Q once again headed into the thicket of trees and not even 5 seconds passed when a large rock came out of nowhere and headed straight for her! Q dodged and used [Magic Perception] to catch any more spells that could possibly fly at her. She didn’t use it earlier inside the village since the spells were easy to see, but here her visibility was reduced and she was forced to rely on this skill to handle surprise attacks.

Sure enough, another spell came flying at her, except this time it was a wave of water. Are these the traps? They don’t seem like it… Q thought as she flew up a bit higher to avoid the water. Once she got up however, a salvo of rocks came at her which forced her to use a wall to block it. Whatever. I just need to make sure to get through this safely. She slowed down a little more and tried to increase the range of her [Magic Perception] to catch the attacks early.

The attacks seemed to become less frequent as she continued to fly, though she soon heard loud sounds of explosions and trees falling behind her. Looks like the other racers have run into the traps. That’s good for me though! Noticing that her mana was down to half, Q used a mana potion and kept her steady pace. This steady pace ended quite soon though, as she felt a reaction from [Magic Perception] and was attacked by yet another spell.

This time the spell came from a clear source, and Q looked to her left to find Kukis who was flying slightly ahead of Q. Kukis held out a twisted wand and smiled, then threw a glass vial with bright red liquid and broke it with a small rock she shot out afterwards. As the contents of the vial spilled out, Kukis cast a large wind spell that scattered it in a wide range which completely covered all the places Q could move to. In response Q activated an earth wall she had begun preparing the moment she sensed Kukis with [Magic Perception].

Q’s wall easily blocked the liquid, but contrary to her expectations it turned out to be colorful water. Trusting her instincts, Q quickly dashed forward just in time to avoid a large fireball. Kukis’ assault wasn’t finished there though, as Q looked forward to see that there was a wall of muddy earth waiting in front of her. For a half-second she wondered whether she should avoid it or breakthrough instead. She quickly made her decision as soon as she saw Kukis shoot down a small fireball which seemed to ignite something on the ground.

Q put on as much defensive runes on herself as she could and then reinforced her staff. The thing which was ignited lead into the mound of muddy earth, and then there was an ear-shattering explosion! Q sped out from the dust, but a third of her health had disappeared and she was coughing. A quick look at her status showed that she was both [Poisoned] and [Weakened], and furthermore there was a wall of strange purple gas in front of her.

“Don’t think I’m just going to keep reacting!” Q yelled as she suddenly changed her direction and headed towards Kukis. Though Kukis looked a little surprised, this seemed to be within her expectations as she prepared even more vials to throw, while also simultaneously creating a large wall of earth to separate herself from Q. Q began to use [Charge Spark] in one hand, and drew a rune gate with the amplify rune with her other hand.

Kukis’ potions flew over the top of the wall to hit Q, but at this moment Q finished creating the rune gate and released  [Charge Spark] through it. At first a moderately sized beam of electricity came out, but as soon as it passed through the rune gate it nearly tripled in size and became charged with even more energy. The beam hit the potions and vaporized them instantly (though a few of them had some reactions, they weren’t strong enough to reach Q). She slowly moved her hands towards Kukis’ position, and her spell followed. The wall of earth was cut in half while the surrounding branches and trees got mowed down while Q used her spell.

Now panicking, Kukis threw two vials in the air which created a sort of ‘foam’ wall when they collided and their contents mixed. The beam of electricity hit this wall and for a moment it looked like it would break through, but eventually it ran out. “Holy crap Q! Hold back a little!” Kukis complained as she fired a rapid slew of small spells.

“That’s my line!” Q yelled back. “I didn’t think you’d use your [Rupturing Earth] combo. That was dangerous you know?” She made a few acrobatic maneuvers with her staff as she dodged Kukis’ attacks. While she was dodging the attacks, she also used a cleanse and heal rune on herself, getting back to prime condition (with three quarters of her mana left).

“I don’t want to hear that from the person who easily got through it!” This time Kukis drank a potion and her speed explosively increased as she widened the gap between Q and herself. Q began creating speed gates to catch up, but at this point Kukis’ preparations were also complete as large pillars of fire and water appeared and headed straight for Q.

Q created two rune circles and placed them on the ground in front of the pillars. As soon as the pillars passed over the rune circles, Q activated them and two giant spikes of earth shot out and interrupted the two pillars. Despite this, the remnants of the pillars continued forward and collided with each other which created a large amount of steam. For a second Q thought about simply going through, but driven by a bad feeling she instead used a wind rune to disperse the steam.

The instant that the steam was blown away by the wind, multiple bolts of lightning came out. Though a few of them aimed at Q, the rest were attracted to the remnants of the steam and faded away after a moment. Q didn’t take much damage from the lightning that hit her and instead of grimacing in pain, she smiled. Looks like she’s been holding back during our sparring sessions! This is getting exciting!

Q created a speed rune gate to go through, then began preparing a large array of rune circles which floated around her. “Hey Schorl, I think you’re going to have to work a little here.”

“Ksha~” The small salamander’s gem began to glow with a soft light and it began to surround Q’s body. Once her body had been completely enveloped with the glow, Q focused on catching up with Kukis.

Each time Q got close to Kukis she would always be repelled with a large area of effect spell. Although this was an incredibly inefficient method of keeping her away, Kukis was able to do it because she had seemingly limitless potions she could drink to keep her mana up. Not only that, sometimes they boosted her abilities, causing her to speed up or making her spells stronger. Q didn’t have half as many potions as Kukis did so she instead focused on staying efficient and using as little mana as possible to avoid or counter her spells.

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At some point the rest of the witches began to catch up with Q, as she noticed more and more of them flying around. The forest became incredibly noisy as branches were snapped and trees were uprooted from the amount of spells the witches were casting. There were even a few of them flying in the air focused on attacking the others without racing. While flying, Q noticed a witch getting hit by a spell and falling off her broom. The witch was able to recover herself in time, and then a white figure came out of the woods and took her away. Are those the volunteers taking out racers who aren’t able to fly anymore? Q wondered as she flew onwards.

At this point Kukis was actually at the front of all of the racers with Q not too far behind. They continued to cast spells at each other, when suddenly they broke out from the trees. For a moment Q was a bit surprised since it had been a while since she left the forest. The two moons shone brightly in the night sky, illuminating the vast plains in front of them, giving it an ethereal glow. A quick look around her showed that they were the only ones who made it this far, and this made her heart beat faster.

“It’s the final stretch!” Q yelled as she prepared to cast multiple speed gates at once.

“Yeah, seems like we really ‘sweeped’ the competition!” Kukis pointed at her broom.

“That’s a terrible pun.” Q finished making her rune gates and activated them all, creating a long line. Kukis had predicted this long before Q finished though, and she sent a salvo of spells through the gates, along with a few potions. The spells and potions immediately speeded up once they passed through the gates and headed towards Q with unparalleled speed. Even though this attack was surprising, Q had already come up with tactics for anyone who would try to use her rune gates against herself.

Q immediately waved her hand to move the gates closest to her, then used a wind rune to quickly push herself out of the way of the spells. Unfortunately for her, the spells collided with the potions at some point which caused an explosion. Q was instantly hit with multiple status effects but she already predicted that and quickly used a cleanse rune. Now Kukis was far ahead of Q, but she didn’t worry about that too much.

Concentrate… concentrate… Q floated in midair for a second, and then she opened her eyes, whipping out her staff from underneath her. She made a complete circle with the staff while activating [Rune-Write] with it, creating a large circle that she began to furiously write in. The circle had only one thing thing written in it: explode. Q then created a few more speed gates and moved the previous speed gates into a straight line. Throughout all of this Q was actually in freefall, and by the time she got back on her staff she was almost touching the ground.

Q wrapped her legs around the staff and locked them together, then tightened her grip on it. Schorl also cast a spell which caused a layer of rocks to form on Q’s hands, locking her grip down even more. 45 degree angle… no wait, 30. Distance should be fine. Q made some quick calculations inside her head and then nodded. ”Alright, here we go!” Q activated the large explosion rune behind her and braced herself for the impact.

A loud ‘boom’ sound came out and Q was propelled forward with immense force. Each speed gate she passed through seemingly doubled her speed and she shot out like a comet. Despite her strong grip on her staff, she actually found herself slowly slipping off it. She grit her teeth and wrapped her tail around her staff, and tried to stay on it as best she could.

Meanwhile Kukis was approaching the finish line when she suddenly heard a loud explosion behind her. Looking back, she saw that a red dot was approaching with high speed. She instantly knew what this meant, and drank as many potions as she could without hesitation. Her speed increased again, and she focused only on going forward as fast as she could. Q and Kukis rocketed forward, both approaching the finish line at high speed, and then…

*****

“Argh! I was so close too!” Q got up from the enormous crater she made in the ground. She dusted herself off and used a healing rune on herself since her health was incredibly low.

“Hahaha! Better luck next time Q!” Kukis’ face was wreathed in smiles, but secretly broke out in a cold sweat. If I didn’t stretch out my hand in that moment, Q would have won! But who cares? I won! At the very last second Kukis won by an inch (literally) and won first place. Immediately following her was Q, who was going so fast that she couldn’t stop herself in time and crashed into the ground.

The two looked around themselves and noticed that there was a large amount of people looking at them in curiosity. In this crowd was Brie, Phanos and Cinnamon, who approached the two when they stopped flying. “Congratulations on winning the race Kukis,” Brie started, “and you did good as well, Q.”

“Thanks. Really though, Kukis deserves this win. She was able to suppress me perfectly throughout the entire race.” Q laughed.

“Nah… I was just lucky.” Kukis blushed in embarrassment. “I just used her habits against her and… I had some good preparations and… and…”

“Oh, just accept your win already.” Cinnamon patted her shoulder. “But if you happen to win again…” Her grip tightened and a sinister smile appeared on her face.

“Right. Got it.”

“I must say, you two have won by quite a landslide.” Phanos piped up. “Only now are the other witches coming out of the forest.”

The group looked at the forest and saw that a few streams of witches were coming out. It was at this moment that one of the witches overseeing the race regained her senses and said, “In first place, Witch Kukis! In second place, Runemage Q!” The girls waited together for the rest of the racers to arrive. After half an hour the rest of the racers arrived and the race was finished. The Grand Witches appeared in a flash of light, all wearing refreshed faces.

“Congratulations to everyone! Good job on completing this year’s broom race.” Pamerun said.

“Yes, and this time there weren’t any casualties. Isn’t that something?” Suina said with a smile, but her tone didn’t seem like she was joking.

“Yes yes, now let’s move onto the prizes for our winners shall we? For our first place winner, a set of brand new witch equipment - including a broom made from elderwood, a state of the art alchemy set, and one of us Grand Witches will teach you any spell of your choosing! For second place, we have a supply of rare ingredients, as well as a magic focus to increase the strength of their spells. In third place…”

“Hey Q, wanna trade our prizes?” Kukis asked.

“My ingredients for your set of equipment? Although I’d rather just have the hat to be honest. These robes aren’t exactly the best for moving fast in a fight.”

“Sounds good. I’ll pick a few and you can keep the rest then.”

“Deal.”

Q and the rest of the girls waited for the awards ceremony to end, and then got their prizes afterwards. Most of the ingredients Q got she couldn’t recognize, but according to their description they could actually increase her stats if she consumed them - and the increase would be larger if they were refined and mixed first. Kukis picked a few of these for herself, then offered to mix the rest if Q passed over the rest of her ingredients. Q agreed, but only on the condition that she was able to get the boots Kukis got in return. Their ‘transaction’ finished, and Q looked at her new items with joy.

[Atmus’ Gaze (Focus, Magical)] - INT +50, WIS +25, Active Ability: Using a spell with this focus allows you to double the power of that spell (1 hour cooldown)

[Woogelt’s Witchcap (Head, Magical)] - WIS +15, INT +45, RES +30, Passive Ability: Reduces weather effects on the wearer, Passive Ability: Constantly searches for any source of magic within 20 meters.

[Sylph Boots (Legs, Magical)] - END +10, AGI +30, DEX +10, INT +10, Active Ability: Allows user to walk on air for one minute.

Q immediately equipped her new items and was getting ready to leave when she caught sight of Pamerun whispering to the other Grand Witches while looking very worried. “What’s wrong Pamerun?” She asked.

“Ah, Q.” Pamerun’s expression looked cloudy and distracted. “I’ve been trying to reach my apprentice Wendy, but she hasn’t responded. I didn’t see her with the other racers either, so I’m very concerned.”

“I smell a quest!” Cinnamon whispered in Q’s ear.