63 Flame Shield (1/2)

Even though he had now found a way to barely defend against the attacks of the vine. He was still to slow with his shield. Despite trying to position it in the best way, he couldn't avoid getting even more injured.

Besides that he used up his mana and mental energy at a high rate. But even so he only managed to slightly char the vine. After blocking more than ten attacks from the vine he hadn't even managed to inflict any real injuries on it, while his strength was slowly reducing, because of the blood flowing out of his wounds.

Realizing that he couldn't continue like that his first thought was to check if Vlada could help him deal with the vine, but she too was in an unfavorable situation.

As such he could only decide to withdraw. He informed Vlada and then decisively moved outside of the range of the vine.

”Damn, I really need a way to deal with this vine.”

Even though he could easily avoid it, in his opinion it would be a very bad idea to do it. After all if he couldn't even defeat a simple vine, how was he supposed to clear this level then.

Now that he wasn't being attacked he had the time to think of a way.

For that he first thought about his experiences during the fight. The first thing that stood out was his new way of using the Flame Shield. Even though it was much smaller, after he had compressed it, it was much more sturdy too.

”I need to be able to move it around faster, so I should take the time to train moving it around. Besides that it would be great if I could have multiple Compressed Flame Shields at the same time, but I fear that will use up to much mana and mental energy.”

”But that would only make sure I can defend myself. Besides that I need something to attack, or I won't be able to ever defeat this stupid vine.”

His first thought was to use a flame based attack, like Flame Arrows. He had seen description of it in some basic books. But after a short period of contemplation he threw away this idea. There was no way he would have enough mana to do it this way.

”The best way would be to combine defense and offense. But how could I archive it?”

Combining defense and offense into one was difficult. Even though his Compressed Flame Shield could defend, it was incapable of attacking. And if he tried he would be defenseless during this time.

”Hmm, how can I combine them?”

Finally he thought of something, ”My sword!”

All the time he had used his sword to attack and defend, so it was a obvious starting point.

”But my sword was useless during the last fight. I could neither use it to block, nor to attack. Only the flames from the Compressed Flame Shield did anything to the vine.”

”My sword can attack and defend and my Compressed Flame Shield can damage the vine. How about I combine them?”