“Not quite, but you’re not far off.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the weapon is a part of it, but it’s useless on its own. Hand it to an ordinary swordsman and they’d just kill themselves with it.”
He tapped a hand against his chest. “Much of my strength comes from practicing magic in ways that permanently reinforce my body. It’s a very slow process. I use things like strength and resilience spells until my body acclimates to them and improves.
“You’re already working on that yourself — practicing that Haste spell is going to make you faster and faster, as your body acclimates to it. Another portion is learning techniques that are designed for single combat against opponents that are stronger than I am. We’re training you for that, too.”
“But I’m sure a lot of people train like that.”
“Sure.” Keras nodded. “To some degree, at least. I’m sure you’ve noticed that training your Haste spell is a painful and frustrating process. Many are going to abandon that, unless they have perception spells to make it easier, like you talked about wanting. Sometimes the most frustrating training methods bear the most fruit.”
That made sense. “But that can’t be enough to catch up to someone like Saffron. If what you’re saying is true, he could just drain a single Sunstone’s mana and it’d be more power than I’ve earned in my life.”
“Fortunately, I don’t think their mana absorption is one hundred percent efficient. But your point remains true. There are two other reasons I’m as powerful as I am. One, is that I’m constantly looking for shortcuts to make myself more powerful. Some of them work better than others.
“That flask of magic water you gave Sera? It might have backfired, but that’s the type of idea that I’ve made use of a dozen times. Some of them have taken me out of commission for a while. Others have nearly killed me. But I’ve survived to this point, and I’m stronger for it.”
Keras shook his head. “Don’t take that as encouragement to go that route, though. I have another reason why I’m as strong as I am, and it’s a part of the reason I can afford to experiment.”
“You’re not human,” I guessed. “You’re…what, a God Beast? Or something like it?”
“I suppose that’s not a bad comparison, although I’m not sure I like it. I’m…well, it’s a bit complicated. Didn’t even find out myself until I was an adult. That made for something of a confusing childhood.”
“I’d imagine.”
“Anyway, I have advantages and disadvantages because of it. In terms of sheer combat ability, it’s mostly advantages. It’s the other parts of life that I have more trouble with.” He gazed away, distant and contemplative.
I let him think for a while.
But not too long.
Being incapacitated and in terrible pain was extremely boring. “Your shortcuts. Would any of them work for me?”
“Not sure. Most of the ones I’ve used are directly related to what I am. A human wouldn’t survive them. Maybe one of the crystals at the elemental temples…” He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.” Keras folded his arms, sitting down next to me. “You might have been on the right track with the mana water.”
I nodded weakly. “I’d been planning to study it further, and similar things like enhancement elixirs. But that still seems so slow.”
I expected him to give me a speech about how slow, incremental growth was the safe way to go. That was, after all, the same kind of lecture I got from everyone else. That I had to pay my dues, train for years, and eventually maybe — just maybe — I’d be good enough.
Or, perhaps he’d give me a lecture about how power wasn’t what was important, and that I needed to grow as a person and learn to be responsible and avoid conflict.
Or maybe he’d tell me that I had a pair of support attunements, and that I should never have been trying to fight someone directly at all. That it was complete folly for an Enchanter to try to be a front-line combatant.
Instead, he said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t have the patience for that approach after a fight with someone like Saffron, either. Okay. Let’s think of something.”
“…Really?”
“Sure. You think I want you to feel helpless? Accept your weakness? That’s no way to live. I might not have an instant solution, but I’ll try to help you figure something out. Don’t get your hopes up about us finding something that’s going to make you as strong as Saffron, of course. But there are ways to win battles without being as strong as your opponent.”
“Of course, but I can’t expect to do that reliably. If Elora hadn’t teleported me out of that area, I’d have been at Saffron’s mercy. And it’s not like that was an isolated incident. I’m routinely running into enemies that are too powerful to fight directly.”
“So…don’t, then.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “What am I supposed to do, tell them to spare me so I can train for a year and give them a better fight later?”
“You’d be surprised at how well that can work, but no, that’s not what I meant.” Keras waved a hand dismissively. “I mean that you seem to be fixating on how to win in a one on one fight without any sort of situational advantages. That isn’t playing to your strengths.”
I tried not to feel offended by that. “Is this where you tell me that I’m an Enchanter, and I should be focused on making items for fighters, not trying to fight?”
“That isn’t what I was suggesting in the slightest.” He raised a hand to adjust his mask. “The strength I’m talking about is your flexibility. You’re extremely creative in how you make use of the items and abilities at your disposal. I’ve been trying to teach you my style of fighting, but I don’t think that’s what suits you. You already have your own.”
“My…own fighting style?”
“Sure. I trained for years to learn conventional fighting styles, just like you have. Sparring with dueling teachers, military training, that sort of thing. I was never a terrible swordsman, but I wasn’t exceptional, either. And being average was never acceptable. To excel, I had to learn to do what other people couldn’t do. And I’ve already seen you doing some of that — I just think you need to embrace it.”
Keras was right.
I’d been trying to copy the general approach to combat from other people my entire life. My father, Tristan, everyone who had ever trained me had ideas on how to approach combat. Many of these came from long years of training and tradition.
But those fighting styles were built for Guardians, or Shapers, or Elementalists. Not for Enchanters or Arbiters.
Even when I was training with Keras himself, I was focused on how I could use my own skills to make approximations of his, rather than developing something that suited me.
“You’re right. I have a combination of attunements that virtually no one else does. I’ve barely bothered to think about how I can do something unique with that.”
Keras grinned. “Now you’re getting it. What can you do that I can’t?”
I tapped my shield sigil. “Make mana threads. I can use them to connect to my sword and manipulate its aura.”
“That’s excellent, but that’s still finding a way to copy one of my techniques. You should still be doing things like that, but I think you can do more than just that. What’s something you can do with that, or otherwise, that I can’t do at all?”
I took a moment to ponder that. “I can attach a thread to my shield sigil so that I can recharge it in the middle of a fight.”
“Good. What else?”
I considered that. “I figured out that I can attach threads to other people’s sigils and recharge them, too.”