Chapter 65
“...Lunaris?”
Senior Gaios's flustered voice buzzed in my ears.
But the sound felt distant, almost as if I were hearing it underwater.
It felt like the world was moving in slow motion.
The process of seeing with my eyes and hearing with my ears couldn't keep up with the speed of thought exploding in my head.
-Wooooong!
The air began to tremble faintly.
The natural mana drifting around me began to take shape on its own.
Complex, tangled mana circuits.
Formulas stretched long enough to fill the air.
Magic circles interlocking and turning with the precision of gears.
All of it was annoying to look at.
All the countless steps and procedures I had to go through just to cast magic felt like utterly useless shackles.
In an instant, the circuits, formulas, and magic circles before my eyes shattered to pieces.
Shimmering fragments scattered into dust made of light.
It felt as if the head that had constantly calculated magic had gone completely blank.
Intuition and instinct filled that empty space.
The sensation that magic understood me, rather than the other way around, felt fresh and new.
-Swoooosh...
The storm of mana wrapping around me quickly subsided.
As if nothing had happened at all.
“...”
I blinked blankly.
My sense of reality returned.
In front of me, Senior Gaios was frozen with a dumbfounded expression.
And in my hand, I was still holding a half-eaten meat sandwich.
“...Nyam.”
I absentmindedly shoved the sandwich into my mouth and chewed. Yep, meat really was delicious no matter when you ate it.
I swallowed the sandwich in one go and licked the sauce off my fingers.
Yep, I'm getting pretty full now.
“Whew—”
Once my stomach filled up, other thoughts started to creep in.
My stomach felt a little bloated, so I kind of wanted to move my body around.
And while I was at it, I wanted to test the newly defined magic too.
“Senior Gaios.”
“...Uh, um?”
“Want to spar?”
He seemed to still be trying to process what was happening, blinking stupidly as he asked back.
“...What?”
“A spar. Right now.”
Senior Gaios scratched the back of his neck with a dazed look.
I had just been scribbling formulas and magic circles all over the dining hall a moment ago, so it was only natural he'd be flustered when I suddenly settled down and asked to fight.
“Well, I'm fine with it... but isn't it a bit late?”
“I just happened to feel like it right now.”
I hopped down from the chair and bounced in place.
My body felt as light as a feather.
“Days like this don't come around often, you know?”
“...Fair enough. Still, I'd appreciate it if you took it easy this time.”
Senior Gaios gave a helpless snort of laughter and picked up the wooden sword he'd left propped against the wall again.
“You should at least give me time to prepare my magic.”
“Hmm—I'll try.”
*
I headed for the Magic Hall training annex together with Senior Gaios.
It was the very same place where I'd once fought a magical duel with Dean Raymond.
“...There was a place like this?”
Senior Gaios looked around the interior and let out an admiring gasp.
The floor was laid with special shock-absorbing tiles, and the walls were encircled by triple layers of top-grade defensive barriers—a dueling arena for mages.
“The facilities are excellent. Much better than the practice yard at the swordsmanship hall.”
As expected of the Magic Department, the pride of Elterion Academy and the recipient of every kind of support, he nodded in admiration.
“You've never been to the Magic Hall before?”
“What reason would a student from the Swordsmanship Department have to come to the Magic Hall?”
Senior Gaios shrugged and added,
“The Swordsmanship Department and the Magic Department aren't exactly on good terms to begin with. If I came here for no reason, I'd only end up picking a fight, so I avoided it on purpose.”
Well, it was famous that mages and swordsmen didn't get along.
That was why they went around calling each other names like mage freaks and sword maniacs.
We stood facing each other in the center of the sparring arena.
The distance between us was... maybe about ten paces.
“How should we do this?”
I asked in a languid voice with my hand stuffed into my pocket.
“Since I ambushed you yesterday, should I let you make the first move today?”
“Well, if you're yielding, I won't refuse.”
Senior Gaios adjusted his grip on the wooden sword and narrowed his eyes.
“Are you sure? If I move first like this, you won't even have time to cast magic.”
“It doesn't matter.”
I gave a light shrug.
Casting? I didn't need that to use magic well.
“Then...”
Senior Gaios vanished from in front of me in an instant.
Fast.
In the blink of an eye, the distance between Senior Gaios and me had become zero.
Appearing right in front of me, he brought the wooden sword down in a straight line.
-Fwoosh!
The wooden sword, which looked ready to split my skull open, stopped a hair's breadth from my scalp.
“...You held back at the end, didn't you?”
I asked while staring at the wooden sword.
“I told you you didn't have to hold back.”
The wooden sword—and the bronzed muscles in his arms—trembled as if convulsing.
As if something invisible had seized both arms.
“Ha ha... Looks like I was worrying over nothing.”
What had bound Senior Gaios's arms was none other than telekinetic magic.
This was one spell I could use as naturally as breathing, even before I gained that realization.
“Then it's my turn now.”
I took my hand out of my pocket and snapped my fingers lightly.
-Snap.
At that instant, a tiny black sphere appeared right in front of his solar plexus.
“...?!"
There was no warning whatsoever.
The time needed to weave the spell and gather mana had been skipped entirely.
The black sphere greedily sucked in the surrounding air.
Then it crossed its critical point and swelled in an instant.
-BOOM!
“Ugh?!”
Right before the explosion, Senior Gaios hurled himself backward on animal instinct and rolled across the floor.
Cold sweat ran down his face, and shock was written clearly in his eyes.
“Was that just now an intermediate fire spell?”
“Well... yes?”
“No, an intermediate spell that someone might only barely be able to use by the time they graduate from Elterion Academy...
And you're just blasting it out with no preparation, no cast time?”
Before he could finish, I flicked my index finger upward.
-Wooooong!
Pure white circles blanketed the ceiling.
Drawing complicated magic circles? No need.
Just imagining them pouring down was enough.
-Rumble-rumble-rumble!!
Soon, a pure white rain began pouring from the ceiling.
It was a downpour of magic missiles.
“Damn it...!”
Senior Gaios wrapped his entire body in mana and began sprinting across the sparring arena.
Along the path he dashed, beams of light crashed into the floor with a rumbling roar.
I watched him quietly for a moment, then drew my finger straight across.
This time, translucent blades of wind tore through the air as they flew.
-Clang! Kaang!
Senior Gaios unleashed sword aura to shatter the wind, then twisted his body to dodge the mana bullets raining down from above.
“As expected of the imperial knight designate, you're different. If I hadn't ambushed you yesterday and ended it in one shot, this spar would have dragged on pointlessly.”
“Standing there... huff, not moving even a single step... whew, I don't think you're the one who should be saying that... tch!”
As Senior Gaios said, I was just standing there with one leg cocked, wiggling my fingers this way and that.
That was thanks to the image in my head being overlaid onto reality exactly as I imagined it.
Wow, my magic really is landing today, huh?
“Huff, huff...!”
Senior Gaios was being driven more and more toward the corner.
The panic on his face was obvious.
Come to think of it, this kind of spar was probably a first for him.
Normally, when a swordsman and a mage spar, the swordsman rushes in on the offensive while the mage uses Blink to open up distance and looks for any chance to land a spell.
Mages are specialized for war to begin with; they're not really built for one-on-one duels.
But the way I use magic is a little different from other ordinary mages.
“You're swinging magic around like... like it's a sword... ngh!”
Maybe I should press him a little harder.
My body was starting to heat up.
The moment I pictured a spell one tier higher than anything I'd used so far.
The temperature in the room began to drop sharply.
White frost began to form on the floor.
In an instant, snow-white frost bloomed over Senior Gaios's ankles.
“Ghk!”
He stomped his foot and shattered the ice, but the real spell was unfolding separately on the ceiling.
From the thinly veiled dark clouds overhead, chunks of ice began to pour down.
It was the very same spell I had used to crush the wyvern.
Senior Gaios released a silent battle cry and sent the mana within his body into a frenzy.
Deep blue mana surged upward as if it were burning.
His seething sword aura smashed every incoming beam of light and chunk of ice, crushing them to pieces.
Senior Gaios deflected every one of my spells and still reached right in front of me.
At the same time, the wooden sword in his hand crumbled into dust.
It couldn't withstand the rampaging mana.
“Huff, huff... huff...”
Senior Gaios glared at me, breathing hard, with only the handle of the wooden sword left in his hand.
He looked like a complete wreck, covered head to toe in sweat, soot, and frost.
“Uhh... should I wait until you bring another wooden sword?”
“...Hah.”
Senior Gaios gave a hollow laugh and pulled out the spare wooden sword he'd left in the corner.
He'd brought it along, knowing this would happen.
“By the way, Lunaris... are you really okay?”
Senior Gaios asked while pointing the wooden sword at me.
“I'm fine. If anything, I'm still not burning completely, so I'd like to let a little more out.”
“...You've been hurling magic nonstop, so how can your face not change at all?”
Senior Gaios muttered to himself with a fed-up expression.
I smirked and reached out my hand.
“Why would I need to use the mana inside my body?”
I compressed the air, drew out nature's mana, and conjured flames.
At the sight of that, Senior Gaios's eyes widened.
Of course. He recognized it at a glance.
I continued, toying with the blazing flame like it was a toy.
“There's mana everywhere around here, so why wouldn't I use it?”