After half an hour has passed, I am more or less fully recovered. Drew then assigns me to fight David. This time, I take the initiative to attack. Dashing toward him without any warning. Instead of allowing him to attack, I might as well take the lead and hope that I can gain some small advantage. It wouldn’t last long, but at least it might enable me to last a bit longer against him. For now, I think that is the best I can do.

David doesn’t react. Choosing instead to watch my advance with slightly narrowed eyes. As I get closer to him, I activate D-three. Immediately, my body is surrounded by a layer of Uua, also getting a lot stronger. I use burst, suddenly accelerating and covering the short distance between us. I kick at his face and he takes a step back just as I spin and launch another kick towards his side. He focuses Uua on his arms, using one hand to block the kick while pushing me with the second. This is another thing I understood yesterday. The best way to combat someone focusing Uua, is to focus yours. Otherwise, each hit you land on the person will hurt you too.

The force behind the push is immense as it immediately sends me flying backward. He makes no move after that, looking at me like I’m not even worth his time. I pay no attention to the look, immediately launching another attack as soon as I regain my footing. The attack he just blocked is one of many I devised yesterday. Since he blocked that, I might as well try another one. At the end of the fight, Drew will most likely analyze it and tell me all I did wrong and how to improve myself. Since that is the case, I intend to take full advantage and find out which of my moves are useful, which could be improved, and which should be scrapped.

Again David doesn’t move, instead choosing to watch me as I get closer. Once I am within range, I throw a punch. He moves his head slightly to the side and my punch passes harmlessly by him. I am not disappointed, turning slightly as I jab at him with my elbow. He moves to the side, effortlessly dodging before reaching out to push me again. Knowing the power behind that seemingly harmless hand, I activate Hilla’s Barrier. His hand hits the barrier and it repulses him, sending him stumbling back. I don’t waste the opportunity, sending five Roe’s flying at him to further throw him off balance. He manages to dodge four, but one manages to hit him, the resulting explosion throwing him further backward.

I am elated by the result. This is the first time any of my attacks have yielded fruit since yesterday.

David is relatively unharmed by the explosion, the only change is the strange smile that has suddenly appeared on his face. “Okay,” he says, “you’ve had your fun. Now it’s my turn.”

He then disappears. Alarmed, I turn around just in time to see him appear behind me. Without wasting time, I activate Hilla’s Barrier a second time just as he throws a punch at me. The moment the punch hits the barrier, a sizeable chunk of my Uua is drained. Is he trying to kill me? I think, a little shocked. For the punch to have drained that much Uua from me, the power behind it is anything but little. He disappears after landing the punch, but I get the feeling that he is still somewhere near me. Without much thought, I push outwards with my hand, increasing the size of the barrier around me.

Immediately, David appears somewhere to my side as he comes into contact with the shield and it repulses him. I react, using burst to dash towards him as I remember Drew’s words from yesterday: ‘Offense is the best defense. Don’t be passive in battle unless you want to get killed.’ I reach out with one hand, releasing a large amount of telekinesis as I do so. I make a grabbing motion and pull towards myself. As I do so, David comes flying toward me.

He breaks out of my hold halfway towards me, but by this time he is close enough. My fist glows as a large amount of Uua is gathered within it, I punch and a Roe, far larger than my previous ones flies out to meet him. He swings his hand, releasing a blue beam from it as he does so. The beam rushes to meet the Roe and after a brief contact, they both explode. Only, the light from the explosion is far brighter than normal, causing a deep stabbing pain behind my eyes. I close my eye instinctively to protect them. The next moment, I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“I win,” David says before his hand releases a crushing force that brings me to my knees.

I open my eyes, blinking them a few times to get rid of the multicolored afterimages caused by the bright light. The first thing I see is David’s smug smile as he smiles down at me. I ignore the smile, briefly thinking back to the fight as I make a brief calculation. A moment later I let out a small sigh. I still wasn’t able to reach my ten seconds goal, lasting only eight seconds. The only reason I had even lasted that long was because he hadn’t even attacked me at first.

“You’re getting pretty good,” Drew says smiling as he walks toward me.

I snort at his obvious attempt to soothe me. “How’d you even do that teleporting thing anyway? One moment you’re in front of me, the next you’re at my back. It’s like cheating. No, it is cheating.”

“It’s not teleporting, it’s leaping, a movement skill. It makes people move really fast.”

I think back to the moment David had disappeared, trying to find any proof that he had been moving really fast, but I can’t find anything. No wind, sound, nothing. Absolutely nothing. I give Drew a hard look. “I refuse to believe such utter bullshit. I’m smart enough to know when someone is moving and he obviously wasn’t.”

Drew shrugs, obviously not interested in arguing. “Whatever you say.”

I let out a deep breath, feeling a bit frustrated. Anyone would, I mean, since yesterday, I’ve received nothing more than a series of constant beatings. Anyone would feel like this if they experienced what I have. Is it too much to ask for just one victory, or at least for me to last more than ten seconds in a fight? After that, Drew begins to explain the mistakes I had made during the fight. They were far less than yesterday, but that didn’t mean they were by any means little, or at least to me they weren’t.

Once he is done, Drew ends the duels for today. As he begins to leave, I stop him.

“What?” he asks.

“I wanted to ask, do you know any noers that can store large amounts of Uua? Maybe activate a noer remotely?”

He nods. “I know a few.” He then proceeds to draw a few noers in the air. He briefly explains their capabilities and even draws a few noers containing those noers to give me more understanding of the noers. Once I have learned everything I need to, I nod and thank him. He leaves after that, probably to do his own training.

The reason I wanted those noers was to use them to complete the attractive noer I had started developing before I came to the Lands of Time. I had not been able to finish it since the noers were not able to hold enough power to attract heavy things, even the passive noer alphabets that I had read about just couldn’t store enough Uua. With what Drew just showed me, however, I believe I should be able to complete version 1.0 of the noer.