She expected this encounter, all things considered. Either him or Alrai, and, since she could kind of deal with Alrai with her current skills, fate had simply given her the bigger fish.

Oh, and Creftalia was there too, standing behind Igern with a heavy-looking staff. Poor girl, stuck with such a teammate…

Velvet pushed the corpses fully away from her, getting up. Where the spear had struck, a layer of frost began to grow, spreading over the two bodies.

So he's using curses this time. She looked at Skugol. Drifa and Syon were busy with the apathy mage, so she only could count with his help.

Skugol nodded, extending his arms, deploying the undead in an ample arch. Like Drifa, Igern was from the Tyranny Paradigm, the middle ground between Wrath and Pride.

A bad combination, honestly. They were petty, vindictive, prideful, and had the raw strength to match. Ironically, the principal threat to a tyranny mage was another tyranny mage, so teams tended to only have one. Having two would simply cause too much rivalry and infighting, up to a dangerous level.

The reason? They needed to be the strongest. Like Igern’s hate for Dianthus, and Drifa’s obsession with finding the mage that defeated her in the Arena, mages from that Paradigm were competitive to an unhealthy extreme. Just the idea of putting two or more together was laughable.

Of course, in the case it happened, being in the middle wouldn’t be so funny.

Igern looked at the corpses uninterested, before leaping down from the column to face them. Like Drifa, he planned to take them out with an Ice Spear Rain.

Velvet grinned upon seeing the translucent tips appearing over their heads.

Boom!

Three paper figurines teleported to them, blowing them up to dust.

“Creftalia! Fourth behind you!” She ‘warned’.

Creftalia panicked, deploying a shield around her.

But nothing happened.

“Good, twenty seconds without support for Igern.” Velvet mocked them. Like Tristan had told her, staffs capables of creating shields took ten seconds at least to set up, and ten to set off.

Creftalia's mouth opened in surprise, realizing her Velvet-related trauma had made her overreact.

But such were the downsides of the Remembrance Paradigm. Once something or someone hurt them, they didn’t forget. And Velvet was an expert at abusing those memories.

“Don’t bother to turn the shield off. I don’t need you to take on two clowns.” Igern said, not bothering to look at Creftalia.

“C’mon dude, respect your teammate a little bit…” Skogul said.

“So you can take two clowns at once, hm? Kinky.” Velvet said in a sly tone, making Igern grimace with disgust.

He didn’t bother to answer, which only meant Velvet wasn’t provoking him good enough.

She might not have managed to piss off the Grahams until they lost their cool, since they were just sooo stone faced all the time, but the same couldn’t be said for Igern.

And Velvet liked to tease people, even more when they were so prideful. She wanted to push them off the stairs from where they looked down on the rest.

So she got ready, triggering the charms under the corpses' meat. Two corpses stomachs’ burst open, with long, slippery vines sprouting from them, burying themselves under the basalt columns.

The floor under Igern shook, cracks running all over it.

Igern jumped back, careful as to not fall into the holes.

“Hahaha!” Velvet laughed. “Hey, Creftalia! Does that staff let you levitate?!”

Creftalia looked down at the basalt column she was standing on. From the bottom, vines crawled, burying themselves under it, crushing the supporting pillar.

Igern grit his teeth, forced to go back and craft an ice pillar to substitute the lost one.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Boom!

A paper figurine exploded next to him, buried next to the vines. He covered his face, but the explosion wave still smashed him against the pillars.

“You fucking…” Velvet heard him curse. Clearly, her unfair way of fighting, targeting Creftalia even when she wasn’t getting involved to force him to step on traps, was getting to him.

“C’mon, use your big boy words… I refuse to believe a little bang is all it takes to cut your claws.” She teased.

Igern slowly rose to his feet. Blood was dripping down the side of his face, as he turned to look at Velvet, a twisted, hateful expression over it. Frost started to condense around him, forming a thin armor.

Now, she cheered inside. Now he is pissed.

Grinning, Velvet jumped over a broom. “Come get me, baby boy. If you can.” Flying away as fast as she could, she didn’t look back.

Not that she needed to. A crushing noise and several spears almost grazing her proved that Igern was closely behind, chasing her.

That was the plan she and Syon had made to deal with Igern.

They couldn’t afford the energy and materials to stall him, not when there were fourteen mages after Syon. So, they came with a plan.

Bait him away. The easiest way of dealing with a Wrath-adjacent Paradigm was simply… don’t. It wasn’t worth it.

Velvet simply had to survive long enough to lose track of him, locate Syon and team up again.

Lose track of him… She repeated in her mind. She had previously planned to go towards the active volcano, to lower Igern’s ice weapon’s efficiency, but she wasn’t accustomed to such environments, and the lack of knowledge was a knowledge mage's biggest weakness.

The forest? I’m used to forests, but so its Igern. The city? Yes.

Decision made, she followed the path towards the city zone, closely followed by Igern, and even more closely followed by Igern’s spears.

…

Tak. Tak. Tak.

“Creftalia, right?” Syon started, looking at the abandoned girl. “You-”

Tak.

“Shoul-”

Tak.

“Sho-”

Tak.

Syon turned, glaring at Drifa, who was hitting the shield with an ice pick. “May you stop for a few seconds, please?·

“Do we need her to turn off the staff?” She responded, threateningly waving the weapon. “I can break it down.”

“I would like to try a reasonable approach first.”

“You do you.” She sighted, lowering the ice pick.

Syon cleared his throat. “Thank you. Now, Creftalia. I promise you a swift, harmless loss, if you turn off the staff’s shield.”

Creftalia pressed her lips, a feeling of apprehension creeping over her.

…

The whole trip took three minutes. Three eternal minutes where Velvet lost Syon’s sand golem, Drifa’s ice chunks and all her paper figurines except one to buy time.

She also lost three brooms, two potions to stop the freezing curse and one to stop the bleeding from her leg, where Igern had managed to land a hit.

The guy was awfully insistent, which made Velvet doubt her chances at losing him.

She had to try, at least. Because Kartal was probably observing, so she had to look the part.

A freezing wind knocked her from the broom. She was prepared, having heard Igern’s chant, using the earring to reduce her weight, nullifying the fall damage, and opening the umbrella to block the following ice spears, landing swiftly on the street.

I’m not losing him, and flying any more will just tire me out.

She was panting, the chase leaving her exhausted. And yet, Igern stood in front of her.

“You know?” She started, smiling. “I’m sure my companions have taken Creftalia out already.”

“I’ll go for them next.” Igern simply said.

“Haha! Guess chasing me is way more fun, hm?”

“Absolutely not.” He summoned a new spear, this one with runes running across the ice.

Velvet squinted, taking a step back.

Igern took a step forward.

Will I really have to use the chain now? After all the work it took to be fixed? She had abused the hell out of the materials provided by Kartal, and didn’t want to waste them on Igern.

I was holding it as a surprise… Oh, well.

Straightening her back, Velvet grinned at Igern. “Are you feeling shy now? Come faster.”

Igern squinted at her. He had complete confidence in being able to take any trick she could keep in her sleeves. Even so, he was cautious, summoning five ice greatswords, who hovered in the air.

Swish! He sent them straight for Velvet.

Cling! Something slashed at them, breaking them in pieces. Velvet flinched, not being the one who did that. And Igern realized so too, taking a step back, waiting for the ice shards to settle.

The first thing she saw was a silhouette, dressed in an Arhontissian mage uniform, and pale hair.

“Dianthus.” Igern said, clearly trying to contain his disdain for the guy, and failing. “I don’t need your help.”

“Right.” Dianthus answered, making an uncomfortable smile while scratching his head. “About that…”