A New Star Chapter 91 (Patreon)

I had known that people wouldn’t be as impressed as I was, but the young man was sitting alone on a bench with no one bothering him. It didn’t seem he was bothered by not being bothered, likely having understood by the end of four years at the academy at least a little of the politics of the situation. He was a physical build in a time where physical builds were looked down upon, and his ideals and goals tended to deviate from what the wealthy and powerful believed in. I thought it was all hogwash, and would be happy to have someone like him on the team, but I also wasn’t going to run over and beg. Such things had to be handled in a more delicate manner, and I wanted to bait the hook and reel him in, not the other way around.

“Cain,” I said, walking up to him. Even sitting, he was massive, though his body was certainly proportional. He had shaggy black hair that he had loosely bound in a band of thick leather behind his head, falling down in a thick tail to hi mid-back. If I were normal height, he would have been taller than me even on the bench, but I was no some short, slim little girl. I was over six feet, and I would likely gain another few inches before my growth was done, ending at something like six feet and eight inches.

“Yes?” he asked, realizing after a moment that someone approaching him now, especially dressed nicely, might not be staff and standing. On his feet, he did tower over me, but size was something that had long ago ceased to intimidate me.

“Forearm,” was all I said, holding my hand out to him like I wanted to shake. He got it after just a second and clasped forearms with me, and then he initiated the contest, though not with any malicious feeling. He did, in fact, still have one eyebrow quirked as he squeezed. His other eyebrow joined it when I squeezed back, the mountain of a man suddenly and clearly feeling the enormous amount of strength I could bring to bear.

“Enough! Enough,” he said after another few moments, reclaiming his arm and rubbing it with his other hand. “You’re even stronger than you look. What is it you want?”

“I’m putting together a team, Cain. An elite team, one that will go deep into the Wilds, one that will seek out the lost continents and the hidden mysteries. One that will treat Z-rank as a way station and not a final destination. Is that something that might interest you?” I said.

“And you’re recruiting me?” he asked, genuine notes of surprise in his voice as he tried to straighten up and assume a slightly more dignified posture.

“Yes. I think you will be a very valuable addition to the team. And stop fidgeting like that, it’s fine if you can’t take a proper stance,” I said, waving a hand.

“Well, what’s your offer?” he asked.

“Firstly, that it’s that I’m giving you one,” I said, glancing around in an obvious manner, highlighting the fact he had been sitting alone in the corner before I walked over. It was not just Francesca, but several others had people gathered around, eager to recruit them for one team or other or one of the noble houses. “Also, I have access to resources and materials that few other people in the Settled Lands do. What do you want? Martial training? I have access to Z-rank trainers. Body reinforcement? I have access to alchemists and lost alchemy secrets that can accomplish it better than anyone alive. Wealth? The resources I’ve already secured are worth hundreds of golds, and the operation has barely started. Power? Even Z-rank isn’t the limit, which is something no one else with an offer would dare guarantee you.”

“I want to see it myself,” he said after a few moments pondering what I said.

“As in?” I asked him, quirking an eyebrow of my own as I looked up at him.

“Let’s find a sparring courtyard,” he replied, turning to walk off, but I snagged his arm and turned him the other way.

“There this way,” I said with a slight shake of my head.

“Right, I knew that,” he said a little sheepishly. Maybe he didn’t have a great sense of direction?

We strode off for the sparring areas, people hustling to get out of our way. Between the two of us, their was enough size and power that it was a worry we’d crush someone underfoot without noticing, and many recognized me. One didn’t stand in the hallway and blocked the path of the child of a grand duke unless one had an extremely good reason or one was feeling particularly stupid and insane. Though, the stupid part, I would say, was present in droves, not just in the capital but throughout the Settled Lands. Well, without a robust system of formal education, this place was going to keep floundering for a while, though the academies were already making some headway into correcting that.

We emerged into an area at the back of the arena, moving over to a walled-off area that was one of the courtyards. They were clever areas that let a set of fighters practice without disturbing others, and they had several safety measures to try to prevent serious injury. The measures weren’t perfect, certainly, but they did a decent job, and I doubted, despite his youth and inexperience, that Cain wouldn’t be able to regulate his strength. Also, he was fighting me, and it was more a worry I wasn’t going to hold back enough and give him a blast he couldn’t withstand rather than the other way around.

“Rules?” he asked.

“Simple spar. Trust me, though you might not believe it, you don’t have to worry about overwhelming me. Just try not to break anything in the courtyard; paying to fix them is a hassle and a drain on resources,” I said, standing across from him in a loose stance.

He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck before quickly stretching his legs and back muscles. After getting ready, he assumed a fighting stance and nodded at me. I, in turn, held out an arm, palm up, and motioned to him with my fingers, making a ‘come at me’ gesture to him. He was more than happy to oblige, exploding across the yard and swing for me, but I redirected the strike with my arm, pushing his left arm across the front of both of us and to the side as I swayed out of the way slightly. He followed up with a kick immediately, and I clashed, letting our legs smash into each other with a booming noise. He took a step back from that while I maintained my place, his eyes going wide before he adopted a more serious look.

He darted at me with a much faster, slightly less powerful series of strikes, not trying to knock me out but probing for a hole in my guard instead. It was a pretty good display of footwork and fighting acumen, and his strikes were sharp and fast, trying to get me to move or step out of position. He wasn’t going all-out yet, not by a long shot, but he was putting quite a lot of power into his punches, and deflecting them was taking a bit of energy. I would have to work on training him, especially if he only fought unarmed, as he was wasting some energy and momentum with how he was punching, and he was also letting me push his strikes off to the side too easily. There were ways to counter my counters or set up his punches and kicks to be harder to push aside, but he wasn’t doing an awful job of it as it was.

I also had the sense that he was not just at a tier two or three body. This kid had to have a tier four body, at least, though I was a bit hesitant to think that he could have a tier five body. I had a tier six body that became a tier seven, so I had a very good understanding of the power of higher tier bodies, and I could say pretty definitively he wasn’t at the standards of tier six. It was also just a bit hard to guage because he hadn’t gotten his body grade up to match mine. He had certainly done more than almost everyone else I had encountered, and he had to be at least at E-grade with his body, but that was still lagging behind me. The other that confounded it was the fact he was using his affinities to enhance his body and increase the strength and speed of his punches and kicks. Others used their affinities to boost their bodies a little, but he was deriving a lot of strength and speed from his, which really threw off my ability to estimate just what his body was and was at.

I was hoping that he had a bit more to show me than what he had revealed in the arena for the ceremony, so I started to push him a bit. Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed and power, and started striking at gaps in his guard or his attacks, waiting to push aside and slip one or two of his strikes before lashing out with a powerful, immensely fast punch in the opening. He was thrown on the back foot at first, but he did adapt rather well, only losing a bit of ground as he blocked my strikes and adjusted his own punches. That was good, but I wanted to see more, so I hit him harder and started infusing my fists with concentrations of lightning mana. It wasn’t enough to blast out big bolts of lightning, but it increased the force of my punch and delivered a nasty shock at the same time.

He ate a couple of those before finally getting frustrated and deciding to stop hiding his cards. Not that he immediately went all out, but he had thought that his physical prowess would have been enough to impress. I imagine that was the idea overall; show off just how physically powerful and skilled he was and have people come running to take him in as a frontliner for dangerous dungeon explorations and Wilds expeditions. Unfortunately for him, the major players just weren’t that impressed with a physical monster in this day and age. They wanted people with rare and powerful affinities and with range, people who could bring a lot of diversity in their casting and skills to the table.

Cain clearly had more to him than just the physical as well, which made his error one of marketing, amusingly enough, but that was more to my advantage. Nobody had been interested in him despite his size and brute strength, brute strength that also was combined with some skill and experience in fighting. Thus, he was dismissed before anyone learned that he had some rather good affinities, including a metal affinity that would reinforce his strength and size, but one that he had enough control over he could shoot metal pellets and lances out at an opponent. In many circumstances, it would have been a very powerful affinity that would have caused others a lot of trouble, but using a metal affinity against someone with one of the strongest lightning affinities every wasn’t a great idea.

I didn’t trounce him right away, however, as we exchanged more strikes and I looked to pull out what else he had hiding. I started playing with gravity, which shocked him at first, and I had to hold back to not take advantage of that and lay him out right away. It would have been a valuable lesson; one should train not to become so easily surprised by simple events, else one would wind up with a spear in the guts on the battlefield. I just waited for a him to recover, firing off a couple punches that had some force behind them, and him getting clipped by one and taking some damage seemed to wake him back up.

He recovered admirably, but wasn’t showing anything else for a minute, which had me a little frustrated. I then started spiking in a bit of time, accelerating my movements in bursts, which had me blowing past his guard and knocking him around the yard with ease. That was enough to get him frustrated, and he showed what I was imagining was his trump card after that, calling on an affinity that it took me a little to recognize. When I did, however, I felt like I had hit the lottery, or really, just made a very wise decision to spend just a little time pursuing this.

Cain had a void affinity, and a strong one, too, if I was doing a good estimate of his current grade. Not only that, but he was freely able to manipulate the energy, first using it to coat his hands and dish out some devastating strikes, or what would be devastating strikes if I were slower and less well-prepared, before firing off a few waves of the energy with a couple punches and kicks. I pushed him again a little, increasing the gravity to five times the normal and darting at him with time, but he finally used his own affinity to block most of the affect, though he wasn’t used to deal with someone else with a mirrored affinity. I let the increased gravity go right before I got to him, which threw him off and let me get two good hits in on him before I backed off.

“Enough!” I said firmly, holding up a hand.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” he said, panting as he tried to regain his breath, sweat rolling down his face.

“I had good instructors and I worked hard to be the best,” I said rather inscrutably.

“There’s more than that,” he replied with a frown.

“There’s a lot more than that, Cain, and if you join up, you’ll find out everything I have to offer,” I said calmly, by which point he had noticed that while he was huffing like a bellows, I was still calm and collected, not even sweating after our exchange.

“I always thought I was a real monster,” he muttered, getting a towel from a side area to wipe down and clean up a little.

“There’s a lot we don’t know out in the world,” I said calmly. “How many affinities have you been training with, if you would feel comfortable revealing that?”

“I have six that I’m good with, and a seventh I use just a bit,” he said, nodding.

“And you’ve clearly spent time training your body,” I said, examining him as he finished cooling down and wiping up.

“Yes, though it’s rather difficult,” he said with a sigh.

“Well, if you are to join us, don’t expect easy days, though the rewards are immense,” I said, turning to go. “Oh, and just to add one more thing to think about, my body tier is higher than yours, and what it is currently at is not what I was born with. And, yes, I do know methods to replicate that.”

With that, I walked out of the yard, having seen the stunned look on his face as I turned in the doorway to walk down the length of the yard.

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