Cornelius rushes me as Livia escapes with the family. I barely have enough time to pull out my knife and parry the blow, much less cast a spell. Even though I managed to pull off a parry, my arm is numb. He hits HARD. I quickly distance myself from Cornelius, and cast earth magic making a wall so I can get some time to think. Cornelius is already trying to smash the thing. Chill man CHIIILLLLL.

 My normal magic except for poison is completely useless considering the environment is inside a workshop and his armor. Normally I'd just drop a huge ass Boulder on him and crush him, but with the given space I can't conjure one big enough. As for poison, he's already seen it so he'll be weary of it. I wouldn't be surprised if he has some kinda antidote on the ready, as he was planning on killing me when he came here. 

My next option would be dragon magic. While yes that would most certainly kill him, it would also take down me and the whole village too. My only offensive spells are [lightning storm] and [crack the sky]. [Lightning storm] will summon a huge storm which is obviously way to wide range and [crack the sky] will drop a continuous beam of electricity on a single spot. The diameter of [crack the sky] is easily enough to swallow the enite shop and house. That leaves the neutral spells. Both the ones I'm capable of using require line of sight on the target and will take a while to complete the chant. In this situation, while yes they'll be an instant win, as either removing a limb/his armor or his ability to move would make killing him easy, they'll be equally hard to pull off. I already need as much focus as possible to deal with his attacks. If I split my attention between the two tasks, I'm bound to fuck up. Either I'll take a really bad hit and have to stop the chant to heal, or I'll flub the pronunciations. 

Shit he's already making cracks in the wall. My best bet would be to stall until Mi'ara gets here. She has been our vanguard on this journey and would probably be able to fight toe-to-toe with Cornelius. Unfortunately it'll take awhile for her to get here so I hastily make a kite sheild and ready myself as the wall starts to break down.

My dagger could probably worm its way through the gaps in his armor. If I want to prolong this, I'll need to fuck with vital spots for combat like his limbs or head. His eyes would be the easiest I imagine so I pounce towards his face, dagger in hand. Cornelius easily sees it coming and side steps causing me to go farther than intended and screw the landing. I hastily roll and get up facing Cornelius, who's already going for a counter attack by swinging his sword downward. I ditch my knife to focus on supporting my sheild and block the blow just in time. Despite the jarring sound of metal hitting metal and the numbness in my arms I manage to push Cornelius's blade back making him stumble backwards. Using this opening I rush forward and ram him as hard as I can with my sheild, knocking him down. I quickly use the opportunity to reclaim my knife and reready myself.

"I can tell you're an amateur, beast. You really should've pressed your advantage there. While you may be able to mimick human speech, you clearly cannot mimick human's skill in combat," Cornelius says. 

"Shut up." 

I can see the fucking smug look on his face through his helmet's visor.

"Allow me to show you how you REALLY fight," Cornelius continues as he does yet another rush.

This time his swing is only one-handed, so it was significantly easier to block. When I was about to counterattack, I found myself sent flying by a punch in the gut. Luckily the force of the punch wasn't enough to turn me into a doughnut, but it was hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs and send me flying into a wall. When I collided, It hurt like hell and got sawdust all over me. Wait. . . Saw dust?  Hehehehe I can use that.

It seems my sudden smile was enough to unnerve Cornelius as he backed up and got into a defensive stance. He's quite weary of my tricks, ain't he. Almost a little too cautious hehehe. Cornelius could've finished me off right then and there if he pressed the advantage. Guy should practice what he preaches.

As I regained my breath and got back up, I casted a spell to summon a whole hell of a lot of iron powder and sent it toward Cornelius. He immediately guessed wrong and avoided it, thinking it was poison. I used this opertunity to make a be-line to the nearest window and hop out of it.

In modern times, wood working shops are pretty dangerous, if they don't clean thoroughly. There are a lot of machines in a modern wood working shop, so its easy for some sawdust to get heated by a stray spark, or an overheating machine. Because of this threat, workshops tend to have systems in check to prevent dust explosions. However this world I'm in is anything but modern. There is very little reason for some sawdust to be dispersed in the air and heated. Unless its on the floor an swept. The sawdust isn't dealt with. 

Do you know why a dust explosion is dangerous in the first place? While sure a little bit of hot dust in the air can create a small fire ball, it's not enough to destroy a whole building. What makes a dust explosion scary is the chain reaction. That intial small explosion generates a small shock wave. That shock wave sends more dust into the air, which is then ignited by the intial explosion. This creates a second explosion which will go on to make more explosions, which will go on to make even more explosion, so on and so forth. Eventually the building will go boom.

A little tangent, did you know it isn't only organic matter that can go boom in a dust explosion? While flour and fine sawdust are the popular choices, a few metals can also produce a similar effect. In-fact metal powder has been used by the military as thermite grenades. Metal plants have similar regulations as wood working shops in regard to cleanliness. Its shocking how recently they were implemented. It took a factory exploding for them to actually be implemented.

"THIS IS WHY WE HAVE OSHA MOTHERFUCKER"

[lightning]