Close Combat Mage

Chapter 124 – Fighting With One’s Entire Body Pt. 2

In the following month, Master Han Sa did not actually begin forging, but rather stayed with Suo Jia and gathered all the materials needed for the fire wind warriors and even personally saw a few of the fire wind warriors display their fighting styles and skills. After determining their characteristics, he had an even harder time with just the history of the materials. For the sake of creating this set of armor, the old Master Han Sa decided to create it at all costs.

According to Master Han Sa, either he wasn’t going to do it, or he was going to do his best. Otherwise, these valuable materials would be wasted and he would be punished by the dwarf god. For a dwarf, the value of these materials was something completely different. It was enough to make his name known for all eternity!

After an entire month, the process was still not finished. Even when the girls all came out of their closed door training, Master Han Sa still had not finished making a draft, finally… Master Han Sa shouted in a blunt manner for the fire wind warriors to use their entire bodies to fight. Master Han Sa sat down on the side and observed while recording with a pen and a piece of paper.

Originally, the purpose of this was simply to allow him to observe the specialties and strategies in combat. However, he did not expect that once the fights broke out, none of them were able to hold back to the point where it looked like magical beasts were fighting!

It’s important to understand that all of the girls were fire wind warriors, and all of their specialties were the same. However, they were not exactly the same, and all of them had their unique skills. Within their fights, everyone learned that although they had the same types of bodies, they all began to gain understanding of new skills and enlightenment. Almost every day, they were all gaining new insights!

It was not just limited to this, and as the fights between them were carried out, everyone continued to mutually understand and deepen day after day. This was greatly beneficial to them in terms of understanding and nurturing. It had an insurmountable benefit to their teamwork, and at the same time increased their individual strengths as well. The strength of the entire team increased overall!

Finally, as well as being the most important, through the battles, everyone gained real combat experience. It could even be said that they gained crazy upgrades, after all… fighting with magical beasts and fighting with a real person was two different things. Human’s greatest enemy will forever be humanity itself; it was not the magical beasts, but rather, the more formidable enemy could only be humanity, and could not be the magical beasts!

Within the battles, they had to face attacks from every direction, and had to resist enemy attacks coming from all directions. They had to deal with all types of methods and difficult challenges. Towards one’s maturity, there were not enough words to describe the benefits.

When it first started, Suo Jia was only standing on the side with a smile on his face as he watched. However in the end, Suo Jia was unable to resist; after watching everyone fight so excitedly in full swing, Suo Jia finally charged in as well. He summoned his water stream and began to attack all the girls indiscriminately.

At first, none of the girls dared to heavily attack Suo Jia. After all…he was only a 9 and a half year old child. If an accident occurred, what would they do then?

Although Suo Jia was only 9 years old, he was already seen as a father to the girls. Even though he wasn’t a father in a real sense, the words that Suo Jia spoke and the words a father spoke weren’t very different from each other.

When they were young, they had to listen to their father’s words. Whatever their father told them to do, they had to do it. Just as they had grown older and become more independent, Suo Jia had taken the father position, and given them new lives, as well as genuine freedom. Therefore, Suo Jia was the main pillar for these girls. His arrangements were the criteria for their actions!

If, for example, Suo Jia suddenly died, then the girls wouldn’t know how they could possibly live the rest of their lives. Although physically, they were already mature women, they were mentally still children that had to listen to their father. In reality, no matter how old a girl was, who wouldn’t listen to their father’s words? Even if one lived for a hundred years, as long as one’s father was still living, one would still be obedient to him!

“Father, leader, master, boss, friend, brother, benefactor, protector of freedom, preserver of life….” All of these titles combined described the figure and position that Suo Jia was in the girls’ hearts. It was an extremely complicated feeling that one couldn’t clearly describe in words. It could also be said that the girls would willingly sacrifice themselves to protect Suo Jia.

As a result of these complicated emotions, none of the girls dared to seriously attack Suo Jia. If they could block, they’d block; if they could dodge, they’d dodge. They completely acted as if Suo Jia was just a younger brother playing around. In their opinions, how could the 9 year old Suo Jia possibly be their opponent? If they exerted even the slightest amount of strength, they’d injure him!

However soon afterwards, the girls became more alert. It wasn’t their acute senses that had alerted them, but the teachings that had been engraved into them, which was much more useful than teaching by words. When the girls began to sustain nearly fatal attacks one after another from Suo Jia, how could they possibly dare to not be alert?

In the enormous underwater training area, the ice stream snaked around, whizzing back and forth. Under Suo Jia’s control, all the girls that were within a 10m radius from him were all indiscriminately attacked. Moreover, Suo Jia had no intention of holding back. If he was to fight, he’d make an all-out effort! Otherwise, the meaning of this exercise would be lost.

“Clang….rumble!” With a loud bang, the thick and solid ice stream first smashed one fire wind warrior’s weapon into pieces, and then fiercely crashed into her abdomen, causing her to fly backwards. Only after colliding into a sturdy pillar did she fall to the ground, as blood wildly spurt out from her mouth. Although she hadn’t lost her ability to fight, her injuries weren’t light either.

In quick succession, all of the fire wind warriors finally realized that although Suo Jia was still young, he was not inferior to those powerful magical beasts. They were both equally dangerous. Holding back even a tiny bit would be digging their own graves!

After a while, all of the fire wind warriors nearby had no choice but to gather their energy and abandon their current opponents. Instead, they concentrated completely on attacking Suo Jia. Otherwise, they’d end up being blasted away by him!

In but a moment, the pressure around Suo Jia grew. He frequently suffered from the coordinated attacks of a few of the girls working together. With Suo Jia’s current strength, he was not afraid of going against any of the fire wind warriors 1v1. However, when it was 1v2, Suo Jia could only persist in blocking. If it were 1v3, then Suo Jia would be forced to flee.

The entire battle situation had become a lot more complicated after Suo Jia had joined. All of the girls had gradually built up their fire qi, and had subconsciously started to use all of their efforts to attack. In an instant, the entire underwater training ground had become utter chaos. If anyone had walked in without knowing the situation, they would’ve thought that they had just entered a battleground between enemies.

Time unknowingly passed by. Elder Sister walked up to Suo Jia amidst the chaos to inform him that Suo Jia had to attend the school’s annual challenge competition. Only then did Suo Jia suddenly realize that a year had just flown by like that.

This time, the competition a year later had no highlights worth mentioning. Suo Jia didn’t even attend the inter-grade competition. Only Aimi and Aila had gone out, and they had even earned the championship trophy cup. The past year, Aila and Aimi had been using the Exhaustion Training Method to boost their magics, and had long since become mage trainees. The combination of Heaven’s One Holy Water and the Ice Fiend’s Nine Prisons was unrivaled.

Although he hadn’t participated in the inter-grade competition, Suo Jia was still the captain, and so he had the qualifications to enter the inter-championship. Aimi and Aila still chose to forfeit this right as they had before. Putting other reasons aside, they knew clearly that Suo Jia alone wasn’t someone they could surpass. Entering the inter-championship was equivalent to giving away their noble ranks to Suo Jia.

After a year, even Suo Jia was unsure of exactly what kind of realm he had reached. Only the 36 fire wind warriors had gained a deep understanding of how terrifying he was. This was something that had left impressions in their bodies, and was definitely not something they could easily forget.

The inter-championship competition wasn’t any interesting either. Aside from the 17-18 year groups that were forced to enter the competition, the other age groups all forfeited. Suo Jia had only spent 5 minutes to win 2 rounds, and was able to smoothly advance two more ranks and become a fifth ranked lord!

After the competition ended, New Year’s began. Master Han Sa had finally completed his count, so he bid farewell to Suo Jia and went back to the holy land of the dwarves with all of the materials. There, he was able to use the lava and whole-heartedly concentrate on creating the 40 sets of armor. According to legends, the dwarf god had used that exact same lava to create divine artifacts.

Other people spent the New Year’s gathering with their families and enjoying celebrations. However, Suo Jia spent the New Year immersing himself with battles. Although Master Han Sa had just left, none of them had felt that they had fought enough yet, so they continued the free fights through days and nights.

The month after New Year’s, everyone was finally satisfied with their work and stopped. Although they would still be able to collect benefits from continuing the free fights, everyone knew that if they continued, the results wouldn’t be as evident anymore.

Though these free fights, everyone was able to organize, digest, and absorb the skills they had gained the past year. Most importantly, they were able to understand more uses of the fire and wind arts, skills, and methods from each other. Each one of them could clearly sense that their strength had exponentially increased.

In addition, the battle experience they had gained had also increased by a substantial margin. It could be said with certainty that this return trip had allowed every one of the girls to clearly boost their strength by leaps and bounds. They were able to perfect their battle systems, raise their battle experience, and strengthen their appreciation and understandings of fire and wind. Most importantly, from going against their comrades, their coordination as a team had already reached a realm that they previously hadn’t even been able to dream of.

Everyone deeply understood each of their comrade’s skills, traits, and habits. Majority of the battles didn’t require any communication between each other. They could understand what their comrade was going to do next and how they were going to do it. It was exactly like the saying: “the person that understands you the most isn’t your friend, but your rival!” Without fighting each other, two people will never be able to understand each other at such a level.

A month of the new year had already passed, and Suo Jia was now 10. Although the past few months with the girls had been very fun and substantial, he knew that for the sake of his objective, he couldn’t stay by these girls’ sides. They would have to go experience nature’s storms for themselves. Only then would they be able to grow further!

The commerce union’s methods would continue as they had been. Since they had already started it, they naturally had to do their best for it. In addition….Suo Jia’s second level of plans depended on the commerce union.

After a bit over a year, Suo Jia’s White Villa and the fire wind warriors had earned Suo Jia a massive amount of gold. Suo Jia’s wealth had already reached 2.4 billion. However, Suo Jia knew that this money would be spent very quickly.

First he had to find Duke Wen Sha, and as a merchant, he’d have to donate 1000 million. Among this amount….according to the Empire’s new regulations, payments of 1mil, 10mil, 100mil, 1000mil, could be used to raise Suo Jia’s noble rank. A contribution of 1000mil would raise Suo Jia from a fifth ranked lord to a third ranked lord.

Afterwards, Suo Jia would continuously contribute 100mil. This money would be used to raise their Golden Flames Commerce Union from Rank E to Rank B. That way, they’d be certified to transport larger amounts of merchandise. In addition, the 36 fire wind warriors would be able to escort large groups of 100 people. They’d be able to use 10 freight wagons to transport the large groups for them to begin businesses in Holy Light City!