Chapter 171 Pride

After a few days of watching the endless sea while training, Aion realized that only the two siblings were talking with him. The others on the ship didn't seem particularly annoyed by his presence, and it didn't look like they found Aion hard to approach, but they still left him alone. Thanks to that, Aion had a lot of time to train, and it had been a while since he did that without interruption. That wasn't half bad, but he thought that something was going on behind the curtains.

"Do you want to spar?" Seris asked. "After watching you for a few days, I can tell that you don't have much experience fighting with people that are able to repel your attacks without a shield. They have speed and power but not enough piercing power."

"I don't have a training spear with me, and I don't think that it will be a good idea to hurt you, even if by accident."

"Don't worry, you won't," Seris said. "Unless you use your full power. With the current level that you are showing now, it will be fine.".

True, Aion wasn't going all out since he wanted to focus on increasing his speed and accuracy. He also realized that she had a point… Aion's stabs didn't have much power because he didn't rotate the spear before landing the hit. He could push the enemies backward, but when they were using shields, he didn't recall breaking them.

If Seris were that confident, then that would be worth the hassle. He readied himself and then waited for her… much to his surprise, she created a rapier with her magic alone… it wasn't like a proper forged weapon, it was more like a rough sword made of iron… she didn't use elemental magic, so Aion assumed that was her power…

In any case, she dashed forward to put Aion inside her attack range, but he stopped her advance by using numerous stabs. He only aimed at her shoulders and on the sides of her body to avoid wounds, but she also used the tip of her weapon to block all of the stabs with pinpoint precision.

Sparks began to fly around whenever the weapons collided, and Aion noticed that Seris was hitting the spear on the same spot, and she never let it get closer than one meter. She was really talented and also had lightning reflexes and enough power to stop Aion's two-handed stabs.

In the end, Aion used Quick Spear and gradually increased his speed. The sparks began to fall even faster, and more spread across the ship. When he got two times faster, Seris still was able to keep up, but when the skill reached its current max potential, and he got three times faster, she began to be pushed backward, and eventually, her weapon cracked. Making a weird burning sound, and then a blast of wind spread across the ship as well.

"That was one weird weapon," Aion said while massaging his wrists since attacking so often and nonstop was quite demanding for his articulations.

"Let's do it again. This time, I will be serious," Seris said.

"No, no… no fighting seriously in a ship," Sauros suddenly approached and declared. "The sparks will burn everything at this rate… even with the materials we used to prevent that."

"Well, I guess we got too much into this," Aion said. "Let's calm down a little and do it again."

"It will be boring unless we try it for real," Seris said. "Can't you create an earth platform and attach it to the back of the ship so that we can fight there?"

Aion could, but fighting wasn't his goal, was to improve and learn something new. He could only do that without risking someone else's life if he didn't fight for real. In the end, Seris left since she was too competitive to do some sandbagging.

"Don't mind her. She is too competitive for her own good," Sauros said. "Since she is talented, she doesn't like to lose in any aspect or even during training."

"What about you? Are you game?" Aion asked. "I am bored here, my bad for saying that."

"I am not much of a fighter, If I were, I wouldn't have been captured back then," Sauros said. "Laying traps and making the enemies fall for them is more my style."

"I see…" Aion said and then resumed his training

"She will challenge you again now that you showed a bit of your power… Just when we don't have time to waste," Sauros said and then sighed. "Anyway, we will stop in four days near a port, so pace yourself properly "

Sauros left without saying if he had to pace himself to the duel or to avoid unpleasant surprises in the port. While he didn't have to, he decided to use that chance to check the places that he had never been to before, even if it would give Seris a chance to challenge him.

"Four days, huh…" Aion rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It will be a good opportunity to check the goods of other countries. Still, while this ship is fast, I don't think it could cross the entire territory of the bandits' country. My sense of direction is all messed up, so I don't know if we headed east or north most of the time."

Also, another thing, Aion wondered how those guys buy things. Silver hair was something that only belonged to them, after all. Even after many years of their disappearance, people like the king and Artemisia knew who they were…

Aion's first guess was that they had some magic items to help them with that. His eyes were blue, but his hair was black… He wondered if that combination was rare in the world…

"Well, I can use the headband trick again," Aion just thought and then shrugged.

The surprise had been spoiled, but Aion finally had something to look forward to in the next few days…