Luca DR
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16 – Time warped fight (1/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-13 23:32:47 +0000 UTCYesterday. Sunday, September 21. Location unknown.
The waving tail of the Scalehorn undulated under the bright noon sun, its shape partially hidden by the translucent superheated air that hovered above the ground and shrouded it in mirages. Three fireballs had already exploded in the vicinity of the tail, washing the ground with fire, blackening it where some organic residues caught on fire, partially melting some smaller pebbles where the flames happened to be funneled in some nooks and crannies in the ground. But none hit the tail. And, Albert was beginning to think, with three more tails swaying even farther from him than the one he was trying to hit, there was the distinct possibility that completing this daily mission was not going to be easy.
Precision training. More like aim training with fireballs.
He knew what the big issue was. He was using [Strengthening] to aid him in the throwing process, because despite all appearances hurling a fireball several dozen meters to hit a small target was more tiring than it seems. And doing so meant that he was handling an amount of strength he was not used to, all to the detriment of his already not very impressive accuracy in throwing. Who would have said that the one very American sport, baseball, which he never played would have come in handy with magic?
Nobody could have predicted that.
Period.
Besides, he barely even trained with the gym equipment he had at home, let alone the idea of participating in a group sport. Perhaps it was not a problem for the Albert of now, but it sure was for the Albert of a few months ago. And it was that Albert who had to choose what to do with his physical activity life, and it was that Albert who chose to buy the weights and put them in the shack in the garden.
Which reminded him that he should keep lifting if anything so that his [Strengthening] would become even more effective. Tripling base strength was something, tripling the strength of someone who lifted the heavy weights was something else altogether. Especially since he could use [Healing] while he trained to keep pushing his muscles beyond normal limits.
Well. Back to the fight. Each fireball cost him one Fireball Unit to throw, but he could scale it a bit down thanks to the control over the size and temperature of the fireball that having the skill at level two gave him. With a mana pool of 15FUs, there were around 17 more throws he could do before he was out and needed to recharge his mana. More than enough to hit at least one tail, right?
The dancing flames appeared in his palm, hovering above his fingers like usual. One notable improvement over the past version of the skill was that he no longer needed to waste the precious charge of his defensive ring in order to avoid being scorched by the heat. He simply needed to construct the spell so that heat would not propagate downwards until thrown, a thing that now came natural to him after some (read: a lot of) practice. He took aim, activated [Strengthening] and tried to control his muscles as tightly as possible. He felt that each time he did it, he became a bit better at doing it.
The ball landed closer than ever, but still some meters too far from the tail. No biggie. It was progress alright.
Onto the next one.
Meanwhile his mind wandered. Thinking about the protective treasure, he remembered his friends complimenting him on his bold choice of fashion the other day at the club. Since he was wearing that steel ring everywhere, he decided to go shopping and have the lady in the store pick some cool outfit out for him. All built around the ring, such a simple thing yet the cornerstone of his whole outfit for the night. And the boys loved it, although it took them a while to move past the jokes stage which Albert knew was all talk and no game. They were envious, and he felt better than ever.
Did girls love his outfit too? That was a future-Albert problem. Not the present-day social-anxiety Albert.
In truth however, and this was something that tied with what he was doing now, he felt very much not self-conscious last night for his own standards. Usually, even when complimented, the ego always liked to throw curveballs at him. Like compliments were never enough, and all it took was one snarky comment or joke and the party was off. This time it was different. Was it thanks to all the meditation he was doing to help him with magic? The ego was illusory after all, says Buddhism.
And in just five days he was already seeing results?
This was more magic than magic.
Which meant that he should apply it to this task as well, and see what happens. Instead of focusing on the throw, on the motion, the fireball, the tail and everything… he decided to let his brain handle it. He relaxed his conscious control over the whole ordeal, simply accepting the fact that most of what he did was already coming from an unknown part of his mind. It’s not like he actually knew how his cerebellum handles movement on a day-to-day basis. So why interfere? Same thing with everything else.
He was so transfixed that he almost did not notice when the tail was hit by the fireball, catching on fire thrashing like mad, until it was completely enveloped in flames and all that was left was a charred stick on the ground and some shed exoskeleton parts. But he did notice, because the Scalehorn reeled in pain and the whole sandy dune came to life in rolling tides of falling sand. Albert braced himself, lowering his barycenter as not to tumble down.
Fortunately the tremors didn’t last long. But there was now a sense of a labored breathing, like the sand rose and fell as the beast hidden below suffered. He felt bad about harming a creature, but the feeling died very quickly when one of the other tails emerged from the sand and shot like a harpoon towards him. He froze, staring at the thing as it approached at impossibly fast speed.
[Bullet Time] kicked in, almost on instinct. This was thanks to his meditative state of mind, he later realized, something close to negative capability. But right now it did not matter, he simply observed the tail and stinger approach and sidestepped them with easy, backhanding the tail when it passed by him with his full enhanced strength. It deviated from its trajectory and shot to the ground, to be buried in the sand, unmoving.
Albert looked at his own hand almost in disbelief, dropping the [Bullet Time] and studying the unmoving tail. Bad idea. The distraction almost proved to be fatal, because the other tail too had shot and was about to hit the back of his head—
Rewind time. 4 seconds.
And there he was, in the past. The first offending tail was still writhing on the hot sands in pain, and the second one was just now shooting out of the ground to reveal its tender bits. He took a deep breath and time dilation kicked in, burning through the second half of his mana pool. A fireball flickered into existence, in slow motion, building itself up from a framework of magic that needed to be studied thoroughly in the future.
[Strengthening] came online, and this time things were different. Something clicked.
