Embedded Files
After a refreshing nap, Lucas decided to practice his magic. The sunlight had dimmed a little, since it was nearly five in the afternoon. The shadows bent easily to his will, and it seemed to be much easier to pull them off of the ground to give them physical forms. He might have gotten better at using magic after pushing himself to his limits. From purely his own feeling, Lucas felt that he was probably a late-middle stage external mage.
Eren was sitting on the bench that he had created, looking at the scenery. Vines were scattered along the floor around him, sliding around every so often. He looked slightly bored, so Lucas stretched his shadows onto the window. They blocked out the view, causing Eren to look at Lucas, who had already gotten out of bed.
“Are these clothes mine now?” Lucas asked, picking at the black coat.
“If you want to keep them,” Eren shrugged. “We only got black because it suited your element. If you don’t like the color, you don’t have to keep it.”
“I think it’s pretty comfortable. I don’t really care about the color that much, to be honest.”
“If you want, I could get my dad to get a few more,” Eren suggested.
Lucas was a little torn. He did want more so that he would be able to change into similar clothing, since it would look questionable if he alternated between commoner clothes and more dignified clothes every other day. But he didn’t want to accept the offer, since he knew that it would be asking too much and he didn’t necessarily have to wear these clothes every time he could.
Seeing Lucas's hesitation, Eren grinned and said, “Don't sweat it. We could buy you clothes for every day of the year if we wanted to. A few more sets wouldn’t be much for us at all. Anyways, being able to let you wear any clothes other than tunics but not doing so would be damaging to my image, don’t you think?”
Lucas nodded silently.
“There you go.” Eren stood up and waved his hand, causing the vines to retreat into the wooden planks of the floor. “It’s basically dinnertime. Should we go?”
Lucas, who was a little hungry, didn’t see a reason to deny. When they arrived at the dining hall, apart from some mildly judgemental glances, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Lucas was happy to see that Vaelith had already recovered from her temporary unconsciousness. It seemed like their opponents had some sense of decency.
Lucas and Eren finished dinner quickly and returned to the dormitory to avoid attracting too much attention. Lucas flipped open the First Manuscript of the Will and began reading it as a pastime.
Soon, night befell them, sending them to sleep. The next morning, Eren left early to watch the matches. There were no classes in the morning this week due to the tournament. As a competitor, Lucas was also exempt from the afternoon classes. It seemed, too, that they had completed the curriculum for this year. All of this left Lucas with basically nothing to do besides practicing his magic.
The remaining two days of the elimination rounds passed by quickly, with Eren bringing the whole team after the matches ended to see Lucas. Even though it wasn’t a rule that Lucas had to stay inside, he still felt that it was better if his teammates could avoid being associated with an anomaly like him as much as possible.
To Lucas, these two days passed slowly. To everyone else, these two days could not have passed quicker. The day for the first team duels came, with Lucas and his team going against one that was composed wholly of second-years. Cairen had already briefed Lucas on the opponent’s powers and tendencies. Now that Lucas did not have to protect a crystal and no longer had to hide his darkness, he was now capable of being much more useful than he had been during the elimination.
The team congregated outside of Lucas's and Eren’s dormitory, since it was the only dormitory that all five of them knew the location to. They began making their ways to the west entrance of the colosseum. Lucas drew a few gazes and a few people skirted around him, avoiding as much contact as possible. Of course, there weren’t many people in the hallways. The vast majority of the students had already gone to the stadium to watch the coming match.
It didn’t take long for the team to arrive at the abrupt right turn in the underground tunnel. This time, Lucas joined the other four in warming up his magic. His Will wasn’t going to be the main character of his performance this time. He would still maintain a basic reinforcement over his teammates, of course.
The team heard their names being called out by the commentator. They stepped out into the light in a V shape, Cairen in the front and center, the two girls branching off to one side, Lucas and Eren branching off to the other side.
The wind blew in their direction, bringing the refreshing smell of spring with it. This time, the terrain was just a yellow desert, dotted with the occasional green cactus. The sand dunes, however, reached nearly five meters high, completely obstructing the team’s ability to see the opponents.
The battle began.
The team ran diagonally to the left, maintaining formation. Lucas enhanced their feet to deal with the sucking nature of the sand. Suddenly, a sharp, yellow bullet whistled above them, exploding into specks of sand. The enemy team had already begun scouting.
Neither of the teams had their members immediately fly into the air to locate the enemy, since such an action would be a dead giveaway of their own location. However, as decided in the plan that they had made beforehand, Vaelith branched off to the right with Iriyen.
Before long, Vaelith’s figure appeared in the air. Flashes of scarlet and orange occasionally appeared in the shape of distant lines angled towards the ground, signalling Vaelith’s attack. The three male members of the team, now forming a smaller V after Lucas switched to the right side, tracked the booming sounds and the flashing of lights. Smoke arose from the explosions, further aiding in the chase.
After a minute, Lucas, Eren, and Cairen saw the silhouettes of the five opponents against the flashing of Vaelith’s flaming projectiles. They had gone in a semicircle, now about to launch a pincer attack against the enemy.
Sand flew into Lucas's eyes, but his tears quickly flushed them out. There were, surprisingly, quite a few shadows in this seemingly flat terrain. The vast majority of them were cast by the dunes, but there were luckily some situated right beside the enemy team members in the form of cacti.
From the rapidly decreasing distance, Lucas molded the shadows to touch the soles of an unsuspecting enemy. Cairen had set the chances of the opponent not detecting the approach to fifty percent.
Suddenly, the opponent disappeared as soon as the shadows encompassed his whole body. He had been too focused on dodging Vaelith’s shots. It took the other members of the team to realize that there were three people rushing at them.
It took them longer to realize that one of them was missing. Without much time to react, the enemy team could only suddenly cast a wall of sand that shot out of the ground just as Cairen was about to reach them.
However, just as the wall stabilized, Cairen struck it with his fist, causing it to collapse immediately. This was a telltale sign of his technique.
With Vaelith’s assault behind them and Cairen’s charge in front of them, the opposing team members could only scatter to the sides. Lucas emerged from the shadows, carrying the missing enemy team member bound by a band of shadows.
Lucas laid the competitor to the side, focusing on the two others who had fled to his side. A great vortex of dark mist rose before the two fleeing enemies, who instantly jumped to the side, rolled, and continued running. But this was within Lucas's expectations. They couldn’t jump to the same side of the vortex, which meant that Lucas had effectively separated them.
Lucas's vortex exploded into a vast expanse of black fog, obscuring the vision of the two opponents who had unluckily escaped to his side. But blocking their ability to see wasn’t the goal of this mist — the fog quickly contracted into two black bands around the opposing team, leaving them no chance to defend themselves with their own magic.
Lucas had now single-handedly restrained three opponents. He could now only trust Cairen’s ability to defeat the remaining adversaries. Of course, Lucas didn’t doubt that Cairen could take on two enemies by himself.
Just in case, Lucas formed a circular pool of darkness below him and floated into the air. If anything went wrong on Cairen’s side, he would be able to help as quickly as possible. But this wasn’t going to be a problem, since Vaelith and Iriyen were already sprinting over to his location.
Eren, who had held back when Cairen had charged forward and Lucas had positioned himself, was also running to Cairen’s position. With a four on two, there was no way they could lose.
That was, before the a piercing shriek tore through the air. It attacked Lucas's heart directly, causing it to buzz within his chest. The erratic movements shook the organs around it. Lucas coughed, bending over as he fell to the ground. His vision blurred, barely making out the growing patch of dark red in the pale yellow sand.
Just as quickly as the disruption came, it went. Lucas, who had, despite facing the opposite direction, acutely sensed that his magic was no longer binding the enemies behind him. He instinctively jumped onto a cactus, letting its shadow encase him as he returned to the shadow realm and avoided its spikes.
Without any time to delay, Lucas exited the shadow realm. He arrived next to Eren, who had stumbled and was in the process of treating his twisted ankle. Lucas quickly located the five opponents. The shriek was not a part of what his team had gleaned from the opposing team’s previous match.
The best guess Lucas could make was that the opponent who had screeched had somehow infused his Will into his voice, causing such an abnormal reaction to erupt from anyone who had heard it.
After Lucas thought this through, he realized that he didn’t need to escape so quickly. The three opponents that he had captured had no way of defending themselves against the shriek and could only take the effects like he had. But nothing was wrong with taking extra precautions.
Lucas condensed his darkness into a ball and grabbed it. He threw it at the ground to make a smokescreen, but it was quickly blown away by a giant gust of wind. Whoever cast this wind, however, did not account for the fact that they were in a desert. Countless specks of sand flew from the dunes, achieving a greater blinding effect than anything Lucas could conjure in a flash.
The quick-thinking Lucas drew a black door out of the ground and allowed the wind to blow it open. There was nothing behind the door but a vast expanse of dark purple. The horizon was just barely visible due to its slightly lighter hue. This was the shadow realm.
The sand was exiled before it could touch Lucas, allowing him to shield Eren. Vaelith and Iriyen collaboratively maintained a thick wall of water that quickly became stained with yellow. Lucas’s team, however, was not the only one that could fend against the sand. After all, one of the other team’s members had been able to create compact sand projectiles.
These bullets came again in a wave, much faster in frequency now that they weren’t just used to poke the environment for signs of enemies.
Lucas felt blessed to have had the stroke of genius to create a nonphysical barrier. As the exploding missiles shot past him, he suddenly felt another stroke of genius. He created a pocket of shadows in the air, preparing to intercept one of them.
A bullet of sand eventually fell into his trap. Lucas’s shadows engulfed the sand before it could explode. Lucas quickly reversed the trajectory of the bullet and sent it straight back to the sender. Lucas dispersed the shadows wrapped around the bullet, but the sand only sunk back into the desert. Lucas felt disappointed but wasn’t altogether surprised about the result.
Just then, Lucas suddenly considered a problem: if the enemy team had someone who could manipulate the sand of the desert, why hadn’t he used the desert itself to create a much more disadvantageous situation for them? A simple whirlpool of sand would probably be able to restrain Lucas’s team, unless they sought refuge in the air.
Did he avoid manipulating the ground so as not to force Lucas and the others into the air, where their height might give them an advantage? But maintaining a constant state of flight was much more draining than staying on land, so there wouldn’t be an advantage by the end of the ten minutes.
Lucas poked his head out from behind the door again. The sand caster was repeating a rather extravagant set of actions: lowering both of his arms, bringing them up, and then finally pushing them forward. It didn’t look like he was preparing a larger spell.
Lucas did not have time to think about how atrociously wrong he was. A roar sounded below the ground, the only forward indication of a sudden tremor that threw Lucas and Eren into the air.
Lucas quickly repositioned the door to the shadow realm, engulfing first Cairen, Iriyen, and Vaelith before then capturing himself and Eren. They landed in a pile, and Lucas instantly shut the door to prevent the sand from entering.
“So. What do we do now?” Cairen asked, the first to recover from the sudden series of events.
Without a word, Lucas grabbed a square patch of shadows from the ground and connected it to the shadows in the battlefield. Without ever having done this before, Lucas gave it the function of a window, allowing the team to be able to see the unrelenting sandstorm outside.
Five specks of light shone among the dark gray storm, indicating the locations of the perpetrators of this disaster. After three minutes, the storm finally showed signs of quieting down. By now, seven of the ten minutes of the match had passed.
Lucas created a hole in the ground and jumped out. The other four quickly followed. Now they had no plan. There was no way they could have possibly foreseen the giant disaster that had just happened. After all, none of the previous terrains had supported sand and wind magic so much.
Now, their only strategy was to launch an all-out counterattack. Lucas made sure to increase the magnitude of his reinforcement.
After they gained their footing, Cairen held up three fingers. Then two. Lucas materialized balls of shadows in both of his palms. Vaelith materialized a ball of light blue water and a ball of fire. Then one. Then none.
Two horizontal columns erupted from Lucas’s hands, blasting through the dunes. Amidst the falling sand, Vaelith pushed the water and the fire together to create a spiraling stream of smoke and steam. Cairen sprinted forward through the chaos, trusting Lucas’s reinforcement.
A wyrm made of sand erupted out of the ground at Cairen’s feet, opening its jaws wide. As quickly as it came, it was blasted apart by a flash of orange light. Charred pieces of sand drifted down as Cairen continued his pursuit after his feet hit the ground. Lucas followed quickly behind, providing cover using his projectiles of darkness. He still hadn’t figured out what his class was, but that didn’t stop him from trying his hand at every single one. As they neared, Lucas decided to show off his newly improved swordsmanship skills.
He materialized a shortsword from his darkness and quickly brought his grip to just below chest height. He used it to parry any physical attack that came at him and used his free hand to counter less parry-able magic with his own.
The duo quickly broke into enemy lines. A sword made of fire appeared through the gloom that had arisen from the countless sources of smoke. It belonged to an opponent with dark blue hair. Lucas swung first, an overhead strike. The opponent held up his sword horizontally, quickly catching Lucas’s shortsword and letting it slide off to the side.
In the midst of his recovery, Lucas saw the enemy swing down his own weapon. Lucas let go and jumped back, replacing his sword with another one from the shadows. He could not risk being hit by an actual sword, since his reinforcement was unlikely to hold under such a direct strike. Besides, even if his Will held up, it would still hurt.
Lucas changed his mind and shifted his sword to his left hand. Quickly following, he stretched his hand into the shadow of a dune and molded a piece of it into a dagger. He threw it at the dark-haired enemy, who blocked it with a blast of fire. As expected, Lucas’s ability to make a dagger was much more efficient than the opponent’s ability to block it. But this wasn’t something that Lucas was about to exploit. If it was just a battle of attrition, it would be rather boring, no matter how effective it was.
Lucas instead conjured two daggers, one for each hand, and engaged in close combat. After a quick exchange that had been periodically interrupted by surrounding magic, Lucas finally managed to fully disarm and restrain the opponent. The latter action was completed by Iriyen.
Cairen was in the middle of pursuing the opponent’s recovery mage, a somewhat short student with yellow hair, having had Iriyen restrain the opponent he’d fought a long time before Lucas did for his opponent. Just as Cairen finally captured the opponent’s healer and allowed Iriyen to bind his limbs, the Will-charged shriek sounded again.
But this time it had no effect. Lucas had provided his team with earmuffs made of shadows just before they had exited his shadow realm.
Lucas looked closely. The one who had shrieked was a female mage. She was medium height and had waist-length black hair. Lucas ran forward and solidified his shadows around her feet. The opponent was now completely restrained unless she was desperate enough to take off her shoes.
However, as soon as the opponent attempted to do so, Iriyen wasted no time in strapping the screamer into her blobs of water. Lucas released his control over his shadows. They had now captured four of the five opposing team members.
Just as Lucas was about to pounce upon the final one, the announcer’s voice suddenly boomed across the stadium, “The ten minutes are up. Four of the five Team Arenel members have been immobilized, compared to the none on Team Cairen. Team Cairen wins and moves onto the next match.”
The spectators were once again silent. The youngest team had once again displayed an overwhelming amount of coordination, once again grabbing a definitive victory. Then, beginning one by one and then snowballing to include the entire bleacher portion, was applause. Most of them didn’t seem to really care that Lucas was an anomaly.
After all, with their resources and protection, whether or not he wanted to, Lucas could not harm them in any way. Cheers came with the applause, and Lucas could only imagine the businessman’s daughter’s current expression.
Without any way to verify his fantasies, Lucas could only exit the field with the rest of his team, after saying a quick good game to the slightly embarrassed opposing team. The five team members were, of course, elated. They had managed to win two games in the tournament where they expected to win none.
“I think the credit goes to Lucas,” Cairen said on their way to the contestant lobby. “After all, none of the other teams has a trump card like you.” This last sentence was addressed directly to Lucas.
“Well, with that logic, none of the other teams can manipulate luck like you can,” Lucas replied, returning the compliment.
“Now that I think about it, our team is really abnormal,” Eren joined in. “We have Cairen and Vaelith, people who use magic techniques, and Lucas, who has whatever he has.”
After a few minutes of meaningless talk, the five finally reached the teleporters, having decided that there shouldn’t be any problem with Lucas watching the battle with the crowd. They appeared with a flash of white light at the exact same point as last time. Lucas scanned the crowd and was pleasantly surprised to see the raven-black hair of the daughter of the businessman.
The flash of light did not go unnoticed, and Lucas caught the girl’s eye. She smiled, causing Lucas to feel a little guilty. He returned the smile anyways, and switched his gaze to the field. The girl seemed to be exactly at his age, so he was a little confused as to why she didn’t go to Sacred Heart. After all, the entrance exam seemed rather lax. Lucas shrugged internally, too lazy to give it any more thought. She probably just applied to another school.
The sand in the terrain suddenly began moving, quickly spiraling into a whirlpool. Cacti were swept up by the flow, specks of green powerless to control their own fates. After the sand had finished sifting away, the barren ground of the stadium was then filled by an ocean, dotted only by the occasional classroom-sized island.
After the ocean was filled and the islands were decorated with trees, the individual teams were called into the battlefield. A giant crystal of ice suddenly burst from one of the entrances when the commentator called out the names of the first team. It exploded as quickly as it came, sending blue shards into the water, white mist trailing with each and every piece.
A great mass of mist stayed around the entrance area, barely letting the outlines of the five team members through. The dark shadows became more and more pronounced until their forms were finally revealed. One of them was an orc, another was an elf, and the rest were humans. The elf was wearing light blue, so Lucas assumed that she was the one who had created the ice.
“We should’ve had a dramatic entry like that,” Eren whispered into Lucas’s ear. Lucas nodded in fervent assent.
“These are fourth- and fifth-years,” Cairen said. “They need impressive entrances to maintain their egos.”
The other team was not any less flashy in its entrance. As soon as their names were called, a giant flame shot through the stadium, only to be dispelled by an ice barrier created by the elf.
Upon seeing this, the commentator’s voice could not help but announce, “Pre-match combat is prohibited. Another violation of this rule will result in coerced forfeit.”
Coerced forfeit… Lucas mused over this term. Normally, the action of removing a team from a tournament would just be called forfeit. Was there a policy that didn’t allow the school to remove the contestants from the tournament?
This question seemed foolish in the face of an immediately upcoming match. The two team reveals had left the audience on the edges of their seats.
Suddenly, a deep sound rose across the colosseum. It felt as if one could hear it from the distant mountains. Lucas pinpointed the source of this sound — one of the human members of Team Ice had brought in a warhorn! The horn was black, carved with reliefs of complicated natures that Lucas could not make out from his distance.
Lucas and a few others in the arena could not help but chuckle a little. This was akin to bringing a parrot into a sword fight, with the sole purpose of incessantly repeating the opponent’s words to piss them off.
Then, after the wave of laughter had passed, the two teams instantly began moving. Team Ice’s elf conjured ice on the seawater, quickly forming a bridge that was then laid with a layer of dirt to mitigate the slippery surface. Team Fire had an earth mage who just straight up pulled blocks of stone from the seabed, creating a long floating bridge consisting of only one element.
After a minute of island-hopping, the teams finally met in the middle. Before anyone could react, a blast caused the ten combatants to fly apart. Team Ice’s orc and elf quickly found each other in the air, as did the three humans, forming two distinct groups. Team Fire, however, seemed to have been much less prepared for such a phenomenon. Their five members were scattered into the sea and surrounding islands.
But they were not to be underestimated. Having lost face, the member who had fallen into the water created a very visible eddy. The vortex began rising out of the water, like a bump at first. After a few seconds, a large plume of vapor exploded from the enlarging protrusion. As the white mist settled, a thin, tornado-shaped, constantly rotating column of water outlined itself. A small figure wearing a flapping teal coat was visible above it.
The elf froze the water. The ice traveled up the water spout, nearly freezing the whole thing. However, since both sides were water mages, who was to say that the one on Team Fire couldn’t counter ice?
The advancing ice cracked, a sound sharp enough to leave Lucas’s ears ringing. The ice subsequently exploded into thousands of descending shards, forcing friend and foe alike to dodge or defend. Walls and domes of fire, dirt, stone, and ice as well as a great gust of wind were the reactions to the falling daggers. This terrain was a playground for the ice and water mages. Everyone else was at their mercy.
Lucas could only watch in awe. The fighters on both sides had yet to show their real power and had already revealed strength enough to squash him flat. Of course, that was assuming that he didn’t hide in his shadow realm.
After this display of raw power, the match displayed a visible, qualitative change in its intensity. Circles of Azla outlined themselves before the outstretched hands of the ten seniors. The atmosphere in the stadium suddenly became extremely tense. The audience clearly remembered just how powerful one spell was in the hands of the team that had defeated the second-year team made up of non-humans.
Then, after the two seconds that felt like an hour, the combatants released their spells in the exact same instant. A raging tornado made purely of fire suddenly raged into existence on one of the islands, burning away the vegetation that had been conjured. It moved toward Team Ice at a rather slow pace, leaving the land smoldering with coals and embers. The inferno vaporized the water on touch, turning it into mist.
The white mist was blown away in the midst of a great storm of wind that redirected the flames’ path to the side, missing Team Ice’s two groups. The wind buffeted the elevated vortex of water, causing it to splash down to the side. The water mage who had been on top of it casted a bird-shaped mass of water that soared in a circle through the air, catching its owner on its back. This mage had foreseen the danger posed to his platform and had created his contingency plan as his spell!
At the same time, a shockwave had run through the earth and cracked open the land beneath the feet of a few Team Fire members. They were rescued by a few rectangular stone blocks that caught them in midair, giving them a foothold to maintain their spells. But even these supports were blasted apart by an invisible shockwave.
Lucas couldn’t figure out how these blasts were being created. It was beyond doubt that the perpetrator was on Team Ice, but he couldn’t understand how the magic technique behind it worked. It seemed like all it could do was send things apart.
Multiple arm-shaped clumps of dirt suddenly shot out of the ground, stretching their hands at Team Fire’s members. Then, Lucas realized. This was the spell of the earth mage on Team Ice. The one who could cause shockwaves was quite literally doing just that — the blast that sent the combatants apart, the earthquake earlier (which Lucas had thought was caused by the dirt mage), and the invisible force that blew the stone blocks apart were all just vibrations, just at different durations and magnitudes. The arms of dirt were twisted apart into dust clouds by a long strip of lightning that seemed to act more like a somewhat rigid snake than an actual product of a storm.
A sword made of light came together in midair, casting a shadow on even the sun with its brilliance. The orc on Team Ice had finally shown his element. It swung down without warning and could only be stopped by the rock mage’s spell — a storm of stone shards that had originally been aimed at Team Ice. The moment the sword touched the stone, it exploded with a blast so violent that the rest of the stone shards were atomized.
The blast was contained by a buffer made of a forest of vines that had erupted from the islands and the depths of the sea. They stretched into the sky, cushioning the shockwave while attempting to capture the members of Team Ice. This was a plant spell on the side of Team Fire. This forest had somehow covered the whole stadium minus the bleachers — a circle with a three-fourths of a kilometer diameter!
This was explained by a blue, rapidly fading glow on the skin of the plant mage who had cast the spell — an auxiliary enhancement had been placed on her. This was likely the spell of the — lightning? Lucas assumed, remembering that there was someone who could control it — mage on Team Fire.
Now, all of the spells had been exhausted. That is, besides the most anticipated one. Although all of the other mages had casted spells at the same time, the elf seemed to have waited a little longer. The moment she released it, the reason became very apparent.
The ocean froze over, although the effect wasn’t immediately obvious, due to the giant forest. A roar sounded from deep within, followed by the entirety of the ocean cracking. It exploded into millions of shards, leaving not a single drop of liquid behind. In midair, all of the shards congregated around a glowing teal core, forming an ice giant standing at nearly one kilometer tall. As a result of this spell, the vines were shredded, replacing the dark blue of the no-longer existing sea with green. It looked as if the contestants were fighting on a large, bumpy piece of moss.
Then, as no more spells were unfinished, the ice giant began moving. All ten fighters flew into the air — the only choice in a situation where at any moment a one-hundred-and-fifty meter long foot could fall. The giant’s stride was enough to cover half of the stadium, but it didn’t bother. It lifted its leg, taking nearly five seconds to reach a stance poised to kick. The air whistled as the nearly eighty-meter-thick lower calf of the giant moved through the air.
A puny prick of lightning shot at the moving chunk of ice, bouncing off but causing a short blast that stopped the slow-moving colossus. It slammed its foot into the ground, stabilizing itself and sending a resounding shock throughout the stadium. Lucas heard his own teeth chatter. The view was entirely obscured by a sudden cloud of green specks, too, causing sneezing sounds to erupt all around.
Flashes of light brightened the decaying fog. A bright, orange one rapidly expanded and consumed the green mist — the fire mage had set the plant residues on fire and caused a magnificent fireball to erupt. The giant’s movements slowed; it was melting. Multiple shards of lightning flew through the sky, skewering the titan.
Cracks were heard as the giant fell to its knees. The fire mage raised both of his hands into the sky. A great ball of fire had formed between his hands and was rapidly expanding. As soon as it was so large that it was impossible to watch the battle without being blinded, his yell could be heard around the colosseum.
“Here comes the sun!”
Despite its size, the “sun” ripped through the air at an unimaginable speed, leaving a trail of amorphous, wavy atmosphere. In no time, it collided with the ice behemoth, ending it once and for all. The ocean was once again filled, but no longer the clear blue as before. It was now a swampy, disgusting environment. As such, no combatant was willing to descend. A clump of dirt detached from the ground and flew to each of Team Ice’s members, picking them up.
The ocean seemed to burn as well as the land, sending up plumes of black smoke and causing Lucas’s eyes to sting. The dirt mage seemed to have gone around collecting his teammates for this reason; the ground was far too dangerous for them to risk falling at all.
The clump of dirt wavered in the air after carrying the last member of Team Ice, and then began to shoot small pebbles at the individual members of Team Fire. The whizzing of the flying stones reached the ears of the audience. A vast majority of them missed their marks. The rest were caught by the individual magic of Team Fire.
Putting out the fire below them didn’t seem like a big concern to either of the teams, who both seemed to silently agree that the air was a more suitable battlefield. Thus, for the next thirty seconds of the battle, the stadium was silent but for the whistling wind blowing through. Both sides were allowing the other to recover their energy — an all-out battle looked good for both teams, regardless of win or loss.
Seeing the lack of motion on the battlefield, the commentator announced, “Two minutes left.”
This marked the end of the thirty-second break, prompting the combatants to start casting spells again. This time, the spellcasting was no longer all at once. It was now integrated into the battle itself, rather than a sort of final showdown.
A giant wyrm of flame erupted from Team Fire’s fire mage. It was like the sun from earlier — it caused the atmosphere to ripple. Its heat was tangible from the very end of the stands where Lucas and his team were watching. It shot towards the clump of dirt, bringing with it a roar that tore through the audience’s eardrums. The clump of dirt responded by dodging to the side, but this didn’t stop the wyrm. It swerved to its left, following the congregation of Team Ice.
Then, a thunder-like clap interrupted the roar, causing the flames to suddenly dissipate into nothingness. The sudden appearance of a ravine in the ground explained what had happened — a tremendous shockwave dispelled the fire, leaving the ground scathed by vibrations.
Immediately following that, twenty some knives of ice materialized next to Team Ice. They were propelled by the wind, shooting towards the five opponents. A giant slab of stone shot out of the ground. The knives sunk into the stone but could not penetrate it. The stone fell back into the earth, obscured once more by the vile mixture of green and blue.
Although it wasn’t displayed on the screen, a whirlpool that had formed was clearly detected by everyone present — a great sucking sound sputtered from the swirling mass. The culprit was displayed on the screen: the water mage from Team Fire stood in the air, supported by an invisible platform. His coat fluttered behind him, his arms crossed over his chest.
“He really likes making water spin, doesn’t he?” whispered Eren in Lucas’s ear.
“I guess,” Lucas replied.
Just as he finished his sentence, the vortex suddenly began shrinking. The liquid inside sloshed and swirled all the more violently. It sounded as if water was being drained rapidly from an overlarge sink. When the eddy converged into a single point, the water inside exploded, sending green sludge into the air, where they immediately formed small pellets and shot themselves at Team Ice. The clump of dirt shook and fell twenty meters, dodging the onslaught of green water.
“Feels like it’s going to be a tie. The battle is way too even,” Vaelith said.
“Yeah,” Cairen agreed. “I think it might just end up coming down to some minor scratch on one of Team Ice’s members.”
The fire mage on Team Fire suddenly flew towards Team Ice. He drew his arms back, conjuring dancing balls of blue flame in his palm. Team Ice’s members were on guard, expecting an attack at any moment.
But none came. The fire mage whizzed straight past the clump of dirt.
Instead, an onslaught of stone columns attacked the unaware members of Team Ice, knocking the floating clump of dirt straight out of the sky. At this moment, the fire mage finally made his move: his balls of blue fire each expanded into five swirling dragons that assaulted the falling members on Team Ice.
A spheric shield of ice was all that protected the falling mages from the external fire. The dirt mage seemed to be recovering from having such a large spell cut short by the opposing team. A bright flash of light illuminated the ice shield from within, blinding Lucas for its duration.
When the light dissipated, the audience was met with a beautiful sight — the ice had augmented itself with uncountable strands that twirled into circles, drawing themselves down to the murky ground. The resultant ice sculpture looked like a vague castle — not those from real life, but those from fantasies that sat upon high hills with thin, elegant buttresses, tall and narrow doors, and elaborate designs upon the railings for their staircases. It held a vague pyramid structure, opening down at the ground and converging at the top. What resembled a central spire appeared to puncture the original shield-ball of ice.
And from this graceful form drifted a light, cold breeze. It drafted over the faces of the audience, a comfortable and caressing boon of nature. Light blue snowflakes drifted through the air, bringing the cerulean tinge of the sky to the air before Lucas. The scene was the ultimate picture of ataraxia — Team Fire’s members also seemed to be in a daze.
The ice’s color began becoming more translucent, causing the castle to take on a rather eidolic feel. The now-ghostly blue shadow in the middle of the battlefield looked like a beautiful princess clad in the most carefully ordained dress standing upon a verdigrised clump of dirt.
Then, just as the ice began feeling divine in its serenity, it shattered. Violently. The shards of ice torn asunder flew outwards, embedding the ground, the stone walls, the residual stone with azure sparkles. The flying shards punctured some of the opposing combatants, as well.
The lightning mage’s robe was now stained with a rapidly growing and obvious patch of red. The plant mage had just barely managed to protect herself with a quick, rectangular patch of hard bark. From the screen, Lucas could tell that some of the shards had their tips poking through the other side.
“The time is up.” The commentator’s words came booming over the crowd. “Team Seradell wins due to lesser injuries.”
“Team Seradell is Team Ice?” Lucas asked.
“Who’s Team Ice?” Eren replied, reminding Lucas that this was a name he had privately come up with.
“If you mean the one with the flashy ice entrance, then yes,” Cairen said. “I think they used the light to conceal what was really happening. I counted and it lasted for nearly ten seconds, which was more than enough for Seradell to cast a spell like that.”
“What year are they in?” Vaelith asked.
“Team Seradell has three sixth-years, including Seradell herself, and two fifth-years. Team Blackmere has three fifth-years and two sixth-years. Blackmere’s the fire mage,” Cairen clarified.
“Blackmere is a weird first name for a human,” Eren noted. “You’d think he was a dwarf purely from his name. And didn’t you say that these were fourth- and fifth-years? What’s the point of sixth years competing?”
“I’m not too clear on Blackmere’s family’s circumstances, so don’t ask me,” said Cairen. “And when did I ever say that these were fourth- and fifth-years? You must be mistaken. As for why sixth years are competing, why not? It’s fun, after all. Besides, even if they already have prospective careers, they could be here to secure another path if their current one turns out to fail. But I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the sixth-years participating are just here for the vibes.”
“When’s the next match happening?” Lucas asked.
“In fifteen minutes, I’d say,” answered Cairen.
“So why did the school clear so much time for matches that only last ten minutes? Apparently, for the duration of this entire week, nobody has to take classes in the morning.”
This time, it was Vaelith who answered. “This is the last week of school, didn’t you know? We’re just having fun. Basically, all of the time in the mornings that isn’t taken up by the matches are just for the students to relax. The classes that the non-competing students have to take in the afternoon also apparently are just for fun. Seralyne told me.”
“Who?” Eren asked, squinting his eyes in suspicion.
“My roommate. Don’t tell me you didn’t know her name this entire time.”
“You never told us her name,” Eren responded, feigning aggrievance.
“Oh, look,” Lucas said, trying to prevent any escalation. “The terrain is changing.”
The turbid, green liquid seemed to be evaporating, leaving peat-dark, decomposed plant matter drying on the ground. The former islands, which now took on the shape of small hills, quietly sunk back into the rest of the level battlefield. The putrescent remains of the plant mage’s magic seemed to be swept away by an eraser.
After the revolting matter had been wiped away, the colosseum began filling itself with dirt. When the dirt had reached a designated height, it was topped with verdant grass. Boards appeared out of thin air, stacking themselves into houses, lampposts, and horseless carriages. Other miscellaneous items and structures appeared, but none that would look out of place in a village. Once all of the buildings had completed themselves, a gravelled path laid itself out, intertwining in the approximately four hundred and forty thousand square meter circle, leading out of the village in only two points — the competitors’ entrances.
The lamps flared into life, the flames jumping within causing the interiors of the houses to flicker with visual sentience. Soon, the commentator flew back into the stadium, announcing the teams.
“Now, these are fourth-years,” Cairen said.
A deep, unstopping boom reverberated within the stadium’s stone itself, growing larger with every passing second. It sounded as if a great ball were rolling through a smooth, echoing tunnel — and that was exactly what it was. A giant, gray ball of stone emerged from the east tunnel, flying up before crashing down into the gravelly path. The stone sphere melted right before Lucas’s eyes, revealing five fourth-years — Team Rhysek.
The other team’s entrance was less suspenseful. A simple flash of white light outlined the figures of the team. The light flew around the colosseum, going through all of the colors of the rainbow before finally exploding into a vibrant star of a conglomeration of every color.
“Team Kerrath — four fifth-years and one fourth-year. The fourth-year and two of the fifth-years are very close cousins, apparently,” Iriyen said.
“How do you know? They’re three years older than you,” asked Lucas.
“They’re closely related to Iriyen’s original family,” Cairen replied.
“Original family?” Vaelith inquired. None of the three first-years had ever heard of this before.
“It’s not something of particular importance,” Cairen said dismissively. Knowing tact, the curious first-years did not press the topic.
The battle had begun. Both teams seemed to have come to unspoken terms of trench warfare. Neither side seemed to wish to reveal their true abilities beyond what the opposing team may have gathered from their previous battles. They hid behind and within houses, using the terrain to their utmost advantage. Lucas did not agree. If he were the stone mage, he would’ve just rolled around the battlefield in the ball.
After about a minute of anticlimax, Team Stone spread out and hid behind different structures. Team Kerrath began moving together, advancing slowly on the battlefield. Every one of them faced a different direction so as to prepare for a potential attack from any side. They trudged through the eerily quiet village, the crunching of the gravel the only sound reverberating.
There was no other sound for the next two minutes. Lucas noticed five small, white balls that trailed with white essence seemed to be leaking from Team Kerrath. They were drawing out in spirals every few seconds, phasing through the walls that stood in their way. They vanished when a new wave began, leaving no trace of their original existence.
“Why don’t they just use the Enhanced Eye?” Lucas asked, guessing that the light was used for scouting and seeing behind walls.
“The Enhanced Eye, since it is a physical application of your Will, causes you to actually be visible from far distances and through walls to anyone with a high enough level of the Will. It’s the same for your reinforcement, actually. That was why no one was really using it during the battles before, since it would give away your position to the seniors,” Eren said.
“How do you know so much about the Will? Last I checked, you didn’t even want to read the book that Professor Morrix gave me.”
“That’s only because I already know everything that’s in it.”
“No, you don’t. What’s a positive technique?”
“A technique that allows its user’s Will to enhance any element of magic. The counterpart is, of course, a negative technique.” Eren’s tone was so confident that it destroyed any hope of gaslighting him to believe otherwise.
“What’s a progressive technique?”
“It’s not defined in the book, but it’s one that becomes stronger as you practice using it. A stagnant technique is probably easier to define. Cairen’s technique is a stagnant technique. Basically what it means is that your technique does become qualitatively more powerful with the sole exception of Revelation Abilities. Someone with a stagnant technique can only become stronger by increasing their other attributes, like endurance, their Will, and probably other stuff, I don’t know.”
“Dang it. I thought you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t in the book.”
“I told you, I already know everything in it. Anyways, we’re missing out on the battle,” Eren said, cutting off any retort Lucas might have tried to come up with.
Team Kerrath’s spiraling detection system seemed to have detected one of Team Stone’s members. The white orbs didn’t seem to be visible to the five members on the opposing team, or else the rather short Team Stone member who had been hiding behind an overturned cart would have noticed them float by. The white orb flew up a few meters upon contact, pulsing into a large white ball.
“That’s a really good example of an actually practical spell. No one goes about their daily lives throwing out those flashy spells of those sixth- and fifth-years from before; no job is that dangerous, after all,” Cairen said. He seemed to appreciate utility over visuals.
“What about hunters and adventurers?” Eren asked.
“What wild animals have you seen warrant magic on that ice giant’s level? And adventurers rarely get missions that are so high-difficulty. Any matter that would require so much magic output would probably be assigned to official mages rather than private, guild-enlisted ones,” retorted Vaelith.
“I don’t really know about adventurers, but I kind of agree with Eren on the hunter part. From what I can tell, you’re from a sort of middle-class village aren’t you?” Lucas asked. He continued without expecting an answer, “But I come from a rural village. Everward has a few places that are considered taboo because of how dangerous the creatures that inhabit them are.”
“What Lucas said is true, Vaelith,” Iriyen agreed. “We have to remember that intelligent creatures like us aren’t the only ones with magic at their disposal. Common animals have no way to know that using their innate elements leads to mental debilitation since no one tells them so. That way, the older they get, and especially the longer they live in perilous areas, the more unhinged they are and likely to lash out at passersby as a form of a heightened and primitive self defense and territorial instinct.”
“Oh, so that’s why we’re supposed to avoid shallow leyline regions as much as possible. They’re more dangerous and therefore require the organisms inhabiting them to use more magic to stay alive, thus corrupting the animals that are capable of using magic more,” Vaelith nodded. “Are there any animals that can’t use magic in any form then?”
“Certainly, but very few. Some insects can’t use magic and those that can instinctively use it sparingly. They can’t spend too much energy into producing Azla, you know. The larger an animal gets, typically the more likely they are to be able to use magic. We learned this about a month ago,” Cairen answered.
The match had begun developing. Team Kerrath had apprehended the rather short member on Team Stone, who sent a blast of fire into the air, signifying his capture. The remaining four members of Team Stone, who now knew where Team Kerrath was, silently moved to a predetermined location behind a cluster of three houses.
Just as the last member of Team Stone arrived at the meeting spot, they fired a giant blast of hot magma at the general direction of Team Kerrath. It eviscerated the wooden houses, sending the wooden planks and straw roofs tumbling to the ground, only to be swallowed by the tumbling flow and crash of the viscous, black-and-red mass.
Team Kerrath had next to no time to defend. However, one of their members managed to stop the flow in its tracks, creating an invisible wall of air at which the flood had no choice but to halt. With the calamity averted, Team Kerrath dashed to the origin of the attack, carrying the incapacitated enemy.
“Was that a spell?” asked Lucas.
“I don’t think so. It looked more like they heated the stone as it came out,” whispered Eren.
The magma solidified into an amorphous, black shape that was littered with shattered wooden planks, vestiges of carts and barrels, and glittering pieces of shattered glass. The battlefield no longer provided any protection. It was merely a comparatively flat, ugly mass of dark colors haphazardly molded like a soup made from dirt and ashes. This bleak scene was accentuated by the steady fall of gray volcanic ash, seemingly simulating a post-eruption scene. This same ash had also blotted out the bright sun, turning the sky dun gray rather than cerulean blue.
But this environment seemed to suit Team Stone very well. The stone mage repeatedly conjured massive globes of stone and rolled them across the slightly bumpy mixture of pumice and obsidian, turning the entire colosseum into a circus of constantly rebounding stones and their resultant grinding noises. Even without crashing into one another, the great spheres would have caused a great din with their consistent rumbling, a noise that shook the bleachers themselves.
Amidst this fury of slate, the unprepared Team Kerrath had no comprehensive solution to the onslaught. The best they could do was fend off the balls as they came close, an occurrence whose time interval was less than five seconds.
Lucas was rather horrified. Didn’t Team Stone care about the member who had been caught by Team Kerrath? It seemed as if it was a foregone conclusion that the captured teammate was worthless and no longer deserving of care. The surrounding audience members also seemed to be shocked on the same lines.
Then, out of nowhere, the stone mage raised his arms to just above shoulder height. It was as if he were praising some almighty power in the sky, but his head and eyes were pointed at the vague location of Team Kerrath. Four stone walls crashed out of the ground, creating a prison of rock and flinging a few of the rolling spheres into the air.
The stone crashed back into the ground with resounding bangs. The balls now bounced between the much smaller area, decreasing the interval between each hit of the stones. Just as the scene felt impossibly bleak for Team Kerrath, a great explosion launched all five members into the air. The blast also annihilated the surrounding rocks, leaving a large crater smoking in the sludge-like ground.
Despite the violent force, Team Kerrath remained largely unharmed. From the crystalline screen, it seemed as if the debris and shrapnel flung by the bomb dealt more damage to the grounded members on Team Stone. At the very least, two of them were nursing small scrapes. The member who had been captured earlier had been, and still was, carried by a member of Team Kerrath.
A series of explosions rang out. A line composed purely of fireballs flashed in the air and disappeared as quickly as they came. A small yellow dot streaked down towards Team Stone. It was a fire mage.
“That’s Kerrath,” Cairen whispered, pointing.
A small spark broke from Kerrath’s body and faded away. It was followed by more sparks. Before long, the fire mage was surrounded by a raging flame that wove around him like a blanket of heat. It stretched behind him to form a magnificent tail. The flames originated an orangish-red color but quickly burst into a bright, neon blue. The moment the color crossed the threshold from warm to cool, another explosion rang out.
The blue line tore through the atmosphere, seemingly igniting the air itself. The sound of a crackling flame met Lucas’s ears. A few more series of blasts rang out before the fire mage finally crashed into the ground.
The result was a great discharge. The blast caused a blossoming dust cloud that proliferated in the air, spreading out and creating a haze on top of the previous volcanic ash. When the black mist faded away, a gaping crater that seemed to stretch for who knows how deep met Lucas’s eyes. It was nearly fifty meters wide. Residual fire burned in its mouth, dancing on no fuel but a powerful will to live.
The heat flew past Lucas’s face, giving him a taste of the smoky smell of the fire before sweeping past and leaving him with the sticky sweet smell of spring-turn-summer. As for the aftermath, it was not clear until nearly fifteen seconds later. A bright, yellow light resurfaced from the hole that had been punched into the ground.
It was outlandishly bright, as if it were a drop taken straight from the sun. The light began settling as the figure of Kerrath reappeared within it. The fire around his body did not go out completely. It became a flickering shield that reinforced his body, incinerating all of the floating ashes around him.
Four columns of fire spread from his body. They started out by stretching outwards horizontally, growing larger in width as well as length over time. Then, they began curving downwards. Each column of fire was a good ten meters wide. They all swirled like tornados that had been confined to a cylindrical container, blazing with a fury no other element could display. The streams of fire reached downwards slowly, like a hunkering giant meandering across a field.
Soon, the purpose of these slow, gargantuan pieces of flame became clear. Four figures flew out of the hole, scattering in different directions — the fire was to smoke them out of hiding. However, as soon as the other four members of Team Kerrath saw Team Stone escaping the crater, they began attacking.
Flashes of light streaked across the field, accompanied by thin blasts of water. The light mage who had created the dramatic entry from earlier had begun attacking with a water mage, attempting to catch Team Stone off guard. The other two team members on Team Kerrath seemed to be a recovery and an auxiliary, which explained how they had managed to survive the earlier onslaught of stone balls.
A ball of water hit one of the members of Team Stone squarely on the jaw, sending him flying to the ground. A ray of light skewered the arm of the stone mage of Team Stone. The stone mage quickly regained his balance and hovered in midair, holding onto his arm, wincing. The other two members managed to escape without being hit, eventually circling back and joining the stone mage in the air.
“All of the battles seem to end up in the air, don't they?” whispered Eren. Lucas nodded in reply.
The columns of fire that had been summoned by the fire mage now no longer served any purpose. They exploded, widening the crater and sending scrap flying across the stadium yet again. Kerrath ignited both of his arms. He seemed to require no break between spells. The fire around his hands formed gauntlets, but it didn’t seem that he intended to use them as such. He punched the air with his right fist, launching the glove of flame at the congregated members of Team Stone.
The attack was not restricted to merely this one single jab. Kerrath shot his other gauntlet and immediately reignited both of his arms. He repeated this series of actions around ten to twenty times, forcing a mage on Team Stone to conjure a shield of water. The fire immediately extinguished upon every meeting with the water, but not without testing the limits of the water mage’s durability.
The incessant attacks allowed the water mage on Team Kerrath to turn the shield to his own ends. He gained control of the water, enclosing Team Stone in a spherical cage. The opposing water mage could not carry his warning to his teammates quickly enough. The team was now no longer capable of launching any counterattacks.
“What do they do now?” Lucas asked.
“Beats me,” replied Eren. “I would not like to be caught in that situation.”
Before anyone else could answer, a giant, green razor tore across the stadium and sliced the bubble of entrapment in half. They had all forgotten about the member of Team Stone who had been sent flying by a ball of water!
Numerous verdant needles formed in the sky, locking on to Kerrath’s teammate who had been carrying the mage on Team Stone since the very start of the battle. To evade the needles, she had no choice but to drop the fourth-year. The needles formed a platform that caught the falling Team Stone member, pulling him back to the plant mage.
The liberated mage intertwined his fingers. He pushed them away from himself, as if he were stretching. But it was apparent that this wasn’t his intention. A large, black shape exploded out of the cooled magma, extricating itself from the hardened ground. When the dust cloud settled, the audience was allowed one good look at it before it pounced on Team Kerrath.
It was a lizard, but its entire body was jet black. Its mouth was wide open, its chin very large and bulbous. Every orifice on its body was emitting bright white light — its eyes and its mouth, essentially. It had no nose nor any ears. There were no distinguishable scales. In fact, if not for its four-leggedness and its tail, it would have looked almost nothing like a lizard.
The black lizard, as Lucas called it because he was too lazy to come up with a more fitting description, was already in the air by the time anyone registered its appearance. Its wide mouth appeared right before Team Kerrath’s members. Before they could react, it fired a giant beam of white light across the stadium.
The five members of Team Kerrath were blown halfway across the field, each and every one of them skidding and rolling for a good ten seconds before coming to a stop. When they got up, they seemed to be grimacing due to a number of injuries dealt by both the hard ground and the beam itself. The recovery mage healed her teammates by creating a large cage of what looked like wind. Their burns melted away and their cuts began closing.
“Eren, why couldn’t you do something like this?” Lucas asked.
“Because our opponents didn’t realize that you guys were being reinforced with your Will until it was too late. A reinforcement like yours would have probably required them to use their Will to reinforce their own magic, and I doubt that any of us have reached the level of bypassing our Will-magic compatibility,” said Eren.
“Meh meh meh meh,” bantered Lucas. “Whatever you say. And you don’t need to bypass your Will-magic compatibility if you’re just reinforcing your own magic.”
“Well, whatever it was, they didn’t break through your reinforcement for some reason.”
“I think it’s because no one else was allowed to use Will reinforcement,” reminded Vaelith.
The giant salamander landed on the ground with a reverberating crash. The bleachers shook a little, inciting a few screams. It quickly got back on its feet. It prepared for another blast, opening its mouth wide. However, before it could do anything, it began wavering. Its black body faded in and out of sight before finally dissipating into nothingness.
Team Kerrath seemed to have someone who was rather proficient with the Will. When the black monster was gone, the five members of Team Kerrath ran towards the previously captured member of Team Stone, barraging him with a series of attacks not limited to the three non-auxiliary mages’ elements.
The mage was incapable of creating another black monstrosity under the pressure. He was limited to creating a thin piece of black matter that shielded him from the bombardment. However, Team Kerrath was not only focusing on this one mage. Especially not Kerrath himself.
He blasted himself off of the ground, fire crackling at his feet as he stabilized himself in the air. He struck at the air behind him, causing another explosion that flung him towards the other three members of Team Stone. He once again covered himself in flame, repeating detonations time and time again, boosting himself even further.
Suddenly, Lucas heard a giant boom. Without questioning how he knew, Lucas immediately understood that Kerrath had broken the sound barrier. From the screen above, it didn’t seem as though his body was taking any damage from the relentless acceleration, despite how recklessly he was acting.
Then his lack of injury was explained. The air around him was warping — a phenomenon that Lucas had thoughtlessly assigned to his fire. But it was apparent what it was now. The recovery wind mage had been supplying him with constant healing. Lucas repeated his observations to Eren.
“Doesn’t that hurt a lot, though?” Lucas asked.
“I guess it does, but the strategy seems to be pretty effective,” replied Eren.
Vaelith shivered. “Imagine fighting with the feeling that your body is being burned and torn to shreds.”
Kerrath shot past the three members that he was aiming for. A discharge sounded as the trail of fire suddenly redirected to the side. Thunder-like claps sounded twice more, drawing the outline of a yellow square in the air. All of this happened within two seconds. Team Stone had originally prepared for an attack from the front, but this was no longer valid. The attack was from the side now.
With no time to defend, all three members were sent flying by a magnificent blast composed of a temporary, spheric swirling mixture of red and yellow. Then, like a bubble, it burst with such a tremendous sound and shockwave that Lucas suspected that its three recipients might no longer have been alive.
However, this was not the case. Despite not having had time to defend, the three mages had reinforced their own bodies with their Will prior to Kerrath’s attack. They crashed into the ground with second degree burns.
“Why do all of the fire users feel so crazy?” said Eren.
“I dunno. I think you’d look crazy no matter how you use your power if you only create explosions,” Lucas replied.
“Yeah, but he’s literally burning his own body and having it healed at the same time. That’s got to be so painful… And just for a tournament, too.” Vaelith said.
“Well, this tournament is rather more important than most,” Cairen commented.
“Even so…”
Just as the three members on Team Stone were struggling to their feet, a word rang out.
“Time.” The commentator had announced the end. “Team Kerrath wins due to lesser injuries.”
Applause broke out around the stadium, but they were also accompanied by murmurs. Not the distrustful or malicious kind at the end of Lucas’s first battle. The kind that stood in wonder. The kind that held prospect. The kind that believed.
“Are all students like them nowadays?”
“Look at this generation. Just imagine the future.”
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