After Alice’s experiment, she went to sleep for the night. The next day, after working with Ezrien’s team, getting through her first two classes of the day, and visiting the library, her self-defense class began. This week, the class had begun having the students duel each other.

“So we’re finally going to start practicing against each other?” said Luka, grinning a bit as Alice and the two classmates she knew stood in the training field. He was practically bouncing on the heels of his feet with excitement.

“It looks like it,” said Alice as she pondered the value of learning to duel Mages.

Thus far, most things Alice had learned that were combat related were dedicated to surviving ambushes and keeping herself alive. Dodging or deflecting projectiles were definitely key skills for Mages, since the primary way Mages died was being caught off-guard before they could get their magic seeds engaged in the fight. Most Mage classes had several Perks dedicated to coping with exactly this scenario.

However, there was much more to learn than just this. While most early self-defense training in this world was devoted to making sure a Mage could survive the initial burst of fatal attacks when an [Assassin] attacked them from the shadows, surviving that initial outburst of danger was nowhere near enough to survive an attack from a dedicated killer-for-hire, high level combatant, or even just a large group of people.

And there was another threat to Mages besides surprise attacks and high-level combatants. The threat of other Mages.

That was what the magic duels section of the class was dedicated to.

And this was also the most relevant Skill set for Alice, since the biggest threat to her life was the Society of Starry Eyes. Since the Society was almost exclusively made of Mages who wanted to experiment with illegal and immoral types of magic, if Alice ever got into a conflict with them she would need to know how to fight other Mages. These lessons were exactly what she needed.

“All right, I will preface this lesson by saying that we’re now fully investing our time into learning how to fight and kill other human beings. Some of the skills we learned earlier were quite relevant against monsters as well as humans, but these classes will be based on the magic seeds of your classmates. Monsters form very different magic seeds than we do, so the applications of these lessons against monsters will be far more limited than our previous lessons. Now, I don’t know how many of you have acquired the {Murderer} Achievement, and it’s none of my business who has and who hasn’t. For those of you that don’t have it, killing another human being is… different.” Professor Tanmi looked solemn as he stood in front of the group of students.

“The military will make Mages who enlist kill a bandit or someone of similar origin during their time in the military, as preparation for what a real battlefield looks like. It isn’t the kind of training a regular soldier gets access to, because there simply aren’t enough [Bandits] and similar lowlifes in the country for every single soldier in the military to kill someone, but for a Mage, this kind of training is vital.

“This is because you’re blessed with Magic. This is something almost everyone who isn’t a Mage envies. If you were born with it, you probably grew up hearing how lucky you were. If you survived a mana baptism, you’re one of about four percent of people who survive the process. Either way, you were lucky, and you’ve doubtless had a much easier time in life as a result of being a Mage.

“But being a Mage isn’t a one-sided benefit. For all of the financial leeway you get as a Mage, as well as the newly opened Perks, Classes, and reduced aging speed all Mages benefit from, there are also new dangers and temptations. Some of them are simple – the desire to experiment on humans, or start learning about other dangerous branches of magic such as dimensional magic. All of these routes of experimentation can, indeed, benefit the human race if the research into them was successful, which leads many well-meaning but easily tempted people into a twisted path of murdering innocent people for the sake of the ever-nebulous idea of the ‘greater good.’ Aside from these more obvious temptations and dangers, you’re also more likely to be targeted by people who want to hurt you. The Sigmusi’s attempts to assassinate Mages in the south, for example, or the occasional attempts by the Society of Starry Eyes to use Mages as experimental materials. While they are rare, these new dangers exist, and if you’re unlucky you may find yourself face to face with them.

“And that is why we require students to learn not only how to survive ambushes, not only how to survive monsters, but how to fight other Mages as well. This is why you don’t have the leeway to flinch if someone is trying to kill you, and why the crown places such great importance on you being able to defend yourselves.

“The dueling portion of the class is meant to teach you how to deal with these new threats to your life.” Professor Tanmi gave them all serious looks, and Alice heard Laila gulp beside her. Alice spared a quick glance in the usually lackadaisical girl’s direction, and saw that her expression was surprisingly stern for once. Far from her usual indifferent or relaxed expression, the other girl looked nervous.

“Now, pair up with someone nearby and stand together. Whoever you’re standing with will be your partner for the lesson.”

Alice looked at Laila, who also looked at her. They shrugged, before standing closer together. Alice wasn’t as close with Laila as the other three students she was familiar with, but she didn’t mind spending time with the other girl. Luka paired up with another boy, and the other students in the class were also quickly getting into pairs. After the students in the class were paired up, professor Tanmi continued.

“Now, first thing to note. As a teacher, I have a special Perk called {Student Dueling} that makes it much easier for me to react to any dangers my students create for each other. In short, this Perk helps me keep you safe if one of you would actually harm the other. However, for the Perk to work, you must first announce that you intend to fight a practice round and raise your hands for a few seconds while standing within five meters of me. Are any of you above level 75 or in possession of any incredibly noteworthy Classes, Achievements, or Perks? You don’t have to tell me what they are, just tell me if there’s something I need to be super cautious of.”

Nobody raised their hand.

“Good. Sometimes I get a student or two who’s just sticking around for the experience bonus for learning under a [Teacher]. I get it, and more power to you if you decide to do that in the future. However, I’m only a little above that level, and a level 75 fighting at full power against a [Student] that might only be between level 20 and 40 is incredibly unfair, and it’s honestly not great practice for either of you. And on a more practical note, it makes it much harder for me to keep you guys safe if something unexpected crops up during the duel. I have excellent Perks for fighting, and I can use those to keep any lethal blows you guys might strike from hurting each other, but if you’re at level 75 it starts to get dicey with some perk combinations or combined perks, and I don’t play games with the lives of my students.

“Now, one pair after another, I’m going to give you guys the opportunity to come up next to me and duel each other. You must first raise your right hand and announce that you will be dueling the other person. Then, you must WAIT until I give you the signal to go ahead. If you attack before I give you the go-ahead, I will personally drag you to an after-class lecture about safety for a few hours and then deduct all of your grades by ten percent for the rest of the semester for flouting my rules about safety, and I’ll kick you out of future duel practice as well. Final rule, you can use any amount of practice weapons and enchantments in the duels, but you need to show them to me first, and I can veto an item if it seems too powerful for the fight. This is to train each other, after all, and in a real fight people are going to be throwing around enchanted items left and right if they’re wealthy enough. But safety is still more important. You can also start the duel with no weapons if you prefer – I personally recommend this. Especially if you’re a [Kinetic Mage], it’s a good way to simulate what to do if someone catches you off guard and you survive the initial volley of attacks. Now, are you guys ready?”

Seeing most students nod, Professor Tanmi grinned.

“Good. Now, you two – the girl and boy standing closest to me. Do you two want to be the first ones up?”

“I don’t mind,” said the girl casually. The boy, who seemed a bit shyer, hesitated for a moment before he also nodded. Alice noted with some interest that the girl had an Organic seed, and the boy had a kinetic one. The girl was also holding a wooden sword. The boy carried no weapons with him.

“Stand closer to me. Now, raise your right hand and announce you’re dueling…”

The two went through the cumbersome starting procedures to activate Professor Tanmi’s Perks. Finally, he nodded. “Remember, fighting continues until I say the fight ends. You may attack each other with full force until then, but the moment I say stop, you stop. If you keep going after I tell you to stop fighting, you get a safety lecture and have your grades penalized. You can start now,” he said, waving his hand in the air to let them start attacking each other.

The girl immediately sent organic mana swarming through her legs, strengthening them until they reached levels humans on Earth would never be able to achieve. She dashed towards the boy, bringing down her wooden sword in an overhead cut to ‘kill’ the boy.

The boy extended two tendrils of kinetic mana towards the girl. Before she could respond, he grabbed her clothes with both and tried to shove her to the ground.

The girl stumbled, before collecting herself and throwing her sword at the boy like an overly large arrow. The wooden sword sailed through the air towards the boy as the boy watched, dazed. However, he still managed to catch the sword with a mana tendril, causing it to stop flying towards him and begin aimlessly floating in midair.

While he was distracted by the sword the girl had corrected her running stance and started sprinting towards the boy again. She caught up to him and… then punched him in the face with organic mana-enhanced arms, causing him to stumble back while flailing and shrieking. Blood began streaming out of his nose as the girl grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up with one hand. She began punching him in the face with her other hand, causing the boy’s attempts to free himself to end with painful groans and ineffective flailing. The boy completely lost any semblance of control over his magic and began jerking around and trying to free his windpipe from the girl’s grip. Instead of a fight between Mages, the duel resembled a street brawl at this point.

“Stop!” said Professor Tanmi, once it became clear the boy couldn’t fight back any more. His mana tendrils whipped out of his body and shoved the two students away from each other. The boy gave a few coughs, rubbing his neck tenderly as he wiped blood off of his face. “Give me {Patient’s Consent},” said Professor Tanmi. The boy nodded and closed his eyes, and a moment later professor Tanmi healed his bleeding nose and seriously bruised neck before handing the boy a cloth to wipe away the sweat and blood on his face.

“A good first duel. Do you know where you went wrong, Eri?” Asked Professor Tanmi, turning to the boy.

“I… should have reacted faster when she threw her wooden sword at me. I got so focused on stopping the sword that I lost track of her, and that let her get close to me. Since she was sprinting towards me, it was pretty obvious she was an [Organic Mage] focused on boosting herself, so I should have been much more focused on keeping her away from me. Once a physically-oriented [Organic Mage] gets close in a fight, my odds of winning are probably gone.”

“That’s part of it, but not the whole story. Tell me, what is the biggest advantage of a [Kinetic Mage] in combat?”

“Manipulating… kinetic energy?” asked the boy. It sounded like he was hoping to just stumble onto the right answer, instead of being sure of himself.

Professor Tanmi chuckled. “It is the ability to make everything into a weapon, and to deflect everything. Trying to use her clothes to trip her up was a good idea, but you neglected to use her sword. It’s true that trying to wrestle for control of the sword when it was in her hand would have probably ended poorly for you. But once she threw her sword, she also gave you an opportunity. If you were fast enough, you could have used her sword as a projectile, and then used it to hit her in the neck or something,” said professor Tanmi, giving the boy an amused look. “Also, there were plenty of other things you could have used as weapons in your environment. I said starting the fight with no weapons would be good practice, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t grab things from your surroundings to use as ammunition. While they aren’t quite in range, if you had taken the start of the duel as an opportunity to flee towards the weapon stockpiles at the corner of the training field, you would have a ready-made pile of weapons to use. If you have a storage perk, you can also use all sorts of random nonsense in there as ammunition to throw at your opponent. Even coins can make good killing weapons if you shoot them at your enemies with enough force.

“As for you, Ellie, throwing your sword worked this time, but an experienced opponent will punish you heavily for ditching your weapon in a fight like this. You didn’t get the chance to try many other tactics, since the fight ended quickly, but that’s a massive flaw in your fighting style that you should correct before it gets you killed.” The girl frowned, seeming a bit resentful of professor Tanmi’s criticism, but after a few moments she sighed and nodded. Professor Tanmi gave both of them encouraging smiles, before he waved his hands to them. “All right, that’s your turn over with. Next!”

The class began to walk up to the front of the group and duel each other in pairs, over and over again. Alice saw no less than six duels take place, mostly between students using Kinetic or Organic mana to fight each other. [Organic Mages] who had Perks dedicated to healing still ended up trying their best to fight, but their ‘fighting’ was usually hopeless flailing against their opponents until they were pronounced ‘dead.’ Professor Tanmi paid extra attention to those [Students], forcing them to concentrate on ways to enhance their muscles and dodge around attacks, even if they didn’t have Perks dedicated to it. Alice got the feeling that these [Students] were the intended targets of this class – [Organic Mages] who thought that being a healer excused them from any potential to get killed by a real opponent. At the very least, Professor Tanmi was very focused on the healing-oriented [Organic Mages] and knew lots of ways to give them some fighting power through Skills and Attributes, even if their Perks were dedicated to healing. Finally, it was Alice and Laila’s turn.

Alice strode to the front of the class along with Laila, doing her best to quell her nerves as she walked. As the two stepped forward together, Alice gave the other girl a quick assessment. Laila had two seeds – one Organic and one Kinetic. The Organic seed was larger and more developed. Was Laila a melee fighter, or a healer?

The two quickly moved through the initial procedures to activate professor Tanmi’s Perks, and Laila began submitting enchanted items to professor Tanmi for him to inspect. She started by pointing to her sleeveless dress, which Professor Tanmi allowed pretty quickly, and then began showing Professor Tanmi another enchanted item… and another enchanted item…

Alice started wondering just how many enchanted items Laila was carrying around in her storage Perk. How much money did her family spend gearing her up? Alice did her best to avoid seeing Laila’s enchanted items in advance – after all, what Alice wanted to test was her adaptability and combat strength. She wouldn’t get a proper measurement of her abilities if she came into the duel knowing all of Laila’s tricks before the match started.

Finally, Laila was done getting her enchanted items ok’d, and the two began to fight.

Alice began by retreating towards one of the barrels of practice weapons at the sides of the training field, keeping an eye on Laila the whole way. Sending a volley of practice weapons at Laila was Alice’s first idea for how to win the fight.

Laila didn’t just let her retreat unimpeded. Before Alice had taken more than five steps, Laila frowned and then activated five rings on her fingers, all of which had different enchantments.

System mana spread throughout Laila’s body, spreading to her limbs and sensory organs.

The System mana exiting the rings was much higher than Alice was used to seeing. Laila was probably getting a +30 or +40 bonus to everything, at the cost of each bonus being temporary.

Laila rushed towards Alice while pulling out a bracelet of metal beads from her storage Perk. Immediately, another enchantment was activated, and all of the metal beads ripped themselves out of the bracelet and began flying towards Alice like tiny bullets.

Alice created four kinetic mana tendrils and used them to rip up chunks of the training field, using the clumps of earth as shields. However, the soil began crumbling the moment it left the ground. It wasn’t held together well enough to use as a shield. The dirt was too loose. As Alice processed her mistake, {Adrenaline Rush} activated.

Alice’s perception slowed down. Every single second was suddenly divided into glacially slow tenths of a second. She noticed two beads from Laila’s bracelet had already nearly reached her. Professor Tanmi’s mana tendrils were already reaching out towards Alice, ready to stop the beads from tearing through her organs and killing her. However, perhaps due to the fact that her Perk was unwilling to leave her safety in the hands of someone else, {Adrenaline Rush} had activated anyway. The Perk was surprisingly trigger happy.

Alice maneuvered her mana tendrils towards the metal beads, and immediately shoved kinetic mana into them. Kinetic Mana disappeared from her seed, and the beads reversed directions and began flying back towards Laila in slow motion. However, Alice winced as more mana than expected disappeared. Since the beads were enchanted and Alice had been forced to just brute-force the trajectories of the beads, it had cost a fair amount of mana to reverse the direction of the beads.

Alice decided to try something different. She retracted one of her kinetic mana tendrils, before converting it into an organic magic tendril and reaching into some grass near Laila’s feet. Since grass had almost no mana resistance, it was easy to manipulate, even with Alice’s small Organic Magic seed. Alice forced the grass to reach up and try to grab Laila, while still using her kinetic mana tendrils to reverse the trajectories of Laila’s beads.

Laila’s shoes lit up with mana, and the girl was suddenly airborne. She had a flying enchantment in her shoes? How much money did it cost to add that into a piece of clothing?

{Adrenaline Rush} ended, abruptly cutting off Alice’s slow-motion perception of the world. Caught off guard, Alice nearly fell over has her enhanced speed and strength suddenly disappeared and time began flowing normally again.

Alice nearly missed the final set of metal beads she had been trying to repel, but managed to just barely touch them with her mana tendrils. She shot the last round of Laila’s beads at the now-flying girl while Laila tried to fiddle with another enchanted item.

Alice finally reached the basin of practice weapons. Before Laila had time to finish whatever she was doing, Alice immediately began shooting volleys of weapons at Laila. One of Laila’s rings began deflecting Alice’s makeshift projectiles, but it wasn’t able to keep up with her groups of missiles, and right as Laila’s new enchanted item activated a wooden sword hit her in the neck.

“Stop!” said Professor Tanmi, reaching out a mana tendril and stopping Alice’s projectile volley. Laila’s ring spewed organic mana into the girl, doing… nothing in particular, as far as Alice could tell. She wondered what the item did, but professor Tanmi was already starting to break down the fight. He gave Alice a measuring look.

“You… aren’t very talented at fighting, but you still managed to put on a good show. You must have trained pretty hard to reach a point where you can manage all of this even with your lack of talent. Were you trained before?”

“Illa taught me for a few months,” said Alice. “She only taught me basic self defense, but with my new Perks and my hard work, I’ve managed to grow some as a fighter. I’m not very talented at fighting, but I’ve tried to make up for it.”

“Illa, huh? Haven’t heard that name in a while. If you learned from her, just follow her teachings and you’ll be fine. That woman was always talented. Anyway, do you know what you did wrong in the fight? Even though you won, there were many places you could have done better.”

“Hmm…” Alice frowned, running through her memories of the battle. What had she messed up on during the battle? Besides the attempts to use the grass and soil. Neither of those had been very effective… Though, admittedly, part of that was because of the ridiculous number of enchantments Laila was carrying around on her.

Seeing her pause, Professor Tanmi began speaking again.

“I saw that you sped up for about five seconds, and you lost control right afterwards. Whatever Perk you used for that, get more familiar with it. Life-saving Perks are amazing, but you need to know how to actually follow up after using them. Right after the Perk ended, one of Laila’s beads whizzed right by your face, and you didn’t notice it at all. In the future you might not be so lucky. Also, your idea of using the ground from the training field as a shield was pretty good, but you need to pay more attention to soil types if you want to use that kind of tactic in the future. This dirt in the training field is pretty loose, so it’s not very good to use it as a shield. You should have used another mana tendril to tighten up the soil a bit, or abandoned the idea entirely. The attempt at using grass to trip your opponent was also kind of dubious. That kind of tactic is super effective against melee fighters, but Laila was attacking you with ranged magic. It might mess up some novice Mages, but most proper combatants will have enough [Strength] to tear up the grass if you don’t reinforce it. I expect you were inspired by the way Vinebears fight, but keep in mind that vinebears aren’t just commanding the plants around them – they also strengthen them to make them into actual threats.

“And, I’m sure you’ve heard this multiple times today already, but I recommend you start carrying around ammunition on your person or in a storage Perk if you have one. Not something you could have fixed today, but in the future it’s a good idea. You learned some from my suggestions to other students, and I commend you for trying to take that advice into account when you started running towards the practice weapons. However, it’s also important to keep in mind what you should do when there aren’t nearly as obvious weapons in your surroundings.”

Alice nodded. Now that Professor Tanmi was pointing out her mistakes, she felt that she could have done better during the fight. Still, that didn’t take away her exhilaration at winning the fight. She had won a combat encounter with someone of around the same age group as her! She felt like it was proof of how hard she had worked to correct her deficiencies during her time in self-defense classes, as well as an affirmation of the time she had spent learning under Illa.

“As for you, Laila… I don’t really know what to say. Your fighting skills are a complete mess. Is your fighting plan just to bury your opponent in enchantments? I mean, I get that your family is wealthy, and you definitely have excellent enchanted items. An inexperienced fighter who is below level 40 or 50 will probably usually lose to you as long as you just throw enough items at them. But still, try to at least competently use one mana tendril in a fight, okay? I don’t think you used your own magic a single time during the entire duel. At least try to follow the purpose of the class. It’s your life that could be on the line here. Enchanted items have limited amounts of mana, while you yourself regenerate mana every minute. And an enchantment will never be as flexible as a competent Mage, because they can’t adjust their instructions on the fly unless you have some incredibly high-level [Enchanter] Perks.”

Laila blushed and nodded. Professor Tanmi gave her a final nod, before he dismissed the two of them. Alice frowned in thought after the end of the battle. Having seen all of Laila’s enchanted items, she had a few new inspirations for items of her own to make. Just in case she needed them in the future. Professor Tanmi had said that Laila would be able to bury an average combatant between level 40 and 50 under her enchantments? In that case, Alice might be doing even better than she thought at learning some combat skills.

As professor Tanmi moved on to the next pair of students, Alice found her attention wandering for the next two fights. She kept replaying the fight over and over again in her mind, trying to figure out ways that she could have improved or changed. She had won this time, but what if Laila had a pile of enchanted items and was good at fighting? If she ever fought with the Society of Starry Eyes, she doubted her opponents would be as inept as Laila with their personal mana control.

Finally, her attention was drawn to Luka’s fight. He was also a kinetic mage, and was able to summon four tendrils as well. However, he was far more natural at fighting than Alice was. He used his environment, already carried ammunition, and had a few small but effective enchantments. Altogether, it took him less than twenty seconds to trounce his opponent, earning him a rare ‘well done’ from Professor Tanmi’s mouth. Of all the [Students] in the class, Luka was probably one of the top five fighters. Alice was fairly certain that if she fought against Luka she would lose, even Luka didn’t use any of his enchanted items.

Alice sighed, before deciding that she really needed to get working on some enchanted items for herself. Fighting with Laila had given her some ideas for kinds of items she could make, and she only had two weeks left until the extra lessons started. She wanted to be ready by that time. She didn’t have enough time to make any preparations besides that, but seeing how powerful the enchanted items of some of her classmates were inspired her to take her enchanting in new directions. Since Alice wasn’t that talented at fighting, maybe she could just compensate for it with a pile of items?

You have leveled up!

Survivor: 46 -> 47

Through Training, you have increased an attribute!

Dexterity 107->108, Perception 128->129, Magic 144->145

Through Training, you have increased a Skill!

Projectile Awareness 17->20, Divided Attention 19->23, Kinetic Manipulation 63->64, Kinetic Force 40->41

* * *

Far to the north, an Immortal and a half-metal man grimaced as they looked at the corpses of various monsters scattered around them.

“Master, are we almost done? This monster layer is… really something. They seem to keep coming whenever we deal with the last layer,” said the half-metal man.

“The area keeps getting flooded with mana every time the monsters dry up,” said the Immortal, frowning. “I was expecting there to be some defenses here, but to think that the first layer of defense is to intentionally lure in waves of monsters to kill invaders. I wonder why the monsters don’t flood the insides. It seems like a dangerous design choice, since the monsters inside would probably break things beyond repair if an error occurred, but the defensive layer clearly hasn’t ever malfunctioned. Hmm…” the man frowned as another group of monsters stepped into an area.

Immediately, an enchantment buried under the earth exploded with kinetic mana, hurling fragments of metal into the bodies of the monsters and killing them instantly.

“This is really just impossible for us to deal with if we keep trying to clear out the monsters. I’ve spent too many enchanting materials on this, and at the end of two weeks of work we haven’t made any progress. If it’s going to keep doing this, we might need to try to sneak our way in instead,” said the man, grimacing. “I don’t feel that great about it, but I’m not willing to give up. One way or another, we’re going to get in.”