Under the watchful gaze of Major Teagan’s deep purple eyes, Kohn hastily equipped his armor one piece at a time. Unlike the Major, Kohn didn’t have armor that could teleport and auto equip itself and although he suited up in record time Teagan had nothing but negative things to say.

“I was told that your suit has some fantastic abilities, but if you don’t have the spell to equip it immediately it would be unusable as an immediate response armor.”

Teg calmly sat on a cask to help Kohn get the leggings on. Being at a higher angle than the round man, Kohn noticed that his hairline was showing signs of receding. “I didn’t know such a spell existed.” He replied to the Major, deadpan.

Teagan annoyingly circled Kohn like a buzzard over a carcass. “It doesn’t have any shield formations on it. At best your total defense would be the metal and your skin. Hardly enough to deal with most enemies, much less the Jzanna.”

Kohn slipped his arms into the torso portion of the suit, slowly lifting the heavy backpack with it. “The suit was designed to go out into space. Eh, the Deep Dark. To fight the Jzanna that are trying to get into a Dark Vessel, or to provide emergency repairs or gather survivors.”

“If its primary purpose is to fight in the Deep Dark then why are there so few magic formations devoted to offensive spells?”

Kohn sighed rather forcefully. He tried to explain the basics of space survival to a group of people that had never thought of it before. “The Deep Dark isn’t a place where you or I could live. Yeah? It’s cold, there’s no air and no protection from the sun or from other stuff out there. So most of the surface of the armor is devoted to keeping me alive. Containing heat, regulating oxygen, movement, deflection of the sun’s rays and meteorites. The list of things needed to keep me alive is staggering. I was lucky to be able to fit Mana Ball on it at all, and that was only because of an idea I had.”

Kohn finally managed to put his helmet on and the whole suit of armor locked into place with its mana reserves activating the various spells on it.

Teagan didn’t seem to want to approve of the suit from a more simple reason. “But why is it black? Armor has to be functional, but it should also be awe inspiring to your troops and fellow soldiers. Look at my own. It raises the moral of my men while also successfully distracting my enemies.” A few men that were waiting for their match to start gave a few cheers and whistles that gave a slight pink to her cheeks. “Yours is boring. And it makes you look like a burnt rock.”

Kohn wanted to refute, but seeing how it would only waste time and probably not end in his favor he gave up. His shoulders sagging as his arms drooped with dead weight. “Can we fight now?”

With a twist of her scale armor wrist, Major Teagan summoned a long spear. Its heavy head was flanked by two slim daggers. All three were pointed straight at Kohn.

“Begin!” Shouted Commander Tealis with glee.

Immediately Kohn started charging up a Mana ball to shoot at Teagan. Seeing him wait for a spell to complete she smirked at him before disappearing. Her maneuver looked to Kohn like her body was yanked from different directions before fading into oblivion.

“Huh?” Kohn let his guard down wondering if she had accidentally killed herself.

BANG!

“OUCH!” Kohn slid face first into the ground after a massive sledge hammer hit him in the back. Shaking the stars out of his vision he looked up to see the butt end of Teagan’s spear about roughly where his back had been.

“You need to show me something before I can give you an accurate assessment.” She taunted him.

“I’ll show you something to assess.” Kohn mumbled angrily underneath his breath. He hadn’t stopped charging his Mana Shot and it was growing. It was almost the size of a softball now, but he needed more time.

Putting both feet underneath him he used the suit’s skip ability to leap towards a wall in one go. From there he kicked off along the wall to skip jump higher and higher.

On the ground Teagan was following him with her royal purple eyes. Shifting slightly to follow his progress. “What’s the point in running on the walls? Are you pretending to be an insect?”

With her spear in one hand Teagan thrust it towards Kohn. Its red tassels separated as the long length of the spear stretched even further to cover the seemingly impossible distance. Seeing the more dangerous end of her spear coming straight for him caught Kohn completely off guard. Desperately he rotated mid-air before kicking off again in a different direction. The maneuver killed his momentum quite a bit but the pointy end harmlessly buried itself into the wall.

“Not bad little Earthling!” She mocked him. “But how much can you keep that up?”

Unleashing a flurry of strikes she made Kohn repeatedly dodge, drastically killing his momentum and climb. Without the continuous upward travel gravity started to pull him back down to the ground. However, he had wasted enough time.

Turning towards her, Teagan noticed Kohn’s Mana Ball was huge. “How much mana did you use for that?”

“A lot. Roughly 30% of my total mana.” He honestly replied. It was roughly three times the volume of a basketball and had grown to such a size that Kohn couldn’t hide it behind his body any more. If it wasn’t for the two evening white suns brightening up the capital, the light from the Mana Ball would have lit up the courtyard. “Can you deal with it?”

“Probably.”

“Then try not to die.”

Firing the shot, Kohn dropped to the ground hopping that he wouldn’t go down for murder. Teagan took a wide stance with her feet. Her manicured left hand gripped the spear close to the tip while her right clasped near the base. The spear’s long haft bowed under her stance. Kohn could have sworn that her arms weren’t long enough to hold such a long spear, but with it curved like that he didn’t know.

“HA!” Teagan called out, launching the taut spear straight into the massive but basic spell.