episode_0131

“Haa, haaa….”

Luke, glaring at me with intense eyes after being hit by a vision arrow on his left forearm.

The look in his eyes indicated a slight change in attitude towards our duel just now.

Not only did he fail in his attempt to stab me in one fell swoop as soon as we started, but he also allowed me to counter his first attack.

From now on, she probably won’t treat me as just a novice magician who can only use magic.

I would have liked her to maintain that complacency until the end of the evaluation match, but Luke was a character with excellent situational awareness on the field.

Perhaps now, instead of recklessly rushing at me with a dagger, there was a possibility of her making more efficient attacks.

As the situation changed, she quietly waited for her other attacks to come flying at me.

“……”

-Parvabat!

First, she moved her feet around me in a circle, trying to avoid the vision-blocking magic she just used.

If this were a normal battle between a rogue class and a magician class, Luke’s actions wouldn’t have been very wise. Approaching a magician and an archer in battle by keeping a distance would just make you a living target.

However, I was not an ordinary magician in that I could engage in close combat, and Luke was not just an ordinary rogue fighting with only two daggers.

Sharp blade-like objects from her hand began to fly towards me, about six of them each.

-Pishoot!

Indeed, she immediately switched to this pattern after giving up on close combat.

While the impact was weaker compared to wielding a dagger directly, the ability to attack from a distance was there.

And creating sharp blades while moving quickly in multiple directions made it a quite challenging attack.

It was impossible to dodge all of them with my body, and it was also impossible to parry them all with a dagger.

For an ordinary magician, it would have been a situation where they would have to think about getting pierced by a few blades and escaping.

Fortunately, I was not an ordinary magician, and I was not just a magician.

-Tuk! Tuduk! Tuk!

-Chaeng! Chaejaeng!

The last basic skill of the auxiliary magic tree, Vision Shield.

This was a magic I had prepared to face Luke, just like the blurry vision. I thought she would definitely attempt a long-range attack.

Of course, the Vision Shield was a skill that could only block a few flying blades before being destroyed among shield-type magics, but it was enough for me in my current state.

Using triple casting to protect three sides of my body simultaneously and parrying the blades that came from the remaining side with a sword.

I could easily replenish the Vision Shield, as my magical power exceeded 2000, making it more than enough.

-Shiiing!!

“Dieeee!!”

The sound of thin blades flying mixed with a slightly heavy sound.

This was a sound I had often heard while playing “Luminor Academy,” so I quickly turned my body towards the direction where Luke’s voice was heard.

Using the sword I had in my left hand to aim precisely at my heart among the thin blades, Luke’s dagger flew towards me.

-Chaeaaang!

As soon as my sword hit, the sharp dagger twisted in mid-air and flew upwards.

Just by parrying the blade that was flying towards me, I could see how determined he was to finish me off, as sparks flew.

“Damn, I really thought I was done for.”

The dagger that flew from her hand was clearly different from the thin dagger in terms of weight alone.

If she hadn’t used the shockwave in accordance with the situation of the clash, she would have undoubtedly pierced my heart, or perhaps failed to deflect the trajectory perfectly and received a wound somewhere on my body.

Even if I had relied solely on my vision shield and relaxed, I would probably have been pierced through.

Since dagger throwing was Luke’s most powerful skill at this time, Luke probably intended to finish me off with this one move.

Judging that it was impossible to swing properly with my injured left hand, I used the finishing move at the moment that seemed most vulnerable.

Fortunately, the fact that her finishing move just failed tilted the momentum of the duel almost entirely in my favor.

With only one dagger in hand, Luke’s perceived combat power was reduced by about 30-40%, so in terms of overall combat capability, it was natural for me to be ahead of her.

Even the thin daggers she had been throwing around seemed to have been almost depleted, with an anxious expression. Of course, even if there were a few left, they would still be blocked by my vision shield, but…

“….”

The problem was that I was still not in a good position to finish off Luke.

To win the duel, I needed to use Mana Blast in a situation where I could definitely hit her, but the fact that such a situation did not arise was the biggest problem.

To use Mana Blast, which had a long casting time and left me vulnerable during use, I needed to subdue her more effectively than I was doing now.

Mana Blast was not an efficient magic to use in person-to-person combat, and it was a magic used for party hunting or as a last resort.

Injuring one arm, blocking all long-range throwing methods, and even taking away the left dagger I held in my hand were not enough to say that I had subdued her effectively.

“The best thing to do is somehow get close to her and bind her body with Mana Chains.”

Just as the first ‘enhancement technique’ of attack magic was Mana Blast, the first ‘enhancement technique’ of support magic was Mana Chains.

If the opponent was at a similar level or lower, it was a technique that bound them for 10 seconds without fail.

The problem was that to use this technique, I had to approach close enough to clash daggers, and since the opponent was a person, there was a possibility that she would feel uncomfortable and try to escape when I approached.

…I had no choice. I had to call Luke over to my side here.

I wasn’t very confident in provoking her, but since I had tried to attack Luke in my past life, I had a good enough understanding of what she liked and what made her angry.

Quietly opening my mouth, I turned Luke’s gaze, who was standing still and staring at me, towards me.

“Have you done everything you can?”

“…No.”

“Really? Then why are you just standing there?”

“…I don’t know.”

“Tech Department Vice-Chairman confidently applied for the evaluation match, so I thought there was something, but it’s more pathetic than I thought?”

“….”

Listening to my words, Luke bit her lower lip and fixed her gaze filled with anger on me.

I casually picked up the dagger that had fallen in front of me, ignoring her gaze, and held the left dagger in her hand that seemed to have been a gift from Seraphine in my right hand.

I examined it closely while slowly memorizing the incantation for the ‘Mana Chains’ spell that I could activate at any moment.

“Isn’t this the one you were holding in your left hand just now?”

“…Don’t touch it.”

“Why? Did you just throw it away like trash?”

“Don’t call it trash!”

“….”

“It’s definitely effective. It must be because it’s related to Seraphine.”

Well, I knew better than anyone that this dagger was a good item, being a player of ‘Luminor Academy’. Seraphine wouldn’t have given Luke any useless equipment in the first place.

But in order to draw her towards me, I needed to provoke Luke with strong words.

Just to clarify, I wasn’t being arrogant because I wanted to. It was just a necessary provocation to bring her towards me.

I had to convey completely different emotions than my true intentions to Luke, just in case he caught on that I was manipulating her movements.

Without doing so, it would be practically impossible to deceive her completely.

“Yeah, it would be a waste to call this trash. Upon closer inspection, it’s quite a good dagger.”

“….”

“Can I take this with me?”

“What?”

“Thanks for the gift. I’ll make good use of it, Luke.”

“G-Give that back…!!!”

As I pretended to actually take the dagger and store it in my uniform pocket, Luke, who had been standing still, began to move his feet.

Realizing that my provocation had clearly worked on her, I kept only the last sentence of the vision chain I had memorized in my mind and watched Luke’s movements.

I needed to stay focused until the end, as long as I didn’t mess up the spell.

If I started chanting Mana Blast as soon as Luke’s dagger was about to pierce me, using the magic chain to restrain her right hand, I could easily secure victory.

With that in mind, I predicted the trajectory of Luke’s right hand and prepared to use the magic chain, but for some reason, a sense of unease began to grow in my chest.

…From the close distance, I caught a momentary glimpse in Luke’s gaze that she was looking at ‘somewhere else’.

“Wait, something’s not right…?”

Come to think of it, there was one awkward point in Luke’s actions during the recent battle.

When she used ‘dagger throwing’ in our battle earlier, why did Luke specifically throw the left-handed dagger at me?

She couldn’t have thrown it with her injured left hand, and if she wanted to exploit any opening as quickly as possible, she should have thrown the right-handed dagger instead.

And if she failed, it would have been better to switch the left-handed dagger to her right hand. After all, there wasn’t much difference between a left-handed dagger and a right-handed one.

So, there had to be a reason why she switched the left-handed dagger to her right hand. A reason why she threw the left-handed dagger at me in a desperate situation.

‘Could it be that Luke was trying to convey not only the ‘dagger’ but also the information that ‘there is no dagger in her left hand’ to me…?’

At that moment, the memory of Ethan and Harold wielding swords at Blackwood Manor training ground a few months ago came to mind.

I could also recall how Ethan had achieved his ‘first victory’ over Harold in that place.

“Dieeeee!!”

In the fleeting moment of understanding Luke’s intentions, her body had already moved closer to me, ready to swing the dagger in preparation.

Although I didn’t have a clear certainty of what would happen, following my intuition, I used my magic chain on her ‘left arm’ coming in at an angle, rather than Luke’s ‘right arm’.

-Shrrrrrrrk!

“Aaah?!”

Luke’s left hand was about to stab a dagger into my occiput when my mana chain wrapped around her left arm first, causing Luke to collapse under the restraint of the chains, right before my entire body was bound by them.

Even as she was being dragged to the corner of the training ground by the mana chains, Luke, wearing a puzzled expression, muttered in a bewildered voice, “H-how…?”

“It doesn’t matter how,” I replied dismissively, quickly gathering all the remaining mana into a mana blast in the palm of my hand.

As Luke witnessed the massive mana construct above my head, she instinctively began writhing in fear, bound by the chains around her body. However, before the chains could be released from her body, my mana blast was already complete.

…As a gift for the defeated, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to explain why she lost.

“If you’re going to ambush me, you should at least maintain eye contact, you foolish woman!!”

With a cry filled with anger, my mana blast soared towards the corner of the training ground where Luke was bound.

Whether my final words reached her or not, her expression hardened in resignation as she accepted my final strike.

After a powerful explosion passed, there was nothing left in the place where Luke, bound by the chains, had been.

…It seems the death prevention magic worked properly.

“The winner! Reliss Blackwood Rosewood!”

“Reliss! Reliss! Reliss!”

“Wow! Reliss is amazing! She’s insane!”

“Scream! Reliss! I knew Reliss would win!! Reliss!”

“Miss, please calm down! Aren’t people staring at us…!”

Amidst the cheers of the academy students chanting the winner’s name, I led my exhausted body to the waiting room where Ethan was waiting for me.

…Phew, I really thought I was a goner this time.