Of course, as much as Agnes wanted to be praised for this achievent, she knew that it wasn’t the ti for that as the wood spear that was being slashed at her suggested.
"Clack!", and here is when the shield on the sportsy sun diamond princess’s back ca into play, Agnes turned her body around so that her back faced Aster, blocking the spear with the shield before she rolled on the ground, holding onto the spear which she had left stuck a couple of ters away from her previous position.
"That was not the kind of reaction I wanted to get", mumbled Agnes, of course she knew that in this last spar Aster had no intention of exchanging pleasantries with her, unlike the other ones, but still she looked at him with accusing eyes, which was honestly cute.
"Ahem, this is a tid battle", said Aster as he was hit by the sportsy sun diamond princess’s version of Kana’s puppy eyes, which returned Agnes focus to the fight.
That being said, Aster was indeed surprised by her, she had made perfect use of the dagger, which by the way Agnes had managed to keep on her waist, so that she had a free hand in order to retrieve her spear, as she didn’t let go of her sword for even a second.
Until now at least, since Agnes hanged her sword on her waist and changed to wield the shield which was protecting her back, with her left hand while she held the spear with her right hand.
In other words, it beca obvious that she had thoroughly planned the previous, from the initial choice of equipnt to what to do after achieving her goal.
’She must have been thinking on how to "quickly" get a point since the first spar, how cute’, thought Aster as he saw the sportsy sun diamond princess charge at him with the sa set up as him.
With a "swoosh", Agnes thrusted her spear at Aster’s neck, quite the fierce but also predictable approach, now, it’s not a bad decision if you are dealing with an amateur in terms of mortal rank combat.
The reason is simple, cultivators have less worries when it cos to keep their heads attached to their necks, their life-saving treasures focus their protection in that and the heart area after all.
So, when having either of them targeted in this place, they’ll of course experience a fear to which they are not used to, in other words this could create a good opening, of course Aster is not like that and Agnes knows it.
Therefore, the sportsy sun diamond princess wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Aster casually dodged her spear by slightly twisting his body to the side, to then bash his shield at her spear, aiming to disarm Agnes.
"Clack!", and here ca the real reason behind Agnes’s previous attack, she placed her shield in the way of Aster’s, which naturally resulted in a strong impact sound, however it wasn’t as loud as let alone Aster but even the observers, expected.
’That little girl... I took a few minutes of that guy’s attention from you, so you are taking my techniques as revenge!’, thought the purple lightning princess as she saw Agnes taking advantage of Aster’s overwhelming strength for her own purpose.
The sportsy sun diamond princess used the montum created by Aster’s shield colliding against hers to make an elegant turn while sweeping her spear at Aster’s body.
"Clack!", this ti Aster was the one that blocked, with the shaft of his spear to be more accurate, and to everyone’s surprise Agnes’s own strength plus the montum she gained thanks to Aster, resulted the latter being forced to the side.
Feeling the sparkling gazes of the disciples on her, Agnes couldn’t help but softly snort to her insides, because they so obviously didn’t expect her to pull off such an "elegant" movent.
’You little girls, it’s still too early to be surprised’, thought the sportsy sun diamond princess as she punched with her left hand downwards as if trying to bash Aster with her shield, and we say try because midway an "object" ca into sight for those watching the spar.
It was the dagger again, apparently Agnes was holding onto it with her left hand which was hidden behind the shield, she moved it from her shirt to said hand earlier when she passed the shield from her back to cover her front, when it was natural for the shield to pass close to her chest.
It was all for this mont, Aster’s spear was occupied with hers, a dagger was thrown at his shin and a shield was coming at his chest, the sportsy sun diamond princess surely was showing those cute girls the different ways the enemy could get at them, you could say that Agnes was basically using all the tricks she learned so far, against Aster.
Speaking of which, Aster, knowing full well that all this was a trap decided to take the bait and jumped backwards to put so distance between himself and Agnes, it was "obvious" that the sportsy sun diamond princess wanted him to dodge in the second of the two ways he has shown so far.
’Earlier when I just slightly twisted my body to the side to avoid her spear’s thrust, she imdiately attacked with the shield, so let’s see what she will do when I put distance instead’, thought Aster as he jumped backwards.
This allowed him to both dodge the dagger and the shield at the sa ti, however there was a split of a second while being in the air, when he was "open" for an attack, this is a natural weakness for a mortal combatant, which can only be eliminated with a hell ton of training and even for soone like Aster it wasn’t easy to defend while airborne.
"Clack!", that was the sound of Agnes’s spear landing on Aster’s shield after being thrown by the forr the very mont Aster jumped so that it would reach him before he landed on the ground.
And as previously stated, while Aster was still midair, he was reached by the spear, the sportsy sun diamond princess even aid the spear so that he couldn’t dodge it even if he twisted his body to either side, so he had to block it with the shield.
Well, to be fair Aster had the spear in his hand, so if he wanted to, he could have stabbed it on the ground and used it as support to pull so acrobatic move, but that would go against his role of demonstrating a simple and efficient fighting style, so shield parrying was it.
So, after smacking Agnes’s spear to the side, the landing trajectory of Aster was slightly disrupted which ssed with his footing, not that much, at worst it took Aster a fraction of a second to take an extra step in order to solidify his stance once again.
But that chance was good enough for Agnes to make her move, since she had thrown the spear and the dagger was nowhere to be seen, the sportsy sun diamond princess had a free hand now, which she used to hold onto her sword as she rushed at Aster.
"Clack!", Agnes slash was stopped by a shield, but her charge didn’t end there, with a cunning light in her eyes, the sportsy sun diamond princess actually bashed her shield at Aster, smacking it out of the way.
"Woaaah!", alongside the surprise of the girls of the sect, ca a small pout from Agnes as Aster stopped the second "achievent" she has been planning since earlier, which was landing a full-frontal slash on him with her sword, sothing that even when teaming up with Valentina, they were unable to do.
It remained unaccomplished though, because at the last second, Aster took a page of Agnes’s book and planted the spear on the ground to then use his free hand and grab the dagger which was hanging from his waist, using it to stop the sword from reaching him.
"Clack!", daggers are designed for close range combat and due to their size, maneuvering with them is easy when there is not much space to move, like right now, so even with all the perfectly executed steps in Agnes’s plan, she failed at the last second.
Aster even stopped her slash by making the guard of the dagger get in the way, at the end of Agnes’s sword, so that she couldn’t transmit that much force with her attack.
One had to give it to the sportsy sun diamond princess though, she really was using all the equipnt to the best of her capacities, and she had made Aster use three out of four in order to keep things simple and efficient, it was not sothing to look down upon.
Anyway, with a gloomy light in her eyes, Agnes retreated by striding backwards in diagonal, she didn’t want to move in a straightforward direction and make it easy for Aster to treat her like a target to pierce with his spear, also, she had to retrieve her own spear which she did along the way.
’Ughh, all those moves took more ti than what I calculated and he blocked my attack at the last mont, I’ll have to improvise a bit for the last charge...’, thought the sportsy sun diamond princess.
Unlike the first move Agnes had planned, this one took a whole four minutes of the fight, instead of two, so she had only four minutes left, in her mind she had calculated the first assault to take two minutes which went on as planned.
The second one should have taken three minutes but she couldn’t execute Valentina’s techniques as fast as her, not to ntion that Aster put more distance with that jump than what she expected and the weight of the equipnt also slowed her down a bit, all of that added an extra minute and cut her remaining ti shorter than what it should have been.
On the other hand, this was a priceless experience not only for the sportsy sun diamond princess, as she realized that her body wasn’t in as good of a state as she expected, it wasn’t that much of a difference since she has good stamina, but that little bit of tiredness which had accumulated throughout the previous rounds also ended up weighting down on her.
’I’m sure the enemies won’t be anywhere as tiring to deal with as Aster, but I’ll make sure to take this mortal "weakening" effect over ti more into account’, concluded Agnes.
The previous took ti to explain but only a couple of seconds had elapsed since Agnes retreated, and they weren’t a waste because she needed to catch her breath and also made the necessary adjustnts to her plan due to the missing minute.
’Look at this competitive princess, being all frustrated over failing at landing her second attack, she hasn’t even noticed that I couldn’t find a simple opening to land my own attacks on her, unlike with the first one’, amusingly thought Aster.
In six minutes, he only landed two attacks on Agnes while receiving one himself, that was a good improvent when compared to the previous rounds, because at this point, she should have had at least three marks instead of two and it’s not like Agnes was stalling for ti.
She had charged at him as fast as she could twice, only for the third one she took a couple of seconds, but if you consider how she was reducing a whole minute in exchange, then it was a small price to pay.
Having found a "shortcut" a sharp light flashed through Agnes’s pretty blue eyes as she rolled her spear once to then charge at Aster who remained static on his place, after all, Aster wanted those cute girls to understand that letting their opponent taking the initiative to attack is actually better in the kind of scenario where they have to face multiple enemies.
Which is why Aster is showing them how to deal with multiple weapons, since there are four weapons plus the shield, it’s like they are learning how to fight against three enemies at the sa ti, in a simple and effective manner while a continuous "weakening" effect caused by the lack of spirit energy, exists.
Surprisingly enough, the sportsy sun diamond princess didn’t try to divert Aster’s attention, she moved in a straight line towards him and started the last exchange with a series of quick thrusts of her spear.
Aster could dodge the first couple of attacks with relative ease, however Agnes quickly corrected the way she moved her spear to make it really hard for Aster to continue that way.
’Heh, smart girl’, thought Aster as he changed from dodging to parrying with his own spear and in case you wonder why he didn’t go with the shield, Agnes was too close to him, if he obstructed his own field of sight with the shield, it would be the sa as asking to get slashed by Agnes.
"Clack!", so Aster started intercepting Agnes’s spear with his own, the continuous fast thrusts and slashes reminded Aster of how the sportsy sun diamond princess uses her sword.
Aster wasn’t present when Agnes pulverized her enemy back at the Silicon Forest, so he hadn’t personally seen how she combined her soul avatar with her genesis core, but this barrage of attacks at high speed was the basics of the basics behind that.
Alongside that, she suddenly twisted her body backwards avoiding Aster’s shield, and now it was the ti for her to make her move, with a small jump Agnes gained so height which she used to throw the spear downwards making it land behind of Aster.
With a "thud" the spear was stabbed on the ground behind Aster diagonally, she used the spear to block one of the possible paths of retreat, and now it was the ti for her to use the shield.
Like earlier, Agnes punched at Aster with her shield, however it seed as if she had miscalculated because when she dodged Aster’s shield, she had put so distance between them, so her attack range was missing a dozen of centiters.
But this ti the cunning sportsy sun diamond princess let go of the shield, allowing it to fly away in the direction at which she was punching so the attack did reach Aster.
"Clack!", despite how surprising it was for Aster to suddenly see a flying shield coming at his face, he managed to block the "projectile" with his own shield, of course that’s what Agnes expected because in the process he had to obstruct his own sight.
And with the spear blocking one of the possible ways of retreat Aster could only move left or right, now it was up to Agnes to guess the answer correctly, which she did based on the subtle movents of Aster’s legs.
’To the right!’, thought the sportsy sun diamond princess as she used the sword which she had grabbed the very second, she had let go of her shield, to then slash at her right, while her left hand threw the dagger at her left.
Then just as Agnes expected, Aster ended up actually moving to the left, in other words he had purposedly tried to confuse her with the direction he was going to take, but the sportsy sun diamond princess correctly saw through that.
Well, it is also true that she had to waste her sword’s attack in order to get the dagger to work, but it paid off because now a small slashing mark had appeared on Aster’s side.
Of course, this left Agnes open for an attack, and so a spear and a sword both reached her thigh and stomach respectively, but then as the dagger was making its way towards her neck, the slightly amused voice of Valentina made him stop just a few centiters before reaching her.
"The spar is over".
"See, exploitative sect, only a few sparring sessions and now you can get more than half the number of attacks I have landed, on ", said Aster.
And in case you wonder why he said that, when Aster got four marks on her but Agnes only got two on him, just like Aster’s dagger, Agnes’s sword was a few centiters away from reaching his abdon, so if there were a few extra seconds for the spar, the final score would have been 5/3 instead.
"Next ti, I’ll get that frontal slashing mark...", mumbled the sportsy sun diamond princess, to which Aster chuckled in response.
"Well, that’s it for , I leave you with your "specialized" instructors, good luck", said Aster as he put down the wood equipnt and offered a prayer for those cute girls.
The reason being that all the ones in charge of training them in a specific weapon were "fired up" as of current, even the usually shy Camila had a sharp light shinning in her eyes, having seen Aster and those two using the spear for mortal ranked combat, inspired her.
What’s more, the ligress girl who is adept at using her fists had decided to teach one or two moves to the girls of the sect.
’I like that Mira is getting along with everyone, but it does feel a bit weird that she is more enthusiastic about teaching them how to fight because I was the opponent in the training’, thought Aster.
"Well, I have so junior blacksmiths waiting for so tips on how to forge spears, so I’ll take my leave, have a good rest before continuing with your activities", said Aster to Agnes, only for him to listen to the sportsy sun diamond princess mumbling.
"When I land that frontal slash, I want a reward", she said without an ounce of hesitation, which took Aster by surprise, not like he had anything against it though.
"Of course", he said as he left not without enjoying the sight of Agnes being dragged away by Valentina to both rest and have a little conversation with her.
Aster on the other hand left towards the blacksmithing area where the iron ore which was processed through the night, had been piled in preparation for today’s forging.
"You little girls, really want to work to death", jokingly said Aster as he saw the aggloration of disciples from the Blacksmith peak gathering around him.
Luckily, out of the equipnt choices, he only had to teach them the process of the spear, because they could apply similar steps to the ones of the dagger for the sword, the shield didn’t require that much steel, they knew how to make the small plaques they had to do with the leftover material and the process for the arrowheads was also similar to the one of the spearheads.
So, yeah, despite the clear unwillingness of those cute girls to only receive one more demonstration from their senior brother, that was the only one they needed to put hands to work.
User Comments
0 comments from readers