Oh fuck yes! He wanted to cheer. Level seven in connect and level five in hidden mind were some excellent results after a few weeks of making braces, along with his little side training of copying everyone's skills onto rings without them realizing. It made going all the way to Anailia all the more worthwhile, especially as he finished up the last person scheduled for a brace before he was to go home. The trip had been fun and exciting, he’d gotten a bit more money he didn’t really need on top of a few experiences he hadn’t expected, not to mention hundreds of rings his teacher would need to sort out, but it would be good to be done with all of the bribes he’d been offered, those that were subtle as well as those that were less so.

Wait, he’s still here?

As soon as he got the notifications for his levels up, he’d ignored the rest of the world in his joy, but it looked like the last person he was working on, an exhaurire who needed their passive fear effect suppressed and was droning on about the wonders of their homeland and the wealth it contained.

“Yes yes, you bribe as good as the rest of them but no thanks, I have other stuff to do,” He said as he waved them off, forcing him out of his work area so he could clean and pack up.

And now I’m finally free of their nonsense.

It is, but it was tiring to get there. Speaking of though, did you ever find out if Sarah was okay? I should probably deal with that before I leave if there’s any issues.

Whoa now, I’m exceptionally cute, if she can’t see that she doesn’t deserve me. He thought to his god as he laughed. He wouldn’t be running off to any distant nations just to try and woo someone he barely knew, but at the very least he was flattered. Now I just need to finish up with Thera’s parents, pick up the books I ordered, and be on my way.

Oh fine, I’ll write the last line in your holy text. He said as he pulled the pages from his bag.

Yeah, but I could cut that time in half if you let me wait.

Fine fine, you’re right it’s not that much longer. Just give me a minute.

With pages in hand, he flipped to the last and scribbled out the final line, completing the book.

There, done. Any new options for me?

Lame but okay, I’ll put it off for now then. Anything else you need from me?

I’m feeling it Myriad! It’s my last day in the nation, I’m getting a win under my belt. Well, not a real win, but something better than the complete loss I’d had until now.

“Well, looks like it’s my win again Ben. Still, I need to thank you for making things entertaining while you were here at least,” Abrus said as he pressed a finger against his head, smiling away the entire time as Ben smiled back.

“Hold on, I wouldn’t be so sure about that this time, look around you.”

He didn’t know what the boy was talking about until he took his focus off him, letting it expand to the area that surrounded him to see a sturdy barrier had been created, running along the ground and creating a dome around them. Since he’d been putting his all into going against Ben his attention had narrowed too much and he couldn’t be sure if it went up before he touched Ben, but either way, it didn’t seem to make a difference.

“I’m not sure why this would change anything. Your attempt to put up barriers in our past duels has been reasonable enough, but none have stopped me.”

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that, but I’m aiming less for my win than your loss. Every part of the enchantment that makes the barrier function is outside of it so it can’t be taken down. I may be trapped, but you are too.”

He’d thought long and hard about how to beat Abrus in a fight given his previous losses and it was obvious a weapon would be meaningless if the great spirit went all out. There simply wasn’t any way he could make something that he could use when going against that speed. Barriers were their own problem, with his previous design needing to be placed down to work, but he didn’t let that bother him too much. He’d had other ideas for how to do it, it just became an issue of making it work.

From there he made something a little different, shoes. The idea was simple, get the best materials he could to make them and attach a fifth-level enchantment to it, blending it with his earth resistance and other skills before shaping it with a level of complexity he never would have been able to manage back when he only had it to a lower level, while making it so it couldn’t be deactivated from the inside, the same sort of mistake he’d made when he first started constructing a shield. It left him trapped as well, and given the design of the shoes with the enchantment activated, if he fell he was almost certain to break his ankles, but he thought he finally had something approaching a win.

Abrus let out a laugh as he explained and ruffled his hair. “Well, whether or not you managed to activate it before I got to you, it was a good idea, there’s just one small issue,” The spirit said before walking over to it, and with a single punch bringing it down, along with Ben's hopes.

“Augh damn it, I really thought I had something there.”

“Ha, well it wasn’t quite good enough to earn a prize, but next time you come by I hope you’ll impress me even more.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. In that case, shall we move on to the main event?”

“Ready dad,” Thera called out as she walked next to Ben. “But did you really need to use that then? If you’d hidden it away we might have had a chance while he was going easy on us.”

“Yeah, but then I really would have had no hope when I was fighting him. Besides, I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve, give me a minute,” He told her as he reached into his bag, pulling out a small variety of items he’d worked on in the small bit of spare time he had, all attempts for beating Abrus as they sparred, all unused as a result of his overwhelming speed and power. As much as it annoyed him, he couldn’t make anything good enough to go up against the earth spirit as it went all out. Whether he could or not when he was going easier in the name of practice was a whole other matter.

With them all ready, Writ called the beginning of the match as everyone began to move. Ben’s first instinct was to use a different configuration of the same barrier he’d just used to try and trap Abrus but he resisted in favour of saving it for an emergency. Even if Abrus was going easy on them, he’d still been able to destroy Glob’s barriers while restraining himself. While Ben was confident in his designs for how they’d be set off, that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t have the awakened version of the skill, and he’d already seen that it wasn’t enough when it came to going against someone so powerful, no matter what other skills he tied into it.

Instead, defense was entirely Thera’s job as she deflected the great spirit’s first attack, an earthen saw large enough to easily cut their legs out from under them while she used what she was most confident with herself, an oversized earth bullet, shattering the thin blade with its shear mass and throwing shards of stone throughout the yard before continuing on towards her father, an attack that he easily sidestepped as she carried out the next.

As she distracted him, carrying out blows and defending them from whatever he fired back, Ben did his own part, throwing out all a pile of frisbees he’d made in the early days of their little spars, counting under his breath each time as he did.

“Three, two, one. Okay, it made it that far, gotta throw a little father then.”

The frisbees stopped and hovered in the air as Ben did his best to keep estimating the distance of where each would end up, the delayed activation of their enchantments keeping them in place as Abrus focused on Thera until they were able to show their full effect.

No matter how much he might have wanted to, he couldn’t tie debuffs to them to fill the area. The great spirit seemed to have a complete immunity to such things if the fact that Thera’s magic had no effect on him was any indication, but there was one thing he couldn’t avoid, the passage of time.

Inspired by the time spells the ferrets they’d fought during their quest had used, he bound some to each frisbee, creating a small slow field around them while other enchantments kept them in place. It was a horribly wasteful spell and would have been meaningless if Abrus was going all out, but this was training, he’d decided on how strong he would be and he would stick to it.

There were two main issues with that strategy though. The first being that the effect was weak. He was sure he could have given the spell a bit more oomph if he’d been able to place the entire thing on a sealed room or some sort of contained space, but the little he was giving off as his frisbees radiated it would barely alter the great spirit's time.

The second, bigger issue was the mana cost. Unlike the first ones he’d created, which he simply made from some decent quality materials before loading them with his mana to let them hover for a while, a time spell like that was big, and as a result each of the frisbees had a rainbow mana battery within it to power it, but even that wouldn’t be enough. While the power one contained was massive, especially compared to a white mana crystal, the spell itself simply needed too much while being extremely wasteful on top of it, to the point the battery would run out after only a few minutes compared to anything of a better design that would run almost indefinitely. That gave them a time limit. One they were sure to act on.

Even if the effect was less than he hoped, Abrus was definitely slowed as he responded to the attacks. He was still managing, but Thera only went harder, firing larger spells faster until she pulled off their main hope for the fight as Ben prepared his own attack.

With an effort of will, she ripped long walls of dirt from each side of her father, bringing them together as fast as she could to box him in, giving him two options, go back to avoid it or forward to press on with his attack, and he decided to go further on the offense, rushing towards them despite being slowed by the time spells as Ben took careful aim and fired the shot he’d been lining up.

It wasn’t good. Pulling the trigger had warped his aim in the end, but the bullet grazed the earth spirit, completing their goal and landing a hit. With that Abrus stopped his attacks and they both let out a long sigh of relief. Even if they weren’t fighting him at anywhere near his best, a hit was a hit and a victory was a victory.