“Understood, Marshal Yulia,” Tilo said, rising from her seat in the admissions tent. “We’ll make sure this freshman is put to the test.” She emphasized the word 'freshman,' showing her lack of faith in Evren’s claim to being a junior caster.
Gods, what if he didn’t do well in this duel? Would he be thrown in jail or expelled for lying?
There weren’t any other students here, and still no sign of the tour group from earlier, so the three Caster Brigade officers agreed to leave admissions unmanned. The Crystal Field was no place to duel.
Behind the admissions tent was a hidden opening in the wall of Level J, and as Warden Hugo held the white cloth aside, Marshal Yulia took Evren’s hand and led him down the dark tunnel.
“This leads to the Stratega’s private chambers,” she explained, her hand holding his wrist in her firm grip as she pulled him along. “There is also a gathering hall here that doubles as a first-rate dueling center. She won’t mind if we use it.”
“Wait… the Stratega is a woman?” Evren asked.
“Of course. What, did you expect... a male Stratega?” Yulia scoffed.
He shouldn’t be surprised, as it seemed all the other members of the admissions team were women now. In fact, Warden Hugo was the only other male he’d seen all morning. This really was a different Nexus than the one he had come from.
He tried to argue his way out of the duel, he really did. But he was vastly outranked and overpowered. Marshal Yulia wouldn’t accept no for an answer.
“I’ve never fought against casters from the Brigade before.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” she shot back.
“I’m still only a junior caster.”
“I can duel both of them alone, and I have. I’m not depending on your spells, I’m just testing to see what you know,” she asserted.
“I’m so tired after taking all those stairs.”
“You can rest after the duel is over,” she concluded, burying his final argument.
The gathering hall was a huge room at the end of the stony hallway. It was well-lit and the air was uncomfortably warm, thanks to a huge fire contained in an enormous hearth. It was so hot, in fact, that Evren broke into a sweat. Or was that because he was so nervous?
“You two head to that end of the hall,” Yulia said, gesturing to Tilo and Hugo.
The sound of their military boots ringing on the stone floor echoed through the open space. Yulia turned back to Evren with a smile on her face and without breaking eye contact, she started to remove her robe.
Her sash with the Chrysanthemum pin fell to the floor.
The cord around her waist began to unwind.
Her robes fell open, revealing a thin stretch of naked flesh from the cleavage of her sun-kissed breasts downward. Sweat ran down her body, across her tanned belly into her deep navel, Evren's eyes registered her voluptuous curves.
“What -what are you doing?” Evren asked, looking away. The shock of the moment sent a rush of blood flowing to his face.
“Several of my spells require skin-to-skin contact. The cloth is just going to get in the way,” she replied dismissively, then looked over and saw him hiding his face. She added with a dangerous edge, “Is this a problem?”
“N-n-no,” Evren replied, studying the stonework around the hearth.
“Good, because you’re going to have to look at me if you’re going to support me,” she said, stepping closer. He could feel the heat of her body and hear the rhythm of her heart and lungs. She was so close.
Then she said in a low voice, “Look at me.”
He turned his head towards her, and just as he’d suspected, the Marshal’s robe was discarded in a pile on the floor. His eyes traveled up her body, and he noted the simple dark pair of underwear, which stretched tightly over her wide hips and left a good deal of her private area exposed.
Her big breasts stood firm like soldiers at attention. Her nipples pointed straight at him. He didn’t know that nipples could develop so big.
She was a masterpiece of mature beauty. Like the Oath Mother herself had come to life.
He must’ve had a strange look on his face, because she put her hand on his shoulder in a comforting motion, saying, “Listen, in the Brigade you’re going to deal with a lot of women and their bodies. You don’t have to like them, but you will have to cast spells skin-to-skin."
She held onto his shoulders tightly, while he squirmed awkwardly in her grasp, saying, “And before you panic, I’ll tell you that you will never have to show your body in the brigade. You just need to bare your hands, arms, and that cute little face of yours.”
She was trying to reassure him, but as she spoke her breasts were jiggling in front of him, and her words were like oil poured over the lustful fire which was burning in his chest. He couldn’t trust himself to respond without drooling on her, so he didn’t.
Sniff sniff.
“What’s that smell?” she asked, leaning in to sniff the air between them.
“Nothing,” he replied quickly. Then he stepped backwards, out of her grasp and added, “What role should I play in this duel? Should I be the Binder or the Warder?”
“Hah!”
She laughed out loud, causing her chest to ripple and shake, confusing Evren even further.
“Boys always Ward and girls always Bind,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Didn’t they teach you that in your freshman year?”
“O-o-oh yeah… I was just checking.”
“What Wards do you know, Evren,” she asked, watching him closely. Her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth, like a predator closing in on its prey.
“I use Mana Conduit to boost my partner’s flow, and Resonance Link to improve shared abilities.”
“All right, those are both proximity spells. Give me a non-stop Mana Conduit and stay close,” Yulia advised. “I use a Halo Shield, so I can protect us both, but if I know Tilo, she’s going to try to eliminate you right away, striking fast and hard… She likes taking out the boys first.”
She didn’t wait for him to reply or ask questions, she just took his hand in hers. Evren recalled that this fight was his chance to prove that he wasn’t a fraud or a crazy person. That he was a trained caster. But he was also worried about this woman and whether he could keep up with her.
Her idea of magic duels was very different from the way he’d been trained. Proximity casting was a familiar concept, but he'd never heard of skin-to-skin spells before. Wasn't physical contact between partners discouraged?
Also, during his freshman year, he’d spent equal time debuffing the enemy with Bind spells, as he did buffing his ally with Ward spells. Do boys not use Binds anymore?
“All right you two shrews,” Yulia was calling across the hall. She still held his hand in hers, and was dragging him closer to the center where the duel would take place. Her toned legs and glut muscles swung and flexed in a delightful way with her long strides, making it look like her butt was chewing gum. Evren could not look away.
“Time to earn your rank, Wardens. En garde!”
* * * * * * * * *
The Marshal was a daring and powerful caster, leading with an all-out offensive, even before raising her Halo Shield. Her mana was fast and forceful, flowing from her arm in the form of an undulating length of orange energy. The whip-like form reached 25 feet across the field, connecting with the chest of Warden Hugo.
Disruption Whip.
Hugo had been on the move, sprinting to the side, trying to add distance between himself and the enemy, but the whip was long and its ‘crack’ echoed across the hall.
“He's disrupted! Both his movement and his Ward!” Yulia shouted, then urgently added, “Where’s that Mana Conduit?”
Evren reached down into his mana pool and tugged a narrow flow of mana up out of himself. It felt like drinking a milkshake through a straw. It was slow and hard to extract, but the longer he maintained it, the faster he could suck the mana up.
He’d just established the mana connection, feeding his energy to Yulia, when the room went dark around him.
Everything was dark and silent.
Evren felt a moment of panic. All the sights and sounds around him had suddenly stopped, and he was floating in a world of his own. Even the sensation of the air around him was gone, and Evren was in a vacuum.
It was very disconcerting.
Somehow, he managed to maintain his Mana Conduit, though he no longer knew where Yulia was in relation to him.
“... , … …?” he called out, asking where she was, but no sound came out. His voice was gone.
He stumbled forward, in the direction that his ward was flowing and fell to his knees. He was senseless, but it seemed to only be affecting his head.
He could still feel the cold stone beneath his feet and knees. Lunging forward, his hands came in contact with a surface that was soft and hot. It felt… fleshy.
Was this… Yulia?
His head spun as he tried to pull himself to his feet, and instead he ended up pulling the hot flesh towards him. His fingers closed on a piece of what felt like cloth that he could grip and hold onto as the world spun around him in a darkness with no sounds.
He wrapped his arms around what felt like the trunk of her body, like a sailor holding a mast in a storm. His cheek pushed up against it too, but his face felt nothing at all. The only thing he could do was hold on tight and increase the flow of mana he was feeding to his partner, which he did with all his heart.
He stayed like that, lost but determined, for a full minute before all his senses came rushing back to him. The roar of the fire was a background noise, and the crack of another Disruption Whip sounded in the air. The sudden sensation of hot flesh pressed to his face, and a rich feminine scent filled his lungs.
“Hhhuunghn!...”
The erotic moan of Marshal Yulia felt rich in his ears. He opened his eyes to find he was skin-to-skin, his face pressed to her soft round buttocks, his hands were tangled in her underwear.
“Oh Gods, what have I done?” he cursed, pulling away from her awesome curves. He was still kneeling next to her feminine form.
“Ungh… You've won is what you’ve done,” the Marshal turned to him, placing her hands on his head in a possessive gesture. “You can stop feeding me mana now.”
“Oh, sorry,” Evren said, canceling the spell. He felt a disconnection as he was no longer sharing his mana with Marshal Yulia.
Across the hall, Evren saw that both Warden Tilo and Warden Hugo were getting to their feet. They both looked a little beaten up, and a bit worse than they had before, having endured whatever Binding attacks Marshal Yulia had sent their way.
“Did we win?” he asked innocently.
Marshal Yulia didn’t answer. Instead, she strutted across the battlefield to pick up her discarded robes, showing off her round hips and a peek at her private place, which was on display thanks to her underwear being twisted and stretched. She glanced back at Evren with an expressionless look, though her cheeks were colored red with the effort of the battle.
“You did,” Tilo answered, approaching Evren with what felt like a new-found respect. “I had assumed that you’d fall apart as soon as I hit you with my Null Orb, but you stuck in there until the end.”
“Yes, you are quite an impressive caster for your skill level,” Marshal Yulia commented, joining them once again, though she was now covering her body with her caster robes in a self-conscious way.
He couldn't help but visualize her naked once again, as she wrapped the cloth around her generous hips and breasts.
“You wouldn't rank amongst the Top Junior Casters, but you far exceed the level of a freshman,” she said, patting him on the head.
Evren felt his heart swell. He looked at Marshal Yulia, a woman whom he had been VERY intimate with up to just a few moments ago. She was standing straight and holding her robes tightly around her voluptuous body, but she seemed either exhausted from the duel or perturbed about something. She nodded to herself and then spoke.
“I believe you, Evren.”
Her sharp eyes finally met his and she explained that she would pass on a report of his peculiar circumstances to the Stratega, but unfortunately, she could not add him to the junior caster roster.
“You're going to have to attend introductory courses with the first-year students. The fact that you were attacked by a woman much more skilled than yourself, and still somehow maintained your Ward shows you'll out-perform most or all of the first-year students,” she confided, looking him up and down as if she were committing him to memory.
“Find yourself a good partner to support. Any Binder would be lucky to have a boy like you, following her into battle. You don’t hold back when it comes to skin contact, and that’s important. When you do someday join the RECB, seek me out. I will see that you reach the rank you deserve.”
Evren looked back at the Marshal. She clutched the robes tightly around her curvaceous body, though he couldn’t forget the sensation of his cheek pressed against her amazing butt. He nodded in gratitude for what she’d given him.
“Thank you, Marshal Yulia,” he declared, “I will never forget the lesson you’ve taught me this day.”
She smiled a secretive smile. Her almond-shaped eyes locked onto him, and then she was walking away, shouting out orders.
“Warden Hugo, escort Evren to his new home. Prepare him for the coming weeks. Y'know... the boy things! Warden Tilo, return to the admissions desk and process any freshmen that arrive. I have matters to attend to and will be otherwise occupied for the next hour.”
“Yes, Marshal!” they both replied.
Then Hugo drifted over to Evren and said, “You did well for your first duel, but you really risked yourself out there. Come with me. I’ll guide you to your new room and give you some boy-to-boy advice, while we’re at it.”
“Boy-to-boy?” Evren asked, confused what the Warden meant.
“Yes, boy-to-boy.”