Training With An Azzure

The rest of the week goes by relatively well. I meet Master Ava after school more than once to clarify some things about noers and find it easy to learn what they teach in class. Also, Lathia finishes my tour of the Metorium, though, the only other place of interest to me apart from the training center is the library and I make up my mind to visit it as soon as possible.

Lathia and I have become friends over the course of the week and I am not too surprised about that. She is quite friendly and fun to be around, although, she seems to be addicted to teasing. The only thing that mars my stay in the Metorium is Keldin and the gaggle of idiots that always seem to follow him. He seems to have taken it up upon himself to make things hell for me, but his efforts are quite childish, making it more annoying than anything else. By the time the weekend begins I want nothing more than to gently introduce his face to my fist, still, I manage to hold myself back, telling myself that he is a child; but that excuse is becoming increasingly irrelevant to me.

Apart from Tobi, Bella, and Han, most of the other kids in my class stay away from me. I get the feeling that it is more out of fear of Keldin than anything else. Some part of me gets the feeling that the only reason Tobi and his gang feel free with me is that no one really cares about them in the class, still, I do my best not to care what anybody thinks and just focus on practicing my magic.

As soon as classes end on Saturday I waste no time getting up to leave the class. While I do enjoy learning magic, school is still school and the promise of a free day is more than enough to make me feel relieved. Tomorrow there will be no practice, so I decide I will just take my time to relax. Outside the classroom, I run into Keldin who is surprisingly alone and looks like he is waiting for someone. As soon as I spot him I make up my mind to ignore him and whatever he does.

"Hey gramps," he says as soon as he sees me.

I ignore him and walk past him.

He begins to follow me. "Gramps, I'm talking to you."

I snap. "Listen you little brat, I am sick and tired of your childish games. Just because you know a little bit about magic you go around acting like a big shot when you're nothing more than a whiny idiot. Look, just leave me alone and find something better to do with your time other than acting like an imbecile."

His expression hardens as he listens to me. "I'm a whiny idiot? Wow, what a really creative insult." He claps slowly. "If you think I only know a little about magic why don't you fight me?"

I look him up and down. "I am not interested in humiliating children."

He laughs. "You say I only know a little bit about magic and yet you are afraid to fight me?"

He is trying to goad me into fighting him, and though he isn't doing too much of a good job with it, I decided to take him up on his offer. Who knows, if I beat him up hard enough he might decide to leave me alone. "You want a fight?" I ask him.

He nods.

"Fine then," I say, "I'll fight you, but if I win you have to quit disturbing me." In my mind, I know the real reason I agreed to the fight was so I could beat his puny ass. But I have no problem letting him think I agreed just to get him to stop disturbing me.

"Sure," he says, a devilish smile appearing on his lips. "And if I win I'll get the joy of humiliating you."

I ignore his obvious attempt to annoy me. While others might think he is some sort of genius, to me he is nothing. I do better than him in every single class we have, hell he barely even makes an effort. And sometimes when he is asked a question, while he manages to answer his answers are barely passable. To his classmates though, the fact that he is even able to answer is nothing short of amazing. Long story short, I am not impressed. Apart from his purer than normal Uua, he is nothing. I am better than him in everything except being irritating.

"When do you want to fight?" I ask him.

"Monday."

I nod and walk away as I change my weekend schedule in my mind. Even if I am better than him in most of our classes it wouldn't hurt to have a bit of practice before the fight. On Monday I'll put an end to all this. Since I have some time to go before I have to head to the bookshop to clean up, I decide to go to the training center to practice. Before that, I go to the restaurant to get something to eat first. In the restaurant, I take a quick look around for Lathia but she is not here, I guess she doesn't come here every day then. I order some food and eat quickly before leaving the restaurant and going to the training center.

In the training center I climb to the second floor. When Lathia had brought me here she had explained that the second floor contains humanoid creatures which are used for training combat skills. The creatures had different difficulties for the different Laen levels and I planned to train with an Apprentice one. I find an empty room and after locking myself in, begin to do some warm-up exercises. Once I am done I speak to the room. "Azzure Apprentice One." The command is one Lathia had taught me during our last tour. 'Azzure' told the room to create one of the creatures I'll be fighting, Apprentice states the level of the creature while 'One' tells the room I only want to fight one of them. A second later, a featureless humanoid creature walks out of the wall opposite me and attacks.

It doesn't take me long to figure out that the creature is stronger than the golems I fought during my Apprentice exams. In less than a minute it defeats me and leaves me bruised on the floor. It takes me some minutes to recover but I don't leave immediately. Instead, I am somewhat excited. I review the fight in my head and try to figure out ways I could have done better. After correcting some of my faults I summon the creature again. This time it defeats me in less time than before. Still, I don't give up. I repeat this many times fighting it, promptly losing, trying to figure out what I did wrong before fighting it again.

After losing more times than I can count, I realize that I can't win it, even if I keep on fighting. Its spells and martial arts are far better than what I have learned so far. Currently, there is nothing I can do about martial arts, but there is something I can do about magic. I make up my mind swiftly and leave the training center, heading for the library. The library is open to everyone and is divided into two sections. The first section is for those who have not become Wranths yet, while the second section can only be accessed by Wranths and above. I don't bother about the Wranth and above section, the spells there will probably be too advanced for me to understand anyway. In the first section, I browse through the books and quickly realize that it will take time to learn any of the spells I am seeing there, time I do not currently have.

I leave the library not too long after, promising myself that once my fight with Keldin is over I will visit it regularly to learn new spells. After leaving the library I head back to the training center to resume getting beat up. By the time I leave the training center my body is aching all over. I expected to be covered in bruises but surprisingly apart from the pain, my body still looks the same as when I came in. I guess I didn't get beaten up hard enough.

"You look tired." A familiar voice says from behind me.

I look back to see Drew and Lathia standing behind me. Unbidden, a small smile comes to my lips. "Hey."

Drew gives me a small nod, he looks more tired than I have ever seen before. Lathia is the opposite, however, as she is as cheerful as she usually is.

"What happened to you?" she asks after we exchange greetings.

"Nothing. I just tried to train with the Azzure in the training center."

"What level was it?"

"Apprentice."

Drew snorts softly. "Stupid."

Lathia raises an eyebrow. "You know that it is as strong as you're expected to be once you are ready to become a Pre-protector right?" Suddenly I understand why it is so strong. It knows everything I haven't been taught yet.

"I did not know that," I say confess. "You didn't inform me."