You Seem Pretty Good at This
Mages are, by design, a class of tremendous offensive and destructive power.
The reason lies in how magic is cast. Mages — the so-called "wizards" — have very long 'cast times' for their spells.
The moment a mage begins casting, they enter a state of 'mental focus,' and as stamina and mana drain away, they unleash power on an entirely different tier from the skills of any other class.
Because of this, the Combat Assist System is practically mandatory for mages.
They already need every scrap of concentration just to cast a spell — dynamically adjusting a spell's attack trajectory or tracking an opponent's position and movement on top of that is next to impossible.
The mage standing before Lily was no exception.
Mana began to flow through the red staff gripped in the mage's hand.
The mage's mind focused on casting, leaving everything else — tracking Lily's position, reading the flow of attacks, preparing follow-up spells — entirely to the Combat Assist System.
A scarlet trace of fire bloomed up from the arena floor.
With her blazing speed and strength, Lily could have struck the moment the match began — but instead, she chose to observe the spell.
This was magic she was seeing for the first time.
It was unmistakably lower in grade than the sorcery of the demonkin, once called the god-race of magic, or the divine magic wielded by the angelkin.
And yet, compared to the 'human' magic she had known, it was remarkably refined.
After all, among the humans of the world she'd possessed, the spellcraft had been so crude that unless one was a Grand Magus, calling it magic would have been embarrassing.
Just as she was watching with fascination, after about five seconds of casting, the fire mage let out a soft breath and turned to look at her.
"I appreciate you waiting, but you really don't seem to understand what you've done."
"...?"
Just how dangerous it is to grant a mage time.
Fire Field
Fwoosh.
The fire's energy sank its teeth into the arena, and the temperature shot upward.
Her stamina and health began ticking away, little by little.
And it didn't stop there. The fire mana saturating the arena gathered together, coalescing into spheres that came streaking toward Lily.
Five fireballs.
Lily started to knock them aside with her spearhead — then hesitated.
My mana's not that abundant.
Deflecting a spell's mana with divinity like she used to was far too inefficient for her current body.
Meeting them head-on for no reason would only deepen her losses.
I'll dodge.
"...!"
Lily evaded the fireballs streaking in at her.
Two spheres whistled past over her head, and the remaining three swept wide between her spear and her arm.
When the fireballs all missed pathetically, the mage, flustered yet composed, prepared the next spell.
No mental focus required.
After that long five-second cast, Fire Field already held dominion over the arena — all the mage had to do was draw mana up from the field itself.
Using the flow of mana and the Combat Assist System to dodge in the direction an attack was likely to come from, the mage chanted a short incantation.
"Homing Fire Arrow."
Fwaba-bak!
The surface of the fire-tinted walls warped slightly, and two arrows of flame burst forth.
Lily dodged them once more.
But as if mocking her, the evaded arrows wheeled through the air in a full arc and came back around to hunt her down.
Homing arrows.
A familiar kind of attack.
Dodging them indefinitely would be a problem.
She tilted her spearhead at an angle.
Then, infusing it with a breath of spirit wind, she swatted them away in one blindingly fast strike.
FWAAAANG! The deflected arrows, riding a violent gust of fire, slammed straight into the wall and erupted in an explosion.
"Wh-what the—!"
The mage reflexively cast Fire Shield at the sudden blast.
Every spell drawn from Fire Field boasted superb performance and rapid casting — but it sacrificed raw destructive power.
An explosion like the one just now was on par with the ultimate spell the mage could currently muster.
And that one would have required roughly two seconds of casting time.
In the split second the mage's eyes were drawn to the blast, Lily had already closed the distance behind them — and shattered the barrier.
"F-Fire Shield!"
Vwoom! KRA-KOOM!
A barrier came into being, only to be destroyed the instant it formed.
Breaking out in a cold sweat, the mage retreated backward, chaining barrier after barrier into existence.
Standing inside a Fire Field was supposed to inflict movement speed reduction and a whole host of penalties — yet Lily seemed entirely unaffected, tearing through the barriers like some ravening demon.
"Ghk—!"
As the mage raised the tenth barrier, blood began trickling from their nose.
Mana backlash.
They had cast far too many spells in too short a span.
No matter how much mana one could siphon from Fire Field, there were limits.
Fire Field was merely a medium that aided mental focus — not some omnipotent domain where magic flowed freely.
Even if such a thing existed, it certainly wasn't appearing at this level bracket.
At the edge of death, the mage saw a green spearhead punching through the crimson barrier — and a pair of blue eyes behind it.
Lily was smiling.
The mage dissolved into pale blue particles, and I returned from the arena to the lobby.
Just like last time, a good portion of my stamina had recovered after a single duel. I could probably manage two or three more matches without any trouble.
"You seem like someone who knows what they're doing."
They had panicked at the end and spam-cast spells, sure — but fundamentally, their understanding of magic and their casting speed were both extremely high.
If a mage of that caliber had existed in the world I'd possessed, wouldn't they have carved out a fairly significant position for themselves?
A royal court mage, perhaps. Or the master of some minor magic tower.
"Combat Assist."
Right. That thing existed.
The system that helped even ordinary people fight with ease — the one used, if I remembered correctly, by roughly 40% of the pros as well.
"I'm curious about something. How convenient is the Combat Assist, exactly?"
"That's right. I don't."
After all, I'd killed the boar without dying, and the tutorial had simply skipped itself.
When I'd asked Yena about it before, she'd said her tutorial had been even longer than mine — that most of the tutorial was just time spent getting accustomed to the Combat Assist System.
Hmm... it would certainly be convenient, no question.
With evasion, targeting, and prediction handled automatically, there'd be far less to think about, freeing up that much more attention for your attacks.
But precisely because it was, well, an assist, the resulting patterns were inevitably monotonous — and that would be its great weakness.
Spar with a Combat Assist user often enough, and you could easily learn to read the system's patterns themselves.
After that, I played four more duels and finished my placement matches, earning Gold — 500 points.
Naturally, I won all four.