Saintess Summons Skeletons

Erian was up next, standing at his starting position, he ‘invoked’ multiple things one by one. Firstly an armor around his body, then a sword, a shield, and even large wings behind his back.

Real flight at level 57? Interesting.

The Exidian student charged, flying up then diving like a bird of prey. He tried to swerve around Pareth, but wasn’t fast enough. Without teleportation, he couldn’t use the same strategy En used, and attacking from above did not work well for him.

No ranged attacks I guess. His summoned stuff is sturdy but not as good as Orichalcum, not very flexible either.

After a few failed attempts to bypass Pareth, Erian pulled back just a bit, and after a few seconds of channeling, four thick walls appeared around Pareth and Erian took that opportunity to try to fly by him. Pareth’s fist burst through the wall as Erian neared and grabbed him. Erian tried to free himself, striking at Pareth’s arm with his sword to no avail.

“Alright, stop,” Sofia ordered, “Nice try.”

He’s trained in swordsmanship I think, from his posture and all. But he tried something different since he saw what happened to Lola’s spirit knight. The walls were an interesting attempt at something, but still clumsy.

Erian unsummoned all of his stuff and fixed his uniform before coming back.

“I apologize for the poor display,” he excused himself before regaining the ranks of students.

“As I said, nice try. Just like Lola, you had a bad matchup against Pareth, there’s no helping that.”

“Even my mithril weapons couldn’t do anything…” Lola chimed in.

“Pareth’s just quite sturdy, although he’s fighting as if he was your level, he’s still a high-level fighter with the health to go with it. Shaily’s turn.”

“Ah- Can I… Can Guerand go first?” the short Exidian girl pleaded.

“Depends on him.”

“I can go!” the red-haired dwarf enthusiastically accepted.

“You’re up then, show us your best golems.”

Guerand ran back to the classroom to grab a backpack that had been placed in a corner since the start, it looked quite heavy. He brought it to the arena and dumped the contents on the sandy ground. Sofia counted five head-sized clay dwarf statuettes, a small magic staff, a pickaxe and a polished round stone covered in runes. With a tiny speck of magic from Guerand, the clay statuettes came alive and started running around, gathering sand around the round stone. Then, with a much larger mana consumption, Guerand’s magic pulled the gathered sand in the air along with the stone, transforming it into a sand golem resembling Guerand, who quickly bent down to grab the magic staff.

After kicking the backpack away, the dwarf grabbed the pickaxe and announced he was ready.

“Start!”

Guerand started the exercise by running to the left while his small clay golems ran to the right. The sand golem stood still, channeling something.

Pareth stood still. Although the fight had just started, there was already not much he could do. Since he wasn’t allowed to fight back, moving to intercept the clay golems or the dwarf meant giving a clear line of sight to the mage golem. Still, he would give it his best shot.

The dwarf feigned an attack first, but Pareth managed to read his bluff, scaring him by taking a single step his way then instead turning the other side and grabbing the closest two of the clay golems, throwing them at the spellcaster one. Guerand struck for real, throwing his pickaxe aimed at the statue. Pareth managed to catch it in the air and instinctively took a step back, realigning himself with the statue, barely intercepting the sand blast from the spellcaster golem.

That left three small clay golems unchecked, they managed to throw themselves at the statue, Sofia moved the statue around a bit, dodging one then the next, but the third hit its target, making it fall over. The preparation time for the fight had been several times longer than the act itself.

“Well done! Outnumbering the enemy is a basic tactic for summoners, it won’t work against all enemies, but it was perfect for this situation, good choice.”

“Thank you, teacher!”

“Keep the thanks for later, I’ve not taught you much yet. Are you good to go now Shaily?”

“Yes. Sorry, I needed some time for my mana to come back up.”

Shaily walked up to the circle in the arena and raised her hands, mana gathered in several points around her, and after a few seconds, coalesced in small dots of colored light, like stars or fireflies. There were about twenty of them, most of them glowing red, and a few of them green.

Cute.

Shaily waved her hands around and the lights followed their directions. Her left hand controlled the green lights, which flew straight toward Pareth’s feet and soon sprouted in a sea of thick vines. Before Pareth could free himself, the red lights surrounded the statue and rammed into it, producing tiny flaming explosions the size of a fist, leaving quite a few burn marks on the bone statue.

Not so cute.

“Well, that was over quickly,” Sofia whispered. Pareth turned his head to look at her, giving away a feeling akin to ‘What the heck do you want me to do about it?’. But maybe that’s just my imagination. Well done either way, you can come back.

“Well done Shaily. If Lola and Erian had a bad matchup, you had a free one. You look exhausted though. Was that all of your mana?”

“Yes…” Shaily weakly answered as walked back out of the training grounds, sweating and too tired to celebrate her victory.

“Shaily’s skills are very expensive,” Lola explained.

“But she has the best controle out of all of us,” Erian continued, “her skills are higher level than she is,” he stated with admiration.

“Stop…” Shaily meekly protested, the blue skin of her face turning slightly purple.

Spends a lot of time training then? Good start. Reminds me I should get on with my own training… It looks like the three Exidians are good friends at least, I wonder about the other two.

“Good, good, good. I think I can teach a great deal of useful insight to all five of you. You all have your own strengths and weaknesses and that’s fine, we will work around that.”

Sofia changed her plans and spent the rest of the class going over each fight, and having everyone ponder about how the fights would now be if they had to go again, being aware of Pareth’s capabilities.

This approach proved to be both instructive and engaging for the group. Each fight was analyzed in detail, and everyone was encouraged to share their ideas on how the encounters could have played out differently, considering the unique strengths and weaknesses of each participant.

Guerand, the dwarf, eagerly participated in the discussion, sharing his thoughts on how he might have faked out Pareth more effectively or improved his control over the clay golems to make them harder to catch. Lola and Erian, the two who had failed, offered insights into the dynamics of their own magical abilities and how they think they could have done things better. Shaily, though still exhausted from her recent battle, managed to contribute her understanding of control and manipulation of mana when it came to using multiple skills at once, which everyone could have benefitted from.

As the conversation flowed, the group discussed various tactics and strategies. Sofia encouraged them to think outside the box, emphasizing that battles were not always about brute force but about clever thinking and adaptability, especially for those who had the most rigid skill sets at first glance.

Before they knew it, the two hours were up.

“Alright, tomorrow same time. We’ll go over everyone’s class skills for the first hour then you’ll have the second hour to try to make me lose some health any way you can. And show up with your mana already topped up, alright?”

“Yes, teacher,” Shaily answered, knowing that this was targeted at her.

“And that’s it, anyone want to say something before I leave? Any comments about the class?”

“It was great!” Guerand was first to answer.

“I liked it,” En agreed, her tails still swaying behind her back.

“It was fine,” Erian muttered while awkwardly looking in another direction.

Shaily and Lola both tried to speak next but their voices were drowned by the sound of an explosion. Sofia had been standing right in front of the door, and the entire wall behind her was suddenly blasted open from the outside.

Sofia dispelled the magic responsible for the attack with a thought, [Heat Death] negating it for the meager cost of sixty thousand mana while magic quickly gathered in her right hand and her scepter appeared in the other. Pareth had instantly teleported to Sofia and brandished two greatshields of light to protect the students from the rain of debris.

“Fucking hell, at least wait until I leave the classroom!” Sofia yelled before hurling a piercing bolt toward the fleeing flying attacker.