“Huh?” Argo let out, confused as he noticed the weight of his spear lighten. And a moment later, he saw Foster holding onto the front of his spear after it had been removed from the rest, which Argo was of course still holding onto.

“I gotta say, though, that was a pretty nice spear. Well, emphasis on ‘was’. Although, you might be able to salveage it if you find someone good.” Foster pointed out, carefully placing the part of the spear he was holding into Argo’s hand.

“You complete maniac! Why did you do that?!” Argo yelled out, finally realizing what happened. It seemed like he finally sobered up a little bit with that. With a shrug, Foster quickly replied, “I mean, you were going around spreading rumors about me. So… that’s what you get, I guess?”

“I’m going to-” With a furious expression, Argo was clearly getting ready to actually fight Foster, when Jasmin started to mutter, “That… the wood… How did you…?”

“I guess I’m just a lot stronger than you guys were just saying, huh?” Foster said bluntly. Of course, that was just a blatant lie. He had used chilling touch to make the spear’s wood rot so that he could easily make it snap. People reacted weirdly whenever he blatantly said he was a necromancer, though, so he figured he should hold back a little in that regard. 

“Just a shitty spear, I guess. What, were you scammed or something?” Foster asked with a grin, having fun messing around like this for the first time in a while. After hearing what had been said about the weapon that he prided himself in so much, Argo ground his teeth and pushed forward the tip of the spear that he was now holding onto separately. It was pointed right at Foster’s stomach, a nasty position to be stabbed. Not that Foster was planning on letting that happen.

The Argomna style was a slow, heavy one. It relied on blocking instead of dodging or diverting, and it used heavy but slow attacks. But despite that fact, it was one that required an surprising degree of agility, since the different stances, particularly their transitions between one another, were weirdly complex and hard to pull through if you couldn’t move certain parts of your body quickly enough. That was why it was nothing but an easy task for Foster to twist his own feet and use them to rotate his body to the side in a split second. He wasn’t really wearing any armor, so he didn’t want to risk getting stabbed all of a sudden by trying to block that attack.

However, the moment that the spear moved past his body, Foster used one of the simple low-kicks that he started practicing recently, kicking Argo’s front leg. Even if this was a sort of town, they were still in a cave. The ground was uneven, and a drunk guy would have a tough time steadily setting his feet on the ground, which was the case for Argo. And so, the kick was enough to make his foot slip backward during that forward mortion of his arms and torso, of course making him fall forward.

Since Foster didn’t want to look like the bad guy for bullying a drunk guy, he of course grabbed onto the back of Argo’s collar. And even though it slightly choked him, the spearman avoided falling to the ground. Jasmin didn’t let all this go either, though. Foster was the one that challenged them before, after all. She pulled a knife from her hip and swung it at the man in front of her. A bit annoyed, Foster grabbed Argo’s arm and pulled it in front of him, using the back part of the spear, which he was still holding onto, to block the knife. At that point, Argo let go of this part of the spear, at least, and Foster was now holding onto it himself. He let go of Argo’s collar and let him drop down, but slowed his fall with his foot so that he didn’t hurt himself falling down with the sharp spear-tip in his hand.

At the same time, Jasmin slipped her knife underneath the part of the spear in Foster’s hand, which was really just a short wooden staff now. Grabbing both ends of this staff, Foster quickly pushed down on Jasmin’s arm. He kicked up his knee and pushed the staff into Jasmin’s elbow while continuing to push down on it. Then, he pulled the staff a bit to the side and twisted it to push it under her armpit, letting Foster remove one of his hands from the staff, which he used to press her lower arm further toward her shoulder. The staff was now tightly locked by both her elbow and her armpit. Swinging her other arm, Jasmin tried to punch Foster, but he simply pushed one end of the staff to the side to force her torso to twist around. Like that, it was easy for Foster to avoid the punch. Jasmin was also a little drunk, after all.

After dodging the punch, Foster pressed more onto Jasmin’s arm, trying to force her to let go of her knife, which was an easy task when he started twisting her wrist a little. Argo was laying on the ground, and Jasmin had been disarmed. It was clear who had won this.

With a sigh, Foster let go of Jasmin and threw the knife on the table behind them, before turning toward the crowd, “Next time, don’t listen to rumors like that, alright?” He said with a wink, and then made his way through the crowd, which was now silently parting ways. Foster was feeling pretty good after that. Putting people in their place always felt satisfying to him.

“Alright, what next?” Foster muttered, stretching slightly. He figured he could train a bit more. He didn’t have anything else to do, and he didn’t feel like just laying down in bed again either. Although, it didn’t seem like there was any good place to train around here. It was way too busy for that.

“Great…” He sighed slightly. Looking around, there was a bit of an overhang here in this larger central cave. It wasn’t connected to anything, so at least he could be somewhere where nobody would bother him if he got up there. Foster walked over to a corner and started to climb up the wall where nobody could see him. It didn’t take him long to reach the overhang either. A few people probably noticed him, but they clearly didn’t really care. Everything in these caves was sturdy enough to hold a few people, so they knew that even if someone messed around a bit, they wouldn’t be bothered by it. And Foster was just up here to get a bit away from others. He was going to practice something that he didn’t feel too comfortable to do in a tight space like the capsule, and doing it in the middle of a crowd felt wrong as well. This place up here actually wasn’t all too bad. It seemed like others climbed up here sometimes, since Foster could see some footsteps pressed into the ground.

Either way, for now, Foster sat down cross legged. He was far too bothered to do this, usually, but there was nothing better that he could do right now. He held forward both of his hands, making his palms face each other. And then, he manipulated the mana inside of his body, trying to make it flow out of his hands.

It took a while, but about a minute later, a small light suddenly appeared in the air, as if it was a firefly. Slowly, the light moved around in a straight line, leaving a trail in the air. Soon, the light stopped, and then changed the direction that it moved. A little while later, it changed direction again. It didn’t take long until a triangle was drawn into the air using this light. It was mana, and what Foster was doing right now was a simple form of practicing magic manipulation outside of one’s body. In order to draw a magic circle, one needed to be able to easily form it into any shape one wanted, so usually to practice this, people were made to draw different patterns into the air in this way.

It was sort of cool at first, but it was also incredibly boring and hard to do for Foster, so he didn’t like doing this all too much.

“But well…” Foster muttered, peaking over the edge of the overhang, seeing Jasmin and Argo rushing around the settlement’s streets to look for him, “It’s better than being forced to deal with this guys more than that….”