Chapter 101: Tutor Morwenna [II]
Chapter 101: Tutor Morwenna [II]
Silas stared at the floating orb of water.
A massive genuine smile completely broke across his face.
’It actually works!’ Silas cheered in his head. ’I’m manipulating elemental magic...’
In his excitement at finally casting a standard spell, his mana control slipped.
He didn’t mean to fire it... He just meant to hold it... but the condensed ball of water violently shot forward like a fired cannonball.
SPLASH!
The heavy orb of water slammed directly into the center of Morwenna’s face.
The impact was loud.
The water exploded violently outward, completely soaking her dark hair, washing over her pale skin, and drenching the heavy leather smithing bra she was wearing.
The entire backyard went dead silent.
Silas froze with his hand still extended in the air. His eyes went wide.
’Fuck... fuck... fuck...’ Silas thought in horror. The last thing he wanted to do was to offend her.
Morwenna stood completely still.
Water dripped down from her eyelashes, sliding off her flawless chin and pooling in her collarbones.
She slowly reached up and wiped the water from her stormy gray eyes.
Morwenna completely thinned her lips and then, a dangerous grin stretched entirely across her wet face.
"I am so sorry, Morwenna," Silas immediately apologized, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender before he got hit by the weight of the ocean. "My mana control completely slipped. I didn’t mean to—"
SPLASH!
Silas’s apology was interrupted.
An incredibly fast ball of heavy saltwater slammed directly into the center of his face.
The impact nearly knocked him entirely off balance.
Freezing water flooded his nose and mouth, completely soaking his dark undershirt and plastering his messy hair directly against his forehead.
He sputtered, coughing up water and wiping his eyes.
Silas looked across the mud.
Morwenna was standing there with her hand extended.
She hadn’t spoken a single syllable as she had entirely bypassed the long incantation and cast the spell silently.
The Pirate Queen laughed, a loud sound sound that echoed over the rain.
"If you entirely wanted a water fight, Captain," Morwenna challenged him, actively conjuring two more swirling orbs of water in her bare hands. "Then I am clear to engage."
Silas wiped the water from his chin.
His own competitive nature flashed, Morwenna didn’t seem to be offended but on the other hand, the woman was quite happy.
"Oh, it’s on," Silas declared.
Morwenna didn’t hesitate.
She threw the right orb directly at his chest with blinding velocity.
Silas completely dropped his center of gravity, smoothly ducking entirely under the incoming projectile.
The water ball violently sailed over his head, splashing harmlessly against the stone wall of the Keep.
While he was ducked, Silas didn’t waste a second.
He surged his Mythic Gold Core, ignoring the concept of standard mana conservation.
He rapidly chanted the incantation for Water Sport, completely overcharging the spell with a massive injection of raw power.
Instead of gathering a single orb, the freezing rain violently coalesced into five massive, incredibly heavy spheres of water hovering in a flawless semi-circle entirely around his shoulders.
"Fire in the hole!" Silas yelled.
He thrust his arm forward.
All five massive water balls shot across the courtyard like a artillery barrage but Morwenna didn’t block.
She relied on her Tidal-Blade footwork instead.
The pirate moved with terrifying fluidity as usual.
She seamlessly side-stepped the first orb, flawlessly ducked the second, effortlessly pirouetted between the third and fourth, and casually swatted the fifth completely out of the air with the back of her hand, sending a spray of water violently into the ground.
"You completely broadcast your firing angles, Captain!" Morwenna mocked him loudly.
She smoothly gathered a massive pressurized sphere of water and threw it directly at his face.
The projectile was moving too fast for Silas to simply duck so he relied on raw athletic agility.
Silas violently threw his upper body entirely to the right, planting his calloused right hand firmly into the wet ground.
’Damn...’
Silas completely leveraged his massive core strength, aggressively pushing his entire body up into a flawless one-handed handstand.
The massive water ball sailed exactly two inches past his inverted ribs, completely missing him.
Silas smoothly kicked off the mud, flipping perfectly back onto his feet with a triumphant smirk.
"Missed!" Silas taunted her.
However, the water ball didn’t just vanish.
It retained its high-speed momentum, sailing entirely past Silas and shooting directly toward the thick dense bushes completely lining the outer edge of the backyard.
SPLASH!
The heavy water orb violently slammed into the bushes.
"Eeee!" a loud distinctly female voice violently shrieked from the foliage.
The bushes rustled, and a completely soaked armored shieldmaiden aggressively tumbled entirely out onto the mud.
It was Maren.
The heavy-infantry scout had completely abandoned her perimeter shift.
She had been actively hiding in the wet bushes, desperately using the foliage to spy on her Lord while he trained.
She was currently drenched head-to-toe and her heavy iron breastplate dripped with cold water.
Silas and Morwenna both froze, staring at the completely exposed spy.
Maren’s face flushed a brilliant visible shade of crimson.
She didn’t offer a military salute, Maren didn’t attempt to explain her severe breach of operational protocol.
The completely humiliated shieldmaiden scrambled up to her feet, let out another panicked squeak, and sprinted entirely out of the backyard as fast as her heavy boots could carry her.
Silas stood in the training field, staring at the empty bushes.
A slow chuckle escaped his lips.
The chuckles rapidly escalated into a loud full-chested laugh.
Morwenna joined him too.
The terrifying Dread Queen doubled over, aggressively clutching her stomach as she laughed so hard her voice started cracking.
They stood in the freezing rain, completely soaked.
Their moment of joy didn’t last long.
A wooden window on the top floor of the Keep violently slammed open.
Eluned poked her beautiful, silver-haired head entirely out of the window.
The Goddess of Nature looked down into the backyard as her glowing green eyes narrowed in jealousy.
"Why are there sounds of laughing coming from the ground?!" Eluned demanded loudly, offended that Silas was actively enjoying the company of the pirate.
Morwenna didn’t even blink.
The Dread Queen looked directly up at the top window.
She rested her hands completely on her hips, with an incredibly smug smirk stretching across her wet face.
"It is just simple combat training, you overgrown weed!" Morwenna yelled entirely back up at the Goddess.
Morwenna paused, loading the emotional kill-shot.
"Why don’t you go make the bed warm like a good wife should for our Lord?!" Morwenna shouted.
The word hit the Goddess like a literal freight train.
Eluned’s divine brain completely short-circuited.
The SSS-Rank Goddess of Nature froze.
Her glowing green eyes went impossibly wide as an explosive blush conquered her entire face, spreading all the way down her neck and pointed ears.
She lost the ability to formulate an arrogant insult.
"W-wife..." Eluned stuttered weakly with her voice lacking any sort of divine authority.
She violently pulled her head completely back inside and slammed the heavy wooden window shut so hard the glass nearly shattered.
Silas stood in the mud, staring up at the closed window in disbelief.
’What the helll...?’
He slowly turned his head to look at the smirking Pirate Queen.
"Woah..." Silas muttered genuinely. "You actually completely managed to calm her down?"
"It is very simple, Captain," Morwenna grinned, proud of her psychological warfare. "She possesses zero romantic defense mechanisms. If you hit her with a term lf intimacy, her head completely overheats."
Silas chuckled, shaking his wet hair out of his eyes.
"Alright," Silas said smoothly, shifting his focus back to the primary objective.
He reached down and picked up his training sword from the mud.
"I have the ability to use Water magic. How do I actually integrate it into the swordplay?"
Morwenna immediately sobered up.
The feral pirate vanished, instantly replaced by the strict martial arts instructor.
"I will show you the First Style," Morwenna declared, raising her own wooden blade.
For the next twenty minutes, Morwenna meticulously broke down the fundamental mechanics of the Tide-Blade Arts.
She explained exactly how to cycle the ambient moisture entirely through his internal mana circuits.
She demonstrated how to flawlessly align the edge of the blade to capture the atmospheric pressure, and exactly how to pivot his hips to release the pent-up force without shattering his own wrists.
Silas listened intently as he tried to replicate the movements.
"Alright... I’m ready."
He swung the wooden sword, forcefully surging his golden mana and the newly discovered water affinity.
Swish!
A tiny weak splash of phantom water erupted from his blade, failing to generate any actual pressure.
Silas was frustrated.
"It’s really hard to perfectly synchronize the mana output with the edge alignment..."
"Of course it is, Captain," Morwenna stated pragmatically. "It completely took me an entire century of fighting deep-sea krakens to actually perfect the First Form... You cannot simply learn a mythic martial art by swinging at the empty rain."
She completely lowered her sword with her stormy gray eyes entirely locking onto his.
"The only way you can actually learn the timing of this technique is completely in the middle of a battle," Morwenna ordered smoothly. "We have to aggressively spar."
Silas nodded, willing to take a beating to improve his stats.
"However," Morwenna added with her voice dropping.
She took a slow step entirely toward him with a smile touching her lips.
"If I completely manage to knock you out entirely during this spar," Morwenna established the exact operational stakes. "Then I win and like I said earlier, I get to sleep on the main bed entirely with you and Eluned tonight, instead of my own room."
Silas looked at the eager pirate standing in the rain and sighed.
"Agreed," Silas stated deadpan while raising his training sword. "Like I said before, it’s alright as long as you knock me out."
Thinking back to it, it would be easy for someone on her level to knock him out but Silas wasn’t going to make it easy for her to do so.
Morwenna didn’t hesitate for a single fraction of a second.
The exact momentthe verbal contract was sealed, she exploded forward.
Morwenna didn’t hold back.
The Dread Queen moved with blinding agility as she swung the heavy ashwood training sword in a brutal diagonal arc directly toward his collarbone.
Silas violently engaged his Mythic Gold Core.
"Fuck!"
He didn’t try to rely entirely on his clumsy new technique.
Instead he utilized his overwhelming physical stats to force his muscles to adapt to the high-speed assault.
CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!
The heavy wooden swords collided in the freezing rain.
Silas was entirely on the defensive.
He aggressively back-pedaled through the water, desperately using a combination of fast, light parries and brute-force blocks to completely keep the Dread Queen from shattering his ribs.
’Why the hell is she going so hard? Sleeping on the same bed with me can’t be that good...’
Morwenna was an unstoppable hurricane of violence.
She seamlessly wove crushing strikes with fluid unpredictable sweeping sweeps.
"You are completely relying on your brute force again, Captain!" Morwenna yelled over the clash of wood, pressuring his guard. "Find the fluid rhythm and turn my own momentum against me or you’ll be knocked out quickly!"
Silas gritted his teeth.
He completely stopped trying to stop her blade.
As Morwenna entirely swung a horizontal strike toward his waist, Silas dropped his center of gravity.
He engaged his newly acquired water affinity, entirely syncing it with his golden mana.
He angled his wooden sword exactly fifteen degrees to the right.
CLACK!
Silas completely caught her blade but this time, he didn’t absorb the shock.
He applied a burst of phantom heavy-water pressure to the edge of his sword.
WHOOSH!
Silas seamlessly redirected Morwenna’s momentum completely to the side, exactly like she had taught him.
Morwenna’s eyes went wide as her sword violently slipped past him.
Silas didn’t hesitate.
He aggressively stepped entirely into her guard.
"First Form!" Silas roared.
He violently swung his wooden sword in an upward diagonal slash.
VWOOSH!