Chapter 164 - Charming reveals
The sweltering evening sun bore down on Scarlett as she sat in the village square of Freymeadow, her focus fixed on the intricate workings of magic before her. A multitude of hazy, half-formed fire arrows hovered in the air, recently conjured and taking aim at a plump mass of vaguely human-shaped water nearby. She strained herself to maintain the dense liquid while simultaneously controlling the fire.
After another moment, the arrows fully materialized, resembling those Arlene had used during their earlier spars.
Mentally commanding them, Scarlett launched each arrow. There was some variation in speed, but they all struck the mass of water with resounding plops and splashes that echoed across the square. Steam rose from their entry points, and while most of the arrows dissipated upon impact, three managed to pierce the ‘target’ and tear through it.
It was an exercise in frustration for Scarlett to juggle this many fire arrows—a skill she had learned just earlier that day—at the same time, while also sustaining a reasonably dense water target. This was far from her first attempt as well. It would have been easier if she had used the [Tiara of Lost Benediction] or had Rosa’s buffs to help her, but there wasn’t much point in practicing if she constantly relied on training wheels.
That said, she wasn’t a fan of making things needlessly difficult either.
Arlene had advised her to challenge herself during the learning process, which was reasonable enough. But the woman seemed to have an odd definition of what ‘challenging’ meant in the context of practice. What Scarlett was currently doing was challenging—she was basically training in two things she was inexperienced with at the same time—but if Arlene had her way, Scarlett would be doing this twice over.
Or at least it felt that way after the woman had been instructing her throughout the day and into the evening. In truth, Scarlett suspected that Arlene already had a pretty decent idea of her limits, and it wasn’t as if the older woman was constantly hovering over her shoulder, shouting at her every time she made a mistake.
Still, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that Arlene was expecting more.
Now that Scarlett had finally been accepted as a disciple, the woman really wasn’t holding anything back.
It made her almost grateful for the fact that it had taken this long to get accepted. Because of that, she’d already had several weeks of time to gradually acclimate herself to keeping up with a demanding training regimen here in Freymeadow. Without that, she wasn’t sure she would have been prepared for the pace set by Arlene.
It was entirely possible that, if Scarlett had been subjected to this intensity of training upon her first arrival here, she might have snapped at the woman or said something unwise out of pure frustration.
What was probably the most annoying part of today’s practice was that, even after having been at it for over half a day now, she had yet to reach the point of mana exhaustion. She was near it—she had been for several hours—but never crossed that threshold because Arlene always told her to stop in time.