Here I am at the bottom, as close as possible to the great spirits as it could, there or just now the most little statues were the size of a human being and some of those statues are as big as an entire building.
Maybe it would scare some adventurers to be in front of those colossal figures with signs everywhere, but not me, I know I could die, I would just try and go with it.
So I just continued to progress more deep where there are only 3 statues, the king of monkeys, the king of elephants, the king of rhinoceroses.
And basically the king of a thousand legs centipede, he is the one who represents the earth in the books, they say that his power is such that by moving his body he would create earthquakes.
Lucian: "Well well let's go"
Lucian : "The centipede, it's gonna be hard"
What technique had I decided to take, simple, challenge the strongest over and over again until I was satisfied, until I was happy with my control of mana.
Now I woke up the centipede by touching its pedestal and it started to move, his eyes becoming a nice wood color.
He didnt attack me directly but became to stretch as if I didnt exist but I didnt have time to lose.
Lucian : "Hey I am your oponent"
Centipede : "Another human, oh can't you stop being annoying, it's been such a long since last time someone called me, let me enjoy"
Lucian : "No go work for me, I dont have time"
I used my mana to fire a little projectile on him to wake him up, he didn't seem quite happy and just continued to ignore me.
But I was not gonna let him do that, I dont have time just for him, I also had to go fight other spirit and time is precious for me.
Lucian : "Nah I am not letting you do whatever"
Centipede: "Stop that, eat this if you are so angry for my earth magic"
A shower of earth projectiles from all directions came at me, the earth being often used by knights or paladins for its strengthening and defense capabilities, this was also what I had decided to train.
So I didn't avoid any of the attacks and decided to tank them, even with mana protection, it was still not without pain, you really had to be crazy to deliberately put yourself under a shower of projectiles.
But I knew I was crazy from the moment I even tried to fight a top 4 stars spirit without even being a four star myself, I am suite lucky that he doesn't go insane from the start.
Centipede: "You're really an interesting person, I haven't seen that often"
Lucian: "That's all you have I'm very disappointed"
Centipede: "Well let's increase the strength of the attacks then"
Even bigger projectiles even from above then started to fell on me, and now I also had some coming at my blind spots which was pretty tricky to defend.
The centipede spirit was really annoying, he could shoot a projectile at me in form of pikes so the speed greatly exceeded that of any attack that I have seen so far which really made me continue my strategy of defense.
Suffice to say that my body didn't really hold the load, I protected my vital organs as much as possible, then with all my mana I surrounded myself with a protective layer, but in a few places it was less thick and so I was bleeding quite profusely from its parts there.
Lucian : "I didn't even know I could bleed out"
Centipede : "This one is gonna be quick"
Lucian : "That's not gonna be easy"
Demlns didn't have blood normally but as I transformed from being a human I had my old blood from a human in my body and it now could escape my body.
But some of my mana was also leeking out as it is going in every part of my body to protect it which made the matter not really better.
To say that even all my mana concentrated on my body was not enough to protect me, the great spirits did not steal their reputations for having a power equal to a great 4 star.
Centipede: "So what's it like to slowly bleed out"
Lucian: "I am more resistant than you think"
Centipede : "Good that make it funier"
Lucian : "You evil"
The more time passed, the more I managed to understand the way of the attacks, to protect and deprotect certain places of my body almost instantly.
Lucian : "You are not that bad"
Centipede : "Stop making fun of me:
Lucian : "I am sorry but now it's to do something else"
Centipede : "What"
I got away from the centipede reamly quick without it being able to go against me as it got back to a sleeping state.
As of now I could go to another temple, with the little thing Thanatos gave me and the fact that Hypnos showed me where the other temple where, I could tp in and out of them after taking a quick brake.
Lucian : "Ah, now time for fire"
Fire great spirit : "Oh a human, woah you are really hurt but that's not my problem"
Lucian : "Here we go again"
Months and months passed, years during which, in parallel with studies, I was literally attacked again by the great spirits continually with changing paterns.
The only advantage I had in there was that I could potentially run away if something went wrong, but I stayed until I almost lost consciousness.
And this process continued and repeat itself for all other spirits depending on my mood, the time of the day and what I wanted to work on.
Lucian : "Progress take really a lot of sacrifices"
Lucian : "All my body hurt so much, but I am not a coward, let's go again"
Centipede : "Oh you again"
Lucian : "Yeah, come on continue attacking me"
For the fire, a large salamander against which I practiced swinging fireballs at him and hand-to-hand combat, without being able to give him even a scratch.
For the water and the air I trained to move, to avoid attacks, but also to control my attacks, the giant octopus and the eagle being particularly difficult opponents.
I don't even count the number of times I had to rush out of temples because I almost burned alive, drowned or whatever...
Lucian : "My my, I got my side bunt again and marks on my back"
Lucian : "Let's wait some bit and go again, it's nearly morning I have to get back to the academy soon"
Besides, I didn't feel like I was really making much progress all this time, at the same time in a duel I was doing the bare minimum, I was taking a few attacks, sending a few and giving up pretty quickly.
Not that I wanted to lose but rather that it didn't interest me, besides, I was often quite tired of the evening before without forgetting the classes that bored me deeply.
Eugeon : "Oh Darthos you are already awake"
Darthos : "Yeah but I'm tired"
Eugeon : "You seem hurt on your face, what did happen ?"
Darthos : "Oh I fell during my sleep"
Eugeon: "Yeah"
It was hard to keep what I was doing secret form Eugeon whi saw me everyday and was living in the same room as me, but with time he just accepted it and never really asked questions.
So my days could be summed up as :
Morning and afternoon: classes
Evening: fights against spirits/ weapon making (just as a reminder he didn't finish that)
A student : "Hey peasent, fight me"
Darthos : "Not that again"
Eugeon : "Since the time you defeated Lapeil, they judt come again and again"
Darthos : "I will just have to forfeit again, eh"
And here we go again, a lot of students at the beginning send me challenges on duels, either I refused, or I accepted and pretended to lose depending on the strength of my opponent, I didn't care what to do with my ranking in the duels as long as it didn't prevent me from moving on to the next year.
That being the case, I realized much later (so the end of the year) that all the fights that I had lost had put me in a much lower place and that therefore I no longer had much time to make up for the points that I needed to go up to the next year.
Darthos : "I am really in a lot of trouble"
Eugeon : "Yes you are"
Darthos : "Do you have some idea"
Eugeon : "Go ask the examiner, maybe he knows, he is the one who know about that"
But by a lot of losing, no one will send me a duel request anymore because my points were way too low to interest them or because they think I'm too weak.
So I really putted myself in a lot of trouble on my own and now I have to spmehow hope that maybe, just maybe their is some way to get enough points before the end of the year.
Darthos: "Mr. examiner, you would have a solution to increase points quickly"
Examiner: "You can try the school Colosseum, you can freely challenge anyone there"
Darthos : "Okay thanks"
Examiner : "But pay attention to high ranking people, you could get in a lot of troubles if you are too greedy"
Oh not bad as a solution, I don't need to wait for someone to accept my challenges or not, I can just force anyone to fight me.
Without further ado I headed to the arena which is rather full in the evening and asked myself who I could fight without to much trouble.
Given the little damage I did to the elemental monsters during all my fights, I certainly wasn't going to try to fight a 4-star, so I challenged everyone below rank 200, with almost a thousand students, only a really low numbers were 4 stars the rest being 3 stars.
Darthos : "Hello sir, I want to challenge the top 432"
Organiser of the colosseum : "Okay, you can go into the area number 4"
Darthos : "Thank you"
Organiser : "Good luck"
So to avoid bumping into someone too strong, rank 200 (top 20%) didn't seem so bad to me as I knew that at the top where last year students or 4 stars which is not something I want to try and fight yet.
At the beginning nothing complicated, just a few 3 stars, who like me in search of points find themselves at the arena, suffice to say a rather easy victory just with the sphere of Darthos.
It wasn't very glorious, even for me to use the same method, but I didn't want to be sent a lot of requests for duels yet so by doing that I had to use the sphere to scare my oponents.
I took advantage of this opportunity to take a few shots and try some tricks that I could not test on higher spirits without a very high chance of dying every 10 sec.
The examiner: "Well he's doing well the kid, he beat 30 in a row, he made me win a lot of money"
A teacher : "You really are betting on your students"
Te examiner: "Yeah I quite like that student and money too, win win for me"
Indeed, in this colosseum the public is often present, especially in the evening, bets of all kinds are managed there by the staff and the winner / winners share the winnings.
Suffice to say that at the beginning the money that I had placed (which he has had since the beginning) multiplied rather well and I won a lot of money but secretly betting on myself.
Organiser : "Here is your money on your bets again"
Darthos : "Thank you"
Organiser : "You are quite good, you didn't lose much bet you made even on other person"
Darthos: "I have good eyes"
Organiser : "Your next fight start soon"
Darthos : "Okay, I'll be betting on myself again"
But despite two days of beating three stars over and over again, which prevented me from fighting spirits in the process, I still didn't have enough points, so I had to venture higher than I had planned, basically until now my max was 200 but avoid going that way and took the lowest available.
The end of the exam period being close and the grades other than theoretical mana being rather close to zero, I had A LOT of points to catch up on, these are the ones I was working on, except that I didn't realize two things, one that a 4 star had given me a challenge, which to recall I can't refuse and that I was starting to attract too much attention from people I wanted to avoid.
Organiser : "You got a challenge form number 104"
Darthos : "Oh that doesn't seem like a good idea"
Organiser : "You have no choice, if you refuse, you cant come back for the year"
Darthos : "That's annoying, let's just hope everything goes well"
Who did I want to avoid then? the hero, it may seem strange considering that he is my target, but listening to rumors from afar and sometimes watching his fights was more than enough for me, especially since I didn't know the extent of his abilities or those of his companions.
Let's imagine that he has a clairvoyant ability or something, I will clearly be in big trouble, which is why I was collecting as much information as possible while avoiding him.
Darthos : "Nah it can't be the Hero, I think he is not in the Colosseum anyway"
Examiner : "Talking to yourself again"
Darthos : "Mr Examiner why are you here again "
Examiner : "I was looking at your fights and it seems you have now an annoying oponent, good luck to you"
Darthos : "Thanks I guess"
Just after, I was thinking and thinking and the time of the fight came very quick, the only option that I had in mind for now was really just forfeiting the match and mose a lot of points.
But it seems that I fell on the wrong day, my series of victories had attracted too many people, including the hero whom I saw in the watching area, without forgeting that my opponent seems to be a four stars with hid quantity of mana, oh really not lucky.
Next chapter: "Under the eyes of the enemy"