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After we got a feel for each other’s abilities, Elise and I decided to take the dual to the next level.

It first started with me replying to her firebolt with my modified Earth Bullet, it took me a few seconds of dancing around the stage as Elise shot firebolts at me, but I used that time to get my Earth Bullet up to a satisfactory rotation speed before sending it at where Elise should be behind her cover.

The moment Elise saw the earthen projectile shoot toward her, she ducked down.

*BOOM!!*

The sound of stone smashing against stone rang out over the Arena as my high-velocity Earth Bullet struck Elise’s Earth Wall cover and kicked up a bunch of dust everywhere, and even though the dust obscured my vision, I could still vaguely see what happened to Elice and noticed that the cover in front of her was blown away, but she was practically unharmed.

As to why she was unharmed even though my Earth Bullet easily decimated her cover, the answer was seen behind her. It seems like my Earth Bullet hit the curved surface of her Earth wall, and must have deviated the trajectory of my Earth Bullet to barely miss her because I could see the Earth Bullet embedded in the inner wall behind her at an odd angle.

But before I could lob another spell at her, she looked down at herself, noticed that she was unharmed, and threw herself into what remaining cover was still standing, just a split second before my firebolt flew through where she was previously squatting.

A moment later, while I was spamming quick spells to hopefully catch her with some splash damage, her Earth Wall repaired itself and a second layer of Earth Wall rose out of the ground less than a meter from the first.

Smart, if I shot anything like my high-velocity Earth Bullet, most of its energy would be expended by the first Earth Wall, making damage to the main Earth Wall negligible.

This meant I needed to start getting creative. I dodged a few quick spells she shot at me, and I used that time dodging while weaving some spells to cast. When I was done, I forced Elise back into cover with a few Spark spells, one of them actually hitting her, but was far from taking her out.

The moment she was suppressed, I ran in closer and I cast my own Earth Wall, but with a few modifications. I sent the spell down my leg and into the ground, and the spell took form, the ground shot up from under me, carrying me to the top of a one-story turret tower that gave me a high vantage point over Elise’s walls.

The moment I saw her, I released my second spell, Flamethrower, into her enclosed hiding circle.

This made her scream as my flames poured in and almost made me stop, but she reacted quickly as she closed off the top of her Earth Wall, totally sealing herself in.

Seeing no point in continuing to fire blast the bunker, and even finding it a bit morbid to essentially pressure-cook someone, I cut off the Flamethrower and started spinning up two high-velocity Earth Bullets to crack her bunker open.

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But just as I was about to finish the second Earth Bullet, a slit in her bunker opened and a shining ember shot out and hit the lower part of my turret tower to seeming no damage, but I knew that spell and how it worked, she actually managed to cast the 4th circle spell, Burning Impact, with such speed, but I had no time to be impressed.

I let my second Earth Bullet fizzle out and jumped out of the tower a second before the base of my tower exploded. It was then that I realized that it would have been safer to just go down with the tower because a flying chunk of rock from my blown-up tower clipped me on the shoulder while I was in mid-air, making me spin before I hit the ground, hard.

The only saving grace was that me being flat on the ground kept me out of sight of Elise, the other small mercy was the issued mana shield bracelet prevented me from taking any actual damage, otherwise, I would most likely have a heavily bruised shoulder, and the air driven out of my lungs. The only signs of damage were the red indicator on my shoulder and the slight tint of red from landing on my chest.

“Of all the people to be my first opponent, why did it have to be the quiet genius?” I grumbled to myself as I crawled for a bit in case she tried to rain some spells down on where I landed, and sure enough, ice spikes formed above where I used to be and stabbed into the ground.

As I stayed crouched, I was wrecking my brain on how to crack open her bunker. That was when I came to me, why don’t I give her a taste of her own spell?

I started duckwalking around the outer Earth Wall she made until I was on the other side of her bunker, all the while, I was mentally weaving a Burning Impact spell and using hand signs to speed up the process, when that was done, I queued up a few more spells in case I needed a to follow up my hits.

When I was ready, I carefully peeked over the wall to take a look at my target and found that she had created slots all around to look out of, unfortunately for her, she was currently looking in the wrong direction, so I took advantage and sent the small ember that contained the 4th circle spell at the wall of her bunker.

The moment my spell silently impacted her bunker wall, she clearly felt a mana disturbance in the structure of her Earth Wall and turned toward me, but before she could do anything the wall of her bunker exploded, and the moment I was sure there was no flying debris, I vaulted over the outer Earth Wall and stormed her bunker.

When I entered the bunker, Elise was pushing herself off the ground, but I did not give her any time to recover and headshot her with an Earth Bullet, ending the match. As i looked at her still body, i took note of the ‘damage’ I did to her. Her whole back was lit up with damage indicator that was most likely from my Flamethrower, her hands and legs had spots of damage indicators that was most likely from the Bruning Impact throwing shrapnel at her, and lastly, the dark red damage indicator at the back of her head from the Earth Bullet i just excicuted her with.

For some reason, i did not feel good beating a little girl. I much prefer beating up on boys with weapons.

The moment I exited the bunker, the referee entered it to see Elise frozen by the mana shield in the pushup position and declared my victory before disabling her mana shield so she could move again.

When she got up, we both bowed to the royals and got down from the stage, but before we parted ways, I reached out my hand to Elise for a handshake and said, “Well fought”, what I got in response was a surprised squeak and a bowed head as she left my hand hanging, but I continued anyway “You almost got me when you blew up my tower.”

“Th-Thank you.” she said in a soft voice before she noticed my outstretched hand and gave it a meek shake before turning to her exit and scampering off. I knew she was shy, but she was acting downright introverted, but I don’t mind, she is still young, I am sure she will grow out of it.

I turned and was ushered to a familiar waiting room with a familiar bartender.