Arc 2 - Chapter 35: Fire Wizard (1/2)

A dome of flames covered the sky. The heat quickly became oppressive and the trees that had fallen to the ground caught fire and began to burn, just like the dome above.

Lylphia's fire dome was an ostentatious spell. Its purpose was to prevent the enemy from escaping, to weaken them mentally and physically and force them to give up.

But she had to remember that Sony was not just any enemy. Sony was a powerful earth mage and could use his own magic to get out of the field.

Indeed, he wanted to get out of the dome, so he tried to cross the wall of fire by building an earthen roof over his head that split the flame.

But having spent so much mana on her spell, Lylphia couldn't let her opponent just run away from the field and waste all that mana.

So when Sony tried to get out, there were always walls of fire in the way, trying to prevent him from leaving the dome.

When all the trees on the ground caught fire, Sony raised the ground he was standing on, creating a thin platform of earth where the flames would not touch him.

The platform stretched from one end of the dome to the other and was several meters high and two meter wide.

Although Lylphia was a fire mage, she could burn like any other human being. She was more resistant to fire and could stand in it for a while, perhaps for hours, protecting her skin from the flames, but in the end she was a flesh and blood creature. Many fire mages has been overconfident and burned to death.

"But that's not my main problem, I just don't want my clothes to burn, I can't go naked in front of the enemy..."

To keep herself from being engulfed in flames, Lylphia used her magic to push the flames around her away and create a safe space in which she could move, but with Sony up there, above the ground he had created, and Lylphia on the lower ground, it was difficult for them to fight. Since Sony would not land, Lylphia would have to jump to the dirt platform.

"For your information, giving up is a pretty good option."

As she landed on the high gronud, she offered her opponent the opportunity to surrender. She knew Sony wouldn't accept it, but she thought it was a hope. It would have been nice if Sony hadn't been difficult.

And it would be in Lylphia's interest to give in, but it would also be in Sony's interest. If he didn't give in and forced Lylphia to do it, he could go up in flames, which Lylphia didn't want to happen, but she would do it if she had no choice.

Moreover, it had been some time since they had started fighting, and although none of the trio of Sivina, Ana and Lylphia could use healing magic, their burns could be healed with Yurine, a healer, catching up with them soon. So Lylphia was planning to get serious if things dragged on.

If not, when Lylphia became serious, Sony's body would have suffered burns that would never heal and, in the worst case scenario, he would have burned to ashes.

It would have been bad for Lylphia, just as it would have been bad for Sony. She didn't want to be known as the one who burned the academy headmaster's son and what would they do to her at academy if she did something like that? She sighed, sometimes wishing she was using water magic.

"So what if I give up? We'll never get along, not with you and not with them."

"I won't burn you if you give up, isn't that a great reason to give up?"

She wanted to fire a warning shot at her opponent, and without spending much mana, she created a small, weak ball of flame and threw it at Sony. Weak though it was, it was a flame attack, and if it managed to ignite his clothes, it could burn him to death.

But since it was a slow and weak attack, Sony didn't even need to block the fireball with the wall, he just turned his body slightly and let the fireball travel straight ahead and crash into the wall of the flame dome and disappear.

"So it is!"

She raised her hand upwards and flames burst from the dome above their heads and fell in a ball on Sony's head.

There was no room for Sony to escape. If he went too far back he would hit the fire dome and burn, if he took a step to the right or left he would fall down and burn. There was no way to go forward anyway, because there was Lylphia standing there waiting to engage in melee combat.

He did the only thing he could do, walls of earth stretched out to his right and left, from under the burning trees on the ground, and joined together at the top of the Sony to form a roof.

"If it continues like this, it will eventually run out of mana."

Lylphia had also used up almost all of the mana she had accumulated over the past few months using her fancy flame dome, but it didn't take much mana to shoot fireballs from it.

So all she had to do was dodge if an attack came and constantly drop fireballs from the fireball dome to make Sony spend more mana.

The sweltering heat also had a negative effect on Sony. Although Lylphia, like Sony, felt the heat and was uncomfortable, as a fire mage she was more resistant to it than Sony.

Sony realized that as long as this continued, he could do nothing but waste his mana. He couldn't get out of the fire dome even if he tried, and it was clear that Lylphia would survive his light attacks.

And the only thing Sony could do was to throw itself into the offense, even if it wasn't good at melee combat, it was his only option.

First he had to deal with the fireballs falling on his head from above. As much as he wanted to use his remaining mana wisely, there was only one option, to build the roof over his head over the entire platform. He raised his hands up and with the movement of his hands, the earthen walls rising from the ground converged on the entire platform. They were in a tunnel now and he wouldn't have to worry about fire falling from above.

At the beginning and end of the tunnel was the wall of the flame dome. There were small flames on the ground, as there were a few sticks on the ground they had stepped on.

The next problem went beyond the fact that they wanted to kill each other, there was a common shortage of air that could kill them both.

If they stayed in the tunnel for too long, they would begin to suffocate from the fire that lined both mouths of the tunnel and the fight would end with both of them suffocating without a winner.

"Of course that's what he thinks. If I faint, the spell will end and Ana will probably be able to stop Sony after that... But it's better if I don't have to faint."

Maybe Sony could have made a deal with Lylphia to let him go, but Lylphia wasn't going to let that happen. But he tried anyway.

"I think if you let me go, we can finish this without anyone getting hurt."

"Hmm... I don't think that's an option, maybe if you give me the Blessing we can think of something..."

Sony shook his head, neither of them would survive. The only option left was for one of them to lose before the tunnel ran out of air for either of them to survive, and neither Lylphia nor Sony had any desire to lose.

Apart from protecting Sony from the fireballs raining down from above, the other advantage of the tunnel was that it restricted the range of motion of Lylphia, who was confident in melee combat and constantly jumping during fights.

With his range of movement restricted, not only would she struggle in close combat and Sony would have a chance, but she would no longer be able to escape the halos of light so easily.

So if Sony had enough mana in his body, Lylphia would not have been able to escape easily, she would have died here. If he had enough mana, he would have created enough halos to cover the entire tunnel and send them at Lylphia to kill her, but with all the magic he used and now the tunnel he had created, he was about to see the end of his mana.

If he spent mana to create the halos of light and Lylphia somehow survived the attack, the mana-deprived Sony would not only lose the opportunity to launch an attack from a distance, but his strength would be reduced to the physical strength of an ordinary human being as he used up the mana in his body against an opponent whose mana reserves he did not know.