“Listen up!” The grizzled dueling instructor gathered all of us up to kick class off with an announcement. “If somehow you’ve had your head under a rock these past few weeks, I’ve got some news for you: Classes are wrapping up! That’s right; it’s about to be finals period for all of you unlucky suckers. Here in The Art of Dueling, we do things a bit differently. Part of that means we kick things off earlier than most other classes.”

While I hadn’t had my head under a rock, and I knew that the first semester was rapidly coming to an end, it was another thing to hear it said aloud. It felt more real than a date on a calendar, somehow.

“A fair number of you have leveled since we first started the class. That, or picked up a few new skills. Learned to think on your feet. Be a better duelist. Curious to see how far you’ve come? Well, you’re in luck! Starting today, you’ll be dueling everyone in the class one final time. We’ll be tallying everyone’s wins and losses as we go.”

There was no shortage of chatter once he said that, though it seemed to be an even mix of excited cheers and discordant grumbling. Seeming to sense the unhappiness of the latter group, the instructor held up a hand as if to deflect any complaints.

“Before anyone asks, there’s no penalties for being at the bottom of the list, save to your ego. Wouldn’t be right to grade everyone that way — fact of the matter is some of you just have better fighting classes than the others. Plus, some of you are still level 10 or 11. Sure, it was your choice to take the class, but you won’t be penalized for that. Think of it more as a test for yourself to see what percent of your peers you might beat in a duel.”

I grimaced, imagining this was the exact sort of thing Suds would want me to do well on. While there wasn’t a penalty to losing per se, it wouldn’t look great if the chamber head’s granddaughter seemed like a pushover. My track record thus far wasn’t anything too incredible, but hopefully the addition of my bow on top of my newly spent class points would help me out some.

“Now! I’ve got all the pairings worked out for the rest of the semester, so if you were looking forward to having some sort of choice, that’s tough! I’ll be assigning today’s pairings, and then off you go!”

“I look forward to our final duel and wish you the best of luck.” An unassuming and frankly fairly scrawny man stood at the far end of the arena from me. Unfortunately, while it was true he wasn’t packing much of a literal punch, physicality wasn’t what he’d be fighting with.

Camun: Level 13 Ember Embracer, 220/220hp

To the best of my knowledge, I’d already fought just about everyone at least once, and the fire mage was no exception. Unfortunately, I’d yet to score a win on him.

His class wasn’t anything too wild. Thus far, with Identify Skill doing its best to let me know what I was up against, I’d only witnessed four skills.

Unfortunately, the four skills worked rather well together.

Flame Curtain surrounded the mage with a wall of flames so intense that, even at spear range, using my armor’s water enhancement, I rapidly started to take an unsustainable amount of damage. The first time I’d fought him had been before Suds had even given me the harpoon-spear, and I’d had to try winning a close-range battle. Perhaps needless to say, that had gone remarkably poorly.

The second skill was the true annoyance, though: Flame Portal. If I managed to push past the flames and sacrifice my health to get a strike in, the fire mage would simply vanish in a puff of smoke, reappearing on the other end of the arena, already surrounded by flames once more.

Perhaps I would have tried keeping my distance and waiting the guy out, but his last two skills made that a rough option. Stoke the Flames slowly spread the fire to the rest of the arena while also gradually intensifying it. Sick Ember was essentially the standard fireball spell, but homing, sicking the spell on me as if it were a guard dog.

Ultimately, it was a frustrating fight, as I knew if I could just get a few seconds to wail on him, he would go down quickly. He wasn’t built defensively at all, as far as I could tell.

Sometimes, that was how it went, though. This time around, I hoped having my bow might change things, but we’d have to see. My arrows sadly didn’t pack quite the same punch as his embers did.

After returning the man’s well wishes, the duel started at last. Much as expected, Camun immediately disappeared from sight, obscured by a thick curtain of fire.

Might as well test out the Overload Weapon upgrade, I figured. Once he realized I had some sort of charge attack, he might save his teleportation skill to dodge all of them. Better to see if I could get one really strong hit in first, and then take it from there.

To that end, I summoned up my huntsman garb, leveling my bow at the center of the fire ring.

Water mana would make the most sense, I feel like, but that’s not very “huntsman-y.” Plus, I’m not sure what his reflexes are like. Wind feels like the moral natural “bowman” choice, and hopefully it’ll make the arrow fast enough that he won’t have time to react?

I mentally shrugged. Was worth a shot, at least. I nocked an arrow — a physical one for once, now that I had it — and enhanced it with wind mana before activating Overload Weapon. It began to hum as I fed it more and more.

Actually, how much can I even stuff in there? With my Wisdom at a comfortable 32 with my pendant taken into account, I had a solid 425 mana at my disposal. Even in my most heated duels where I’d had to heal myself multiple times, it never really dipped below 300. My spells and class skills just didn’t use enough.

Not seeing any reason to be stingy, then, I continued to pour more and more of my mana into the bow until just keeping it constrained took nearly all of my attention.

It was, perhaps, a poor choice, as it was right then that an ember flew out at me. Considering it was homing in any case, it was all I could do to grit my teeth and bear it, hoping the damage didn’t distract me too much.

It neared and neared as I continued to charge up, 50 mana, then 75, then 100. At last, it burst against me, the flames washing over me and-

Heat Resistance has reached level 3!

Wait, was that it?

A tiny corner of my mind checked the battle notification, certain that Camun had miscast his spell somehow. Instead, all I saw was a series of resistances. Heat Resistance. The passive resistance from leveling Fire Magic. Most of all, though, was the newly enhanced Resist Magic.

Reduced damage of 35 resisted by Resist Magic (20% plus flat 34 Intelligence/2 reduction).

Final damage: 11

Had I not been as focused as I was on my impending attack, I would have laughed. That was- that was nothing! I could take dozens of those! Without even healing!

Filled with a sort of giddy mirth, I continued to charge. 150. 175. I could feel the strain growing, pushing against me. The winds grew tumultuous surrounding the arrow, a fierce gale emanating from it. 200. At last, I could feed it no more.

And with that, I released it.

Now, I’d had my hopes about that arrow. Optimistically, I was looking to shave off at least a quarter of Camun’s health. I figured that way, I’d hopefully be able to pepper him with arrows and whittle him down before his flames covered the entire arena.

As it turned out, my expectations were a bit… off.

In the blink of an eye, the arrow shot forth, gale force winds surging ahead with it. Another ember honed in on me, only to be entirely snuffed out by the arrow’s passage.

When it hit the Flame Curtain, the flames fared no better. All at once, the towering inferno was swept to the side to reveal the man within.

A man, who, quite notably, was missing a good chunk of himself.

As he toppled to the ground, I expected to see him pull out some sort of healing spell, or maybe some flame based cauterization, but no. There wasn’t even time. Before any serious blood started to escape him, it was over. The training enchantments kicked in, and new flesh replaced the missing.

Camun stared uncomprehendingly down at the mangled hole in his shirt, exposing the newly healed skin. After a moment, he tilted his head up towards me.

“Damn. I didn’t know you could do that.”

I gave him a somewhat guilty shrug, not having tried to tear a hole in him. “Going to be honest. Neither did I.”

The accompanying notification did cheer me up, though.

You have won a duel!

Heavy Armor has reached level 7!

I rocketed backwards into the air, coming down in a heap with the loud crashing of metal. As hastily as I could, I pulled myself from the ground, only to find my opponent just standing there.

“Are you, uh, not dead from that?” he asked politely. “Or, I dunno. Critically injured with your chest caved in?” He planted a comically massive spiked club into the earth in front of him, the cause of my recent departure from the ground, and eyed me appraisingly. “Because not to argue with reality, but I feel like you should be more dead.”

He had a good point, honestly. I’d been dumb enough to try my supercharged arrow trick again on the next fight, only to discover that some people were not so nice about letting you charge your ultimate attack skill up. Frankly, it was kind of rude.

Right before he’d activated some gap-closing skill and then walloped me with the force of ten, testosterone laden angry bulls, I’d thankfully had the presence of mind to switch to my plate armor. More than that, I’d gotten a chance to test out my other new skill: The measly singular rank of Overload Armor I’d picked up to see what other options I had. I’d flared it for all it was worth, managing to dump a good 40 mana into it before I’d started to fly.

Even so, I was kind of with him on this one. I’d been hit by the man in previous duels, and even with me wearing double plate armor, he’d managed to crush it inward.

I checked myself over, as interested in the answer as he was. Scanning my battle notifications, I saw the desired lines.

You have taken 6 damage!

You have gained the status: Light Concussion!

“I think I’m not dead?” I responded. Before resuming, though, I called out to the instructor. “Do we keep going if we get concussed? Like, is that a healable status, or am I going to end up with permanent brain damage if he knocks me in the head too many times?”

The instructor barked back, apparently not amused by us pausing our duel. “You’ve seen people get healed from having holes in their head, and you’re really asking about a concussion. Do you think ANY of this would work if the enchantments couldn’t heal brain damage? Your opponent gives at least three people a day concussions. Suck it up!”

Hey, I was just asking.

I shrugged back at my opponent who in turn shrugged back at me. With that, we leapt back into action.

Now, the sane thing to do in a situation like this would be to keep him as far away from me as possible and either stab him with my spear, or get some good arrows in.

On the flip side, I’d just learned that he could close distances incredibly quickly, and that as long as I was in my plate armor and timed things well, he couldn’t do much real damage.

Instead of running away, then, I dashed in. Brandishing my pickaxe, I charged, all the while with my opponent looking at me like I’d lost my mind.

In fairness, I did have a brain injury.

He revved up for a repeat of his earlier strike. Not even attempting to block it, however, I instead funneled mana into my pickaxe. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t grabbed the third rank of Arcane Armament, so I was still only able to enhance spears and bows with different types of mana, but thankfully Overload Weapon was exempt from such a requirement.

If perhaps a bit over dramatic to any onlookers, our two massive weapons slammed into each other’s chests at once. With another judicious supercharging of my armor, I took the hit and launched into the air. Once again, I crashed into the ground.

Dazed, I looked up to see the result of my handiwork.

A gaping puncture wound bled from his chest. I let out a victory cheer right as I processed my new notifications.

You have gained the status: Moderate Concussion!

You have won a duel!

I looked down to my feet, both of which were trapped in a thick layer of ice. Even were I to activate a few Jet Steps, I wouldn’t be able to melt them.

I would know. I’d had this happen to me every single time I’d dueled against the infuriating ice mage. In all such cases, I’d lost, too. She always wrapped herself up in some ice-skin shield, froze my feet, and then went to town on me.

“You know, really is nice to have a bow again.” I summoned up said bow and started launching arrow after arrow at the mage in question. Each one got a good 30 mana’s worth of power, and while I didn’t manage to land every arrow, it was enough.

Not that she didn’t hit me back. It was pretty much just a glorified slug fest, with icicles ramming into me one after another. With my newly upped flat resistance to magic from Resist Magic, though, each one did next to nothing.

After the fourth arrow, the solid layer of ice around her skin cracked.

After the eighth, it was over.

You have won a duel!

I looked down to my feet, both of which were trapped in a thick layer of vines.

“I feel like I just did this, actually.” If anything, this would be easier. Channeling some death mana into my feet and hitting the vines with Withering Steps would free me in a jiffy. Not that I even really needed to be free. I could just summon my-

A vine leapt out from the ground, and bound as I was, I didn’t have time to properly dodge it. Instead of striking at me, though, it flew unwaveringly towards my hands. In a second, my wrists were bound together just as tightly as my feet.

“Oh. Uh. Good point.” That was really an infuriatingly good counter, wasn’t it?

I tried to summon my knives to awkwardly cut myself free, but at the angle in question, it was pointless. Unable to attack, things went pretty much as expected.

You have lost a duel!

“I see you’ve picked up the use of the coward’s weapon. Can you imagine? Using a bow in a gentleman’s duel? No matter! This class has offered me enough dueling experience to gain class points beyond your wildest dreams. Fear my sword well, for today, the day of our final duel, will be the day where you lose to Daymon’Larin!”

…

You have won a duel!