A Magic Duel Without Magic
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Sure, I said I'd do it, but I never actually meant I was going to fight a proper magical duel.
More to the point, I'd never learned a single decent offensive spell in my life.
I'd dabbled a few times in the past, honestly, but magic turned out to be way harder than I'd expected.
Dammit. I figured all I'd need was to juggle some mana around — who knew I'd have to study theory and philosophy on top of it?
Well, whatever.
Measured by the catalog specs Dr. Pyeong So-woon loved so much, not a single advantage favored me right now.
My mana manipulation ability was less than half that of a same-rank mana-specialized hunter.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon, meanwhile, stood inside her own territory, expanded and reinforced through Feng Shui geomancy.
At this point, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say the gap in raw capability between me and her had all but vanished.
On top of that, Dr. Pyeong So-woon was a professional mage.
Me? I'd never once used magic in a fight.
Because I couldn't!
And that, surely, was where Dr. Pyeong So-woon had spotted her opening.
A magical duel between a professional mage and a mana manipulator — obviously I couldn't win that.
That's what she must have believed.
Yeees indeed!
And therefore.
The little brat who mouthed the word pragmatic with every breath, yet was more impulsive than anyone I knew.
The old crone with an aged soul was, even now, shrieking at a reality that refused to bend her way.
The distance was still ten meters.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon, constantly widening the gap as she cast her spells, and me, walking forward at a leisurely pace.
The distance between us was proving stubbornly hard to close.
Of course, that posed no particular problem.
The magic circle deployed above my head doubled the gravity of the entire area.
I slid a glance toward the circle.
A spell circle scattering violet mana in gaudy showers.
And toward the formula beyond it, I gave a little nudge of interference.
My power cracked the magic circle open.
At the same moment —
Scattering a bizarre racket, every object strewn around the room exploded, one after another.
Because I'd flung the gravity that had been hammering at me outward in all directions.
What the hell, what the hell is this?!
Dr. Pyeong So-woon tore at her own hair and howled in fury.
And honestly, who could blame her?
By now this was what — the umpteenth time I'd broken her spell?
A magical duel without a single spell cast.
Even if the very definition of the word threatened to warp out of shape, what was unfolding between us right now was, without a doubt, a magical duel.
……The thing is, Dr. Pyeong So-woon had misread the situation from the start.
The gap in raw ability between me and her.
A facility more than capable of compensating for it.
Feng Shui geomancy — a school of magic specialized, among all others, in expanding a mage's territory.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon's own encyclopedic knowledge of magic.
My vague, uncertain magical aptitude.
Weighing all of those facts, she'd probably concluded it was a fight she could manage.
But.
That was the story through Dr. Pyeong So-woon's eyes.
Through mine, at this very moment, the situation couldn't have been more overwhelmingly in my favor.
My opponent was a researcher.
She knew perfectly well herself that in terms of pure combat power, she was no match for me.
Given that, my request for a magical duel was a windfall — but at the same time, it was exactly the kind of move that demanded vigilance.
Which was why Dr. Pyeong So-woon, wary that I might suddenly charge at her sword in hand, had diverted part of her available resources into defense.
Frankly? A completely useless move.
No — did she really think a trickle of mana like that could stop one of my attacks?
So on raw capability alone, she was at a disadvantage.
Even factoring in the terrain, her edge amounted to a slight upper hand at best — and she'd thrown that advantage away with her own two hands.
Which left her no room to deal with even this kind of petty nonsense.
Next problem: the composition of her spells.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon's magic was flashy.
Scattering mana around to throw off glittering colors, or requiring a colossal processing chain just to drive a single formula.
In a word: stuffed full of dead weight that had nothing to do with fighting.
Naturally so.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon was, first and foremost, a researcher.
Not a hunter.
The only time she ever cast magic, I'd wager, was when she needed to impress her sponsors with research results.
And in that sense, there was nothing wrong with her spell construction.
Assuming an identical amount of mana, it was the most efficient possible way to deliver firepower.
Take the gravity spell from a moment ago: a genuine work of art, masterfully balancing the area it could burden against its mana cost.
And yet.
On a battlefield, a work of art is nothing more than a useless antique.
The same goes for fighting monsters.
Five fireballs with a power rating of 100 — or fifty firebombs rated at 50? You'd want the firebombs.
But.
Monsters are creatures that defy all logic.
Take a monster with 100 fire resistance. To punch through it, what you need is not fifty firebombs rated at 50.
You need a single flame of maximum power — one that outranks even a fireball rated at 100.
If you're thinking in numbers, that looks like senseless inefficiency.
But that is precisely where battlefield logic lives.
Irreversible gambits. Tricks you can only pull once.
Anything will do.
If you can slip through a gap in their guard even once, you kill them. That's all.
In a life-or-death struggle where there is no round two, whoever strikes first is the one in the right.
Which is why, unlike Dr. Pyeong So-woon, the battlefield I was looking at looked entirely different.
A military otaku pressed into close quarters against a veteran special forces operative.
The two of them squared off.
Only the military otaku has been handed a gun — but the safety is still on.
What's more, this is the first time the otaku has ever actually touched a firearm.
Excuse me, where exactly is the losing factor here?
'If she'd been a genuine scrapper, that might be another story.'
If Dr. Pyeong So-woon had ever experienced real combat somewhere, this wouldn't have happened.
A mage is one who prepares.
That being so, they're always at a disadvantage in a warrior's interval — the space between blows.
However.
That being so, real combat mages deploy every trick in the book.
I hate to compliment them, but people like Kim Minchul are a prime example.
Ignoring flashy incantations and maximum-efficiency spells entirely, they simply check the warrior closing in on them.
Arrows incoming? Burn them. Need a barrier? Wall of fire.
And of course, the moment both are inside each other's range, they're in the warrior's interval — so they land a counterstrike.
A signature blow honed with obsessive rigor matches any warrior in speed, and considering it arrives from the blind spot of your awareness, it's worse than matching.
It's Kim Minchul's pride and joy: the weapon that flattens the warrior who closes the distance and lets his guard down.
Dr. Pyeong So-woon was different.
Nothing in her formulas had been pared down for standing on a front line.
Nothing had been retooled to sacrifice efficiency in service of a single purpose.
All noise and sparkle, and that was it — festival fireworks.
If I had to put my impression into words, that was Dr. Pyeong So-woon's magic in a nutshell.
Now, granted, no matter how fast a mage slings a spell, unless the skill gap is truly enormous, most mages die to a blade faster than they can cast.
But at the very least, there wouldn't have been openings like this — windows for interference like these.
No magical protection either.
No anti-interference wards.
At this rate, it'd be no different from a pistol that took ten full seconds to aim and fire.
Even without a gun, a special forces soldier pressed to point-blank range could have snatched the weapon and turned it on her well within that time.
Exactly the same thing was happening here.
On gun knowledge, sure, the military otaku probably wins.
But even if the special forces man is outclassed on paper, he still knows one basic truth: the bullet goes where the muzzle points.
So you knock the muzzle aside. Done.
What I was doing was no different.
Gorgeous magic.
With my mana sensitivity, I could roughly tell what properties a spell had — but that was the extent of it.
The fine specs of the magic itself? Beyond my ability to even guess.
And yet.
Kagagagang!!
Ice spikes launched at my head slammed into the walls on every side.
Wh-what the hell even are you?!
……And still, all it took was turning the muzzle in another direction. Easy enough, even for me.
I couldn't cast magic — but I'd seen plenty of it.
I knew where the trigger lived, and Dr. Pyeong So-woon had never even bothered to hide it.
In a situation like this, neutralizing her spells took nothing more than the flick of a finger.
Well. That was only natural.
A mage is one who prepares.
Just as even an E-rank mage, backed by a leyline and facility support, can output firepower beyond an A-rank warrior.
Just as even an A-rank mage must accept that the moment a warrior gets inside their guard, the blade finds their neck.
And a research-type mage like Pyeong So-woon, on the other hand……
'Best to just let her hole up behind her leyline and spam her big spells from safety.'
If that had been the setup, I'd have been in real trouble.
I wouldn't have even attempted a magical duel in the first place.
Same if Dr. Pyeong So-woon had been a mage with real combat experience.
No matter what, cheap little tricks like these don't work on genuine combat mages.
Then again, had that been the case, she'd have killed me outright.
Thud.
At last, Dr. Pyeong So-woon's back touched the wall.
The color drained from her face in an instant.
And even now, the distance between us was still ten meters.
U-waaahh!!
Spells fired at random flooded the space around me.
There was no need to rush my steps.
Flickering flame.
A blaze that could've passed for hell's fire demon tried to devour my body, scattered instead, and quietly raised the temperature of the room.
Remaining distance: nine meters.
What the hell, what the HELL is your problem, you bastard!!
Gas manipulation and embers detonated together once more.
In a word: explosion.
Thunder cracked through the air — it seemed any thought of protecting the laboratory had gone clean out the window.
Naturally, no real problem.
Because I'd unraveled the ice spikes Dr. Pyeong So-woon had fired at me a moment ago and wove them into a barrier.
The explosion's point of origin was caught inside that wall and blown apart against it.
Ice shards scattering on every side.
One of them grazed my cheek.
The only wound Dr. Pyeong So-woon had inflicted on me in this entire fight.
Remaining distance: eight meters.
Dammit! Shit!! You son of a — !!
Along with the idle thought that her mother back in the countryside would have wept to hear her, the floor beneath my feet plunged into an abyss.
Endless darkness.
The poison of shadow that corrodes the human mind flooded out.
Countless screams.
Of course, all of it was nothing but an illusion.
I pressed the part of the spell that served as its switch — in the opposite direction.
Pop. The mirage vanished.
The sensation was exactly like flipping a bathroom light switch.
Remaining distance: seven meters.
Stop it, I said STOP, you little — !!
This time it was something a bit fresher.
The aggregate that formed the laboratory floor swelled upward, molding itself into the shape of a giant.
Size: roughly five meters.
Its material: the junk scattered around the lab — or so I'd like to say.
More likely the entire laboratory itself was built from mana-reactive material.
Transmutation through alchemy.
Golem-craft through Kabbalah.
A formula running both at once, then.
While the golem was still forming, I kept walking.
Remaining distance: six meters.
And just before the completed golem could raise its fist —
I gave its surface a light, gentle caress.
That much was more than enough.
To a Kabbalist, a golem isn't some mere guard automaton — it's the imitation of the act of creating life itself.
In other words: a discipline on the path to Truth.
Therefore.
The golem's animating formula contains the word for Truth — Emeth.
And thus.
A Kabbalist can halt the life he has granted his golem — simply by erasing one letter.
This time was no different.
Impressive, sure. And that was all it was.
I walked right past the collapsing golem.
Remaining distance: five meters to go.
This is insane — what is this?! You're beating me at MAGIC?! You're telling me this is what you wanted to show me?!
A face churning with rage and wounded pride roared.
It was a stupid thing to do.
Instead of preparing countermeasures, all she was producing was the sound of her own world caving in.
Then again — it was only to be expected.
Because this wasn't a situation where she'd held every advantage and I was overturning it all.
She compensated for the gap in raw ability with the power of Feng Shui geomancy?
Her knowledge of magic was superior?
Idiot.
She didn't compensate for the gap. Her magical knowledge wasn't superior.
In this situation, the only thing that was even was that one gap in raw ability.
The only thing she led in was that one body of magical knowledge.
In everything else, she was losing.
Remaining distance: four meters.
No way, this can't be happening!! Do you — do you have any idea how many years I've poured into this discipline?! This CAN'T be happening!!
Realizing I had no intention of answering, she flung a storm of mana around in a fit.
Raw mana discharge — no formula, no structure, nothing behind it.
True, there was nothing for me to interfere with in something like that.
The energy packed inside it was real, and beyond control.
However.
I swung my hand and batted it away.
The thing is, without the facility backing her, there was a modest gap in raw ability between her and me.
And without magical knowledge, the gap only widened.
So a mere shockwave of mana?
There wasn't a single reason I couldn't swat it aside.
Remaining distance: three meters.
Talent?! So it's TALENT?! You're telling me that's talent?!
'Nope. Never had any.'
Not that this was the moment to say so.
Frankly, if she wanted to believe that, it made my life easier.
At the same time, the building shuddered to life.
A magic circle ran across the structure — constructed from the ground up to channel the power of Feng Shui geomancy.
Elements began to seethe over the pre-set circle.
Needless to say, it posed zero threat to me.
I mingled in forces that repelled each other, shook the clashing powers, and forced them to surge backward in reversal.
For elemental manipulation — a school that prizes the balance among the elements — interference of this kind is fatal.
That's why mages weave protections into their formulas to ward off interference……
'Too much to hope for, I guess.'
If this woman lacked anything else, she was fatally deficient in combat sense.
Unless her situational awareness was truly hopeless, she should have noticed by now that I was responding to her magic without ever casting any of my own.
Well, everyone has different aptitudes.
Asking for that much would be pushing it.
The elemental spell collapsed under its own weight.
Remaining distance: two meters.
Aaaagh!!
Although —
If there was one thing I had to correct, it was this: Dr. Pyeong So-woon really was a genius.
Without understanding the principle or mechanism of her spells' collapse at all, Dr. Pyeong So-woon took the phenomenon I was causing at face value.
And then.
Using those collapsing formulas, she wove yet another spell.
Not forcibly restoring the broken magic.
The shattered formulas, with impeccable precision, were assembling themselves into one more magic circle.
……Less ritual craft than something closer to runecraft, honestly.
The four elements Empedocles established, joined by the fifth concept Aristotle sang of — the elements performed a chorus together.
The problem was —
You idiot.
Remaining distance: one meter.
A grand working of this scale is hard to fire even with a leyline fully claimed.
Let alone in this secret laboratory, which had survived on nothing but leyline dregs.
Worse, she'd just dumped the entire mana reserve she'd been hoarding.
Obviously, I reached Dr. Pyeong So-woon first.
Uh — oh?
So, ready to begin, madam?
Wh — wait. What — what is this. Why are you clenching your fist?! Didn't you say magical duel?!
The thing that had been glowing until moments ago was nowhere to be found; Dr. Pyeong So-woon was screaming herself hoarse.
Watching her carry on with a face that looked about Hayeon's age did sting a little, even for me.
Of course, from here on out it wasn't her heart that would hurt — it was the bridge of her nose.
Magic Missile!!
Gyaaagh!!
And then.
With a wet crunch, blood sprayed through the air.
Something — molar or incisor, hard to say — pattered across the floor.
I didn't need to check whether she was conscious.
The flow of mana that had been murmuring behind her until seconds ago had gone silent — I could feel it plain as day.
Dammit. I let it slide because you're not actually a monster.
Whoosh. I threw the punch.
God, honestly.
What a complete joke of a woman.
Full of holes even in her own field of magic, and she lectures me about reality.
Like I said from the start — Dr. Pyeong So-woon was a vainglorious poseur who knew absolutely nothing about anything, and this fight had only proven it.
* * *