Chapter 25

Shannon’s surprise attack almost worked.

That is, if I hadn’t been prepared.

[Casting Frost Shield spell.]

[Remaining mana: 99.87%]

The magical explosion left no smoke behind.

The spell Shannon used was likely a low-rank gas explosion.

It was a spell with a setting where water was electrolyzed into hydrogen and oxygen and then ignited to detonate a hydrogen bomb.

Though it was labeled as “low-rank”, it was classified as a 5th-class spell and required delicate control over three elements.

Not just anyone could be called a genius, I suppose.

I had to admit. I was impressed.

Of course, that didn’t stop my mouth.

“You challenged me to a duel with just that level of skill?”

I saw Shannon’s expression twist as she muttered something.

But I could only see her lips move, I couldn’t hear a thing.

All I could hear was a sharp ringing in my ears.

“…So that’s what you were aiming for. You know how to fight smart, huh.”

The explosion had stunned my eardrums.

In a battle between mages, hearing was critical.

Because if you hear the incantation, you can anticipate the spell and prepare for it in advance.

That’s why a skilled battle mage would first disable the opponent’s hearing like this, then follow up with a powerful strike at this very moment…. the timing they’d find hardest to react to.

Just like Shannon was doing now.

“……!”

When her silent mouth movements finally ended—

Flash!

A blinding light flared from Shannon’s fingertips.

And right after that—

A bolt of white lightning tore through the air and shot toward me.

Too fast for any ordinary person to react.

A follow-up strike, without a doubt. A potential finishing blow.

But like I said before…

I was a veteran of this game.

[Casting Palette Swap spell.]

I activated the spell I had kept circulating through my magic circuit ever since the duel began.

***

“…Left arm of the Thunder God. The second spear that cleaves the storm. Percival’s surging lightning!”

After she finished her long incantation, Shannon unleashed the completed spell toward Professor Winslet.

It was the second spell in the Percival’s Five Lightnings series—

A lightning spell specialized in single-target lethality. It was one of Shannon’s signature moves.

Flash!

The first burst of light tore through the air, filling the space with a white current.

Rumble!

The trembling that followed in the air was unmistakably thunder.

But the moment the surge of lightning reached the professor, Shannon’s eyes widened in shock.

“No way! It disappeared?”

The lightning that had charged toward the professor disappeared without a trace!

…No, Shannon realized—

The lightning hadn’t disappeared. It had changed.

From lightning… into wind.

Whoosh.

Golden hair fluttered in the breeze.

Within the now-gentle gust, Professor Winslet cast her an arrogant glance.

Even that was a scene beautiful enough to be a painting.

Not that Shannon had any desire to admire such a scene.

“…Palette Swap?”

Finally realizing the professor’s trick, Shannon bit her lower lip.

Palette Swap. It was a high-rank spell that manipulated the elemental attribute of mana.

In other words, with just a single gesture, Professor Winslet had transformed the lightning Shannon had fired into wind.

Shannon didn’t want to admit it, but it was an incredibly fitting defense for Winter Winslet. It was elegant and refined.

She muttered to herself as if trying to convince herself,

“I can do that too.”

But could she really cast a spell at lightning speed like the professor had, without any incantation or magic circle?

Before reaching a conclusion, Shannon stopped thinking.

This wasn’t the time to be caught up in impressions like that.

If a prepared move had been countered, she just had to coolly think of the next one.

“Hoo…”

Shannon took a deep breath to regain her focus on the fight.

Then, a beat later, she noticed something strange.

“…My breath?”

The breath she exhaled had turned white in the air.

A biting chill.

At some point, the temperature in the dueling hall had dropped.

But when had it started?

Crack. Creak.

Startled by the sound of hard surfaces grinding, Shannon quickly looked up.

And she witnessed sharp icicles growing in mid-air.

The elongated, pointed masses were shaped like arrows.

One, two, three, four… they multiplied in an instant, soon filling the air completely.

It was unmistakably Professor Winslet’s magic.

For a mage who could only cast spells within their own mana field, generating and firing projectiles was the most basic and primal form of attack.

However, once their number exceeded four digits, the legion of ice arrows became something that could no longer be ignored.

Shannon bit her lower lip and hurriedly prepared her defense.

At that moment,

Professor Winslet snapped his fingers.

Snap!

As if in response to the signal, invisible archers released their drawn strings.

The countless icicle arrows hanging in the air rained down toward Shannon.

***

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Crash!

The noise, like someone smashing 60 glass plates per second onto the floor, lasted for more than twenty seconds.

It was the sound of ice arrows being fired in succession, shattering as they collided with the ones already embedded.

Winter Winslet who was a holder of “S-Rank” in ice element talent was practically the incarnation of ice itself.

A 2nd-class spell like conjuring and firing ice arrows was something he could cast as naturally as breathing.

All I did was repeat that.

The result was an overwhelming display of sheer numbers.

[Ending Frost Arrow spell.]

[Remaining mana: 97.02%]

By the time the number of arrows fired at Shannon surpassed 1,400, I withdrew the spell.

After all, my goal wasn’t to skewer her to death.

Fsssshhh…

The mist, made from shattered ice fragments, quickly dispersed and vanished.

As the hazy veil lifted, Shannon stood in its place.

“I thought you’d be a pincushion by now, but not bad.”

In front of her stood a wall of earth as tall as she was.

It seemed she had hidden behind it to escape the hail of arrows.

To think she had the presence of mind to pull sand from the ground and raise a wall in that brief moment—

It was a decent improvisation.

If it had been a simple sand wall, it would’ve been pierced by the mass and volume of ice.

But what Shannon had created was a composite barrier of sand and magical power.

Just like mixing gravel and sand into cement to create concrete, reinforcing a magical shield with aggregate increased its strength and durability.

A battle style focused entirely on efficiency.

Shannon clearly knew how the weak should face the strong.

Not that it mattered. At the end of the day, it was still just a desperate trick pulled off by the weak.

“Do you understand the difference now? You will never be able to defeat me.”

“You don’t know that until we test it, do you?”

“Only fools need to test before they realize the truth. Don’t you see? You can barely stand on your own two legs.”

Shannon, who had been trembling without realizing it, snapped back and stood upright.

“It’s just because it’s cold!”

Shannon snapped back with that retort and started shaking her head irritably.

Every time her long hair swayed from side to side, shards of ice tumbled off in a shower.

Well, considering how many ice arrows had shattered right in front of her, it was no wonder she looked like a walking shaved ice dessert.

I deliberately provoked her further.

“I’ll be generous. For now, I’ll settle for just a shoe.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, beg for your life while licking my shoe. Say you were too young to know better, and plead for forgiveness. I’ll consider showing mercy.”

“As if I would ever do that, you idiot!”

Shannon snapped with a sharp bite in her voice and readied herself for battle again.

She quickly chanted a few lines of incantation, then pressed both palms to the sandy floor.

The magic Shannon activated belonged to the fire element.

Heat began to radiate beneath the soles of my feet.

Was she trying to bake the ground or something?

I quickly understood what she intended.

Fwooshhh…

It was fog.

The training ground was still littered with the shattered remnants of the ice arrows I had fired.

When the heat radiated from Shannon’s hands warmed the sandy ground, that ice began to melt and boil.

The rising steam met the still-cold air and formed a thick layer of fog.

The mist soon rose up to knee height.

It continued to build like floodwater rising after heavy rain.

I tried stirring up some wind, but it was pointless.

No matter how much air I displaced in this enclosed space, the fog just rushed back in from the opposite side to fill the void.

Eventually, when the fog rose to the level of my chest, Shannon’s figure was the first to disappear into the white veil.

Ironically, the difference in our height had become an advantage.

“Losing the initiative because of arrogance… I wouldn’t have made that kind of mistake.”

Leaving those words behind, Shannon erased her presence.

Was she planning a sneak attack under the cover of fog?

Not a bad choice.

If this weren’t a battle between mages, that is.

I immediately expanded my mana field.

For a mage, a mana field was like a second sense and an extension of presence.

Every mage possessed their own unique mana field, and mana fields naturally repelled one another.

That meant wherever I felt resistance, Shannon would be there.

“Hmm.”

But Shannon’s mana field wasn’t anywhere to be sensed.

Did she deliberately suppress her mana field to avoid detection?

Shannon was demonstrating a level of skill well beyond expectations.

Still, restricting her mana field would make it harder for her to cast spells herself.

So then, what was she planning now?

Flash.

As if answering my question, a small flare of light pierced through the fog at the 11 o’clock direction to my left.

A moment later, a surge of mana.

I immediately deployed a barrier.

[Casting Frost Shield.]

But nothing came flying from that direction.

A standard decoy.

It was likely a trick using a delayed-activation magic circle.

Without hesitation, I turned around.

And there she was…Shannon who burst through the fog from behind locked eyes with me.

“How predictable.”

“Yaaahhh!”

Shannon shouted as she leaped forward. She thrust her outstretched right hand straight toward my face.

“You never stray from my expectations.”

I caught her wrist with my left hand.

Then, with my free right hand, I grabbed her by the collar and slammed her into the ground in a move like an over-the-shoulder throw.

Thud!

A dull impact sounded as Shannon’s back hit the sandy floor.

But it wasn’t over yet.

I twisted the wrist I still had in my grasp.

Whoosh!

A blade of wind narrowly grazed past my ear.

Shannon’s final trick, which she had held in reserve, missed entirely….and only sliced off a few strands of my hair in vain.

“Hh—ghk…!”

Shannon gasped belatedly. She was clearly struggling to breathe from the impact of being slammed to the ground.

That was the moment the battle was decided.

Looking down on Shannon from the winner’s position, I declared the duel’s conclusion.

“You leaped around like a grasshopper, but playtime’s over, Shannon Quinlivan.”

A look of defeat washed over Shannon’s face.