Arc 2 - Chapter 33: Wizard Collisions (2/2)

Yu didn't want to be disappointed, so he tried not to think of Yurine as too strong before the fight started.

She seemed to be doing a pretty good job, though. At least she was doing a much better job than Yu would have done. Even though she couldn't put pressure on Sharley, she was good when it came to defense. None of Sharley's attacks were able to penetrate Yurine's wall of wind.

But it was unclear how long this could go on. Yurine was slowly retreating while Sharley continued her non-stop attacks. It was hard to notice at first, but Yurine was much closer to Yu now than at the beginning of the fight.

"Why are you protecting this bastard, Neko? You're crazy!"

Sharley made sure that his attacks did not hit Yurine in particular, his target was Yu, but Yurine was standing right between them, making it difficult to hit him.

"I don't have any pride anymore, I've never been so humiliated before. Of course, I'm happy at the same time, but..."

When the night was over, he would still have to heal his shattered pride. He knew Yurine was a sword fairy and a mage, but in the end she was a little child and Yu was a grown man hiding behind a little child.

But he still couldn't do anything about it, so he could only stand there and hope Yurine won.

"Huh? What insolence is this! Look at this low life form that calls me crazy, you are in no position to comment on people's mental health."

Taking advantage of the gap in Sharley's speech, Yurine went on the offensive for the first time since the fight began, directing the storm around her in one direction - Sharley.

The storm Yurine sent was not an attack that Sharley could shield or dodge. The winds that swept through the entire street shattered the crystal wall he had created in front of his opponent without giving him a chance to escape and slammed into Sharley, dragging her away.

"I can't believe I wanted to save you when that animal attacked, seems even superior beings can be wrong sometimes. I wish you had died for good when the gorilla attacked you. Leaving you to die was the third of the three best decisions my mother ever made."

"LIE!" Even though there was some distance between them, he heard Yurine's words and was able to make his own voice reach her. "LIE! LIE! LIE! LIE! YOU'RE LYING! LIAR!"

Hearing that Rie had left him made his head spin. Normally he chose Yu as his target, but this time he targeted Yurine, the little girl he had accused of being a liar. He threw the hundreds of crystal swords he had created at Yurine.

"Nonsense," Yurine whispered. The strong winds had shattered all the swords into pieces.

"WHY DID YOU LET THAT BASTARD BRAINWASH YOU! WHY! WHY! CAN'T YOU SEE ALL THE THINGS I'VE DONE FOR RIE?"

Sharley had no intention of getting an answer, she was just shouting to justify herself.  The bandages covering her body were also torn, exposing her burned body.

"Don't be ridiculous, a mere human can't brainwash me."

"THEN WHY!"

This time Sharley made a vertical attack, not a horizontal one. The purple-colored crystal rock he created in the air appeared on top of Yu's head and quickly fell down.

Yurine could not see because the attack was from behind her, but as soon as she sensed the mana, she turned around and prepared her wind spell to push the rock away.

"I was fucking dying!"

Yurine took a deep breath when she realized that her worry was in vain. Yu dodged the rock that was about to fall on his head and leaned his back against the wall. He looked at Yurine as he caught his breath.

Yurine was quicker to sense the mana this time, she noticed the swords coming from behind her and quickly spun around, creating a wind field. This shattered the crystal swords into pieces and the mana that had formed them dissipated into the air.

"WHY! WHY! WHY! WHY!"

Sharley was constantly creating swords and sending them at the duo without discrimination.

Yurine, too, was shattering the swords coming at her and gathering the wind around her body for her next attack. A storm was about to break.

"You have so much mana, it never ran out. Whereas when I was with my mother, it was always running out."

Yurine did not know how to use light magic for attacking, and using light magic for healing required too much mana.

Actually, mana was not the problem. Yurine had enough mana in her body to make most mages jealous, and even when she couldn't use magic in the Sigma Tower, she could feel it coursing through her. In fact, the mana in Yurine's body was even more than the mana in her mother's body.

But still, Yurine had spent half of her mana stockpile. Despite her huge stockpile, it was because of the healing spell she had cast for Yu.

In the healing spell, when transferring mana from one body to another, much of the mana was lost into the air, causing it to expend more mana than necessary.

Yurine didn't want to spend unnecessarily as she had used up half of her mana because of this. Sharley, on the other hand, was constantly spending mana despite the state of his body and seemed to be fine with it.

Since she couldn't tell how much her opponent's mana stock was, she couldn't decide whether to attack or not.  Should she wait for his opponent to run low on mana and then attack, or did he already have a small amount of mana left?

Yurine could feel through the attacks of her winds take, Sharley's crystal swords were constantly increasing in power. Clearly Yurine was scared.

Nevertheless, there was no expression on her face that would show her opponent her fear. She had learned from her mother to be a poker face, as Yu called it during the fight.

Or rather she should say she had seen it from her mother. Although her mother gave her small lessons now and then, she was often ignored during magical training and other training and did not receive much education.

Yurine could digest this. Because Rie, a dark mage, was limited in what she could teach Yurine, who used wind and light magic.

Yurine could understand why her mother didn't teach her what other children were taught, since she could read, write, knew history and math thanks to Emily

"I realize now that there are many more things I have been ignoring..."

But she couldn't help feeling sad that her wishes were not being fulfilled, that she was not getting the attention she expected from her mother and that her ideas were being ignored.

Yet this never diminished her love for her mother. Yurine resented the fact that her mother was teaching Sharley magic and caring for him more than she cared for her, but she kept it to herself and continued to love her.

"I think that's why I hated Sharley, not because he loved her, but because she was more interested in him than she was in me."

She wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand and smiled.

"Hate doesn't give power, it won't be enough for me to stop him. YOU!" Yurine called Yu.

"Yes?"

"He's stronger than I thought."

"So?"

"On the count of three, you will pick me up and jump behind the wall. ONE, TWO, THREE!"

Yu was given no time to say anything. Yurine immediately counted to three and at one she threw the storm that had gathered around her at Sharley. By two Yu had her in his arms and at three Yu jumped.

Yurine supported him with her magic and even though Yu's body was weakened, he managed to jump behind the wall thanks to Yurine.

"RUN!" Yurine shouted. After slowing their fall with wind magic, she used the rest of her mana to make Yu run.

"What happened to magic lesson?"

"Shut up."

Yurine was hugging Yu's neck. Yu noticed the tracks on the ground and ran, thinking that following them would lead them to their estranged friends.