A dome of flames covered the sky. The heat quickly became oppressive and the trees that had fallen to the ground caught fire and began to burn, just like the dome above.
Lylphia's fire dome was an ostentatious spell. Its purpose was to prevent the enemy from escaping, to weaken them mentally and physically and force them to give up.
But she had to remember that Sony was not just any enemy. Sony was a powerful earth mage and could use his own magic to get out of the field.
Indeed, he wanted to get out of the dome, so he tried to cross the wall of fire by building an earthen roof over his head that split the flame.
But having spent so much mana on her spell, Lylphia couldn't let her opponent just run away from the field and waste all that mana.
So when Sony tried to get out, there were always walls of fire in the way, trying to prevent him from leaving the dome.
When all the trees on the ground caught fire, Sony raised the ground he was standing on, creating a thin platform of earth where the flames would not touch him.
The platform stretched from one end of the dome to the other and was several meters high and two meter wide.
Although Lylphia was a fire mage, she could burn like any other human being. She was more resistant to fire and could stand in it for a while, perhaps for hours, protecting her skin from the flames, but in the end she was a flesh and blood creature. Many fire mages has been overconfident and burned to death.
“But that's not my main problem, I just don't want my clothes to burn, I can't go naked in front of the enemy...”
To keep herself from being engulfed in flames, Lylphia used her magic to push the flames around her away and create a safe space in which she could move, but with Sony up there, above the ground he had created, and Lylphia on the lower ground, it was difficult for them to fight. Since Sony would not land, Lylphia would have to jump to the dirt platform.
“For your information, giving up is a pretty good option.”
As she landed on the high gronud, she offered her opponent the opportunity to surrender. She knew Sony wouldn't accept it, but she thought it was a hope. It would have been nice if Sony hadn't been difficult.
And it would be in Lylphia's interest to give in, but it would also be in Sony's interest. If he didn't give in and forced Lylphia to do it, he could go up in flames, which Lylphia didn't want to happen, but she would do it if she had no choice.
Moreover, it had been some time since they had started fighting, and although none of the trio of Sivina, Ana and Lylphia could use healing magic, their burns could be healed with Yurine, a healer, catching up with them soon. So Lylphia was planning to get serious if things dragged on.
If not, when Lylphia became serious, Sony's body would have suffered burns that would never heal and, in the worst case scenario, he would have burned to ashes.
It would have been bad for Lylphia, just as it would have been bad for Sony. She didn't want to be known as the one who burned the academy headmaster’s son and what would they do to her at academy if she did something like that? She sighed, sometimes wishing she was using water magic.
“So what if I give up? We'll never get along, not with you and not with them.”
“I won't burn you if you give up, isn't that a great reason to give up?”
She wanted to fire a warning shot at her opponent, and without spending much mana, she created a small, weak ball of flame and threw it at Sony. Weak though it was, it was a flame attack, and if it managed to ignite his clothes, it could burn him to death.
But since it was a slow and weak attack, Sony didn't even need to block the fireball with the wall, he just turned his body slightly and let the fireball travel straight ahead and crash into the wall of the flame dome and disappear.
“So it is!”
She raised her hand upwards and flames burst from the dome above their heads and fell in a ball on Sony's head.
There was no room for Sony to escape. If he went too far back he would hit the fire dome and burn, if he took a step to the right or left he would fall down and burn. There was no way to go forward anyway, because there was Lylphia standing there waiting to engage in melee combat.
He did the only thing he could do, walls of earth stretched out to his right and left, from under the burning trees on the ground, and joined together at the top of the Sony to form a roof.
“If it continues like this, it will eventually run out of mana.”
Lylphia had also used up almost all of the mana she had accumulated over the past few months using her fancy flame dome, but it didn't take much mana to shoot fireballs from it.
So all she had to do was dodge if an attack came and constantly drop fireballs from the fireball dome to make Sony spend more mana.
The sweltering heat also had a negative effect on Sony. Although Lylphia, like Sony, felt the heat and was uncomfortable, as a fire mage she was more resistant to it than Sony.
Sony realized that as long as this continued, he could do nothing but waste his mana. He couldn't get out of the fire dome even if he tried, and it was clear that Lylphia would survive his light attacks.
And the only thing Sony could do was to throw itself into the offense, even if it wasn't good at melee combat, it was his only option.
First he had to deal with the fireballs falling on his head from above. As much as he wanted to use his remaining mana wisely, there was only one option, to build the roof over his head over the entire platform. He raised his hands up and with the movement of his hands, the earthen walls rising from the ground converged on the entire platform. They were in a tunnel now and he wouldn't have to worry about fire falling from above.
At the beginning and end of the tunnel was the wall of the flame dome. There were small flames on the ground, as there were a few sticks on the ground they had stepped on.
The next problem went beyond the fact that they wanted to kill each other, there was a common shortage of air that could kill them both.
If they stayed in the tunnel for too long, they would begin to suffocate from the fire that lined both mouths of the tunnel and the fight would end with both of them suffocating without a winner.
“Of course that's what he thinks. If I faint, the spell will end and Ana will probably be able to stop Sony after that... But it's better if I don't have to faint.”
Maybe Sony could have made a deal with Lylphia to let him go, but Lylphia wasn't going to let that happen. But he tried anyway.
“I think if you let me go, we can finish this without anyone getting hurt.”
“Hmm... I don't think that's an option, maybe if you give me the Blessing we can think of something...”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Sony shook his head, neither of them would survive. The only option left was for one of them to lose before the tunnel ran out of air for either of them to survive, and neither Lylphia nor Sony had any desire to lose.
Apart from protecting Sony from the fireballs raining down from above, the other advantage of the tunnel was that it restricted the range of motion of Lylphia, who was confident in melee combat and constantly jumping during fights.
With his range of movement restricted, not only would she struggle in close combat and Sony would have a chance, but she would no longer be able to escape the halos of light so easily.
So if Sony had enough mana in his body, Lylphia would not have been able to escape easily, she would have died here. If he had enough mana, he would have created enough halos to cover the entire tunnel and send them at Lylphia to kill her, but with all the magic he used and now the tunnel he had created, he was about to see the end of his mana.
If he spent mana to create the halos of light and Lylphia somehow survived the attack, the mana-deprived Sony would not only lose the opportunity to launch an attack from a distance, but his strength would be reduced to the physical strength of an ordinary human being as he used up the mana in his body against an opponent whose mana reserves he did not know.
“The situation looks bleak for both of us. I'll give you one more chance, do you want to surrender? That way we can have a happy ending without both of us getting tired, what do you think?”
“I will not surrender.”
“Well, what are you going to do? Even if you beat me, there's another mage out there, how are you going to beat him after me?”
“I know the end is coming, fire mage. I just want to make sure she survives before it happens, and that's all I need to prolong it. After all, you'll start to stop breathing too, and then you'll have to lift the dome. I'll take it from there.”
“Well, how are you going to drag it out? If you had mana, you would have killed me already.”
“Even if I don't have mana, yours isn’t the ocean neither.”
He was not wrong about that. After all that chasing, it would have been easy even for non-mages to realize that Lylphia had run out of mana too.
“I think you're having a hard time understanding the situation. Let me explain, it's about to come to a fist fight and then I'm going to beat the shit out of you and if it doesn't come to a fist fight then I'm going to give you the gift of burns on your body that you will carry for the rest of your life and even if you manage to beat me you will be stopped by my friend waiting outside. You have nowhere to go, this is my last warning, surrender and let's end this calmly without any damage to your body. I think this is an offer you shouldn't refuse, accept it and everyone goes home.”
Sony nodded again, and Lylphia, sure of his resolve from the start, didn't stop asking.
“I'll ask you even if I know why, why are you after me?”
“Huh? Are you trying to stall me until the air inside runs out, or are you a mana regenerator and you're trying to buy time. I want you to know that either way, you will fail.”
Lylphia formed a thin spear of flame over her shoulder and, with a flick of her finger, hurled it at Sony.
Even though it looked like a spear, it wasn't going to pierce Sony when it hit him, it was going to explode the moment it hit him and hurt him very, very badly.
The flame spear went for Sony, and he darted after it. Sony formed a halo and threw it at Lylphia before the spear reached her, and when it came, she leaned her back against the wall to avoid being hit by the attack.
As the spear of flame traveled through the tunnel and blended into the wall of the flame dome, Lylphia easily dodged the incoming halos of light and came up to Sony and punched him in the jaw.
The punch knocked Sony off his feet, he flew into the air, hit his head on the ceiling of the tunnel and fell to the ground with a groan.
“It was shorter than I expected.”
Lylphia was proudly looking at the fight she had just won when a sudden bulge beneath her feet caused her to lose her balance and fall. While Lylphia was on the ground, Sony gathered the light in his hand into a dagger and leapt at her.
“Holy shit!”
Lylphia was quicker, grabbed Sony's wrist and punched him in the cheek. The impact of the punch sent Sony tumbling to the side and Lylphia got to her feet and kicked Sony in the stomach.
She then bent down and grabbed Sony by the collar, lifted him up, punched him a couple of times in the face, then a punch in the stomach and, as Sony gasped, grabbed him and threw him against the wall.
She was physically weakened by the mana draining from her body, but her fists still hurt.
She punched him again in the jaw and when Sony lifted slightly, she grabbed him by the collar again and threw him to the floor. She bent down again and lifted Sony up and threw him against the wall again.
Sony took a few more punches to the face as he was pinned to the wall, and with the last punch he was thrown a few meters away, approaching the fire wall of the dome.
“I think we're making history with the first mage struggle in which magic was used so sparingly.”
“How can you beat me?”
As Sony wiped his bloodied face with his hand, he couldn't believe how easily Lylphia had grabbed him as if he were a child's toy and slammed him to the ground. He spat on the floor and two teeth came out of his mouth.
“The story started before I was born, even though my gender was not yet clear, my father said the child will be a warrior and my mother said ‘oh don't be silly, it should be a mage.’”
By the time Lylphia started to tell the story, she was back at Sony's feet. Sony used halos of light to get rid of her, but he missed Lylphia and was defenseless against her.
“They were still fighting when I was born; warrior or mage? Warrior or mage? Warrior or mage?”
With every word she punched Sony in the face, chest and stomach. Occasionally, when she got tired of punching, she slam him against the wall or use his kicks.
“Warrior or mage? Warrior or mage?”
After punching her opponent some more, Lylphia grabbed him by the throat and threw him across the tunnel. Sony rolled on the ground, narrowly avoiding the wall of flames.
“You're so annoying!”
As smoke began to fill the tunnel, it became harder and harder for him to breathe.
“But soon you won't be able to breathe either.”
“You think I'm gonna let it go that far? You're gonna lose your mind when we get close to each other again.”
“This sentence... I don't know... It had a bit of a seductive air.”
He used some of his accumulated mana to create two halos, one for Lylphia's legs and one for her neck.
Lylphia jumped out of the halos coming at her, spun on her hands and did another somersault in the air, coming face to face with Sony. Sony tried to back away but was forced to stop by the heat he felt behind him and the realization that he was approaching the wall of the fire dome blocking the tunnel.
When Sony stopped, Lylphia's fist was coming at his face again, he shielded his face with his arms to defend himself against it, one of Lylphia's punches hit Sony's arms and the other hit him in the stomach.
The blood from Sony's mouth spattered Lylphia's face as he was struck hard in the abdominal cavity. Lylphia continued to punch Sony, oblivious to the blood splattered on her face.
Sony finally couldn't take it anymore and lowered his arms, screaming even as Lylphia's fists hit his face and he grabbed her around the waist and slammed her into the wall. Then he threw a headbutt, which shook Lylphia for a brief moment and he took advantage of the gap to grab her head and start banging it against the wall.
Lylphia could not hold back her tears as her head split open and blood poured down her face, unable to think of any other way out, even if it meant using the last shreds of her remaining mana, she placed her hand on Sony's chest and formed a fireball that could have killed him.
Sony was thrown against the opposite wall with a fireball in his chest. Lylphia was struggling to recover, but neither was Sony, and neither could move until they started coughing from the lack of air and smoke.
When they looked at each other again, they were both injured. Lylphia had burned her own hand in the fireball she had created without taking precautions to protect herself, and the ribbon she had tied around her finger had turned to ash.
She could not hold back her tears, her head had been repeatedly hit against the wall and her brain was throbbing. Nevertheless, she was still determined to fight and would not lift the dome until she had defeated her opponent. In fact, if she lifted the dome now, Ana could easily defeat him, but since it was a matter of pride for Lylphia, she didn't even entertain the idea.
Sony was in a terrible state. When he pulled himself together and stood up, his body was full of burns and he had almost no energy left.
Neither Sony nor Lylphia could fight any more, and neither could create a powerful spell.
But even though Lylphia knew she would faint afterwards, she had the means to make one last move. She could have plucked flames from the wall of the flame dome.
It was a small but effective move. Her eye shifted to the wall of the flame dome at the end of the tunnel, she raised her hand and pointed her palm at Sony, or rather at the wall behind him. Sony took a few steps back, expecting his opponent to throw a fireball at him, he had no strength to defend.
Lylphia closed her palm and pulled her hand back, as if she was grabbing something and pulling it towards her. Before Sony could realize what she was doing, a ball of flame from the wall of fire slammed into his back and sent him flying towards Lylphia.
When Sony arrived at Lylphia's feet, he was on fire. He was spinning madly on the floor, coughing from the smoke, trying to put out the fire in his body.
Lylphia no longer had the strength to stand, she fell on her back and her eyes closed. As Lylphia lost consciousness, the mana that formed the dome of flame dissipated.
As the dome of flame disappeared, Ana appeared at the entrance to the tunnel. With a single, powerful wind spell, she blew out the toxic smoke and rushed to Sony's side to save him, who was on fire.