I was finally able to stand. Teacher Fielding glanced at me.

"Um, so you still intend to fight."

"Yeah, that's right." I grinned as I swung an arm to test it. Good, it was working. Then again, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Hal Gunther didn't do any serious wounds because he was trying to toy around with me, so that went in my favor as well. "I feel a bit better already."

"Okay then." Teacher Fielding then glanced at the Crowley Academy section, where the students were s.h.i.+fting restlessly.

"You've got to be kidding me…" the girl with shoulder-length hair muttered. "How are we supposed to go up against that?"

"I a.s.sume you don't want to, Elena?" Cecilia glanced at her, but the girl shook her head. The captain then turned toward a few other guys. "Nick? Louis?"

The two guys she turned to also shook their heads.

"Did you see that gigantic phoenix thing? If I go in there, I'll be roasted in seconds."

"Sorry, I'll pa.s.s."

"Doug? What do you think?" Cecilia turned to the handsome guy with blond hair. He frowned and nodded.

"I don't mind giving it a shot if no one else wants to…"

"Wait."

It was the guy with dark hair and narrow eyes. Everyone turned to him.

"You want to try, Albert?" Cecilia asked. The guy named Albert nodded.

"I have a plan. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but as long as I take down the summoner, his summoned beast will naturally be defeated as well, right?"

"That is correct." Cecilia nodded. "Do you have a way to target the summoner?"

"Of course." Albert smiled darkly. "Don't forget, I'm an a.s.sa.s.sin. I specialize in these sort of things."

Cecilia studied him for a second, and then nodded. "All right. I'll be counting on you then."

Albert stood up and strode to the stage. As usual, I made sure to extinguish the flames out of courtesy and protocol. It would be unfair to start burning my opponents even before the match began. On the other hand, the rules allowed me to continue maintaining my summoned beast as long as I remained in the ring.

Which was why I refused to step out. After going through so much time and trouble to summon my Vermillion Phoenix, I wasn't going to dismiss it like that. As a side note, the rule applied to all enchantments, summoned beasts and Artificial Realities. So if Chang Cheng had won the last battle, as long as he remained on stage, he would be allowed to leave his Great Wall in the material plane until he was eliminated, or swapped out for a team member.

"I'm Albert Alain. Third year in Crowley's Grand Arcane Academy. My cla.s.s is a.s.sa.s.sin." Albert's eyes were narrowed as he stared at me. I nodded. Since I already offered an introduction of myself earlier, there was no need to do it again.

"Nice to meet you."

Honestly, it wasn't. I was aware of Albert Alain's reputation. He was known as the Ashura Killer, a skilled a.s.sa.s.sin who honed his skills in extreme speed and dual daggers. Already he was drawing his infamous twin daggers, Light and Shadow, and dropping into a stance. I could see the muscles coiling in his legs as he got ready to lunge.

Teacher Fielding glanced from him to me, and then raised his hand.

"Fighters, take your stances," he began. "Ready…fight!"

Albert Alain immediately charged at me. His speed was so fast that he literally disappeared from my vision, turning into a blur.

At the same time, my Vermillion Phoenix bathed the entire s.p.a.ce in flames.

"Tch!"

Clicking his tongue, Albert quickly dodged the first wave of flames, hurling himself to the side.

I tried to track his movements, but Albert was too fast. He was already disappearing into a blur. The next thing I knew, he appeared behind me, his twin daggers slicing down for a lethal strike. Before they could reach me, a wall of flames erupted and forced him back.

Albert quickly retreated, and then began sprinting along the edge of the arena as my Vermillion Phoenix hurled tremendous torrents of fire at him. Despite their fearsome firepower, all that destructive force was for naught if none of them landed a direct hit on him.

No wonder Albert volunteered for this match. He was confident in his speed, and relied on swift, elegant movements to completely evade my powerful but slow attacks. Actually, they were Vermillion Phoenix's attacks, but you know what I mean.

Albert danced across the flames that were ravaging the arena, almost dismissing them. He was right to do so. Even though the inferno that bathed the coliseum was a terrifying sight to behold, the flames that blazed atop the ground were merely "baby" fire spells. Most competent mages were able to hold their heat and damaging effects at bay with their innate magical aura. Even I was protected from my own flames by my own protective magical aura without needing to cast a proper spell. These were the most basic of flames – their purpose was not to defeat the opponent with fire, but to slowly wear them down, to exhaust their energy (in maintaining that protective aura) and also through gradual dehydration and heal exhaustion.

My opponent was currently perspiring profusely, huge rivulets of sweat rolling off his skin and evaporating instantly they came into contact with the flames. However, Albert was a well-trained a.s.sa.s.sin with impeccable discipline. He wasn't going to let the surrounding basic flames distract him from his current mission.

Once again, he swept toward me from a blind spot, but I instinctively turned around. Vermillion Phoenix, who had a bird's eye view from its position above, was able to react quickly, conjuring another wall of flames to deflect Albert's fatal attack.

However, I had the sense that Albert was growing faster and faster. He was actually leaving afterimages right now – probably because he had finally finished casting a more advanced speed enhancement spell. Or perhaps it was an illusion spell. In any case, he was attempting to confuse me with multiple copies of himself.

With every single copy of Albert moving at supersonic speeds and striking from my blind spots, I was slowly beginning to be overwhelmed. If Vermillion Phoenix hadn't launched ma.s.sive attacks from above to try and incinerate Albert, which forced both him and his afterimages to keep a safe distance – many times I saw one of his afterimages vaporized by a torrent of flames when it was too slow to escape – I would have been cut to death several times over.

"Ugh…!"

Albert's arm was scorched – I could tell that he was the real one, because his afterimages were too fragile, often shattering upon a single hit. Grimacing, Albert pulled back, and disappeared into the flames again, weaving through Vermillion Phoenix's relentless attacks before he suddenly appeared to slash at me again.

Throwing a hand up, I linked my will to Vermillion Phoenix and tapped into its repertoire of fire spells, conjuring yet another fiery barrier that almost incinerated Albert, had he not pulled back in time. His reflexes were nothing short of remarkable.

"Heh, not bad…but you can't keep this up for long, can you?"

Albert was practically dancing a circle around me, darting in and trying to land a vital strike, only for a suddenly erupting barrier of flames to force him back. We repeated the series of maneuver, almost as if we had fallen into some weird dancing ritual or game of tag where he was supposed to tag me with his daggers and I had to protect myself. Despite getting a little dizzy from constantly revolving around to try and keep my eye on the swiftly disappearing Albert, I gritted my teeth and held my ground, refusing to let him out of my sight.

Not that I succeeded. The guy was just too fast.

"Your magical energy is not unlimited." Albert sounded like he was a.n.a.lyzing my skills right now. He grinned. "There are lots of openings…even though you can easily defend against my attacks with those walls of fire, you won't be able to keep them up. Those spells are draining a lot of your magical energy, aren't they?"

Actually, they weren't. The defensive fire spells were being cast by my Vermillion Phoenix, and it had a separate pool of magical energy from mine. I could top its magical energy pool (let's call it MP for the sake of convenience) with my own, but the Vermillion Phoenix had a monstrous amount of MP to begin with. Right now, it hadn't even expended half of its MP, and it regained a significant amount every time we stopped for the opposing team to swap out their members.

In game terms, my Vermillion Phoenix was probably one of those final boss monsters in the secret areas of the most difficult dungeons.

But I had no obligation to inform my enemy of that.

"I want to see how long more you can keep this up!" Albert shouted before disappearing. He reappeared from my left, striking from below at what he thought was my blind spot. Yet another fiery barrier flared up, causing him to retreat. Before he landed, Vermillion Phoenix hurled another ma.s.sive torrent of flames at him.

To Albert's credit, he flipped himself in midair, almost as if he was kicking off a flake of ash or something, and vanished. The stream of h.e.l.lish fire washed over where he had been, but achieved nothing other than scorching the ground.

"That was close!"

Albert skidded backward after reappearing, and he divided into several afterimages again, launching himself at me.

"Your defense is not impenetrable!" he declared confidently as his many copies flickered and flashed around me, striking from countless angles. Looked like he had completed yet another spell as well. Multiple walls of fire erupted and forced the copies back before fading back into the ground in cinders, only for Albert to strike again. "If you really are impervious to all attacks, then you should be able to keep up a permanent wall of fire around yourself, like Chang Cheng, instead of allowing them to dissipate and fade away after deflecting just one of my attacks! Most likely the magical energy expenditure is too large for you to keep it up! Not that it matters. As long as I can surpa.s.s your speed at conjuring barriers...!"

He dashed at me again, vanis.h.i.+ng as his speed kicked up yet another notch. His daggers slashed at my back, and despite just barely managing to deflect his attack with another fiery defense, I vaguely registered that he had been much, much closer than before.

Albert was accelerating increasingly, and the longer the battle went on, the faster he got. Most likely because of his speed a.s.sa.s.sin spells. He was repeatedly casting his acceleration spells over and over again to stack their effects, and thus the longer the match went on, the faster he would become. Theoretically there was no limit to how much he could accelerate himself, but the drawback was that he obviously couldn't multi-cast the same spell at the same time to stack them immediately. He had to cast the spell individually, one by one, to stack its effects slowly in order to amplify his speed exponentially with each successful cast.

"As long as you aren't able to touch me, I will be able to win eventually!"

Crowing, Albert slashed at me again, and Vermillion Phoenix hastened to protect me. This time, I could actually see the gleaming blades slice through the air just millimeters away from my face. That was dangerous.

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However…

"You talk too much."

However confident Albert was, we were still in the middle of a battle. I couldn't believe he was spending most of his time yammering away. On the bright side, I was distracted by his dialogue to the point I no longer paid any attention to the cliché commentary by the stupid crowd.

Additionally, I had finally finished casting my spell. Or to be more accurate, Vermillion Phoenix did.

"It's over!"

Albert triumphantly stabbed at me with his twin daggers, but before the blades could score a hit, the entire area around me erupted in flames. This wasn't the simple wall of fires that I had been relying on before.

It was literally a volcanic eruption.

"No way!"

Albert's triumphant yell transformed into a scream of agony as he was consumed by the h.e.l.lish flames that swept across the entire arena. And this time, there was nowhere for him to run to.

I watched impa.s.sively as his charred form hit the ground, and sighed a breath of relief when his shrieks ended.

"Finally…he finally shut up."