Battle Mage 1: Academy for Magical Inmates by King Dante

Author:King, Dante
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2021-10-13T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Blademaster Ziggio slowly circled us like a one-man wolfpack, sizing each of us up as he spoke.

“You are here to become battle mages, of this fact I am well aware,” he said, adopting a grave tone. “And yes, your magic will be your primary weapon—well, it will for those of you who survive to eventually become battle mages, that is. But how do you survive in the Wilderlands when you’ve used up the last of your mana, and a minotaur is charging at you, or a griffon hurtling toward you from the black skies of that cursed land?”

Faster than I’d ever seen any man move, Ziggio drew his rapier. Merely saying that he drew the weapon, though, could not do justice to the alacrity of his movement. His hand was empty one second, and then, in the blink of an eye, his fingers were curled around his rapier’s hilt.

“When mana fails and magic is gone,” Ziggio said, “there is one thing you can always rely on… cold, sharp steel. And here, in this theater of pain, you will learn to use steel to deadly effect. You are not warriors who will fight in sieges and on battlefields. You do not need to master the various arts of many weapons. Instead, each of you will specialize in one weapon—whichever weapon suits you best.”

We all looked at the weapons rack and the array of arms on it, and the same question was running through each of our minds: which weapon will I specialize in?

“Some of you may be more suited to swords,” he said. “Some to axes. Others to spears or staves. Some of you may already be proficient with many weapons,” he said, his eyes falling on Khirel,

“but weapons used to quickly and quietly dispatch lone,

unsuspecting targets in the dead of night are not the sorts of weapons that will be particularly useful in open combat against an enraged monster in the Wilderlands.”

Khirel’s expression remained as neutral and unreadable as ever, but I noticed a subtle shift in the dark elf’s stance. The blademaster had clearly picked her out as an assassin.

“You may have noticed that while there are many weapons on the rack,” Ziggio said as he continued to circle us, now with his rapier in his hand, “there is no armor, no padded gear. As battle mages, you will wear a few items of light armor, but nothing truly substantial, not like the knights and men-at-arms who slaughter each other in pitched battles.”

“As battle mages, you rarely carry shields to deflect attacks.

And you’ll rarely be attired in heavy suits of steel, like knights. If you are forced to defend yourselves with only weapons and not magic, speed will be your shield and agility will be your armor. And as a man who has devoted his life to the mastering of the art of combat in all its forms, I have learned that pain is the fastest and most effective developer of speed and agility when it comes to

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