Akira hopped from the manor grounds to the top of the wall. She sat down and then got up just as fast—no way she was putting her bare legs on solid ice. She'd settle for slowly pacing the arena's edge with a cigarette in hand to watch everything unfold. She didn't plan on lifting one finger for Erina today.
A stiff breeze encouraged Aileen to lower her head briefly. The morning air was cold in the arena grounds. As the wind died down, she lifted the brim of her hat and assessed her challenger. "That's a fine expression," she said. "Are you afraid, Erina-san?"
"I am." Erina admitted it, even if her face was a perfect mask of calm.
"You've hidden it well. It's one thing to be a fool that knows no fear. It's another to conquer it and move forward even as it lingers in your heart." Aileen smiled. "I like to see that. How far can your courage go?"
Erina didn't respond, standing as tall as she could in the face of another dreaded battle. The wind tousled her long hair and blew along the hem of her skirt.
"We can begin whenever you're ready," said Aileen.
Erina nodded. "Opponent," she murmured. "Former High Magus, Aileen Lohrs. ."
Her laser struck solid ice and dispersed on its surface. As fast as Erina had fired, water leapt up from the floor and turned into a thin but impervious wall before Aileen. A quick draw, but not quick enough.
The wall washed away as fast as it formed. Aileen paced to the side, cane tapping the floor with each step as Erina took off running the other way. A green orb tossed up became a cloud of ammunition ready to fire. On the other side, snowflakes formed—a glittering aura of frost and ice lingering in Aileen's wake.
They condensed into icicles and fired off as Erina returned the favor, firing a barrage of lasers at a rate of a dozen per second. Aileen's icicles were just as numerous. Several collided and canceled in mid-air, the rest flying by each other towards the target. Erina rolled, dived, and dodged as the little spears whistled by around her.
A thin film of water at Aileen's feet became a frothing current and then a shallow whirlpool. She darted several yards without taking a step, easily turning on a dime and changing direction through the live fire. All the while, she didn't exert any more effort than leaning her body side to side, gliding over the ice as her agile maneuvers stirred currents and violent wakes.
A sudden shadow brought Erina's attention to the column of water yawning overhead. She leapt aside as it crashed down, water rushing past her feet and draining into the trenches as a second one reached out from behind Aileen. Moving with a life of its own like a massive tentacle, the liquid tendril lashed down and brought an end to their initial exchange.
A preference for long range, noted Aileen as Erina rolled aside once more. Clear water swirled around her feet as she slid to a stop.
The icicles had stopped, but Erina's cloud was gone too. She quickly generated a new one, her eyes on Aileen as the older woman extended one arm and motioned upwards.
Rainwater surged along the thin trenches, coalescing before her into a large orb and then exploding into shape with a loud crash. A massive body of opaque blue-white ice, huge fins and a tremendous tail—a full-scale whale of solid ice burst into being and crashed down through the arena floor. The ice melted around it and refroze as it passed, traversing the coliseum as naturally as if it were a liquid sea.
Erina made to scramble away, but it was already upon her. The whale whipped around and struck out with its huge tail, launching huge chunks of ice at her.
A heavy blow and then Erina found herself tumbling across the floor. She fought through the dizziness, heart racing as she got back up and locked onto the whale. Her cloud opened fire on her behalf, bombarding the whale as it banked around for another pass. Lasers ripped out chunks of ice from its back. Erina started running and then doubled back as it cut her off. She kited the other way as she continued her assault on it. It was big and fast, but it wasn't as agile as her. She could whittle it down.
Then a half-inch of water rushed around her feet and Erina found all her plans thrown out the window. Aileen had closed the distance, snowflakes and frost glistening in her wake. She carried her cane in one hand, the other closing around a freshly-formed sword of ice!
Erina drew her own katana and parried, wincing as the blade clipped her arm nonetheless. She backpedaled as fast as she could, but that was no good when Aileen could all but levitate after her to carry on the pressure! Another narrowly blocked swing, a duck under a slash—it was all Erina could do to defend herself.
The sound of cracking ice and rushing water was her only warning before the ground heaved up from below and the whale burst out. Erina found herself in the air with the world spinning every which way. Spell circles flashed and vanished as she blindly tried to figure out which way was down until she finally got the right direction, arresting her fall just short of the ground.
The currents intensified at Aileen's feet as she skated off towards Erina once more. Erina threw her sword aside and let it disperse as she brought her hands together and formed the spear into her grip. The whale reached her ahead of its master—
Erina leapt back, flipping away into the air before its belly flop could crush her under its huge bulk. Landing on an airborne platform and leaping away again as Aileen's icicles whistled up, Erina drew a bead on the whale as it broke off and launched her spear through the accelerator at it. Branches of light erupted, tearing into the ice that composed it and shattering the construct to pieces.
Erina jumped away to another platform, keeping an eye on Aileen below. Fighting from the air offered so many more dimensions to dodge than on the ground. A fresh cloud of green orbs multiplied into being at her back as Aileen paused. The icicles stopped.
Erina panted. The glowing cloud hung behind her, but didn't fire. From this distance, Aileen would surely dodge it no matter how much she fired. Erina doubted she would ever get away with catching Aileen sleeping on a lucky hit. She needed a way in—some method to trap Aileen.
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Akira frowned. Aileen was holding back an absurd amount. In a frozen coliseum with the rain falling, she could attack from any direction with anything she wanted at any time. Even restricting herself as much as she did, Erina was on the back foot the whole time.
"C'mon," muttered Akira, more to herself than anything. "I've seen you do better than that."
The mental stack was overwhelming. Erina was alert. Attacks could come from any direction. She listened for any noise that could tip her off—the whoosh of air, the rush of surging water, anything that broke the ambient drizzle. Her platform gradually inched down under her weight.
"You're keeping up well!" said Aileen across the distance. "But I believe I warned you…" Her sword crumbled into snowflakes as she brought both hands to the head of her cane. The water at her feet drew back, leaving a dry patch of ice in a small radius around her. "It's best that you don't underestimate me, hmm?"
The air crackled. Erina tasted the sharp tang of ozone.
Aileen firmly struck her cane down against the arena floor.
The air exploded. Light flashed, winding and twisting up towards Erina in the blink of an eye. She only had time for her eyes to go wide before it struck her, intense heat searing her front before the force of the earsplitting explosion flung her off her platform.
Erina hit the ground roughly, tumbling over herself. She hurried to her feet, shaking the dizziness out of her head and refocusing. What was that? That wasn't fire magic! Every spell had its signature—a trace of the caster's lingering mana in it. She didn't feel any of that just now. That was a genuine, actual explosion!
The air crackled again. Her mouth filled with that off-putting taste. Her eyes focused on Aileen's cane as she struck it on the ground. The very tip was a reflective material. Sparks flew from the steel as it met the hardened ice and ignited thin air—
A spell circle flashed as Erina turned away, sheltering her face as a dense shrub of icy branches jumped to cover her. The shrub shattered taking the blast for her, shedding most of its branches and pelting her with ice shards.
Erina's ears rang. There was no way, right? No, she couldn't think of another way water magic could achieve that!
She stepped out from behind the broken bush as her hearing came back. "Manipulation of water," said Erina, "at the molecular level?"
Aileen merely smiled. Erina understood. Water, composed of hydrogen and oxygen, made for powerful fuel, if only it could be pulled apart into its constituents.
…What kind of Affinity was that?! Calling it water magic was like calling the sun a moderately large fire!
Snowflakes filled the air around Aileen. Erina snapped to attention and hastily summoned another shrub for cover, hunkering down as icicles pelted the other side. Green light surrounded her arms as she motioned and flourished as fast as she could.
Light rushed along the edge of the coliseum, drawing a huge circle over the course of several seconds. The icicles crashed and shattered on the other side of her cover, each impact breaking off another small piece of it. Erina completed the circle and gestured again, drawing a second smaller circle within the first, and then a third.
Her shrub broke completely as she slashed her arm down and completed the spell. Erina's eyes went wide as her cover fell away, revealing the large spear-like icicle hovering over Aileen.
The walls cracked and the trenches in the floor deepened with a deep boom. Material was pulled away from the surroundings and channeled into points all along the circles, growing tall thick trees of solid ice throughout the arena. Aileen's spear shattered against the sturdy trunk that emerged in place of the shrub.
"Ohh," said Akira. "Ain't that something?"
Erina broke cover and ran for the next tree, her cloud launching a rapid fire barrage of lasers with each swipe of her arms.
"Interesting," said Aileen. Smiling, she spun gracefully away from the first lasers, currents rushing at her feet, sheets of ice rising and falling to block the rest. "I've never seen spells like that before."
She looked at the tall tree next to her. It melted at once, pouring down and then refreezing into two new shapes that vanished under the floor.
Erina spotted the fins slicing the ice just in time to leap away. An icy shark breached the surface, launching itself clear of the floor. Twisting and flailing, it crashed down and swam away to join its partner circling their prey.
The spear flashed into her hand. Erina spared Aileen a glance—no sight of her. That was all the time she had to look.
The sharks dived under her first throw. Erina leapt up with one animal breaching hot on her heels, its jaws snapping barely a few feet short as she grabbed onto one of the tree's lower branches. Her feet kicked about, and then a platform seal offered the footing to climb up higher.
"Running away so soon?"
Erina whirled. Aileen stood in the branches of the next tree, a column of water losing its shape and splashing down beneath them.
"Aileen-san—"
"Back down you go."
Aileen had the same smile on her face as ever. The tree melted around her, spreading out and surging forward.
The tidal wave hit Erina squarely. The thick branches snapped, her tree collapsing as the wave dragged her down and left her spilled out on the arena floor again.
The water drained away as she got up with a new sore back. The sharks were onto her again. Every passing second made her realize how sorely outmatched she was. Erina wasn't going to get an opening any time soon! Tossing up a cloud of orbs, she resorted to making a break for it. A concentrated barrage encouraged the approaching shark to turn away, if only for a moment.
Then she turned her head and found the other coming in hot—a pincer attack!
Green light flared, her mana shield bursting to life as the shark broke the surface and clamped down around her midsection. Erina was tugged back and forth, the shark's flailing rattling her brain in her skull. Gritting her teeth, she formed her spear and drove it into its eye with a yell.
The shark shattered to pieces as branches of light flashed everywhere around her. Adrenaline pumping and heart pounding, Erina heaved a large chunk of ice off her and stumbled afoot—
Aileen's frost sword made her hit the ground again, rolling away to her feet at a distance. She didn't let up for one second! Erina's lingering cloud opened fire at maximum intensity, unloading everything like a gatling gun. Erina backed out as Aileen did the same, vanishing behind the same trees Erina used for cover. The cloud fired its last orb and blinked out.
"Is that the extent of your will?" Aileen's voice called out.
Erina panted as she flicked an orb into the air. It multiplied and compressed down into a shining bolt as she readied her accelerator. The shark had vanished off somewhere. Her eyes scanned the tree line. There—a hint of that pale blue coat!
The railgun blast ripped through the icy tree, severing its trunk. Aileen darted to the left—and to the right? No, one of them was merely a clear figurine of Aileen cast from water. But Erina didn't see where the real one went!
Erina readied another bolt, but thought better of loading it into the accelerator. She held it in her palm and swiped the other. A tight fist squeezed around her heart as the bolt split, multiplying into an array orbiting her as she loaded the round.
A shot, and a miss. Aileen was behind the other tree, and moved to new cover. Erina couldn't keep track as more and more figures darted about, the sound of surging water coming from everywhere she could see.
A wordless yell left her as she opened fire, one blast after another felling the trees with blind impunity. Erina had no idea where she was aiming anymore. One tree after another fell, the arena shaking as they shattered like glass.
"Erina," muttered Akira. "What are you doing?"
Erina willed another round into the railgun and found she had no more rounds. Her chest was on fire. She felt like she'd been sprinting full-tilt without rest for the last hour. Gasping for air, she stumbled to the nearest stump and threw herself against it for support to keep herself from totally crumpling to the ground.
She didn't get it. She didn't understand at all. Against an opponent this strong, what was Erina supposed to do?!
The shark's fin parted the coliseum grounds at a distance. It joined Aileen as she stepped out from behind cover, her familiar swimming in slow wide circles around her.
"Have you had enough?" said Aileen gently.
Obinai, a young man shackled by self-doubt and past trauma, never expected greatness even out of himself in his lackluster life. But when mysterious tremors shake Nurikabe—a structure separating humanity from the unknown—his life is violently upended. Haunted by horrifying visions and relentless experiences, he is captured by a scheming society and given a brutal choice: master the elusive power of "essence" at the ruthless Elona Academy, or face execution.
As Obinai struggles through brutal training and uncovers fragmented truths, he realizes the world is built on layers of contradictions—more than one story, more than one truth, and more than one lie. With the veil thinning, he must confront the darkness stirring within himself and decide whether to embrace his fate or be devoured by it.
Because how else is he supposed to destroy the world?