Welldark B2 Ch. 02

I ran by them. Priorities had to be set and my priority was the tracker and my Queen. Definitely not in that order.

Entering a brawl was a peculiar sensation. At one moment, I was moving with the intention of getting somewhere. The next, I uppercut into the side of a narrow-visioned combatant. The impact drove her back. More importantly, my arrival bought space for Esther. The raven-haired lady immediately switched from pure defense to balanced offense, assaulting the target I had just unbalanced and slowed with gravity magic.

Her sabre sliced through the student's abdomen. Blood covered the blade, but the body was regenerated near instantly, leaving only a gap in the sportswear of the student. Esther was about to be pelted in retaliation, when she snapped back in time to her previous safe position and launched a second offensive on the closest enemy.

I threw myself in the fray, trying to isolate the three from the one. The runes on Esther's short sword burned out from the tip down. Without any warning, she accelerated twofold. Her motions looked like she was part of a sped-up video.

To be in a duel with Esther was the worst position anyone around could be in. She was faster through time acceleration. She could recover Astral Capacity through reversing her state and position. She was a master of her dual weapons and lightning magic. To outrun her was nigh impossible. To wait for her stamina to be expended, a fool's errand.

My own skill set was more versatile. Gravity magic was especially potent if repeatedly applied to one enemy, but it also helped with levelling the playing field against several opponents. Accepting a couple of hits meant that I could slow the one's throwing them with cheap taps. The swords, fists, and bladed boots coming for me, I could soon swat aside. Graceful swipes became forced swings. The number's advantage that should have been overwhelming could not be pressed, courtesy of the diminishing effect I had on their agility.

They understood the fundamental drawback with that strategy. I was expending a lot of Astral Capacity. Taking the initial hits and reapplying the gravity magic over and over again, it tapped on my resources. My shirt soon sported several holes. The trio tried their best to drain my resources and force me to tap out. As per the rules of the class, once I surrendered, I had to recover for at least fifteen minutes back in the gathering area.

The problem with their strategy was that they were setting themselves up to be stomped.

The sword of the blonde scratched over my gauntlet. My knuckles connected with her stomach for a brief moment, the retaliating punch delivering little force thanks to the rock slamming into my head. Now identified as a stone manipulator, the brunette tried to conjure another attack. She wouldn't have gotten away with it, had it not been for the redhead engaging me with her burning hands.

Turned out the brunette didn't get away with it anyway. As she raised her bladed foot, exercising control over another piece of stone, Esther was suddenly next to her. The blade of her sabre stopped short of the woman's throat. Who swallowed and raised her hands in surrender.

I couldn't verify whether she actually stepped back, as I had to dodge another stab, but I had not yet noticed anyone violating the honour of the exercise. It was two down, two to go. A statement that was immediately falsified by the two onlookers joining the fray and then rapidly re-instated as truth by Esther unleashing a flurry of attacks.

Slowed down as the remaining two of my previous enemies were, they stood absolutely no chance against my accelerated Queen. Slicing, whirling, almost dancing, Esther's blades drew the blood of our enemies, depleting them of their Astral Capacity in a storm of metal and grace. They ran out of harm's way, arms raised. Leaving me and Esther to fight the last two.

Esther continued fluidly. Swinging her weapons in parallel, she forced a fellow raven-haired woman to jump backwards. That left me with another brunette. I raised my fists in guard and kept my distance. My Astral Capacity was down to a quarter. Carelessness was not something I could afford and damage not something I had to sustain anymore.

I concentrated fully on the enemy in front of me. She was a brunette with medium sized breasts, although the sports bra could have fooled my perception to that end, and very nice legs. More importantly to the situation, she wielded an estoc, a light stabbing sword. 'Gravity magic will do little there, so I guess I'm doing this purely physically.'

My winning condition was waiting for the timer to run out or for Esther to take out the other one. I had only stood to gain from each passing second. The brunette must have known as much. Stepping up to me, she launched her offensive.

I dodged by turning my whole body sideways. Committing to the whole thrust anyway, the brunette left herself wide open. She shot me a confident glance. I disengaged immediately. A stab from a supernatural source cut through where my shoulders had just been. Immediately, the brunette launched another attack. This time, I knocked the blade aside. A streak of blue white scraped over my hand half a second later.

'An echo attack in the vicinity of whatever she hits?' I theorized and dodged the third strike. Again, the streak of sharp energy cut through the air. It moved in parallel to and in close proximity to her estoc. That basically confirmed my theory. 'Not easy to get in there if she gets a second try on every miss.'

I kept dodging in circles, observing her patterns and the exact make-up of the area. Gradually, I goaded her to a boulder. I acted surprised, when my back hit it. Gave her the opening she thought she needed. The lunge came predictably and I teleported one step to the right. "CLING!" the tip of her weapon collided with the rock. She hastily pulled back, unable to use the echo attack to keep me at bay.

Although I wasn't a big fan of it, her face was the only available target. I stopped the full swing short of her nose and waited for a reaction. "You really are too good," the brunette sighed with a smirk and stepped backwards.

"Do not compliment my Karitas too much," Esther requested in her stern tone. Even as she approached, she kept a tight grip on her weapons. "It gets to his head."

The brunette gave Esther some serious side-eye. It occurred to me that it must have sounded like a demand to someone who wasn't familiar with the stern tone of my raven-haired lady. "She was trying to make a joke," I assured her.

"Was she now?" the brunette asked sarcastically. With a friendlier tone, she said to me, "I'll see you around," and then walked over where her defeated comrade was waiting.

"You should work on your joke-tone," I recommended to my Queen.

"She has an interest in you. My words will be taken in bad faith." Esther joined her weapons again, to free one of her hands and wave at me with her finger. Taking the invitation, I bowed down to her and received a kiss from my soft-lipped love. "If you wish to try and pursue her, I would swallow my complaints until we know her better."

I directed my gaze at the brunette. She was good looking and I liked her figure. Physically there was nothing wrong with her and what I had seen from her in terms of character was perfectly acceptable. 'Acceptable just isn't really enough for me. Oh, how greedy I am. Like the nothingness from whence I spawned, the never and the forever, so I too wish to devour all I please.' "She's not quite my type," I summarized succinctly.

Esther gave me a quick peck on the cheek. "Then you have more time to spend with me," she said and the two of us returned to the flag.

Several more times over the coming two hours, our position was attacked, but there simply wasn't enough coordination to take us out. Really, it felt less like people tried to beat us and more so that they had already accepted they wouldn't score in the top three and just wanted to grind their teeth on something difficult. I honestly admired that level of dedication, so we kept those duels going for longer than was practical. Between those fights, Esther and I just talked and made out.

It was a nice way to earn 100 Dark.

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Wednesday flew by me. The classes on engineering and cooking went as expected. I screwed together a simple device that focused or scattered the light created by a magical crystal at the centre. Afterwards, I spent two hours preparing and then eating a casserole. All ingredients were provided at the start of the class, which limited my choices, but also assured quality.

After the three months I had spent attending this class, I realized that there were several members of the Wood Division and Bronze Area, the two lowest of Welldark's five brackets, that joined the class only for the free food. I felt a strange mixture of respect and annoyance towards them. Respect was aimed at their craftiness, to solve part of their money problems by going to a class that would offer them high quality ingredients for free. Annoyance was born from the majority of them displaying behaviour that deservedly put them among Welldark's poor.

They put in the minimal amount of effort and had obviously no drive to improve. Lazily, they cut and seasoned the food, wolfed it down with no love for the craft, ignored the advice of the teacher, and left as soon as they had finished eating. It was all representative of an attitude that would keep them where they were for the length of their attendance. There were many ways in Welldark to rise up beyond combat. Tests, additional efforts made in class, working with or for the faculty, that was just the short list. Everything counted towards the score that decided one's standing.

I wasn't going to pretend that everyone could make it to the Golden Eagles. The highest echelon was meant to represent exceptional individuals. From what I had seen, however, with enough drive anyone could rise to the Iron Ranks, the middle segment, at which point life was at least comfortable.

Seeing this general lack of drive among so many people made me wonder whether the percentages associated with the five segments were set in stone or if they were a rough estimation of how the motivational differences between people manifested. At some point, I would have to ask Willt about it.

The teacher was obviously used to the low-ranking individuals attending the class. Patiently, they made sure that there was no disturbance for those of us who wanted to do the proper work. Where they could, they offered a hand to those few that weren't settled in their low-achievement mindset. By my estimation, that was the best that could be done.

It also served to make me feel better about myself. On a normal day, I would qualify myself as a procrastinator, but I did at least do the things I committed myself to. I attended my classes, stuck to my workout, and I never knowingly missed a meeting I had agreed to. Knowing that I was more reliable than about half the student body with those three qualities alone made me... well, it made me something approximating happy. I liked being better than my peers, obviously, but I would also have liked it if I could have reasonably held everyone around to at least that standard.

Thankfully, I had the freedom to pick my circle of associates, so I did not have to be friends with any of these people. I made my casserole, flirted with some classmates, and left half of my food for Esther. My raven-haired lady had her scheduled lunch break after my cooking class, so she typically came over to feast on what I had made while it was still fresh. We could afford the cafeteria, yet saw no reason to leave food on the table -- literally.

Much as I liked seeing her react to whatever I had poured up to two hours of work into preparing for her, the saddening fact was that I only had about ten minutes to spend with her on those occasions before I had to head out to my last class on Wednesday.

The advanced lecture on unarmed combat had been mildly awkward after Esther and Karona had their brawl. That situation had essentially faded, with me and the succubus just existing in the same space. Out of respect for the distance she kept between us, I kept my lecherous stares to a minimum. Something made easier by the hideous teacher we had, Grumble Stiltzkin. The half-dwarf, half-troll who was as much annoyed with everything as he was talented at teaching us to beat one another up. I had a great amount of respect for the man, even if his appearance managed to make me question how him and beauty could exist in the same universe. One moment I was looking at a bubble butt jiggle in the aftermath of a kick, the next his wart-covered hide entered my field of view. It gave my perversion whiplash.

In any case, this Wednesday, like most, was relaxed. My first class had been at 11:00 and I was out the door at 18:00, leaving me with ample time to laze about, hang out with my friends and keep my body working. On this particular occasion, I also headed out and bought the oil and other utensils helpful for massages. Only for massages, the erotic toys I wanted I did keep for my next shopping date with Esther, as agreed. It was unsurprisingly useful to have the input of the woman when buying things that were supposed to go inside her.

Thursday was slightly more involved. I only had two classes that day, music and basic weapon training. The former was becoming more interesting for me, now that I had the basics of singing down. Maria Trostwald, the teacher, hadn't given me any special attention since the initial incident and I appreciated that. After having observed and offered some distraction from my relationship troubles, she had allowed me to switch classes to accommodate my working hours and then stepped back into her role as someone who lectured me and other students about music.

The weapon training class was primarily interesting because I was everyone's target dummy. That sounded like a thankless job, but it was exactly what I wanted. I was in that particular class not to learn how to wield one or several weapons, but to learn how to fight against them while utilizing my gauntlets. To that end, I was practice on a moving target and in return learned the most common attack patterns.

After that, I had another shift at Café Served. Thursday was my least favourite shift. Esther wasn't there. Thursday also had a low workload. Less work was surely more enjoyable? A naïve thought only someone who had never worked in the service industry could have. Less and especially no work were the absolute worst. An overabundance of work was tiring for the body and that had its issues. Lack of work was tiring for the soul and there was only so much I could do on my Ashod in the breakroom before twiddling my thumbs became a torturous exercise. I cleaned the tables three times more regularly than I needed to. My desperate search for something to do eventually led me to partly reorganizing the storage.

Boredom was part of the university life though.

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I had a swing in my step as I wandered through the corridors of the Etiquette branch of Welldark. Of all the segments of the campus, the buildings dedicated to this branch were by far the most 'normal'. There was nothing really special about the purple, black and gold that had been intertwined in the gothic design of the tall stone walls. No concoctions in the walls, no great statues, no otherworldly lights or intense heraldry, just shaped rock and clear glass.

'I suppose that is representative of etiquette -- a front of bland behaviours existing so you can get along with strangers,' I thought. The smell of peppermint and black tea in the air was swiftly replaced by the sweet fragrance of flowers. A colourful carpet of petals stretched over the surface of the medium sized park that I walked across. Even the butterflies frolicking in the air were pale in comparison to the brightness of my mood.

It was close to 11:00 on Friday, which meant that it was time for my penultimate class of the week. While the lecture on dimensional heroes I would have later that day was held in great esteem in my mind, the class I marched towards at the present had the dedication of my heart.

Of course, I was talking about the Sexual Skills class.

After a few minutes of walking, I approached the Sexuality branch of Welldark. Even from the outside, the character of that building was clear. The stained-glass windows of its gothic towers depicted humanoid forms, primarily women, in erotic poses. Many statues adorned the walls, the corners, and the roofs, each showing the pinnacle of a flavour of attractiveness, ranging from the bouncy shortstack to the muscular amazon.

On the outside, such displays had just enough modesty that a minor walking around the campus could have been shown around without issue. Inside, those restrictions were shed, and the statues depicted people and acts in full nudity. The stones were expertly cut, giving a soft appearance to the rigid material. The air was pregnant with the stimulating smells of vanilla and burning sandalwood. Every surface was clean, every piece of art graceful. I loved Welldark's Sexuality branch for how it displayed sex not as something depraved to sinfully revel in, but as the intimate, almost holy, union between consenting partners it optimally was.

I entered the classroom and looked around. Like with most classes, attendance had gradually decreased over the weeks. Still, the Sexual Skills class retained three quarters of attendants, which was a lot higher than most classes. Although there were more than seventy people in attendance, the room was less than half full. A deliberate decision, I had eventually come to guess, as it allowed pairs of attendees to sit with at least some space between them and their peers.

Esther and I were no different. I swiftly located the lady of my love, chatting with Arlethia. Sitting straight, her tricorne placed in front of her, she chuckled at something the succubus had said. Arlethia tilted her head, lazily resting on her palm, and looked at me.

"Our stripper is here," Arlethia joked.

"I don't want to hear that from you," I responded swiftly. The red-skinned succubus was in her underwear, a particularly attractive set of black lingerie, complete with garter belt and stocking. It complimented her red, curvy body fantastically. The straps dug into her squishy assets, emphasizing the size of her tits and thighs.

Arlethia was far from the only one in a state of partial undress. At the start of the second month, Danielle, the teacher of this class and Mistress of Sexuality, had told us that she encouraged us to get comfortable with public nudity. More advanced classes in future semesters were held entirely naked, as per her own description. It was all part of her philosophy that there was nothing shameful about openly displaying one's sexual desires, as long as they were tempered by discipline. The class was a setting where desires and bodies were laid bare.

"Willt is a lucky guy," I said, admitting to my attraction to her physicality as platonically as possible. That was part of the discipline one had to have to keep this openly sexual setting wholesome. Sexy as Arlethia was, objectively, I did not covet her.

"I know, right?" Arlethia asked and unashamedly pushed her boobs together. She only did it for a laugh, not to entice, and stopped quickly. "Too bad he's too fucking shy to show up."

"Not everyone is as forthcoming as us," I stated as I unbuttoned my shirt. Once I pulled the red cloth off me, I orderly folded it and placed it on the table. I couldn't suppress a smile. All across the room, women of the single variety were glancing or overtly salivating over my exposed chest, hairless and toned. They knew as well as I did that it didn't stop there. My pants and underpants followed my shirt quickly.