The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1368 The Real Challenges

The ringing of blades caught the attention of most of the dragons, who went to watch the two warriors fighting the maids.

The young dragons had skills, and had been training all their young lives to be the best that they could be. But the maids were made with the [Gargoyle] spell, and were not only more agile than the kids, but faster and in some cases, smarter.

Landing a blow on them was not going to be easy.

Skirts twirled as they parried and dodged, easily swatting away skills and landing strikes on the guests with their blunted blades.

Karl had placed healing totems in the garden, so the bruises vanished within seconds. But the proud dragons did not forget the pain of being hit by the beastkin dressed as the lowest servants.

“Are those real beastkin?” One of the boys, a Sand Dragon Mage, asked as he watched them fight.

“Yes and no. They’re Gargoyles. So, they’re real and solid, but I didn’t invite them here, I summoned them.” Karl explained.

The boy’s eyes lit up with joy as he watched the fights.

“The head tutor of the Royal Family knows the Gargoyle spell, but he never does cool things like this for us. I don’t think that they’ll manage to land a hit, though.”

Karl patted him on the head. “Just wait. They’ll figure out the combat style soon enough, and then they’ll manage to get a strike in.”

Then a sound of frustration drew both of their attention to the other side of the illusionary garden.

Only a few mages had gone straight to the ranged targets, and quickly discovered that the Phoenix was a merciless goalkeeper. It looped around the grounds, and they thought that would give them a large opening, but it did not.

It just gave them more travel time, as the Phoenix intercepted with ranged fireballs.

Rue joined the mages, and then the young Sand Dragon who had been talking with Karl.

With four of them, they could time their spells together to make the phoenix work harder. Rue was the first to sneak a spell past him by double casting [Void Blast], and letting the fireball destroy the first one, while the second continued to the target.

“Ooh, score one for Princess Rue. That was a great trick” One of the girls cheered.

She tried the same trick, but the Phoenix squawked and used an explosive fireball to wipe them both out.

“GAH! Did it learn already? I totally thought we had figured the trick out.” She complained.

Just as the kids in the mage class at the Academy had done, they worked on multiple castings, speed variations, oscillating travel speeds, and even curved routes by the mages with the skill to manage it.

Slowly, they were managing to land more strikes on the targets as they learned the ways around the defender.

But they were also rapidly increasing their spell control skills.

From a table in the corner of the garden, Librarian Barry watched in awe as the mages improved their skills by more in one hour than they had in the last semester of tutoring.

Competing really was the best way.

Unfortunately for the boys sparring, it was not so easy for them to win. The extra cake slices were well guarded, and the first boys had given up when they got tired, allowing a new pair to take over.

One of them was a Rogue, and he was getting much closer than either of the boys before him. His agility was enough that he could keep up with the maids, but Karl knew that was not the only way to win this challenge.

You only had to land a single strike, not win the fight.

The first to figure it out was a girl in the third group of warriors, who started her sparring session just as Princess Rue sat down with the others to take a break from casting.

She fought with a pair of scimitars, which others thought might give her an advantage. Except that the maid was still much faster than she was, and highly skilled.

A cross block stopped the maid’s blade, and the girl flicked a kick in her direction, making the maid jump over her foot.

Then, she did what nobody else expected, and rotated her blades over her head as she dove forward. Like a tackle ball player, the warrior girl crashed into the maid. Both parties dropped their blades, and the slender beastkin was knocked to the ground.

Laughing, the maid rolled out from under her attacker and lifted the girl to her feet.

“We have a hit. Now, go grab your bonus slice of cake before it gets stale.” The other warriors groaned in disappointment. Why hadn’t they thought of that?

“Mister Karl, what are those hoops in the air? Is that for skill targeting too?” One of the boys asked.

“Oh, that’s a flight course. Agility training to help build wing muscles. Do you not have them here?” Karl asked.

Cara loved the flight course.

“How does it work?” The boy asked, not seeing any obvious start or finish lines.

“You go through them in any order you want, but you have to go through all the rings. Some you can fly straight through. Some you will have to tuck your wings for. And, they’re set at different angles, so you need to be able to bank quickly to make good time.”

The boy immediately transformed into a Shadow Dragon whelp just under two metres long, and frantically flapped into the air.

Unlike Button, who spent most of her time going back and forth between wings and feet, the dragons here lived in the city and spent most of their time in human form, learning essential skills.

Compared to the wild forest dragon, their flight skills were incredibly underdeveloped.

As evidenced by the fact that he managed to hit his head on the first ring he tried to fly through.

Flight came naturally to the dragons, they could do it from the moment that they hatched, but they were clumsy and awkward until they had enough practice, and the dragons here had forgotten that. They had become too civilized, and didn’t spend much time showing their scales or building flight muscles.

That would change soon, Karl hoped. Baby Dragons should be baby dragons, not human students.