In one swift motion, Alec took out a piece of paper from his pocket. Just like the one at the start of the duel, it was the drawing of a magic circle.

‘Currently, I am not capable of remembering more than one magic circle and constructing it,’ Alec thought. ‘If I want to start remembering a new one, I have to let go of the other. Fortunately, I have just recast the dash spell. I should be able to finish this in time.’

Unfolding the piece of paper, Alec started dodging around the arena all the while while committing the drawing to his mind.

“Stop dodging!” Iris shouted. Her speed was nowhere near enough, even with whatever spell she was using to enhance her agility. Alec’s physical stats were too high for a mage his age, making him a hard target to catch up to.

‘This should be enough...’ Alec mentally muttered before crushing the paper and putting it back into his pocket. With one more motion, Alec placed himself as far as possible from Iris, who was on the other end of the arena.

When she turned around, she noticed that Alec had stopped moving, which made her wary. Still, the star-like mana balls circling around her were very fast, and they were also hard to get through. Whatever Alec threw at her, she believed that it would be enough to receive it. Once more, she lowered her body and started running toward Alec as fast as she could.

Funnily enough, both were incapable of hurting each other without getting close. Alec was too fast for Iris to snipe from a distance, while Alec lacked the necessary magic to try and hit Iris.

As Alec’s eyes locked onto Iris, he started jogging toward her at a rather slow pace. Behind him appeared a magic circle, which was mostly ignored by Iris. After all, it was probably another cast of the dash spell.

As his speed started ramping up, a wide grin appeared on Alec’s face.

‘I can’t get past those balls of mana orbiting around her. Without getting hit, at least,’ he calculated. All his efforts so far had accumulated into this one move, where he would bet everything he had. ‘If this fails, I’ll lose...’

Finally, about around the time the distance between the two had decreased to three-fourths of its initial size, Alec increased his pace further, hitting the highest speed he could. About 15 meters a second. With both of them heading toward each other, they would collide in less than a second.

Iris was prepared for it. She ordered her mana balls to orbit around her to hit Alec. As soon as she did so, those mana balls started converging toward a single point, looking like comets in the dark night.

However, something interesting happened. From the magic circle Alec had previously created, an unexpected spell came out. It was a magic missile. The only other spell Alec was somewhat capable of casting. Iris frowned at the sight of the magic missile, not knowing what it was meant to do. And when she did understand, it was too late to do anything about it.

Right as they were about to collide, The magic missile hit Alec square in his back, accelerating him further past his terminal velocity. This, in turn, caused Iris’ calculations to fail and most of the mana balls to miss their target. The only one who managed to connect with him hit Alec on the shoulder, shattering his bone in one go. Gritting his teeth, Alec turned his other shoulder to Iris and hit her on the chest like a cannonball.

Instantly, the entire audience went silent. Most people were able to understand what had happened, which made them even more surprised.

“The winner is...” the announcer increased the tension. “Iris Duncan!”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The silence broke once again, and Amphitheater shook with applause and cheers. While Iris had miraculously managed to twist her body in time to get away with a broken ribcage, Alec had launched himself off of the arena, causing him to automatically lose the duel.

“Fuck...” Alec muttered as he held his arm from moving. His face crumpled into a painful frown as he got up and walked back up to the arena. Iris was lying on her back, trying to keep the broken ribs in her chest cavity from moving around and hitting any vital organs. Her face was reddened from the pain as her nostrils kept flaring in order to pull some oxygen. Spitting out a mouthful of blood, she looked at Alec.

“Your arm... There is something...” she said with a coarse breath. Alec was having a hard time understanding her words, and healers were already approaching them with stretchers. “There is something written... It says... ‘Wa-’”

However, before she could finish her sentence, Iris lost consciousness, going completely limp.

“Don’t worry champ, we’ll heal her back in no time. This much injury is nothing for our healers, aight?” One of the healers who was there tried to comfort Alec as they carried Iris away.

Unfortunately, their words went unheard.

Alec had something much more important occupying his mind.

‘What was she about to say there? Something is written on my arm?’ Alec thought. However, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t spot anything out of the norm.

As he was laid down on another stretcher, he closed his eyes to rest.

‘I can think about this later...’

***

“This is unbelievable,” one of the healers said as he flipped the page on the wooden clipboard. Taking out a pen from his lab coat’s chest pocket and scratched his head with it. “I’m sorry but this just doesn’t make sense. This student’s shoulder bone had been completely pulverized yesterday. Even with the best healers we have here, it should have taken about a month for him to heal.”

“No matter what you say, he is almost completely fine,” another one said after shrugging. “I think we should call the master healer.”

“Yeah...”

As the two healers left the infirmary room, Alec sighed at the fact that he was back here so soon.

‘If I didn’t have to hide the existence of The Author’s Pen, I wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit...’ he thought. Taking out the artifact, he started spinning it in between his fingers. After zoning out for a few minutes, he sighed and gathered his thoughts.

‘Something happened at the end of our fight with Iris, but I don’t remember what it is,’ Alec contemplated. Scratching his left arm, he got up from the bed and walked toward the door. However, before he could leave, the door was opened from the other side, revealing the two healers from before accompanied by the white-haired healer that had healed Alec back when he first woke up in this world. ‘Huh... I still don’t know her name.’

“Leaving so soon?” the woman asked before signaling him to sit down on the bed. She then turned her head and shooed away the two healers. As the two complied with her order and left, Alec and the head healer were left alone in the room. “I’m Rebecca Bailey, by the way. I figured I hadn’t introduced myself the last time.”

“Uh... It’s nice to meet you, Ms. R-”

“Call me Ms. Healer.” Rebecca cut Alec off before he could say her name. She walked up to him and placed her hand on his recently healed shoulder. She started pinching, flicking, and moving the shoulder, none of which extracted a reaction from Alec. “You either have an extreme amount of pain tolerance, or you have completely healed.”

Looking deep into her purple eyes, Alec didn’t answer. He didn’t feel much discomfort from his shoulder, nothing that would make him react, at least.

“Not to mention, I was there during your fight. It was a really surprising one,” she continued as she inspected his other shoulder. During her inspection, Alec stood still to avoid annoying her. “Even after losing your memories, you don’t stop surprising us.”

After making sure Alec wasn’t feeling uncomfortable on both shoulders, She ordered him to take off his shirt.

“Especially the part where you hit yourself with that magic missile for acceleration, now that was something,” she said before asking Alec to lie face-first. Inspecting his back, she noticed that it was also, completely fine.

“You also seemed to have become a lot more ripped than the last time I did a check-up on you. When was that? A month ago?”

“Probably,” Alec affirmed. As Ms. Rebecca’s hands kept applying pressure on his back, Alec frowned.

“Hmm... Miraculous. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with your body at all,” she said. Slapping his back, she ordered him to put on his shirt and sit down. “We here at the Lation Academy always appreciate our students becoming stronger. Even though Iris is not necessarily a combat specialist, she is still a top scorer. Good job putting up a fight.”

“Mm,” Alec nodded. However, when Ms. Rebecca went silent for some time, he felt the tension in the room rise.

“Now, tell me how you did it, and what you are hiding...”