20 Today's Weather: Sunny with some Deadly Storms
For this fight her opponent seemed to be a knight, as Aaron had already told her. She really wanted to test out her new weapon, but as Aaron said that it would be better to use some magic to weaken her opponent first she decided to follow his advice.
The magic power became active under her control and several enhancements quickly improved her physique. A strong invisible reflective barrier came next, before Myra started to focus on offense.
Her spells barely took her a breath of time and they were executed so quickly and fluently that no one around her even noticed that she cast anything at all.
'I shouldn't use all of my power on a single attack, so maybe I should start with something smaller at the start.'
It did not take long for Myra to redirect her focus into a clairvoyance spell scouting the area for her opponent. Once she found him she started her actual attack to test her opponent's defenses and see how much of her power she would have to use in order to defeat him.
--
Meanwhile the knight was quickly reducing the distance between them. His speed was fast and even though Myra's spell preparations were even faster there was no way that he would know about it.
According to his information, his opponent was a girl that had just joined the academy. He heard some rumors about her being a princess, but it really made no difference to him. He was also informed that the girl seemed to be some knight with some potential as a mage. It would make it harder to prepare, but he was still confident in his own abilities.
If he had known that Myra did not just cast a simple barrier, but several layered spells in this short timeframe, he might have been worried, but sometimes ignorance is really bliss. He could not feel any magical fluctuations and he became even more confident that he was facing a knight with just some minimal spellcasting abilities as a mage.
'A little girl can never compete with me in terms of fighting prowess. I just have to make sure not to fall into a trap that she might prepare, then it will be an easy win.' he thought to himself.
He was just getting ready to quickly but carefully cross the little hill in the middle of the arena, when he heard the sound of thunder above him. The weather was rather nice with sunshine and white clouds as far as one could see, as such the dark cloud hanging right above their arena, was a really unexpected view to behold. The clouds were like a cover on the inside of the magical barrier, which separated the audience from the arena giving him the feeling of looking at a grey colored, weather based, sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
A grey ominous cloud would be bad on its own, but it did not take long for lightning bolts to zigzag their way to the ground. Thankfully it did not look like he was their target.
"What in the name of …"
He stared a moment at the lightning bolts that seemed to all hit a certain point in front of him. It was easy enough to figure out that it must be his opponent who summoned this cloud in some way. He never heard about a student who could perform such magic on such a big scale and he already had a bad feeling when he finally approached the girl that he could now see in the distance.
Like a cage of lightning, the lightning bolts seemed to be trapped around her small frame, circling her body like living snakes in an awe inspiring manner. She was holding a polearm in one of her hands in a relaxed way, while the other hand was raising in his direction, fingers slightly apart.
'Oh hell no, you're not going to shoot me!' he thought, instantly becoming aware of her intention. He quickly hid behind a large boulder waiting for the impact of whatever magic she would shoot at him, to dissipate in the ground.
He could hear the crackling noise of the massive amounts of energy from her direction, before the sound abruptly changed into an explosion. The knight who hid himself behind the boulder already expected some kind of impact with an explosion, he did however not expect the sheer amount of power behind it.
The first bolt of lightning was hitting the boulder he was hiding behind. Not only did the boulder explode, with little stone pieces flying in all directions, but he was also thrown high into the air along with a good amount of earth.
The little stone fragments only did minor damage and getting thrown around for a few meters was not a big issue either, what nearly made his heart stop for a moment though was the 8 other lightning bolts that were on their way to him already lining up in the sky to be released at any moment, like a barrage of arrows covering the sky.
The second bolt reached him in the blink of an eye, shredding the magical power he used for protection and he realized that he had lost, before it even spent all of its energy. What changed the look on his face from disappointment to being horrified however was that this second bolt not only hit the lifesaving badge they received and disappeared, but instead it shattered the badge in one go along with his own defenses and then even ripped into his body.
"Aaaahhh…" he shouted out in pain and fear. Blood dripped from the wound on his shoulder where the bolt hit him. If not the majority of the bolts power was dissipated due to the defenses of the badge, he would already have lost his life.
He could not help but to stare at the remaining 7 lightning bolts, hanging in the air like an omen of death, already triggered and let loose. He might not be a mage, but even he as a knight knew that once a spell was released, it was extremely hard to control it.
He shut his eyes in fear, expecting to be blasted into pieces in the next moment. He could hear explosions around him, but due to some miracle he seemed to still be alive. The master knight did not even open his eyes anymore, he just fainted due to fear.
--
There were 6 craters to be found inside and around the arena and the principal frowned when he looked at the aftermath of this fight. It did not look like a duel between students, it looked like an archmage was angered and decided to start a magical bombardment.
He first noticed that something was wrong, when the spell of this little princess girl was on a scale that was not normal for a student. The extreme amount of magic she gathered was just unbelievable and the spell was something he had never seen before.
At this point he was stunned and in awe by her spell casting ability. He did not consider at the time, that this was not one of his colleagues showing him a new spell, this was a fight between students. His lack of attention nearly cost one of his students their life.
Myra's first lightning bolt completely destroyed the cover of the young knight, who did the correct thing and hid behind a boulder. It did not last long, as the second bolt hit him right afterwards without any cover remaining.
This bolt just confirmed what the principal was afraid of, the power was more than enough to blast through not only the student's defenses, but also the protective badge that all participants would receive.
Then something unexpected happened. He could feel the power emanating from the young girl, redirecting her own spells to avoid the knight. The girl looked as if she would collapse any moment, the backlash of redirecting her own spells causing severe harm to her body, but none of the remaining bolts hit the knight.
Five of the bolts hit the inside of the arena without causing much harm, other than creating huge craters in the landscape. One of the bolts zigzagged away from the knight in the last moment, reaching the outer area of the arena soon after and then broke through the magical barrier that was there to protect the audience as if it were made out of paper.
Before it could cause any casualties outside it was redirected yet again and zapped into the sky, flying for many miles before finally losing its power and disintegrating without bringing harm. The audience in this area was still pale and shocked, some were trembling and some even started to cry, having escaped death by a hairs breadth.
The last bolt hit a storage building made out of stone and showed just what would have happened if any of these bolts had hit a living being without protection. The parts where the lightning bolt crossed were gone, with several square meters of wall just disintegrated.
It looked like some angry god had raged and destroyed the building in his anger. All that remained was a ruin, the surface around where the bolt hit, blackened if there was still any stone left to be seen at all. Luckily, no one was inside the building at the time.
By now the healers had already made their way to the knight and quickly carried him away for treatment.
"Someone get a healer to that girl as well! That magical backlash alone would have killed most students and she still managed to redirect those spells in the middle of a fight." the principal shouted in anger after a moment, when no one else seemed to realize that she was hurt.
It was at this moment that everyone understood that it was not their principal, or some of the other mages who had prevented the magic to kill the knight. They would not have expected the girl to redirect her own magic, because it was way more powerful than anything a student should be able to control.
--
When Myra finally made it out of the Arena, she had totally changed her opinion about this tournament. This wasn't fun, this was just utterly horrible. Not only did she already hold back, she even had to redirect her spells at the last moment, in order to save her opponent's life.
Who would have thought, that these older students were not only weak, but even the badge and the barrier of the arena would just prove to be of inferior quality. This could not be the work of what people called saints and archmages right?
She was hurting everywhere and even without a healer around, she could easily tell that coughing blood, was probably not the sign of a healthy person.
'Just give me a break. I quit! I don't care about this stupid tournament anymore.' she thought.
Finally a lot of people arrived and began to surround her. She did not know most of them and just stumbled to the first friendly face she recognized.
"Aaron, I don't feel so well, let's go take a nap."
"Mhm, sure, but first all these nice people will patch you up. I don't want you to die while napping."
Aaron's voice was rather gentle when he spoke to her and he also seemed unusually gentle when he picked her up and carried her to the healers. With all the pain and discomfort she was feeling, getting carried around was the only thing that made the situation a little bit more bearable. She could feel his aura surrounding her and making the air quiver with power.
One day she would have to teach him how to avoid letting his emotions influence his aura, but today she was just happy to see how much he cared about her. Doing her best to use some healing magic on her body, it did not take long until she fell asleep.
--
