Year 2, Summer, Second Month, Fourth Week.

The other veterans seemed to want to protest, but the smile on Lew’s face confirmed Diana’s statement. Without needing a second command they ran forward. Tael stop to exchange his bow for a spear with a fighter but soon followed his friends.

Diana was still recovering from the exchange, so she let the others attack. The twins were using the lightening boots, so they took the lead followed by Toni and Tael. Sania didn’t hesitate to activate the Arrays in her spear and make the first attack. Lew saw that she also had a good posture but her attack was weaker than Diana’s, so he easily deflected it before pressing for a closer attack. Lew got a little disappointed seeing that the girl wouldn’t be able to block his attack, but that was before her silent sister moved.

In Lew’s perspective, Samia appeared from nowhere and blocked his attack. The combination of hesitation, disappointment and surprise made him lose his rhythm. He had to jump a few steps back to avoid the twins’ combined attacks. This was the first Lew had to step back in the fight, he had seen both girls approaching but somehow, Samia’s immobility made him lower his guard against an attack, which the girl made faster than he had expected. But now, he was ready.

This time, Lew made the first attack, he slashed forward but the girls surprisingly backed away and his attack clashed against a shield. Fortunately, he had reserved some magic energy or he wouldn’t be able to block the attack that came flying from over the shield. Lew was pushed back and Sania barely landed before jumping forward to attack him again.

Lew was prepared to block and push her back, but the other twin appeared attacking his back. He blocked it but had to dodge to the side to escape the thrusting spear. Before he had time to mount an attack, Tael appeared from his side striking him. The attack was sloppy, so he effortlessly blocked but failed to hit the boy who jumped to the side to avoid his slash. At this moment, Toni appeared pressing the shield against him.

“Tump!”

The shield attack launched Lew a few meters back. Instead of cursing, Lew got up smiling.

“I’m really impressed with your performance… I never saw this level of synchrony between so many people during one fight… I didn’t expect to use this…”

Lew took a MQ energy from his pouch and started to drain its energy. The team didn’t wait to see what he was planning and ran forward to attack, but Lew had already absorbed enough before they crashed again. As usual, Sania attacked first but was unsurprisingly blocked. This time Lew put some extra strength in his sword pushing her back a few steps before he met Samia’s attack that came from his side.

Toni was the next to arrive, pressing forward with all his might, but Lew choose to dodge him with a burst of speed. Sania attacked again, but he increased his strength again and threw her to the ground. Tael charged at him up front, but his ability was truly lacking. Fortunately, Samia matched Tael’s timing and attacked from behind, saving him from being thrown too. But this time, Lew was free to counter Samia, pushing her down after three attacks.

Tael was next, but Toni and a flying Sania intervened. Another burst of magic energy for speed and strength, helped Lew dodge the attack and take both of them down. Now, only Tael remained. He tried to make his fall less pathetic by taking the initiative to dash towards Lew giving his all. He earned the respect from everyone watching but was taken down nonetheless.

The villagers looked sympathetically at the fallen team members, but their disappointment couldn’t be hidden. Even if this was a friendly spar, the defeat was a heavy blow to their confidence. Then, the sound of running steps captured everyone’s attention.

Lew didn’t want to disrespect someone that dared to step up and fight but couldn’t help but look confusedly at the boy that ran towards him. He was running faster than Lew would expect from a regular villager, but none of the villagers here seemed to be regular. Since he failed to spot any weapons in the boy’s hand, he didn’t know how to react.

Diana tried to stop Karl but failed to put the words together. After eating magic-infused meals and doing resistance training for a year, Karl had become stronger. Unfortunately, he was still untrained for fighting, after all, his abilities laid elsewhere. Even so, his courage to come forward for his friends' rescue was appreciated by everyone.

Lew prepared for the collision, he wouldn’t use a lot of force, the boy didn’t look very strong. Karl didn’t look around, he only concentrated on running forward, waiting for the right moment to act. The people behind him didn’t fail to spot the wooden staff tied to his back but they didn’t think it would make a difference. When he passed the five steps mark, he took it from his back and used both hands to push it forward. Lew was surprised by the sudden move but still didn’t use his sword to block it, he was prepared to backhand the staff.

The staff shined, a surge of strong wind appeared, making visible ripples in the air before launching Lew dozens of meters back. Lew couldn’t react on time, for a second he thought he was fighting a Mage. Everyone was speechless, looking at the sweating Karl with shock and admiration, which made him feel a little uncomfortable.

“Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t need to be so surprised, It’s not like I never went outside to hunt beasts too…”

“…”

***

“Master, how did you make that wind attack?”

“Yeah… Did you use an Array or a Rune? It must be a Rune to be so powerful…”

“Was it the Property Extraction Array?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions… Of course, he used it, it's basic for any elemental tool…”

Karl sighed as he felt a headache coming. He was supposed to be teaching his level one and two disciples a new Array, but the matter of his early demonstration had dominated the lesson, how was he supposed to keep to the schedule if every time they would ask him about a different topic? Later, he would have to deal with his mother’s complaint about them being behind schedule.

“OK, but stay silent and only ask questions after I explain… We still need to discuss the Addition Array… So, I trying to create an emergency tool that could be used by anyone and would have a strong effect. Because it would dismiss the need for mastering a weapon, it had to be an elemental tool, but the properties that we usually extract aren’t strong enough to make an emergency attack. In the case of the wind affinity, even if we use a lot of energy we would take too much time to attract a strong wind current…”

He looked around and confirmed they were understanding, so he continued:

“Then, I remembered a Rune that uses magic energy to manifest other types of energy in the material world, for example, it could transform fire energy into fire…”

“Master, why didn’t you use this Rune before? It looks very useful…”

Karl stared at the disciple, making him silent again.

“It's useful, but I couldn’t draw it before… You have to remember that learning takes time and I can only learn to draw the Arrays and Runes slowly, just like you… The concept of the Manifestation Rune is Phenomenon and it has the aspect of expression, like the representation of any object in the material world. Because of the complexity of the concept, it takes a lot of energy to draw it…”

It took some time for Karl to calm the excited disciples, so he could continue explaining.

“To craft the wind staff, I used the Extraction, Combination and Direction Arrays, and the Manifestation and Stimulus Runes. First, instead of using a property of the wind element, I used the wind element itself. That’s why I used the Extraction Array instead of the Property Extraction Array…”

“But Master, you told us before that using the elemental energy itself would drain the crystal faster and it wasn’t worth it…”

“Yes, but how could I make such a fast and powerful attack without the element itself? Anyway, I craft the tool to test the Array, we can think of an alternative to use a property instead of the element later… I also use the Stimulus Rune to increase the elemental energy without the need to drain more from the crystal… However, for now, this is just an initial design, we would need to improve it later to be more efficient… Back to the point, I used the Combination Array to combine the Rune’s effects and the Direction Array to push the manifested wind towards the enemy.”

Karl showed them the design and the staff, explaining each part until they understood it.

“Master, why is the Stimulus Rune in the central point of the Array? Shouldn't the Manifestation Rune be the last effect?”

“That’s a good question… You already know that it doesn’t matter if the Direction Array is in the central part or not, either way, all the effects are executed before energy is out of reach… I’m just reinforcing that it doesn’t matter the order that you draw the Direction Array… However, there’s a difference in energy cost between stimulating the energy before or after you manifested it… If you analyze the other tools you can see that moving large amounts of energy use more energy, so it's better to increase the energy in the last part of the Array… You can use an analogy to comprehend better. Imagine that you have a tool to multiply bread and you have to serve breakfast for everyone in the central square. Would you multiply the bread in your hut and then carry thousands of breads to the square, or carry one bread and only multiply it before serving? The Stimulus Rune also multiplies other energies, so it's better to do it at the end of the Array…”