Chapter 328. Challenge Accepted.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you? I was heading back, but I wanted to introduce myself and see if you’d be interested in a quick sparring session with our minions,” a young woman that had been training on the opposite side of the field said as she walked toward me.

  “Hi, I’m Rico, and yeah, I’m new. I’m going to be an adjunct professor here for the semester,” I said holding out my hand for her to shake. At first, I had mistaken her for a human, but now that she was close, I could see small horns curling up from her long hair, and her feet, peeking out from the bottom of the robes, weren’t feet, they were hooves.

  “I’m Briella, a third-year student of the summoning arts here at this illustrious academy,” she said with a playful smile. Long, sharp canine teeth flashed through the smile and gave Briella a formidable appearance despite her friendly demeanor.

  “Good to meet you, Briella. I just got here a few hours ago, and I’m afraid I’m not sure how the whole sparring thing works, but I’d be glad to give it a try if you can help me,” I said. In reality, I wasn’t just willing to give it a go, I was chomping at the bit to test my newly enhanced minions against a real target.

  “Woah, a new professor completely uncorrupted by the other faculty. This should be interesting. Here’s the deal. Either of us can initiate a duel challenge just by voicing your intent. Once active, the field’s system will offer us some options. For this duel, I suggest just a minion-on-minion fight unless there is a long cooldown on resummoning or some other restrictions you have with your class.

  “We can include ourselves in the duel, but it’s not quite the same, I’ve found. The system lets the minions go at it, but if we join in, there is no feeling, only the training field system determining what the outcome of our actions are. Saying you want to cast a fireball at a foe and having to actually cast the spell makes a huge difference in realism,” Briella explained.

  “If that’s the case, I agree with just using our minions. I’d rather give them a chance to shine without them relying on my support spells,” I said. It sounded like personal duels were rather boring as the training field did all it could to ensure there was no real threat to the participants. Summoned creatures were a whole different story, so it seemed.

  “Great, we’ll do a standard one-minute starting timer so we can summon all our minions. There will be no buffs from us, though minions can interact with each other and use abilities and spells as they normally would in a fight. Is placing no limit on numbers or tier and rank okay with you? If you want, we can do a series of one-on-one duels with our minions, but that’s not as exciting,” Briella offered.

  “I’m fine with the no limit deal, and a big fight sounds like it would be more fun. How do we get started?” I asked. My minions were all out on the field, though none of Briella’s team were present. I hadn’t done much with my minions, just tested a few abilities and wasn’t sure if Briella had even seen that much of them in action before she had walked over.

  “Here we go, I’ll send over the duel request,” Briella said.

  A duel challenge request from the being known as Briella, a Tier 2, Rank 7 Shield of the Forest summoner, has been offered to the being known as Rico Kline, a Tier 3, Rank 0 Contracted Summoner.

  This duel is to be a minion-only challenge, with realistic combat conditions. A 1-minute summoning and preparation timer before the hostilities commence will be enacted. Neither summoner may directly interfere with the conflict, and all spells, abilities, and consumables that may affect the outcome of the duel are to be restricted.

  Do you accept these terms? Y/N.

  I hit accept and another notification appeared.

  Please note the highlighted area of the field, and the specific locations for each summoner. Your minions must remain inside the highlighted area for the duration of the duel.

  A large, rectangular part of the field was lit up for us. A green square, just big enough for me to stand on flashed at one end, and at the other end was where Briella would stand. Once in my designated spot, a narrow strip of the field, closest to my spot, was highlighted for me to summon my minions onto.

  I already had the drone and Elida out and about, so I ordered them to stand in the highlighted area and wait for the duel to commence. Normally, I’d be giving them some overall game plan to follow, but I wanted to see how the newly enhanced minions did on their own without any pre-planning from me.

  The duel has begun, your minions may attack in 60 seconds...59…58…

  As soon as the countdown timer started, Briella began to summon her team. First out were a dozen small humanoid creatures that had bodies that looked like they were covered in small twigs and sticks. I’d seen something similar before in the maze summoning contest I had been called to. They were called vegepygmys and I hadn’t been all that impressed with them.

  Briella seemed to be casting a summoning spell every ten seconds or so, and the second spell created another dozen vegepygmys. Her third cast was something different, it was a group of four huge wolves, with bright green fur and oversized teeth. She had time to cast three more summoning spells, and I waited to see what was next.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  A second quartet of wolves appeared, and then eight elves who quickly mounted the oversized wolves. The elves were equipped with bows and short spears. Each wore leather armor, and I got the impression that they were much lower tier and rank than my minions. Brielle’s class seemed to have a quantity over quality approach to summoning minions.

  Her final summoning was a larger version of the vegepygmy, one that held a long branch shaped staff and that had small green motes of magical energy sparkling around it. The last few seconds ticked down and I could see Brielle sweating and panting like the rapid-fire summoning of six groups of minions had really taxed her.

  Despite her exhaustion, Brielle had a rather confident grin plastered on her face, like she was sure of victory. The large vegepygmy, a mage of some type, raised its staff and cast some kind of buff spell over its comrades. They glowed green as a mana barrier of some type snapped into place over them.

  My minions hadn’t been idle either, and Elida had cast her Personal Shield spell, causing a second shield, identical to the one she already wielded, to appear and hover between her and the enemy. The countdown reached zero and the drone began to stride forward at a brisk pace, with Elida moving behind it, using the drone as cover. A bright beam of energy fired from the drone’s shoulder-mounted Plasma Beam Generator.

  The drone targeted one of the swarming vegepygmys as they charged in front of the wolves and the mage. The bark-like skin of the small creature proved little protection as the beam sliced through it, leaving behind two smoldering halves of the creature on the ground. With remaining seconds of power it had for the weapon, the drone walked the beam down the row of small attackers, cutting through their numbers even as the drone’s grenade launcher swiveled toward the foes.

  Elida added her attack to the mix, casting Deadly Beam at the enemy mage. A golden bolt of light slammed into the vegepygmy mage, burning deep into its chest, but not killing it outright. Ongoing damage would continue for another ten seconds, but the final summoning that Brielle had brought onto the field seemed to be the most durable of the bunch.

  In response, the enemy mage cast a green blob of sap at Elida as arrows from the wolf-mounted elves began to strike home as well. The drone stepped in front of the spell and an electronic hum sounded out as the drone’s Spell Reflect ability kicked in. The blob of sap flew back at the enemy mage, but it seemed immune to whatever the spell was supposed to do.

  Arrows pinged off the drone’s armor, and Elida’s shields, none finding a gap in their defenses yet. Seeing their fire was ineffective, the elves spurred their wolves on, charging with their spears ready to strike. A series of six explosions detonated among the charging elves. The drone had chosen incendiary ammunition for its launcher and in addition to blast damage and shrapnel inflicted on the targets, they were all covered in sticky, flaming napalm.

  Only two of the wolf-riding elves made it through the barrage, and as they reached my minions, the enemy mage cast another spell, covering the ground under my minions in grasping, thorn-covered vines. The vines grabbed onto both minions, but the drone just slashed down with its oversized arms, cutting through and pushing past the mess with its enhanced strength.

  Elida was in a bit more trouble, unable to walk, and the long thorns wrapped tightly around her legs were able to find any gap in her armor, digging deep into her flesh. The halfling Battle Mender started to glow as she activated both Gleaming Aura and her Battle Mend abilities. Wounds healed and the vines began to shrivel as the aura took effect.

  The drone bulled its way through the small field of vines just as the elves arrived. One elf and its mount were impaled on a pair of short spears that the drone held in its smaller set of arms. The other elf managed to land its blow, and the metal-tipped spear punched through the armor of the drone’s chest, doing damage, but nothing catastrophic.

  A swipe of the drone’s bladed hands ended the elf, but the powerful wolf managed to pry off an armored plate on the drone’s leg before it was also put down. All that was left of the horde of attackers were a few vegepygmys that tried to swarm Elida, and the enemy mage that the drone was now charging toward.

  The vegepygmys began to claw with their sharp stick-like hands, but a few blows of Elida’s mace, and her still active aura did them in quickly. My drone was closing the gap with the mage but was also being hit with a barrage of spells. The Spell Reflect ability was still on cooldown, and even with its innate magic resistance, the damage to the drone was mounting as balls of acidic sap, and a hail of thorns peppered my minion.

  Elida responded quickly, also moving to join the attack while casting Healing Beam on the drone. Only the acid sap spells seemed to do any real damage, and the thorns were mostly ignored by the drone. With Elida’s healing bolstering its health, the drone made it to the enemy mage and ended it with a couple slashes of its clawed hands.

  The being known as Rico Kline has emerged victorious in the duel.

  “I didn’t expect you to deal with my minions so easily, Rico, despite you being a few ranks higher than me,” Briella said, taking the loss in good stride.

  “My two minions are rather strong, and they both had abilities that were hard counters to your forces. Despite that, I bet you’ll give me a run for my money whenever you hit tier three and get more abilities,” I said.

  “It’s my fault, I should have gone with a different mix of forces. I saw your nice armor and weapons, and I figured a lot of the power of your class was in your personal combat skills. If that had been the case, your minions would have been a lot weaker than they turned out to be,” Brielle said.

  “I’m grateful to you for showing me how the duel system works. If you ever want another go at it, just let me know,” I said.

  “Thanks, Rico, I’ll take you up on that offer, and I think things will turn out differently next time,” Brielle said. She was a good sport and helpful. I hoped that my informality with her still being a student wasn’t going to be a problem, but I’d just realized how casual we had been only now that she was leaving.

  “Well, gang, I think it’s time we call it a night,” I said, unsummoning the drone and Elida.

  The school was a safe enough place, and I had a few figurines on me if things got out of hand. The resummoning timer began to tick down. Since they weren’t destroyed, it seemed I could bring my minions back after a minute had passed.

  I then received a system notice warning me that unsummoning and resummoning took longer in combat situations. It also warned that any damage the minions had taken would remain if they were immediately resummoned, though they would slowly heal over time as they waited for me to call them back.

  It had been an interesting day, and I was looking forward now to my comfortable-looking bed and whatever tomorrow held in store for me.