Chapter 6.

Fast. That was my first impression of my opponents... They were damn quick. In my estimation, all were weaker than a serious Paul, but not by a wide margin.

I barely had any time to react before there was a man trying to cut off my head. I was able to react, barely. Dodging was difficult when the opponent was almost thrice as fast without even trying, but with the use of magic, I was able to at the very least not get immediately killed... Only I was now exposed. As the first man zipped past me, I was hit on the side by another's blade. It dug deep between my ribs and managed to crack them. I could feel fluid filling my lungs, and that burning sensation I felt was unbearable... Fuck! This is unfair! Half a dozen trained assassins against a child is overkill!

With my awareness raised to the absolute maximum, I took the time to find an opportunity to cast one of my spells, which would likely turn the tide of battle in my favor... But even still, against to many opponents, it was easy to get caught of guard.

Dodging and weaving a constant stream of attacks, the disparity between our levels of physicality was made clear as I required every bit of concentration and power in my magic to be able to just barely keep up with them all. My weaker spells did not seem to be having that much an effect on them either... I needed something stronger, but I needed time for that, an opportunity. And an opportunity came indeed.

After repelling three aggressors with a wind spell, I managed to create enough distance to concentrate.

I closed my eyes, and in a split second, before any of the cloaked figures could reach Sylphy or Eris, a massive ball of white flames appeared and was immediately compressed into the size of a marble... It was a technique I had developed not too long ago. A fusion between fire and lightning.

All I needed to do now was set my desired targets, and they would be struck down before they could even react, though the technique grew weaker with each additional target... Hopefully, half a dozen wouldn't be a number too large for the spell.

I felt another knife carve into me, this time my stomach was cut open in an attempt to stop me from casting... But it was too late.

King class magic: Blitzfeuer.

In an instant. 3 swordsmen had holes in their chests from being hit by the intense heat of my white flames, 2 others had managed to parry my attack, but not completely, resulting in the loss of a limb or two... And the remaining one was completely unphased. Fuck! That guy was bad news, and I hadn't even dealt with the ones on top of the building yet.

Sylphy fell to the ground and began crying as she saw me slaughter two men. Eris had a smile on her face, but continued shaking, unable to contribute much... Ugh, children.

I look down for a brief moment to inspect my wounds... Both were severe, and I soon felt the consequences of having let them happen as I began to cough and vomit blood uncontrollably... The pain was also severe, it was hard to concentrate at that moment, but a quick cast of healing magic quickly fixed that.

In the time I took trying to lessen my wounds however, the one cloaked figure who had been able to parry my magic and be unharmed was already onto me again, dashing towards me and aiming to split my skull in half. At the same time, I could hear and feel others jumping from above with my enhanced hearing, likely aiming for me as well... Wait no! They were going for the girls!

I can't deal with all this... You know what? Fuck it!

A smile crossed my face as I prepared yet another spell with nothing less than my maximum output.

Advanced-class magic: Frostnova

↴

Emperor-class magic: Absolute zero.

The entire street was frozen in a fraction of a second, save for Sylphy and Eris, as well as 3 remaining cloaked figures, who had some limbs frozen, even if they avoided instant death.

Damnit! Who are these guys?!

More jumped down from above, likely the last of them, and now I had 8 opponents to deal with, though 3 were severely compromised. I hate this.

I took out the dagger stuck between my ribs and began to heal myself, utilizing my full mana to make it as quick as possible... I also managed to somewhat close the woung in my stomach, but was stopped from doing so by the charging figures, again.

Bloody hell!

What followed was an intense fight for control. Their assault was relentless, likely to stop me from casting anything too strong, while I was focused on finding an opening, much to no success. My stamina was also being drained by my loss of blood, and I wouldn't be able to keep it up for long.

I was armed now though, which was a good thing. With the dagger, I was able to perform counters to their attacks, even if I could just barely keep up with them. I even managed to catch one off guard with a feint and made sure to close his jaw shut with my newfound weapon... One less to go.

2 minutes of keeping them at bay later, I realized I wasn't even the main target, it was Eris... I was tempted to just let them take her, especially as I began to feel my vision darken and my movements falter due to anemia, but it would be a nightmare to deal with the aftermath of that situation, she was my employer too after all. And so I defended the red hair valiantly until an opportunity arose for me to end the fight.

The seven fools had somehow managed to line up, and it was the perfect opportunity for me to erase them right then and there, all of them, all at once!

Saint-class magic: Flash Over

↴

King-class magic: Flash Inferno.

A sea of flames overcame the area, and all opponents were caught within... They didn't survive, not a single one.

I looked back to ensure the girl's safety, only to see their terrified faces while looking at me... Ah, well, I was covered in blood and had just now killed who knows how many men.

Breathing heavily, I approached them and knelt down to their level, healing myself as I did so.

"Sylphy, Eris... Plea-" - Before I could finish, I had collapsed. Damn anemia!

I ended up losing 2.7 liters of blood that night.

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Both Eris and Sylphy were scared. They had carried Tanya's little body in a hurry at the time, and both were incredibly scared... But even still, they couldn't waste the opportunity given to them by Tanya, and they had to repay her somehow if she even survived that is. She had yet to wake.

When they both arrived at the manor, Eris was immediately scolded for going out without permission, and without a guard too! Tanya was almost fired for letting that happen, but the red-haired girl was able to convince her parents it was all her fault, and that her teacher had no choice but to comply, and that she had saved them single-handedly from multiple attackers. No one argued any further upon Eris's insistence on the story. It was hard to blame their girl's savior after all.

Since then, a day had passed, and Tanya showed no signs of waking up any time soon... It was rather concerning. Doctors said she'd be fine though, which was a good sign.

Sylphy never wanted to see that side of her beloved master ever again, nor did she want any harm to befall Tanya... Eris on the other hand, couldn't get the images of that night out of her head. How she moved, how she managed to beat her opponents even while weak herself... It got her blood pumping!

Eris needed to get strong. Stronger so that she wouldn't be useless like last time, and stronger so that Tanya would look at her with proud eyes in the future... Yes, that'd be nice. It was a sentiment shared by Sylphy, though she was more reluctant.

4 days passed before Tanya awoke.

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The aftermath of that fight was not all bad. For one, when I woke up, I was flocked with questions by the Greyrat family asking how I managed to take down what I learned was a highly skilled mercenary unit, all advanced level combatants or higher. The constant pestering was awful, sure, but I also got an extra 10 gold pieces for my efforts, which made it hard to complain.

Even still, by the time I got to tell my employers I didn't want the stories of my fighting skills out, it was already too late. In the few days, I was down, the city had been calling me "The child in red" upon learning about my feats in combat... It wasn't ideal, but again, I got 20 gold pieces in total for the whole ordeal, and most importantly, was still alive.

Seeing as there was no point in hiding the story, I told them everything, and even advised them on how to maybe track down the one who placed the order on Eris, after all, mercenaries only moved if there was a client and money involved.

They weren't happy about the rumors either, as I couldn't be very public, but it was way past their control now, so the best course of action was to simply let it die out.

Aside from that, recovering was surprisingly easy. I was kept well fed so regaining my energy was not an issue, and with proper healers working on me day and night, there were little signs I had been stabbed at all, save for a faint but annoying feeling whenever I bent over to the right or left.

In a few weeks, I was all good to go and returned to my job, which had been gracefully tended to by Sylphy, who proved herself to be an excellent teacher in my stead.

I was also given a task by one of the servants to aid Eris with her dancing classes after a while, something I didn't look forward to doing, so I put Sylphy on the task and focused my efforts on teaching her and Ghislaine just what was asked of me.

Developing a new type of spell entirely was also on my cards. My battle aura Grew slowly, and during the fight with the mercenaries, my pseudo-form of movement enhancement didn't yield satisfactory results. Sure, I was able to keep up, but I was wasting a lot of energy while doing so, my motions were crude and imprecise at times, and most importantly, it simply wasn't enough for my liking. I wanted a type of magic that would allow me to move matter itself, not the elements around it... Axis magic, if you will. By setting an anchor point in objects, I'd be able to move them around through space freely without worrying about much else... That's the plan at least.

I wasn't quite sure how to do it just yet, but with such an extensive library containing magic books around, as well as my master Roxy to send letters to, it surely wouldn't be too hard to figure it out.

I also hurried my studies on magic circuits. In the same fight with the mercenaries, my mind almost went blank with how much mental calculations I was doing. Even if some of it was instinctual, the spell parameters were still mostly just manual, and I wanted a workaround for that.

Thankfully, several months after awakening, I was able to finally produce one set of magic circuits for the wider schematics for the computation orb. This set was able to read any inputs fed into it and convert them into simpler inputs that could be understood by the other circuit sets needed for the computation orb... It was all coming along rather nicely indeed.

Training my battle aura was also coming along rather nicely indeed. I was able to get to the level of an intermediate-level sword-god style after so long. It was far from particularly good, but with my magic, I would be able to close the gap between levels... Hopefully. My sparring matches with Eris, who was now ranked Advanced also somewhat proved my point.

Sylphy also trained, and she also progressed faster than me, much to my dismay. She also reached advanced after a while, though she was not quite on the same level as Eris.

All in all, it wasn't looking too bad for me, and it wasn't long before the red-haired girl's birthday.

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Eris's birthday went smoothly... For the most part. She tripped over herself multiple times when dancing at first, but Sylphy quickly interfered without me having to say anything and took control of the situation, consolidating herself as Eris's dancing partner, and with the half-elf to guide her, Eris didn't struggle at all for the rest of the celebration.

I myself didn't do much, though both Eris and Sylphy stuck to me the whole party for some reason, which made me unable to stuff my face with sweets... Damned pricks.

As a birthday present, I gave a wand to Eris, as Roxy had for me not so long ago. They both received the wands quite gracefully, and Eris especially was quite enthusiastic about it. In the time we spent together, she managed to reach an intermediate level in magic, while Ghislaine managed the same, but handled her mana with much more grace.

In the after-party, me, Sylphy and Eris ended up sleeping together as the half elf foolishly tried drinking wine thinking it was juice, and dragged us to her room while proclaiming her love for the both of us... Truly, what a foolish girl.

Things were not looking so bad after all, hm?