Chapter 616 (2/2)

“Indeed. Let’s begin immediately.”

So Azriel entered into the rotation of dueling. Whereas Helen was focused about controlling her body in the small area around her opponent, Azriel was more like Randidly in that she was really, really quick and powerful, and perfectly willing to rely on that. So their first duel was a rumbling, crashing affair, where Randidly finally lost after quite a long time of keeping her at bay with increasingly complicated Spearing Roots spells. Afterward, Randidly had to admit that he might indeed by rusty at this sort of combat.

Then Azriel and Helen dueled.

To his surprise, Helen won, but barely. Even though the match was close, Randidly was flabberghasted after watching it. He looked at Helen with wide eyes.

“Is your spear… really so delicate as that?”

There were times during the fight where Helen’s spear would move in a seemingly innocuous manner, but then it was there to nudge Azriel’s attacks to the side. There was a strange certainty in the way she fought. Small advantages would pile together to finally turn the tide of battle against more powerful or faster enemies.

It was clear that Helen was happy to receive the compliment but also annoyed that Randidly was so surprised that she had turned out to be the most powerful of the three of them. After some reflection, Randidly supposed it made a certain amount of sense. When he couldn’t rely on his higher stats, Helen was the one with more Skill.

Their journey continued, and Randidly slowly refined his fighting Style while moving with the two women. Helen assured them that they still had time, so they slowed down their pace and upped the number of total duels in a day into the double digits.

At first, Azriel seemed suspicious, but perhaps she realized that Helen benefited from the same thing that she did, and said nothing about the fact that all three of them were rapidly improving.

Randidly especially felt that improvement, as he began to work the Spear Phantom moves back into his usual fighting Style. As the Spear Phantom Style reared its head, his close quarters dangerousness rose precipitously.

By the time they arrived in Hastam, Capital of the Central Domain and therefore the entire Spearman School, two weeks and a day had passed. And from Helen’s increasingly worried tones, they were very close to missing the deadline for their arrival.

As they moved closed to the city, Randidly couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There seemed to be millions of people loitering around in the small, impromptu towns in the surrounding area, with the height of Hastam rising up above them.

Hassam itself was built on a mountain that rose as tall and proud into the sky as a spear would. Helen rolled her eyes and explained that this was exactly the sort of legend they told about the place; it seemed that far in the past the first individual looked at this mountain and envisioned using it as a weapon. The next day, he forged the first spear.

Randidly’s fuzzy understanding of Schools made him wonder whether this was actually appropriate for the Spearman Style, but ultimately he said nothing. It wasn’t really something worthy of slowing them down.

The gates were huge things of smooth stone, with one open to allow foot traffic in and out of Hastam. And the closer they got, the more people there seemed to be. All of them carried a spear, and when he encountered them, Randidly couldn’t help but noticed how these strangers seemed to take stock of him and then sneer at him.

‘Great, a bunch of stuck up little shits,’ Randidly grumbled inwardly.

Although it wasn’t slow, the passage of people through the guards at the gate wasn’t fast enough for Helen either. After two minutes of waiting, her internal alarms were ringing like crazy, and Helen made the executive decision to start pushing her way towards the front. Many people cursed them, but for all their sneers people stumbled to the side when Randidly shoved. It would take a very special spear user to have the kind of stats he did.

As they moved closer, it soon became clear that there was something of a commotion going on at the gate. Very quickly, they had reached the front of the line by where it was occurring and they could witness the event.

“This is impossible Garritt,” A young man with bright blue eyes was saying. He stood straight and had an unadorned spear strapped across his back. “We grew up together. How can you refuse my sister entry into the city? We aren’t foreigners, we-”

“I’m sorry sir,” A young looking guard looked at the ground as he answered in a quaky voice. “I cannot seem to recall meeting you before.”

“That’s exactly right, guardsman Garritt.” Another guardsman stepped forward and put his hands on Garritt’s shoulders. Based on his fancier uniform and the obnoxious mustache, this guy was a two-bit villain. “A spear user like this… there is no way such an individual was ever born into our esteemed city of Hastam.”