I didn't know and I really didn't want to find out either. I definitely didn't want to be on the receiving end of her curses, that's for sure.

The both of us maintained our distances, where we normally could put our spells and abilities to their greatest use, but I realized I might be at a disadvantage, especially with my mana running out and all that. Furthermore, like me, Miura did not specialize in close combat, and would be at a disadvantage if I could get into melee range with her. For the first time, I had encountered an opponent who was weaker than me in close combat, especially when I considered the fact that I trained under Dad, who taught me the Miyamoto sword style.

With my mana running out, it might be best to end the battle as quickly as possible.

Taking a deep breath, I woved through the barrage of shadowy bolts that Miura fired upon me. Darting through the hail of shadowy bolts, I cut apart a few of them that I couldn't avoid and surged toward Miura. She moved slightly, s.h.i.+fting position, but this was one of the rare occurrences where I was physically faster than my opponent.

"!!!"

Miura brought her scythe up and parried my swords. She spun her weapon to force me back, the wickedly curved blade slicing through the s.p.a.ce where my neck had occupied. That huge move left her open for a counterattack and I obliged, thrusting both of my swords forward from different directions. Miura kicked off, twisting her body but even though she evaded Bai Ri, I managed to graze her waist with Hei Yue, drawing a thin line of blood.

"Ugh…!"

Hissing in pain, Miura withdrew while slas.h.i.+ng desperately with her scythe. She drew another series of runes to bombard me at close range, but I sliced her script apart with my sword. She staggered backward as the script exploded right in front of her and I closed in, hoping to take advantage of the opening to finish her off.

However, Miura didn't become a core member by being extremely weak in close combat. Like me, she had developed ways to make up for her vulnerabilities, and especially against someone like me who wasn't specialized in melee, she had more than enough skills to survive and pull away.

Plunging the shaft of her scythe onto the ground, Miura used it as a pole to swing about and kicked me before I could bring my two swords down to cut her. I managed to block her feet with my elbows, but I was still sent skidding a couple of paces backward. Miura spun around her scythe before landing on the ground, but before I could close in, she kicked me again, causing me to retreat a step and stay out of range. She then followed up with a slash, which I parried, and then jumped up and tried to kick me in the solar plexus.

Raising a knee to block her attack, I staggered back and then grimaced.

"Are you sure you should be throwing kicks when you're wearing such a short skirt?"

Miura was currently wearing a blue and silver one-piece dress-type uniform that sported a black tie. For some reason, the girls still wore pretty feminine-styled dress-type school uniforms when fighting in the tournament – I guess it was the old anime cliché where the artists focused on eye candy over pragmatism.

To her credit, Miura didn't bashfully pressed her skirt down and act all shy and embarra.s.sed when I pointed it out. She merely smirked and shook her head.

"You're too busily defending against my attacks to see what's underneath, so I'm not worried at all."

"I get that, but have you forgotten I'm wearing gla.s.ses?" I tapped my gla.s.ses. The lenses had a recording function, after all, so even if I missed something during the fight scene, I could replay everything in full detail later.

The color of Miura's face changed slightly, and she glared at me while placing one hand on her hip. "You had better delete the recordings later."

"I'll just cut out whatever I need to cut out to keep it PG," I replied dryly. I was mentally over thirty, and thus I wasn't that desperate for a view of what was under a teenager's skirt.

"That works." Miura seemed satisfied with the compromise. She plucked her scythe out of the ground with one hand and drew more runes with the other, and I took that as a sign to resume my attack. Charging forward, I dodged to the side when she hurled several shadowy bolts at me, and then lunged at her exposed flank.

Whirling around, Miura parried my swords with her scythe, and we exchanged several blows while hopping across the arena. The destruction that our exchange wrought upon the arena was not as much as when I fought against Eliza, especially since neither Miura nor I possessed as much physical strength as the Paladin or melee-type combat mages. Even so, the sheer sharpness of Miura's scythe and my two swords were able to slice through the reinforced concrete and throw up some measure of debris.

We continued to trade blows, the blades of our weapons easily cutting through the debris and reducing them into smaller chunks of rock. It almost appeared as if we were fighting in the middle of a fierce sandstorm, the dust and rubble billowing about us. To normal human eyes, our swords and scythe were streaking in black and white flashes, colliding in showers of sparks and throwing up more grains of broken stone into the air.

In the midst of our furious melee, Miura still managed to find the time to draw more runes and fire off shadow bolts when the opportunity arose. As for me, I delayed my casting of a spell just so I could call something more potent.

Clang!

After a particularly violent exchange, the both of us sprang apart, and I finally found the chance to bring one of my stronger Constellation spirits into being.

"Hydra!"

The multi-headed serpent burst into the material realm, his azure scales sparkling. Five heads snarled and hissed intimidatingly before their jaws opened up to unleash many streams of freezing blasts that enveloped large swathes of the arena and essentially turned it into a tundra.

"Me and my big mouth." Miura looked a little upset as she glanced up at the gargantuan Hydra. "So you still have such a powerful Soul Beast in reserve, huh?"

I didn't reply, mostly because I was too busily bouncing from ice floe to ice floe while my Hydra continued to sweep his many heads about, engulfing the stage in frost. Miura emulated my movements, doing her best to stay one step ahead of my Hydra while retaliating with shadowy bolts that dissipated harmlessly against his azure armored scales.

"Just how many Soul Beasts do you have?" she grumbled.

Eighty-eight Constellation spirits from the Greek astronomy stuff plus five from Chinese astrology, but I saw no need to tell her that. Besides, like I said earlier, currently I didn't have the mana to summon all of them in one go (and I didn't mean a simultaneous summoning – even if I summoned them one at a time, I didn't have the mana to summon all of them into existence in a single day).

Doing her best to dodge and weave through the multiple heads that pursued her, Miura twisted in midair and beheaded one of them. Three more heads sprouted from the stump, water freezing and coalescing into a serpentine shape. Rather than regeneration, this resembled more like freezing the moisture in the air into a living ice sculpture.

"d.a.m.n! What a troublesome ability!"

Miura clicked her tongue and s.h.i.+fted her trajectory in midair, launching herself toward one of the heads instead. However, she didn't slice it off but instead landed on top of it, and then ran along the length of his neck to avoid getting struck by the others.

The neck she was running along went rigid, and two of the other heads sprang forward to knock her off. Miura was forced to jump off, and while she was cartwheeling in midair, the other heads launched a series of freezing blasts that caught her.

Swinging her scythe, Miura cleaved through one of the blasts before landing on the ground. Slamming the blunt end of her shaft against the ground, she murmured a short incantation to create a black spherical barrier that weathered the blow from another freezing breath. Her surroundings turned into ice, but she was physically safe from the chilling effects of the spell.

Despite being safely ensconced within the barrier she had just conjured, the defensive enchantment was still unable to completely protect her from the plummeting temperature. Her breaths coming out in thick, white fog, Miura forced her numb fingers across the air, drawing a fresh script. Ominous black runes s.h.i.+mmered in the air, and I intuitively instructed Hydra to reintensify his efforts. Blue torrents of freezing mana gushed out of his mouths and smashed into the sphere, shattering it.

"Ugh…!"

Miura quickly darted away, and this time she drew several runes to place them on her legs. With a single leap, she propelled herself far from her original position, avoiding getting frozen into solid ice by Hydra's spells.

The serpentine heads continued to pursue her, lunging across the distance and descending upon her new position. Miura clicked her tongue and conjured a fresh script of runes, transforming them into a volley of black bolts that detonated ineffectively against the approaching Constellation spirit. Hydra continued to surge onward, the tremendous monster unfazed by her efforts.

Miura hopped back, parrying one of the heads with her scythe. As she skidded backward, another head struck her from the side. Unable to evade in time, she let go with one of her hand to draw a defensive rune, but the barrier made in her haste was too fragile and it shattered immediately. Miura was sent sprawling onto the ground, blood leaking from her mouth, after being flung away.

Hydra wasn't going to miss this chance. He unleashed a blanket of freezing energy across the spot where she was sprawled on, endeavoring to end this once and for all. Rolling onto her back, Miura gritted her teeth as she rammed her scythe against the ground and conjured another defensive barrier. She barely managed to get it in time before she disappeared under a sheet of white and azure.

For some reason, the outcome reminded me of an igloo.

"Don't let up!" I warned Hydra, sensing a tremendous output of mana still coming from the inside of the pseudo igloo. He complied, immediately lunging forward, but the ice surrounding Miura's sphere cracked and shattered.

Huffing and s.h.i.+vering, Miura completed the last of her incantation and sent the script forward. A formation circle manifested below Hydra and resolved into a curse. Despite his regenerative abilities, Hydra had no defense against a curse that attacked him from the inside out. He snarled as he fell back, black wisps of noxious fumes spilling out from his nostrils and mouths. The runes settled atop his azure scales, corrupting them and causing him to thrash about.

Still, for a Constellation spirit as large and powerful as him, it was going to take quite some time to subdue him, even with a curse. Hissing ferociously, he sent another blizzard of freezing energy in Miura's direction, forcing her to dodge. She swore under her breath as she jumped away, throwing bolts of darkness at the incoming breaths of ice to slow it. But she might as well be throwing pebbles into an encroaching tidal wave for all of its effects.

Then Miura thought of an idea. Spinning in midair, she used her bolts to propel herself away, almost as if she was riding on their recoil like rocket thrusters, blasting herself away from her current position by relying on Newton's third law. She wasn't able to control herself smoothly, though, and she ended up colliding against the wall with a grunt.

"d.a.m.n, I'm so clumsy."

Chuckling, she righted herself, but by now the curse had taken its full effects and Hydra was writhing. I had to dismiss him before the damage got worse. I had half a mind to let him bleed out his toxic blood, but that would be overkill. Fortunately, with my immunity to poison, I would survive, and it was a viable strategy against a target I really, really want to kill.

Probably I should have used this against Miura, but she didn't deserve such agony. I wasn't a fan of torturing my opponents with excruciating pain that surpa.s.sed even death. Besides, I had just come up with an idea, which was more apprioriate for me given my current circ.u.mstances.

"Your move," Miura panted, not realizing that I had already developed a new plan in mind. She leaned on her scythe and continued to draw new runes in the air, either to curse me or to bombard me. "I really hope you don't have another one of those big ones hidden somewhere…"

"I do, but don't worry. I'll shrink his size just for you." Smiling, I raised a sword in the air and completed my conjuring. "Green Dragon!"