A blast of wind ruffled Artemis’s hair as her steely grey eyes struggled to track the two forms duking it out in the Felidae training ground. The bright blue streak of lightning that was Veer Felidae curved around and appeared behind Mars’ back, his fist crackling with electricity and drawn back to deliver an incapacitating blow. But Mars seemed like he had eyes at the back of his head. Without so much as a backward glance, he stepped to the side and grabbed his father’s wrist.

Dazzling sparks of electricity blasted out from the point of contact, forcing Artemis to narrow her Feralized eyes. The sparks skittered harmlessly across the surface of Mars’ body and grounded themselves into the soft soil beneath his feet. Artemis had to resist the urge to itch between her shoulder blades as her mark tingled, her metallic mana draining through it and into Mars, forming a protective coating around him that redirected the lightning.

Grabbing onto his father’s wrist with his other hand as well, Mars crouched and with a low shout, threw him over his shoulder.

Instead of landing hard on his back on the ground and having the breath pounded out of him, the Felidae clan head twisted impossibly midair and balanced himself, landing on his feet in a crouch, his arm still within Mars’ grasp. The ground cratered beneath his feet from the force and a spiderweb of fissures radiated outwards from the point of impact.

Veer grimaced as his knees creaked in protest. Abstinence made Mars oddly strong. He wasn’t a match. If he let him keep a hold of his arm, the spar would be over soon. Especially since he had agreed to limit himself to Tier 3 peak stage spells – none of which seemed to be working on the red-headed boy.

Pivoting on his heel, he threw an elbow strike backwards at Mars’ face, forcing him to let go of his wrist with one hand and block the attack. A thunderous sound rippled outward from the point of impact along with another shockwave that blew Artemis’s red-gold curls out behind her and ruffled the feathers of her wings.

“Amazing!”

Artemis took her eyes off the spar between father and son and turned to the origin of that whispered exclamation. Sitting on a comfortable seat beside her was Epione Felidae. Deimos stood behind her, haunching a swirling barrier of air that protected her and Mars’ unborn sibling from the wind and the noise of the duel. The barrier made their forms blur and waver like a mirage.

“I heard tales of his progress… but seeing it with my own eyes is another thing entirely.”

Deimos grinned proudly while Artemis couldn't help but nod in agreement. Fighting him and seeing him fight from an observer’s perspective were two different experiences. Especially when the opponent was a Tier 5 mage with nearly a decade of battle under his belt.

Just because he had restricted the might of his spells to the level of a Tier 3 peak mage didn’t mean that Veer Felidae was now equivalent to one. His vast fight experience and the inherent advantage that a crystal core granted him meant that even a Tier 4 initial stage mage would struggle hard against him. Yet Mars wasn’t dropping the wind. Indeed, he had his father on the ropes.

Artemis couldn't help but clench her fist. He had gotten even stronger while her strength had taken a dive. Now, she wasn’t confident of lasting even a few rounds against him. Her crimson-eyed husband was like a sponge, soaking up knowledge and experience at an alarming rate. His uniquely enhanced senses gave him a huge boost in the field of Aspect comprehension and having received unrestricted access to the Imperial library due to his freshly minted princely status, his growth wasn’t measured in months or even weeks… It was measured in days.

Freeing his arm from Mars’ iron grip with some difficulty, Veer spread out with his son and began to probe his defences with a barrage of cleverly placed air bullets. The tiny super-dense packets of air exploded concussively upon impact with Mars’ Barrier, chipping away at his reserves of Vita’s divine power. Without mana of his own, Mars wouldn't be able to replenish it, leaving him vulnerable both to physical attacks, as well as without fuel for physical enhancements.

Slapping his palms together, Mars bent down and slammed them onto the ground. Golden ripples of earth mana spread outwards from them and towering pillars of compressed earth rose up all around him. They weren’t very sturdy, Mars having taken up the study of the Earth element just six months ago, after gaining an affinity to it from marrying Artemis. Two or three air bullets made them crumble, but within the blink of an eye, yet another would take its place. They seemed inexhaustible.

~ Tier 2 earth magic: Stone spike ~

~ Forest of Stone ~

Veer frowned slightly, his mental state of the Void vacillated. This way they would get into a mana deadlock. The mana he used came from his internal reserves, Mars’ mana came from the world. While as a Tier 5 mage he could easily drag things out until all the ambient mana was exhausted, that wouldn't be in the spirit of the spar. A Tier 3 peak mage wouldn't have that kind of energy reserve.

He couldn't help but sigh internally. Really, the boy had a hard counter for most of his skills. While he was much faster, the overwhelming amounts of divine power coursing through Mars’ body gave him supernatural reflexes. And that coupled with his mana sense meant that he was able to keep up with all his movements no matter how fast they were.

Then there was that metallic mana he had obtained from his new bride. It was the nemesis of any mage specialized in the Aspect of Lightning. All throughout their spar, Mars had used it to negate all of his electrical attacks by channeling them into the ground.

Well… Veer straightened up and rolled his shoulders. If that was what it took to maintain the dignity of a father, he didn’t mind exposing his trump card.

He stepped towards Mars with leisurely, unhurried steps, seemingly having given up on winning the spar. Yet every single hair on Mars’ body stood to attention as a strong sense of crisis covered him. His eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at the approaching form of his father.

“I Specialized in Power,” said Veer, his deep voice echoing through the training ground. “But that doesn’t mean that I neglected Control. Just that I’m not as good at it.”

He stepped into the forest of stone and everything within the radius of a metre from him simply disintegrated. Rock turned into dust, then into particles finer still, swirling around him in a dusky brown haze. As he stepped forward unimpeded, he left a perfectly straight trail of fine sand in the soil of the training ground.

“The range of this move is limited so I can only use it in close combat. Against an opponent such as the Sun Wolf, or that ant Queen it wasn’t very appropriate. But in this situation, against you... Concede. You can't win.”

Abandoning his earth spell, Mars leapt backwards several times to take some distance. To his soul sense, his father was no longer shaped like a man but like a twisting, writhing tornado of tiny, invisible blades.

It was nothing but the ubiquitous Tier 2 spell: Blade Edge Hurricane. But one perfected to such an extent that it had ceased to be recognizable. The power, the finesse, the destructiveness… there was no comparing the two.

Such was the extent of his father’s control, so sharp were the tiny blades of wind that the air didn’t even ripple around him. Neither did the wind whistle as the region within a metre centred on his father turned into a Domain of utterly silent destruction. Anything entering it, be it material or magic would be sliced into nihility.

Mars considered his options for a moment before concluding that there was only one way he might have a shot at winning. Hesitating slightly, he tightened his hold over the half-formed mass of concentrated fire mana he had concealed at his former location, directly beneath his father’s current position. Relaxing his posture, he raised both hands in surrender. There was no need to go so far for a mere spar.

Then again...

Just as his father stepped out of the effective range of the explosion, Mars lifted the suppression on the spell. With a deafening boom a thick pillar of blue fire connected the floor and ceiling of the training ground, casting Veer's face in deep shadow, the resultant shockwave making him falter in his steps.

As the incandescent flames died down, without a single word, the head of the Felidae clan turned and marched out of the training ground.