first, and last sign of respect as it spoke to him. It went for the throat, and in the next second, it was dead, killed by a Wind blade.
It didn't even know how it died. One second it was going to eat its lunch and the next, total darkness.
Ciaran sat down and began healing his face. It had left him less human, and more of a squashed tomato with a body attached to it. For some reason, it loved going for the face, and now the boy had to regrow his teeth for days.
"What did we learn today?" Diana asked him, blinking right next to the boy.
He said nothing at first, but when she kept poking him, literally poking him with her finger, in his ribs, which were either broken or bruised, he gave up on his ego.
"I am a mage, not a Warrior, and rushing in the ranks is suicidal. I don't have a talent for martial arts, and that's fine. We will do it your way, I will learn self-defense, but everything else will be done with magic." He said with a sad voice.
He hated admitting his incompetence, but continuing like this was contra-productive. He was no good at fighting, and he had no passion for it. He could fight to some extent, but nowhere near as good as others of his rank.
Why would he focus on what he was bad at when he could excel at what he was not only great at, but loved doing? He loved magic, and as far as he could tell, it loved him back. Not only that, but he was the best at it, at least for his rank.
Diana was the same rank as him, and also the most brilliant person he knew, but if they were to compete with just magic, it would end worse than his skirmish with the seal. He would, without much effort, mop the floor with her.
He would still train his martial arts, and develop the rank of his body, but from this day forward, he was giving up on being a Warrior. From this day forward, Ciaran Clades formally stepped on the path of magic, and only on the path of magic.
In the other corner of the Empire, Nature was projecting this scene to his mentors. Eleftherios was less than pleased to be in her presence, but the rules never applied to her, so when she proposed to show him one of the most important moments of his student's life, he begrudgingly accepted.
"Finally he gets it. I am happy I didn't have to beat it in his thick little skull." He said.
Against all expectations, the Warrior was happy his disciple was letting go of the martial path. Sure, he couldn't teach him as much about magic, but as his Master, he wanted the kid to follow his path in life.
No one was perfect. No one was good in everything, and it would be cruel of him to make a fish feel inadequate for its inability to climb a tree.