In an area of a few hundred meters, explosions of fire could be seen along with the dangerous rumbling of the ground. Occasionally, spikes made of stone tens of meters tall would appear before crumbling back down.

Only a few minutes had passed, but the previous serene forest clearing now looked like a warfield.

Emil was currently weaving through the dangerous attacks of the swordswoman and mage. The two of combined didn’t leave any room for him to breathe. Of course, they weren’t doing too well either. Not only were they overextending their anima circuit, the amount of injuries on their bodies from Emil’s strange spatial attacks was increasing.

The boy’s arms shook as he blocked the woman’s red hot sword with his daggers once more. He was surprisingly strong himself, but he still couldn’t be compared to her.

With a weeping heart, Emil forced himself to teleport once more away from her. He just wanted to be done with all of this already… Emil disliked fighting, after all. Nobody liked getting hurt or feeling endangered and he wasn’t any different.

Emil flipped back as another earthen spike shot up from the ground, nearly impaling him. He drifted in the air for a second before teleporting, appearing behind the mage and swinging his dagger downwards.

His weapons met a resistance from the magical barrier the mage had cast on himself, but Emil ground his teeth and pushed harder. He could sense that the woman was charging towards him once again, but he was determined to get rid of the mage.

Emil raised his arms up, the air around the blades become hazy as the space was distorted. “Break!” he shouted, sending his daggers done once more towards the man’s skull.

The mage shouted in agony as Emil’s daggers slid through the barrier he had cast, inserting themselves into his head. Emil’s face grew deathly pale underneath the coat of blood--he felt that his body was ready to burst from the amount of anima he had just absorbed in order to kill the mage.

His eyes slid to the side as the woman came closer, her blazing sword pointed at his skull. Emil sucked in a sharp breath before teleporting away, his body crashing against the burnt trunk of a tree and he glared at the woman. With how close she had came to him, part of his hair and clothing had been burnt.

Emil felt as if his organs were ready to explode from the overexertion, but he couldn’t stop yet.

The swordswoman wasn’t in any better condition and she had stabbed her sword into the ground to support herself as she stood. There were deep cuts all across her body that were pouring out a steady stream of blood. Some had been cauterized by her, but most were still open. But, her green eyes were full of murderous determination.

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“Brat, I’ll admit that you’re pretty good,” she said.

If anyone else had heard her words, they would have laughed at her stubbornness. Killing five others above one’s rank was far more than “pretty good”. But Emil didn’t seem to take her words to heart and stood up properly once more.

He pointed his bloody daggers at her temple and smiled, revealing his pearly white teeth that stood out against his red face. With a twirl, he threw one of his daggers at her.

The woman sneered, raising her sword to deflect the attack. But just as she did so, the dagger blinked and reappeared in front of her chest. She let out a shout and quickly jumped back just as it began to embed itself into her skin.

But as she did so, another dagger appeared behind her head and her action only served to drive it with through her skull. Her eyes widened in shock as she crumbled to the ground. Blood seeped out from her body, staining the ground. She did not get up again.

“Finally…”

Emil held his heart which was creaking in pain. Teleporting his body was one thing, but he still hadn’t mastered transporting other objects through space. Especially when it came to a very specific location. The tax on him was great which is why he held back from doing so until it was the end of the battle. If he had done it before, he surely would have lost.

He knelt down, blood soaking his entire body and his breathing was labored, but his expression remained neutral. He turned and locked his gaze on a tree off in the distance.

“How did I do, Teacher?”

“Ha-ha, you’re still too flashy,” the Night Sage answered, his body emerging from the tree trunk. He still held a pipe in his hand, casually blowing out more smoke. “If you hadn’t confronted them and used your strongest spatial spell, you would have been able to finish this minutes ago.”

“I wanted to speak with them first,” Emil coughed out the words, wiping his own blood from the palm of his hand onto his pants.

“Why?”

He looked down, scratching the drying blood on his arm. “I don’t…”

“I’m not mad at you, Emil. I am just asking why.”

“If there was a way to end it peacefully, then… I wanted to try that...” The boy barely managed to finish his sentence before he began to fall forward, finally having lost consciousness. He collapsed into the Night Sage’s arms who easily picked him up and tossed him over his shoulder.

A wry smile appeared on the Night Sage’s face and he messed up Emil’s soft hair. “All right.”

He recalled how from day one, Emil never had any issue with taking lives. When the Night Sage had instructed him to kill beasts, the boy was able to do so without shedding a single tear. But, he always asked for reasoning. It didn’t matter whether it was good or bad; he just wanted to know why… or if there were other options.

The Night Sage shook his head as he let out a light laugh, raising his pipe to his mouth.

He couldn’t help but feel that he had good taste when it came to choosing a disciple.