Chapter 699
Ava raises her massive hammer, and it glows with a faint white light; nowhere near as bright as it was when she was trying to kill me.
"Alright, let's spar. I'll be activating the lowest setting for my attacks; otherwise, an hour of fighting will use up more Ether than I can extract from ten stones."
She picks up the last stone from which I had absorbed the majority of its Ether, inspects it, and her expression changes to confusion while extracting the rest of it and throwing it to the floor.
I can tell she wants to ask more questions but instead grips her hammer with both hands and readies herself.
While I'd love to face her at full power, going easy at first is probably better for me too. I can't argue with her logic either; if sparring would cost more Ether than we mine, it wouldn't be worth her time.
"Sure," I reply while raising my hands to fight, taking deep breaths to summon Ether from the depths of my consciousness.
–
Over the next hour, we spar at the bottom of the abandoned mining pit.
I use the same technique to summon waves of translucent white energy over portions of my body to block Ava's incoming strikes.