I held back a sigh at Doni's presence. I'd been warned of his interest on the second day of my vacation, but I imagined once he found out I wasn't in São Paulo he'd get bored and leave as he'd been known to do, not track me down 2500km away.
"So, how did you find me?" I asked, giving him a cursory glance before taking a drink of my pina colada.
"I just asked Andrea," he said, waving in the direction of a man wearing a black suit and glasses sitting down at the bar close to the street. "It took a few days but he found where you were staying."
"How?" I groaned out, there weren't any travel logs since I used my Authority, and the place I was staying was borrowed.
"No idea," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "But when we got to the house your dad sent us here."
"Of course he did," I sighed before taking a breath and turning to the other Campione. "So, what can I do for you?"
"I want a fight." He said casually.
I choked on my drink, sending an 'Are you insane!?" look at him while I recuperated.
"Hey, it's been a few weeks since your first proper Heretic God fight and I wanted to know how good you are," he shrugged.
"With your experience and combat-oriented Authorities? I'll have no chance." I said while shaking my head. "All I have is an Authority that I'm still learning how to use to fight and a movement Authority, with a third I've had no luck figuring out."
"And wouldn't it be better if you had someone to try stuff on?" He said with a grin.
I didn't want to admit it, but he was right. Having another Campione to not only bounce ideas off of but also try my new spells on would be priceless at this point.
"When you put it like that, yeah, that'd be nice." I nodded.
"Great! Let's go!" He jumped up, clearly excited for some combat.
"Not so fast!" I called out, making him slow down and turn to me. "I'm still on vacation, a little tipsy, and in no mood to get sober and fight now. Let's enjoy the rest of the day today and we can fight tomorrow."
"Fiiiine," He groaned and sat back down beside me.
With a wave of my hand to the bar's owner, Doni didn't take long to have his own pina colada while I got my refill.
As he got comfortable, I noticed a slight smile on his face as the tension dropped from his shoulders.
"This isn't so bad," he said.
"Right?" I replied.
The next morning, we were at my training ground in Australia, ready for the spar.
The previous day had been a success, after the beach we had gone back to the house for dinner with my parents and an intense Uno 'duel', the fact that both of us were already decently drunk by that point made it all the more serious.
Throughout that time, we talked about fighting and our Authorities. His combat experience alone was a great source of inspiration for me, but his knowledge of how Authorities work in general opened a great many pathways for future training.
The jealousy I felt at his great number of combat-related Authorities was natural, especially when I was faced with the fact that I'd need to fight him.
Thankfully, I managed to convince him to use our first 'fight' as a test for my combat skill, so no activating Authorities for either of us.
That left me with some advantage, as I could still use my passives, though I worried if they'd be able to change the outcome of the fight at all.
As I faced him with my wand in hand, he gave me a cocky smirk and motioned for me to make the first move.
With some quick wand movements, I sent a series of elemental spells his way.
He sidestepped the Earth Spike, batted away the Wind Bullet and Water Slash, and simply walked through my Fire Wall.
The unimpressed gaze he sent me at my poor showing made me more disappointed in myself than I already was, but then he smiled, and that sent chills down my spine.
With that bone-chilling smile still in place, he casually grabbed a small pebble off the ground, turned towards me, and said "Block" before flicking the pebble at me.
His warning gave me just enough time to cast a wandless Protego spell in front of me, but even then the magical shield cracked under the force of the attack.
"What the fuck was that!?" I screamed at him, letting my cracked shield dissipate.
"That?" He pointed a what was left of the pebble on the ground. "That was nothing! What was that!?" He waved his hand at the remains of my failed attacks. "Yesterday you were talking about how the Runes were something above even the Gods, and this is what you have to show for it!?"
"I thought they'd at least do something!" I said back.
"Well, it didn't!" He crossed his arms with a huff. "What was that shield you used? At least it did something."
"Just a basic shield," I said with a shrug. "And that's because I cast it without a wand, my spells are much more powerful that way."
"Y-You were holding back!?" He said, his face contorting in rage.
"I mean, yeah? I don't want to hurt you!" I said, backing away from him.
"What are you talking about!?" His previous anger was instantly replaced by confusion.
"Without my wand, I can't really control my power output when casting spells, so I have no idea how strong they'll come out." I shrugged.
"Were you afraid of hurting me?" He said with a smile.
"Yes?" I replied.
"Didn't you kill a bunch of people in that other world?" He said, his hand covering his mouth while his chest shook.
"Yeah, and they were the type of people who had fun murdering, raping, and torturing while you're just a cool guy who likes fighting." I pointed out.
"I never thought I'd see the day where a Campione of all people would be anti-violence," he said with a shake of his head. "Alright! Put that wand away and hit me with your strongest attack!"
"Are you crazy!? I killed a Heretic God like that!" I exclaimed.
"Then it's perfect for a demonstration!" He said with a bright smile.
"Demonstration of what!?" I said.
"Of how strong we really are!" He said, finally drawing his sword and getting into position. "Now come at me or I'll be going to you!"
With a sigh and a shake of my head, I put my wand away and got ready.
With a small exertion of focus and my Authority, I apparated behind him, the overpowered Severing charm instantly leaving my left hand toward his Achilles tendon while my right hand let loose a Disarming charm at his sword hand.
But before I could see the result of my attack, something solid hit my head and sent me rolling away.
"That's better! If those hit they'd have actually done some damage!" Doni laughed.
I got up from the ground while shaking my head, still trying to get my bearings.
"What was that?" I asked, looking at him casually leaning on his sword, which was stuck on the ground.
"A punch." He shrugged.
"How the hell…" I started to say before he interrupted me.
"You've been holding back." He said seriously.
"Yeah, we established that," I said.
"No, you've been holding back in all of your fights." He sighed.
"Huh? How? I killed those cultists and Odin." I said.
"You shouldn't have needed help with the cultists in the first place, but they were mortal so even while holding back they still had no chance." He said. "Now with Odin, I'm assuming the attack you just used was how you took him out?"
"Kinda, he was pretty banged up by it but I still needed to keep attacking him, and even then he was using the Runes left at the clearing to keep fighting, so I needed my contingency plan to do it," I said.
"And what was the contingency plan?" He leadingly asked.
"A pretty solid Yggdrasil stick with a Locomotion charm fed with almost all of the magic I had left," I said.
"And that's what I'm talking about! In the end, you didn't let up on the attack, even having a plan for if just your magic didn't work to put him down for good! From what you told me yesterday that was not how you were fighting, right?" He said.
I nodded, understanding his point. I started the fight against Odin at a massive disadvantage, and it was only the fact he needed me for something that let me win, if he were serious I doubt he'd have needed to reach the point of summoning his familiars.
"So, what do you suggest?" I asked.
"For now?" He said, his bone-chilling smile back. "We fight."
Saying that, he instantly appeared him front of me, his fist pulled back for a right hook.
By instinct I sent a torrent of wind at him, pushing him away and sending me back.
"See! You can do it if you try!" He laughed, rushing back at me.
I sent a thin line of fire with my right hand at him as a distraction, using my left hand to pull a compressed piece of stone from the ground on his path.
It worked, he stumbled on the rock and fell.
Unfortunately, he rolled with the fall and used his position close to the ground to push himself at me at breakneck speeds.
I didn't have time to react, his fist buried in my stomach for a fraction of a second before I was sent flying.
My landing was rough, the vomit once the world stopped spinning was somehow worse.
As I got up after reorienting myself, plans were formulating in my mind: the best combination of spells to use to get him, maybe even a stacked rune to try on him.
Those plans were forgotten when I was suddenly hit with a roundhouse kick to the back of my head, my face cratering the ground.
"You need to pay attention! An enemy won't let you take time to plan your next move!" He said while laughing.
That was it. I was finally and officially pissed.
I slowly pulled myself from the ground, spitting out all the dirt and sand that got into my mouth.
As I turned to look at Doni, I cast another torrent of wind at him with my left hand while I started concentrating fire in my right hand.
When I was satisfied he was far enough away, I dispelled the wind and used my left hand to summon lightning, combining it with the fire on my other hand.
After these weeks of experimenting, one thing I learned is that not all Runes were equal.
Being representations of concepts, the Runes went from the simple elemental ones I'd been using to extremely complex ones with different meanings depending on how you used them.
The Rune I thought was a simple analogue to the Severing charm was actually the one that represented the concept of division, too complex for an amateur like me to use it right now.
But lightning? Just a step above the basic elemental Runes in complexity.
I hadn't been able to go too in-depth with the lightning Rune by the time of the fight. But from my research on the properties of both lightning and fire, what I was attempting should work.
Anything to make that stupid moron shut up for a second.
The elements converging in my hands were starting to get out of control when I saw him, coming at me with that stupid smile on his face.
I pretended to be distracted by focusing on my hands until he was at striking distance, and then I let the concentration of pure plasma loose on him.
The purplish-blue light of the attack hit him dead on, blowing him away and making our surroundings dark due to the amount of light it emitted.
As the attack dissipated, I instinctively jumped to the right, seeing Doni pass by where I was previously sword first, that damned smile brighter than ever.
"Now you're getting it! I can finally have some fun!" He said, still laughing.
"I'm going to kick your ass!" I said, thinking up a combination on the fly and waving my hands to the sky, one with earth and the other with water to gather clouds in the area.
The clouds had barely started to form when I heard a *BEP* sound coming from Doni.
"Aw, man! And things were starting to get fun too!" He groaned.
"What's that for?" I asked, approaching him.
"Your mom made me promise we'd be back for lunch." He dejectedly replied.
"Hey, we can always get back at it after that," I said, lightly patting him on the back.
"Your dad said he was going to make something extra special, I doubt any one of us will be able to move, much less fight, after that." He sighed.
"Yeah," I nodded. "But think on the positive side!"
He looked at me curiously.
"We get to eat like kings! And it's going to be glorious!" I laughed.
"Alex, we are Kings," he drily said.
"Then it's fitting for us to eat like it," I said, utilizing the most perfect Lovegood logic.
"I guess," he said.
"Let's go," I said, conjuring a door and opening it to the house me and my family had been using these last few days.
"Sure," Doni said, dragging his feet as he passed the Doorway.
After lunch, Doni and I were relaxing in the backyard of the house, each of us in a hammock, side by side.
We could have used our magic to speed up digestion, but that'd defeat the point of eating as much as we did.
I was almost dozing off when I heard Doni calling out to me.
"Alex?" He said.
"Yeah, Doni?" I replied.
"You need a weapon," He said.
"I'll have an actually useful wand soon enough," I said.
He sat down on the hammock to look at me.
"And that's good, but you need a way to physically attack," he said.
"Why?" I asked, sitting up to look at him.
"Because not all Heretic Gods are weak against magic and while your improvised weapon idea worked against Odin, it probably won't work against the next one." He said.
"And what ab-" I started before he interrupted me.
"The fists of a Campione are mighty weapons in and of themselves, but unless you plan on going on the path of a martial artist like Luo Hao, a weapon for you to be able to make a decisive blow quickly is much better." He said.
"And you want me to take up the sword," I said, nodding.
"And I want you to take up the sword," he nodded back.
"Could you at least pretend that that wasn't your goal with this talk?" I asked, rolling my eyes at him.
"What's the point? You know I have a point." He smirked.
"What if I take up the spear? Odin used one pretty well, and I copied his attack decently." I said, lifting an eyebrow at him.
"Then I wouldn't be able to train you!" He quickly replied.
"Fine," I said with a sigh. "But! You have to learn some magic as well!"
"I already told you that I never had a talent for it!" He defended.
"And now you're a Campione," I deadpanned, "And anyway, I'll see about getting you a wand when I get mine, that should make it easier on you."
"Yeah, that does sound nice." He smiled.
"Deal?" I asked, extending my hand to him.
"Deal!" He replied, giving me a firm handshake.
And with that, we both laid back down on our hammocks to enjoy a nice and lazy sunny afternoon.
A/N: And that's that for this week folks!
Doni is a pretty interesting character, and he is the perfect person to motivate Alex into going to the next world.
Of course, that'll be after the Yule Ball, and we still have some things to do before that.
Like my writing? Want to be able to read a full two chapters ahead? Then check me out on P a treon . com (slash) NickKane.