Harem Academy

Aclysia took a small bow before her opponent, holding her silver salver in both hands. ”I will gladly be your opponent, ” she spoke in the same dutiful tone as her mother did. I couldn help but want to see her in nothing but an apron making pancakes for me. Her chest seemed a bit on the smaller side, but I wasn one to discriminate between chest or hip jiggle. A spankable ass was as good as a nice chest, in my humble opinion. Similarly, the size of breasts wasn quite so important that I couldn enjoy whatever I was granted to touch. ”May I ask your name? ”

”Esther, ” there was no follow-up to the rest, that single word was all she let them know. ”It will be an honour. Do I assume correctly that Artefacts are allowed? ”

Derilea answered from behind the barrier, now standing in the lower area between ring and seats. ”You may fight with whatever weapon you wish, I do assume neither of you are foolish enough to keep going until your Astrality gives in. ” Esther nodded and reached up to her hat, plucking off the white feather with a simple move.

In a sharp movement, she cut the air with it and the sound of singing metal suddenly filled the air. The feather had been replaced with a weapon. Two blades, joined at the handle, one a long sabre the other a shortsword. Grey from one tip to the other, it had winding runes etched into the flat parts of the blades. She held it with one hand, the tip of the sabre pointing at the ground and the shortsword reaching behind her back. It was an odd weapon, one that needed a lot of training and skill to properly handle.

The salver in Aclysias hands liquified and transformed as well. Silver and black and covered in a vast array of ornaments, a spear now rested in the white-haired womans hands. This weapon was many times more intricate in its design than the weapon of her opponent. The audience began to whisper, as they watched the display.

”There are first years that can already use Artefacts in battle? ” Willt shared the public surprise. ”I can barely keep mine out for more than a minute… ”

”You can ? ” I asked with an overplayed amount of mockery. He and Arlethia gave me disbelieving glances. ”What? You should know I am good at most things by now. ”

”And what can you do then? ” Arlethia challenged, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared up to me. The question was in regard to my Artefacts ability. Those items were manifestations of their creators will and granted them, when wielded, a unique power. Well, as unique as was possible, given the confines of recognizable things in the universe. There was certainly a lot of overlap between similar abilities, but two that didn have any differences whatsoever were exceedingly rare. ”Knowing you, something whimsical and stupid. ”

”You could call it that, ” I agreed, ”but lets talk about it after this fight. ”

The two women in the arena had begun to move. Their measured steps were taken with care, as if they were taking part in the same waltz. Unknowing of the scope of each others abilities, they didn allow themselves any careless or hasty movements. In their approach, however, they differed quite a bit. Esthers path, with each certain step of her heavy boots, carried her towards her enemy, while Aclysia was circling the rim of their arena.

The position of their weapons also differed for how similar they were in overall length. In totality, the spear had the advantage in reach, courtesy of the unusual shape of Esthers blade. Based purely on the weapons match-up, the headmasters daughter was favoured to win.

This beautiful Esther woman is maintaining a neutral pose, I thought, watching their body language intently. A basic grip, arms only slightly stretched, and a focus on balance, all of that made for a pose that could be held quite a while and that could quickly shift into a more appropriate stance to slash, stab or parry. The small runes along the back of her blades began to glow one by one, creeping upwards from the bare-metal guards. I guess she is benefiting in some way from a slow start. I can really make sense of what the young maid is doing though. ”

Aclysia had her posture and the tip of her spear lowered. In principle, I agreed that this was a good defensive stance to have. Every attempt to charge at her would be met with a swift stab in the guts. However, she had taken the lowering part far further than was effective, dragging the tip of her weapon over the floor. That left her wide open towards a close-range charge.

Soon, I got a clue about what Aclysia was trying to do. A switch of camera angle showed the gap between the white tiles she had passed over to be oddly distorted. Size of the area affected seems to be respondent to the time she kept her Artefact in place, I observed, wondering what exactly the effect was.

Aclysia suddenly inverted her path. With much quicker steps, bordering on a sprint, she trailed back. The distorted parts of the ground followed along the tip of her spear and once she arrived at her original position, she quickly rotated around her own axis. Liquefied stone trailed after the movement and consolidated into a sphere – launched directly at Esther.

The stone hardened back into its original state. Over a hundred kilograms of rock came flying at an impressive pace at the raven-haired woman. Suddenly, as if someone had pressed the forward button for her and only her, the tricorne-wearing student accelerated. Smoothly, she dodged out of the way.

The rock passed behind her back as she made a quick step forward and thrust her left arm out. Just as the rock smashed onto the ground, the screaming thunder of magical lightning echoed out. Blue light exploded from Esthers palm, a bolt of electrical energy that struck Aclysia in the stomach.

I whistled, ”Combat magic as a melee fighter against a melee fighter? Using her Astrality like that in close quarter combat is pretty brazen. I like this girl. ”

”Of course you like her, she has a gorgeous face, big tits and a juicy ass, ” Arlethia rolled her eyes, as she remarked this. ”Everyone would like her at first glance. ”

”You know me so well, we must be kindred souls. I would ask you out on a date, if I didn respect your boyfriend too much. ”

Aclysia took the punishment well. She didn scream or even a whimper from the pain. Her clothing received a bit of searing, revealing some of the naked skin of her stomach under the shirt. An indication that the damage couldn have been too bad. An Astral Body maintained ones current physical state, including things worn closely to the body. That being said, the body was always the priority of restoration and things outside of it suffered gradual degradation.

It was common to gauge the remaining Astral Capacity of the enemy through how much more intact clothing they had. The body was protected from lethal blows and wounds in general. The presence of people that knew about the Dimensional Truth was etched into the Astral Plane and reset them to an unblemished state after receiving wounds, as long as they had enough Astrality left. It was important that people gave up before they ran out; once their Astral Body was broken, they could be wounded just like any other being. If they weren careful with how they dealt with those wounds, the resulting scars could end up as part of their new true body. There was also the whole dying business.