Dana's Test Begins
The test from Dana finally began. The first one up was Siwoo. To summarize his match, it was pure hand-to-hand combat. Siwoo’s ability disrupted other people’s powers; if the opponent was stronger than him, it weakened their abilities to a certain degree. Yet Dana, as if deliberately matching his strengths and weaknesses, didn’t use her own power at all. She tested him with pure martial arts alone. As a result, Siwoo lasted one minute and thirty seconds against her and set the highest record.
The second match was Aria’s. Hers was the complete opposite of Siwoo’s, proceeding mostly through abilities and magic. It wasn’t that there was no physical exchange at all, but Aria’s tactic was to wrap herself in shields and spam magic from behind them. The arena flashing and sparkling made it far more entertaining to watch than the previous bout. That didn’t mean her results were better than Siwoo’s, though. Aria held out for a total of fifty-nine seconds, placing third. She was huffing in frustration at missing the one-minute mark by a single second, but considering she was a supporter, the record was absurdly high.
And then it was my turn.
“Shall we get started, then?” Dana said with a bright smile after sending the unconscious Aria to the resting room. Despite her sunny expression, she loosened her body with ominous cracking sounds. I smiled quietly and stepped onto the sparring arena. The alloy-sealed room brought back old memories—the training ground where I had once twisted my entire body in a desperate fight to escape the laboratory.
“It’s been a while since I could really stretch.” I began warming up with the same cracking sounds she had made.
“Hmm? Sounds like you haven’t had a proper fight lately.”
“Pretty much. Honestly, even you lost to me, teacher. There’s no way academy students could be my opponents, is there?”
“Pfft, you’ve got a point. Then why don’t you ask that creepy old man hiding behind your brooch to find you some real opponents?”
As Dana giggled and pointed at my brooch, a displeased cough came from it.
“...Don’t scold me too much. This is my job—what else can I do? It’s not like I enjoy wiretapping and surveillance.”
“Ahaha, I know. Someone with your personality would never enjoy that. More importantly, is it okay to leave the brooch on? If it gets caught in our fight, I can’t guarantee it’ll survive…”
“No need to worry. I reviewed your previous battle records and reinforced its durability enough to withstand the fight. In terms of toughness alone, it’s sturdier than the girl’s minigun.”
“If that’s the case…”
Dana clicked her tongue in mild dissatisfaction but raised both arms into a guard stance and widened her footing. I copied her posture exactly. The combat techniques I had learned all originated from her, so our stances were perfectly symmetrical, like mirrors facing each other. Then Dana, eyes blazing, shot forward in an instant and threw a punch—!
“Wait!”
She pulled her fist back at the sound of the Director’s voice coming from my chest.
“Is there a problem?”
“A problem? Of course there’s a problem!” The Director let out a sigh-filled shout as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, then took a deep breath and spoke firmly. “Are you two planning to blow up the entire academy? What do you think will happen when one of the 5 Greats and a quasi-5 Great start fighting? Have you already forgotten about destroying the lab last time?!”
Hmm… even I had to admit I went a little overboard back then. Some personal feelings had mixed in, and if things had gone wrong, Dana could have died. Still, that was then and this was now.
“I’ve improved a lot since back then, you know? I won’t lose control over a single spar.”
“And how exactly do you plan to prove that?”
I awkwardly turned my head. The Director let out a deep sigh, as if he had expected this.
“Then… seal some of your power before you fight. First, Dana, limit your output to half.”
“Half? Then how am I supposed to win!”
“Am I only penalizing you? Listen until the end! And you, Plea girl… don’t use that Solar Manifestation. This should make things fair.”
“…Honestly, without Solar Manifestation my overall combat power feels a little weaker.”
Solar Manifestation was my most important offensive technique, accounting for more than fifty percent of my fighting strength. Without it, I would lose the sure-kill trump card I needed to beat Dana…
“So, are you confident you won’t burn this building down even if you use it?”
“Not really…”
“Then we’re settled. Dana, what do you think?”
“At this level… I suppose I can at least warm up.” Dana answered in a slightly dejected voice, as if disappointed she couldn’t go all out, then wrapped sacred flames around both her arms.
“Then I’ll start right away.”
“Finish it quickly.”
The moment the Director finished speaking, Dana and I collided.
Magic is both a relic and a legacy created by the first magician. It has taken root in this world not as an individual’s ability, but as a single universal law. As I mentioned before, ability users can achieve three stages of awakening: the first stage of handling mana, the second stage of drawing out part of one’s inner world, and the third stage of fully manifesting that inner world. Ability users walk the path of awakening with the goal of reaching the so-called ultimate—third-stage awakening.
However, even third-stage awakening, which earns one the title of ability user, cannot be called the end. That is because a fourth stage exists. In truth, more than a hundred years had passed since the last fourth-stage awakener appeared. After every nation imposed strict information control, fourth-stage awakening had been all but forgotten by the public. But since I had experienced this world as a game, I knew about it.
The stage where one forces their inner world onto reality.
An ability user who reached the fourth stage could insert their inner world into the real world. In other words, they could engrave their ability as an eternal law into the very principles of the world. Magic was the ability engraved by the second person in history to reach the fourth stage. And that magic was indeed worthy of being called a law.
“Hap!”
With Dana’s shout, every kind of energy condensed into arrow form and poured toward me. It was the most common magic of all—Arrow. Because it was the most basic and widespread, its difficulty was extremely low. Still, no matter how easy it was, there was a limit to how much one could cast at once. Just because solving 10 + 10 was easy didn’t mean you could solve dozens of similar problems simultaneously.
But what the hell is with that woman Dana!
I quickly rolled across the floor to dodge the incoming barrage.
Thud thud thud!
The arrows, whistling sharply, slammed into the spot where I had been standing moments earlier and scattered their embedded energy in every direction. Eight of them. When I glanced back at Dana, twelve more arrows were already loaded behind her.
“Damn it!”
I rolled again to avoid the next volley. Twenty magic arrows in total. She was performing a near-miraculous feat—mentally calculating and firing twenty spells at once. Maybe she had reflected on her previous defeat and prepared countermeasures. Dana gave me no time to prepare an attack and kept relentlessly driving me back.
“Hehe, that’s exactly the skill you’d expect from the face of Helline’s 5 Greats!”
“Director, please be quiet for a second!”
I silenced the sudden interjection and kept observing Dana’s arrows. I wasn’t analyzing firing intervals or power in any professional way. I simply had no idea how to deal with them, so I stared blankly. The thought of wrapping myself in mana and charging in had crossed my mind more than once or twice, but those sacred fire arrows she had created weighed too heavily on my mind.
Dana’s sacred fire was a flame that burned even mana. No matter how thickly I coated myself, the armor-piercing property on those arrows would pierce straight through like I was made of tofu.
“Is it difficult?”
“Of course it is!”
Dana was strong. Objectively, she ranked among the top ten in the world. Although she was overwhelmingly outmatched in raw output, she compensated with overwhelming skill and experience. Even when I found an angle and threw a light attack, she dodged effortlessly. Then, in the momentary gaps created when she attacked, she generated dozens of blind spots and fired arrows into them. No opening appeared at all.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want the sun sealed…!”
If I still had my sun, I could have simply melted the entire area without worrying about angles. But my sun was currently sealed.
“Ugh, seriously…”
It looked like I would have to endure a bit of pain if I wanted to win this match.