Chapter 50: Single Combat (Patreon)

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“Are you sure? I didn’t come off as cocky?”

“I’m sure. You were confident and composed and presented yourself well. I’m sure you’re in.”

“I don’t know…I didn’t really explain how I was able to extrapolate the expected improvement in the potions from optimal enchanting items based on the improvement when using suboptimal items. How can they trust any of my projections when I forgot to mention that?!”

“Elise,” Cayden said, putting a hand on her shoulder and waiting until his friend looked him in the eyes. “You did great. Better than great. If there was a betting pool for applicants, I’d put everything I own on you getting in.” Elise tentatively smiled while Cayden withheld his sigh. He wasn’t sure how Elise could be so unsure of her research when she was normally so confident in the progress she’d made over the last year. “Now, what skills do you think that guy has? That movement skill looks amazing – do you think it’d work for me?” he asked in a blatant attempt to distract her from her spiraling.

Elise turned from Cayden to look at the fight below them in the arena. “Hmm, seems to be a control-type mage. At least one debuff skill to slow enemies. Another one to temporarily lock them in place. Probably a magic-boosting skill or two, considering how quickly he’s casting without seeming to worry about his mana. His physical stats seem low, but he looks competent with his rapier…perhaps something to boost his dexterity? And then his movement skill, of course.” She paused, tracking the ongoing fight with her eyes. “Probably not the best skill for you, I don’t think.”

“Really? Why is that?” Cayden asked, pleased with his successful diversion.

“I think his skills are all focused on time magic. See the slow? Even his opponent’s blinks and eye movements are slowed, which means he’s probably slowing their flow of time rather than simply limiting their physical stats. And the opposite applies to his movement skill – I think he’s speeding up his own flow of time, kinda like how [The Moment] works for you.”

“Except [The Moment] only speeds up my perception of time, not my actual flow through time,” Cayden responded. After so long training with his class skills, he was much more familiar with their strengths and weaknesses.

“Exactly, which is only a reaction boost rather than a movement and reaction boost, like his. But his skill is likely extremely mana intensive and related to his class.” She shrugged. “It’s powerful, sure, and if you want to pivot towards it, you can, but right now you’re a physical fighter. You’d have to level a lot and invest all of the gained stats into the magic stats to be able to use his skills the way he’s using them.”

Cayden frowned, a little sad that what sounded like such a cool set of skills was out of his reach. But he had chosen his path. The gargoyle race allowed him unparalleled diversity of choice, but he couldn’t afford to second-guess himself with every step forward. That was the path to becoming decent at everything, and Cayden didn’t want to settle for merely being decent.

He wanted greatness.

They watched the rest of the match in silence until the time mage’s opponent lifted a hand, signaling the end of the bout.

Despite the mage’s impressive skills, his opponent didn’t look any worse for wear after the five minutes of combat. The mage, on the other hand, was dripping in sweat and sporting bruises on his hands, forearms, and shins from his opponent’s practice weapon.

All things considered, the mage had a pretty impressive showing against the instructor.

After watching Elise’s trial, Cayden had done a bit more investigating of his own to figure out the schedule and format of the rest of the trials, and it turned out that the applicants wouldn’t actually be fighting each other – at least not directly.

The trials for the Delver’s Academy were split into three sections. The first, which had taken place the day before, was the written portion. The Delver’s Academy was a martial academy, but they wouldn’t admit anyone who was illiterate or was without a basic understanding of the principles of adventuring. The written test was supposed to be trivial to pass for anyone who had a basic education and a solid head on their shoulders; it was simply an easy way to weed out the chaff before the academy’s instructors had to get personally involved.

The second section of the trials, and what he and Elise were currently watching, was the individual combat trials. Adventurers could have a potentially huge range of skillsets, from scouting to stealth to crowd-control, many of which didn’t directly translate to combat. Yet at the end of the day, every student was expected to be able to fight if called upon, regardless of where their primary strengths lay.

It wouldn’t be fair to pit a fighter against a rogue in a one-versus-one fight in an open arena, and there was always the potential of niche skills completely countering otherwise extremely powerful skillsets, so rather than have the applicants fight each other, the instructors tested them. In eight matches at a time across the arena, students would step into rings against their older opponents until the instructors had their measure and called a stop. For the most part, the instructors simply used their higher stats and martial skills to abuse the applicants, but Cayden occasionally saw instructors casting flashier skills to further push their opponents.

The second round of cuts would be made after they’d tested every applicant. And then the next day was the final day of the trials and was what Cayden was most looking forward to: group combat against monsters.

The academy would assign applicants into ‘delving’ teams based on their reported skills and displays in the individual trials, and then, in groups of five, the applicants would attempt to take down a captured monster within the arena. It was the final trial for the prospective applicants, and it tested the most important part of being an adventurer: how they performed on a ‘delve’ with an adventuring team.

While he was excited to watch the trial, Cayden was extremely thankful for the princess’ free pass into the academy. He had hated group projects in school in his previous life, and even after delving weekly with various groups in Avernon for the last ten months, his attitude hadn’t changed. Though they were more dangerous, he enjoyed his solo delves with Elise so much more than the ones shared with the ‘professional’ adventurers.

“Oh, there’s Jeremy, the guy I met,” Cayden said, pointing to one of the nearby rings as his acquaintance stalked across the sand. “You know what race he is?”

Elise frowned. “I’ve never seen one before, but I’d guess he’s a formine. I’ve seen them referenced a few times, but I have no idea what the requirements might be.” She turned to Cayden. “Do you think he’d be willing to share?”

Cayden shrugged. “He seemed friendly enough, so it can’t hurt to ask. Hopefully, he does well enough and we’ll get the opportunity in the academy.” While Elise had ‘published’ in the Avernon library a copy of her book detailing the races and their requirements she and Cayden had researched, she was always looking to make it more complete. And with her soon-to-be newfound access to the libraries in the capital, Cayden was sure the book would be getting some updates along with some new avenues of distribution.

Jeremy settled into his spot across the ring from his opponent, hefting his practice sword as he and the instructor exchanged a few words. Unlike the affiliate school trials, they didn’t amplify any of the words spoken during this trial, so Cayden could only guess what they were saying. But a moment later, Jeremy raised his sword into a guard position and cautiously stepped forward.

The instructor responded by leaping towards Jeremy and raining strikes down on the younger formine, and Jeremy frantically backpedaled as he barely turned away the blows.

Not the best start, but not the worst start either, Cayden thought to himself. It was a standard approach by the instructor to get the applicant on the back foot from the get-go, but he only knew that from watching the other matches. It was good that Jeremy wasn’t completely caught off guard.

It was difficult for Cayden to judge his acquaintance’s stats from a distance. Agility was easy enough to guess from watching how he moved, but the rest were more difficult to tell without sparring with him. And trying to compare Jeremy against the instructor’s displayed stats was just as useless, as Cayden had noticed the instructors were modifying their attacks to place themselves just above what the applicants were able to handle.

But from what he was seeing, Cayden judged Jeremy to be better than the majority of the applicants, at least in the way he handled his sword. It didn’t look particularly graceful, but he managed to deflect and dodge the vast majority of the instructor's strikes and was even able to weave in the occasional attack of his own – something many of the other applicants weren’t able to claim.

Yet despite the show of skill, Cayden frowned as the bout went on.

“Where are his skills?” Elise mumbled a moment later, echoing his thoughts.

Though he fought with skill, he didn’t fight with skills. His movements were crisp, his defense was solid, and he kept his composure, but nothing he did was outside the realm of what someone on Earth might have been able to do. There were no spells, flashy or subtle, that Cayden could see: no sudden bursts of increased stats, no hesitations from the instructor indicating a crowd-control skill, and no manipulations of shadows or of the elements.

Perhaps his build was similar to Cayden’s, focusing on passive boosts and skills? But even Cayden had several active skills to let him take advantage of a specific moment in a battle – skills like that were just too powerful to pass up completely. Maybe he was a healer or some other support class that displayed their usefulness outside of direct combat? But even healing adventurers had skills that could be used in combat, such as shields or buffs. It was possible that Jeremy had cast his buffs before entering the arena, but that seemed foolish given that many buff spells wouldn’t last the full five minutes of the bout.

Unfortunately, Cayden’s questions were left unanswered as Jeremy and the instructor continued their dance around the ring. Eventually, the instructor called for a halt, and after a few more words spoken back and forth between the two, Jeremy walked out of the arena.

“That was a little anticlimactic,” Cayden said in disappointment. Jeremy’s showing hadn’t been anywhere close to the worst of those he’d seen today – at that very moment in another ring there was a gnoll who was, for some reason, attempting to burrow into the sand to get away from the instructor harassing him – but he was far from the best. Unless he had some hidden abilities to balance the scales more in his favor, Cayden couldn’t imagine how he’d make the cut.

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