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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 134
🕑 Added 2024-08-24 16:20:46 +0000 UTC“Danm, these are good, they are also generous with the filling” I commented after swallowing a mouth full of a meat-filled bun.
When no reply came, I looked up to see Dave and Sam too busy stuffing their face holes to dignify my comment with a reply.
When they were done stuffing their faces, they did not even have the decency to look embarrassed at the ferocity they displayed as they demolished the meat buns. “You said something Luke?” Sam asked as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Not only did they not pay attention while eating, they did not even register my words, and I am pretty sure they were taught basic etiquette in lower education and know enough to not use their sleeves as a handkerchief, but then again, we are all in civilian clothes, so we do not need to worry about bringing disgrace to the Royal Academy with their actions.
The three of us were currently leaning on a wall just outside of the new bakery we bought our meat buns from, when I asked, “The both of you taking part in the tournament?”
“Yeah, we will be competing in Archery, and teaming up in the Melee Battle and Monster Hunt” Dave answered.
“That's all? Not the Swordsmanship Duels? You do know that aura is banned from that competition so only pure swordsmanship would be on display, right?” I asked.
“We know… but we also know that we are not skilled enough to make it into the top sixteen, much less top eight, especially because we know for a fact that you will be participating. So, besides Archery, we decided to go for events we can team up in.” Dave said.
I was a bit disappointed that they did not want to at least take a crack at the Swordsmanship Duels, but I was not going to force them, it was all good as long as they had fun, as kids should. We spent the rest of the day goofing off before we had to return before the Academy's curfew.
***
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, I used my free time to practice my other armed and unarmed martial arts that I feel that I have been neglecting while I was concentrating on my studies and conditioning my mana pathways.
In the few months I have been at the academy, the only weapon I had any real practice with was the sword, and I felt I needed to shake off the rust, but that was not the main reason. The main reason was that despite the Swordsmanship Duels having been named as such, a few decades ago the previous king thought having only swords in a dual was a stupid tradition that had carried on for too long and decided to change the rules.
As for why the name of the event did not change along with the rules? As far as I could tell without going to the library to check, it was mainly down to brand recognition with the wider public for all the years the tournament had been around before the rule change.
All of that brings me to where I am now, in a wooded area attached to the campus grounds, away from prying eyes with my new custom spear in my hands.
As for why I had to customize my spear? That was because I heard that quite a few people were going to be using other weapons besides swords I wanted to see how the spear techniques of my wushu lessons from my previous life would stack up against the spear and polearm techniques of this world, and no rule said I was only allowed one weapon, so I could also bring in my sword as backup.
So when I went shopping for a spear that felt like a Chinese Wushu spear called a Qiang, I was disappointed to find that there were none, and when I asked the weapons shops where I could find something like it, they just looked at me funny and asked some version of ‘Why would you want something that would break so easily?’
Now, I can readily admit that the Qiang I used in my previous life was mainly for performative purposes and would have a high chance of being snapped like a twig if it went up against a real weapon, but where material science lags behind, magic fills in the gap, and if this world did not have a Qiang, I would just have to make one.
So in my quest to create my custom spear, my sourcing for the spear shaft led me to a bowyer because I found that the flexible wood used to make bows was the closest analog to the ones I used in my previous life.
When I asked the bowyer for a custom job of a spear shaft, at first he was intrigued and amused at what he thought was going to be a bow that was taller than the average man, but the moment he caught on to the fact he was crafting a spear shaft, the now grumpy man cussed me out for wasting his time and insulting his profession. That was until I showed him money did he calmed down and begrudgingly accepted the job.
As for the rest of the spear, I decided to put my blacksmithing and enchanting lessons to use, and it also helped that the crafting facility was free of charge for students to use as long as we made a booking.
Besides the wood for the shaft, I decided to buy ingots of Mana Steel for my spearhead, pommel, and some wire to go along the wooden shaft which was not mana conductive. The only problem was that I did not know how to forge with Mana Steel and may end up ruining the end product, the know-how of it was a year 2 blacksmithing course.
So my only option was to ask my dwarf of a blacksmithing instructor, Professor Haldor Steelbeard. It took a while to convince him to help out and he only agreed because I was binging my own Mana Steel.
After all the parts of the spear were made and put together, the end product was a spear with the blade of a 35cm shortsword at the spearhead, with a red tassel tied to where the metal meets the wood, from the same place where the tassel starts are four Mana Steel wires that spiral down carved out grooves of the wood shaft, all the way down to the pommel. It may have been a lot heavier than the Qiang from my previous world, but then again, I am much stronger than the young me in my previous life, so it kind of balanced each other out.
To others, it may look like a bastardized version of a fantasy spear with eastern and western design influence, but to me, it was a thing of beauty and performance.
And speaking of performance, now that I had no time constraints compared to my exam, I could take my time enchanting my spear, and after many drafts were drawn up and scrapped, I managed to draw up a blueprint for the enchantment and managed to fit in three enchantments.
The first of the enchantments was a simple sharpness enchantment that I inlaid with Mana Copper wire along the flat of the blade, I could have gone with a more specialized piercing enchantment, but seeing that my spearhead had quite a lot of blade along its length, I decided to use an enchantment that both the tip and blade would benefit from.
The second enchantment was a reinforcement enchantment inlaid in the same Mana Copper wire on the top part of the spearhead’s socket, which would make the mana steel portions of my spear harder to damage in general. That included the Mana Steel wires.
The last enchantment was an impact absorption enchantment to slow any impact that strikes the wooden shaft, but since the reinforcement enchantment took up the majority of the space on the top part of the spearhead’s socket, I had to split up the enchantment into two parts, that's where the Mana Steel wires that spiral down the shaft comes in, like wires that connect two circuit boards, they are connected to the first part of the impact absorption enchantment at the spearhead’s socket and run all the way down to the second part of the enchantment on the pommel.
This way, the Mana Steel wires are bendable enough to flex along with the flexible wooden shaft while also providing the benefits of the enchantment along the non-mana conductive wooden shaft.
I took my stance, took in a deep breath, and when I felt myself calm, I started going through the spear forms. Rapid stabs flew out into the empty air, along with swipes, spins, twirls, and kicks, as I got faster and my strikes got sharper, I enjoyed the feeling of my spear flexing and whipping around.
After I got comfortable with the spear, I decided to kick it up a notch by adding aura to the mix. With every stab and swing, I was kicking up the wind and dry leaves as I got caught up in the moment and only snapped out of it when I felt my spear hit something hard.
When I focused on what I just hit, I saw my spear had impaled a tree, which was not good, not good at all. The trees here were academy property, and I just put a hole in the trunk of one.
I swiftly yanked out my spear while looking around for any witnesses, and when I saw no one, I bolted for my dorm.
***
Just a few trees away from the tree that just got stabbed, a man in a janitor's uniform stepped out from behind a tree and walked up to the stabbed tree. After looking at the damage, putting his finger inside the newly made hole and feeling the smoothness of it.
He rubbed the fine sawdust that was inside the hole between his fingers, “Excellent if unknown spear technique, what else are you going to show me during this tournament, Luke Ironcrest?”
