[B2] Chapter 44 — The Divinesday Newcomers Tournament! (Part 3)_Ria of Shadewood

[B2] Chapter 44 — The Divinesday Newcomers Tournament! (Part 3)

Team Earthen Doom had come to a similar decision of offensive engagement, maybe wanting revenge for their familiars, maybe deciding that Rockshot spells weren’t going to be effective, or maybe they needed to address the balance of results so they wouldn’t lose if the five-minute rule were to be invoked.

Whatever the reason, openings had formed in the stone dome and two of the boys were rushing out to meet Ria’s charge. Each had a rune-inscribed enchanted weapon, one a large two-handed sword and the other a vicious spear. They still looked confident.

Ria swapped out the sensing magic for body-strengthening, and let the domain spell dissipate to better focus on using her Air Shield wand and training dagger. The domain spell was powerful, but it was still too new and rapidly drained her reserves.

A cheer raised from all directions in anticipation of a direct clash and surged Ria’s fighting spirit. These older earth mage students should be able to take a beating well. The corners of her mouth raised cruelly at the thought, and she launched herself into the air twirling upside-down and kicking off an air shield to propel herself downward at claymore-boy from above.

Ack!

A last-second application of quickly hardened air stopped his upward swing and saved her from getting cut in half mid-air—or impaled, or at least painfully whacked by the boy’s sword edge, assuming Zena’s armor spell held.

His resulting shocked-face was rather delicious until she remembered that burying her dagger into his forehead was probably frowned upon… oops?

Oh, he has pretty amber eyes…

Surprisingly, even though the abjuration surrounding him cracked like dry stone as her magic exploded out from the dagger, it held. The force of her strike drove the buff boy into the ground, and she used her momentum to continue past, cartwheeling to her feet in time to deflect a spear stab just enough, the glowing blade passing over her shoulder.

Already inside Spear-boy’s guard, Ria slide-stepped closer and kicked him in the gut as hard as she could, fully amplifying the strike with body-strengthening and a burst of earth energy from her booted foot to send him flying.

Her friends were yelling something through the tether, but before Ria could react, her plant leg was suddenly flung out from under her, and the horizon spun. The sunlight flashing off the claymore suggested what had happened as she hit the ground and rolled back to her feet just in time to adjust her footwork and twist around the follow-up finishing strike.

The explosion from the huge enchanted sword hitting the ground blew her sideways like a rag doll. Fast! The boy was incredibly fast!

Oof!

Her butt caught the dirt and the back of her ember helmet slammed into the ground.

While Zena was giving instructions, a further flash of morning sun on metal encouraged Ria to roll and spin to her feet and another near miss sent her flying to the ground again.

A ringing impact and blinding flash of light gave Ria the moment she needed to return to her feet.

Ria sent through the tether, but before she could take advantage of the change in situation, Claymore-boy’s trembling arms shifted, and his sword suddenly deflected the beam of light in Ria’s direction, burning a gash in the dirt as she dashed away then flipped up into the air backwards just as the beam passed by.

Her sore leg protested, on both the leap and the landing, but there wasn’t time to work any healing magic or drink a potion. Zena’s armor spell must’ve held against the sword cut that sent her spinning in the air—or the arena’s illusion would’ve made her leg more than sore.

Ria charged forward and tried to deflect the boy’s quick claymore swipe to create an opening, but even with her magic and muscle training, his muscles, weight, and body-strengthening were stronger.

Knocked to the ground again, she was forced to block his predictable follow-up overhand strike with an air shield to his arms as she again rolled back to her feet.

Regardless of the boy’s incredulous expression, his weapon and skill were besting hers.

Ugh. Not just her leg was hurting; she had minor aches over her whole body from getting thrown around. If Spear-boy returned, or one of the boys behind the dome decided to do more than focus on bolstering their teammates’ defense…

Chiding herself for losing focus during a fight, Ria cycled more energy to her brain and charged again. This time she air-blocked Claymore-boy’s arms right away, and again when he redirected in the other direction. There was no way someone with such a large sword could-

Ria threw herself just under a sudden slash of the sword, as a blast of earth energy disrupted the blocking air-shield. He overswung, and she hardened the air to keep him from rebalancing as she closed the remaining distance and struck.

In her frustration, she sent too much energy through her dagger. Claymore-boy satisfyingly crashed to the ground face first with an oof of air rushing from his lungs, but her dagger crumbled to ash in the wind before she landed on his back and brought her fist to the back of his neck repeatedly, blasting energy from her reserves.

Rocks began to strike her, knocking her about, but she unleashed her aura with a vocalized fury and continued pounding her enemy into the ground, pounding with each strike growing in power until she felt the abjuration around him shatter and the safety magic made him go still.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Brought back to her senses by Zena’s voice, Ria rolled off the downed boy, pulling on his clothes to speed her movement. A ripping sensation tore through her arm, followed by a rush of wind that dragged her along in its wake. Her eyes caught the flash of sunlight on serrated metal, and Spear-boy’s spear dug a furrow in the ground ahead.

Another rock impacted hard enough to send her flying, and embers swirled in the wind as they fell away from her body.

Zena’s spell was failing!

Ranger signaled he was ready, and Ria empowered him with all her remaining energy, letting herself flop to the ground, spent.

Ria cued, and the whump of exploding dirt inside the dome was met by the thumps of light beams from Keira and the girly screams of the boys trapped inside with an empowered deepways hound…

At Zena and Keira’s reports, Ria raised her head in time to see Malleron leap through the air to impale an ember-encased figure.

Ranger’s empowered snarls became more clearly audible over the crowd’s continuous cheering, and Ria pushed up on an elbow to see over unconscious Claymore-boy, Klein.

The stone dome was dissipating into motes of earth energy as large mushrooms rapidly grew around the scene of the two remaining Earthen Doom team members fending off a terrifying and vicious blur of claws and teeth, bouncing from one magic-staff-holding boy to the other and keeping them from forming spells.

By the time the pair had distanced themselves from each other enough that Ranger had to choose his target, the air was full of spores and Malleron stepped out of one of the mushrooms to stab the likely abjurer-boy from behind.

Just a whiff of the moldy-smelling spores carried on the wind was enough to make Ria dizzy in her energy-drained state; she couldn’t imagine either boy would hold out long.

Sure enough, a soul-shaking cheer went up as the final boy wobbled to the ground and the winner was announced.

Ria summoned her staff and used that to unsteadily climb to her feet as Ranger trotted over, a newly confident bounce in his proud gait. While she was catching her breath, Klein blinked open his eyes.

The boy rolled to a crouch and stared her way warily. “You’re…”

Not sure what he was trying to say, Ria made a contrite gesture with her hand and bowed a bit. “Sorry about stabbing you in the face.”

He blinked at her a few times, and before he could reply, a gopher at least as big as Ranger rushed over to stand between them with its fur puffed and rodent-like tail whipping in irritation.

Not interested in a public confrontation, Ria ignored the upset familiar and started jogging back toward her friends, Ranger at her side.

{You did great, Ranger! You’ve really gotten strong!}

The deepways hound’s chest puffed up further, and he woofed happily upon hearing her praise for his performance.

{{We actually did it!}} Keira blared into their heads, hopping up and down as she pulled Ria into a huge hug. {{We defeated a second-year team from an arena Order!}}

Zena laughed at the display.

{{But…}} Keira stepped back and grasped Ria’s shoulders at arm’s length with a judgmental raised eyebrow. {{After all your effort to win over the spectators, beating Klein into the ground with your bare hand like a Thunderfist Blood-howler? Really?}}

Ria looked away in embarrassment only to see the scene of her pounding Klein into a shallow crater displayed in the illusions above.

{{Is the ground supposed to bounce like that?}} Keira huffed in disbelief as she too caught sight of the illusion.

Ria could hear the cringing murmurs in the arena’s mixed reactions and made a sheepish expression as she waved to the crowd, hoping it wasn’t too late to turn the impression of her around.

Zena soon ushered them back to the waiting room, and this time, Ria had no hesitations about sipping an energy restoration potion to speed the recovery of her reserves. If the scheduling continued as before, the time before their next match would be shorter with each victory as the number of remaining teams and matches became halved with each round.

Jules contacted Zena again to report on their next opponent—the Stormbringer team, as expected, and Ria decided to temporarily swap out the devastator for her dragon-bone brush. Fortunately, she still had her off-hand practice dagger to use in place of the one she ruined. The loss of her dagger did force her to face a truth she had been naive about: new weapons and protective equipment would be needed before the Grand Games.

When they lined up opposite another all-second-year team wearing storm-mantled robes, one of the boys who looked familiar pointed at her and said something that sounded like a challenge.

“Is that...?” Ria asked.

“Verdin Ravelle. It is,” Zena confirmed.

Keira let out a low groan that was swallowed by the excited ramblings of the announcer and the swells of the crowd’s enthusiasm.

Ria huffed at the raven-haired Emberflow daughter. “You knew.”

Zena laughed. “Is it a problem? You beat him before, didn’t you?”

Ria tilted her head. Verdin’s presence was a surprise. Though whether to call it unwelcome… she wasn’t so sure.

Zena laughed even harder and clapped Ria on the back. “I’m not worried. You’ve grown stronger since then, and our elements are better matched than against the Earthshaker team.”

It was true. Ria glanced at the dual shadow- and light-attuned ink brush in her hand and the shadow-attuned ring on her finger. Lightning was an element she was well used to dealing with.

As the announcer was winding down his introduction to the match, Zena made a challenging gesture of her own and motioned for the team to gather close—an act that caused sneers and mocking laughter from the overconfident lightning boys who moved to stand in a formation with Verdin in the center and the others equidistantly spaced around him.

When the beginning was announced, rather than working on the tethers as was usual, Iselyn extended out her domain filling the air with spores. Zena formed a dome of loosely packed ash-like embers swirling with increasing speed until Ria felt her hair puffing out from the generated static. It was a technique the girl had developed to repel lightning.

Once shielded from view, Ria began shaping the new geometrically propagating dome version of her energy absorption and emission spell. Keira’s job was to prepare a shield of light, should Ria’s spell fail.

Zena’s plan of drawing and preparing for a large opening strike from the Stormbringers was risky due to the significant energy expenditure and consequences for failure, but she was confident the boys would take the bait based on knowledge of their tactics from prior matches.

They didn’t have to wait long before a crack like the sky was breaking echoed against the heavens and slammed into the prepared dome blowing the embers aside like fluffy clouds. Some of the lighting was diverted to the ground by Zena’s effort, but even so, Ria quickly thickened her spell’s battery constructs to contain the ridiculous amount of energy that was absorbed by her spell—more than she had ever tried to control at once before.

More sky-splitting cracks shook the air, and strike after strike flashed blindingly, filling her spell’s arrays until the constructs were writhing with the density of energy, and it was only through force of will that the spell didn’t unravel in an explosion of unconstrained energy.

Knowing she desperately needed to buy more time, Ria siphoned-off as much of the excess energy into her dragon-bone brush as she could.

And then, as sudden as it began—and just as Ria thought she couldn’t keep up with even a smidge more—the blinding and deafening crashes stopped.

Desperate to expel some of the energy before her spell failed, Ria rapidly shaped a geometric construct for the emitter above the glowing, arcing dome and began to divert the lightning energy into it until a crackling sphere chirped and rumbled ominously above them.

Finding her targets staring dumbfounded, Ria could only grin like a demon as their opponents’ smug elite faces turned from disbelief to horror. How much stored energy had Verdin and his friends put into this one attack? Had each boy already spent his entire reserve in a foolish attempt at an all-out overwhelming one-shot-victory?

[B2] Chapter 44 — The Divinesday Newcomers Tournament! (Part 3)

目录