Teo was already in deep waters and the worst part had yet to begin. How was he supposed to defend himself from his teachers attacks? Would he go easy on him? But what was the point of all this then? He would just have to grit his teeth and pull through somehow, it's not like this was a life and death battle, so he would be fine... probably.

"Are you ready?" his teacher asked, which he answered with a firm nod. He did not feel ready, but that wasn't going to change anytime soon. At least he had already prepared a dense mat of woven Mana he could use for an impromptu shield.

The students on the other hand were very excited. They did not have a grudge against Teo or anything of that sort, but the performance so far had made their hearts pump like crazy and they were giddy from anticipation. They had already forgotten about the punishment that was supposed to befall the one who stepped out of line in class and were just enjoying the show now.

Even Jackson watched in amazement, barely able to contain his excitement. 'Man, I really need him to teach me that move!' he thought with glistening eyes as he went through the last scene of battle in his head over and over again. That was probably the coolest thing he had ever seen. Sure, his father was probably doing all sorts of cool stuff at work, but he just wouldn't take him along for a mission, however much he begged him. He could barely wait for the second half to begin, it was sure to be quite interesting as well.

Contrary to the majority of spectators, Angelika was not excited at all — she was terrified. One of her only friends was suddenly strapped to a cutting board and she could do naught but watch. She had been easily pacified by Jack's words, that Mr. Kasahara would go easy on Teo, that he was in no danger and would be done no harm... But after seeing how quickly the sparring session had escalated, she was starting to doubt it.

If Mr. Kasahara just decided to throw back what he had defended from and nothing more, then Teo would already be in a very unfavorable position. If only she could help him somehow.

'Please just be alright, Teo!' she silently prayed while clenching her delicate fists.

After dramatically stretching his arms and legs, presumably for the sole purpose of building up suspense, Mr. Kasahara stood up straight and warned again,

"I'll be so free to start then."

He began to gather up liquid water from his surroundings, drawing small streams from the air and the ground to himself. He used most of it to form a ring of water, silently hovering around him, and pulled out a small bubble which he hovered over his outstretched hand.

Rapidly the Water Elements in the surroundings began to rush towards his palm and gathered in the small blob of water. It soon began to change, presumably according to the will of the Magician. It elongated and slowly began to freeze, forming a sharp icicle, as long as a dagger.

After meeting Teo's gaze for a short time, he shot it towards his student, carefully aiming slightly to the left, so as to miss his body by a small margin should the boy fail to block his move in time.

Teo was already mentally prepared for the challenge, but decided against using his shield to protect himself against such a fast and sharp icicle. Instead he turned the Mana that he had gathered over his hand, as soon as the Magician opposite him had began casting, into a normal Magic Bolt and imbued it with as much Mana as he could fit into it.

He shot it out, just as he saw the icicle being fired and tried to emulate the tactic, his teacher had previously demonstrated. Despite his preaching about defensive Magic, he seemed to like using offensive maneuvers as a form of defense himself.

Trying to hit a fast moving projectile in midair was no easy feat, but Mr. Kasahara had shot it especially slow and did neither try to incorporate unexpected movements nor to dodge Teo's counterspell, he tried to make it as predictable as possible, leading to a perfect hit.

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Seeing the mighty attack of his teacher being disintegrated into dust, Teo's self-confidence began to rise again. Of course he did not expect that to be a part of his teachers plan as well and thought that he had simply outsmarted him.

"Not bad! But what about this?" taunted Mr. Kasahara, trying to combine praise and threat in a single statement and did not leave Teo much time to think, before he began casting again.

This time a larger bubble of water separated from the water-ring around him, containing at least a third of the whole volume, that he had previously taken in. It quickly began separating into multiple smaller and smaller bubbles.

Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirtytwo, sixtyfour... soon the number of droplets was too large to count, presumably in the thousands.

They all simultaneously went through the same changes the icicle previously did and began to solidify. Thousands of small, razor-sharp needles were aimed at Teo and he felt his scalp tingling with nervousness. Someone particularly afraid of needles would probably have fallen unconscious already, but even without such fears it was still plenty uncomfortable.

He hurriedly unfurled the prepared blanket of Mana in front of his body and began to fortify it with more Mana, compressing everything further as he went.

Soon a barely visible wall with a crystalline appearance, reminiscent of glass, was erected in front of him and just as he finished constructing it, the needle storm broke loose.

They swooshed through the air like a swarm of angry wasps, eager to sink their stingers into any soft piece of flesh they could find and were fast approaching Teo's makeshift barrier.

They fell onto the shield like hail, constantly pattering and crackling for several seconds, until the frequency of impacts lessened and finally ceased completely. It sure looked impressive, but the offensive might of this skill seemed to be quite lacking, as the small needles were simply too light to cause much of an impact.

Unable to relish his short-term victory Teo moved his concentration back to his teacher, who had already began preparing his third assault. Judging by the pattern so far, this would be the last assault he would have to weather, after that he would be done with it once and for all.

Yet despite his rather impressive success so far, he had a very bad feeling about it. Mr. Kasahara was a crafty devil and the chances, that he did not have a surprise up his sleeve were slim. The question was just, what could it be? Would he sneak attack from several sides? Waiting and waiting for something horrible to happen without prior notice was almost as terrible as the moment when it actually happened — and even more tiring.

Unable to relax, Teo readied himself and tried to reinforce his barrier some more, it was his best bet against whatever would be thrown at him. Meanwhile Mr. Kasahara was already done with his preparation some time ago and was just waiting for Teo to finish his part, before he would usher in the grand finale.

He collected all of the leftover water from the floating ring around his waste with a sweep of his hands, forming a large ball that slowly became elliptical and elongated. He did not pull out any new tricks for his last attack, instead he relied fully on the very basics of Water Magic to strike home a lesson.

A large icicle had formed in front of the tall man and hovered there menacingly. Teo's eyes almost popped out, it was huge! Around a meter long and at the very least a dozen kilos heavy it was a real behemoth. However, before he could think much about it, the frozen spear was already charging towards him.

Teo tried to do something about it, but it was fast approaching and he was running out of time. He gathered his Mana Shield in front of him and concentrated as much as possible on the single point where it would impact soon enough. And that was all he managed to do in time.

It crashed into the barrier with an incredible shock, pushing him several steps back and just as Teo thought he had managed to block it somehow, his barrier shattered like glass in face of a rock.

A sharp edged, spiky ice-lance was now barely one and a half meters from his face and fast approaching. In this time of need he noticed a sudden stream of Mana racing around his body, almost like an emergency protocol, but before Goliath could manifest the life-saving emergency shield, the icicle in front of them vanished, or rather it dissolved, melting with incredible speed — visible to the naked eye but over after a blink.

It completely turned liquid again and splashed all over Teo's face, leaving him thoroughly drenched and knocking him down on his butt.

Perplexed he sat on the frozen ground, his eyes wide open and blinking frequently, as if to ascertain that he was not dreaming.

"Thank you for helping me demonstrate the excercise, but you better go see Mr. Quackenstein now and get yourself dried, we can't have you catching a cold," said Mr. Kasahara in a seemingly worried voice while smiling at Teo.

Only now, that the adrenaline was receding from his system, did Teo notice the biting cold assaulting him to the bones — he was literally sitting on his bum, soaking wet in deep winter.

Hurriedly he ran to the main building, publicly shamed and embarrassed. It was everything else but a nice memory, but the message was received. Teo would probably take special care to be considerate of his classmates from now on, instead of hurtling deadly projectiles at them.