Chapter 71: Battle Witches (2)

"D-did we go overboard?" Katrin said in a panic as she watched the explosion of flames consume Gigi. She walked towards Agni pensively, her hands clasped against her bosom as she moved. Her eyes were transfixed on a large mass of swirling flames six meters away (roughly 18ft).

"No. I don't think so anyway.." Agni said.

"When I got hit with her magic earlier it didn't hurt. I just felt pressure and then a sense of mana loss. I almost blacked out. That's probably what happened. We should check on her though…" Agi expounded as she began walking towards the spot of the explosion. Throughout the short but fierce battle the landscape of the training room remained unchanged, Agni could only admire the rules of Adventia.

"Wait. Something's not right." Katrin said as she stared into the flames of the explosion. They should have dissipated within moments but instead they began to form a sphere. The energy was hollow in the center and waves of flame cycled along the surface of the magical construct. Soon a rush of air filtered outwards, strong enough to give Agni pause as Gigi stood unharmed in the center of the sphere.

"Whew. That was really unexpected. I didn't imagine you two to catch onto magical combat so quickly. And I only gave you a few pointers too." Gigi's voice was relaxed, calm even as if their attacks had been shrugged off altogether.

Agni couldn't help but grit her teeth, biting her lip in the process as Gigi released her magic, the sphere of flames must have been created at the last moment in order to negate the damage of Agni's fire attack.

It was the same sort of trick that Agni regularly pulled against Fulger Stags who often used lightning element to great effect. Rather than taking the full brunt of the magical attack head on, Agni would fill her body with as much lightning as she could safely muster. This would oftentimes half or even cancel out completely the energy directed towards her. Gigi's application of this principle was on a much higher level, however.

"But I'm glad. It's been a while since I had a good sparring session. The power of a Specialist class is nothing to sneeze at, and you even combined both Inner and Outer techniques in that last strike. Agni, you're amazing!"

The praise filtering from Gigi's lips was somehow tinged in Agni's mind. Once again the young woman's words didn't match the energy Agni was perceiving. She felt like she was facing a wild beast and when the flames subsided she soon understood why.

Gigi's body had undergone several changes, the most prominent were her eyes and her hair. Thick magical lines appeared along her cheeks and forehead, these were Gigi's magic veins and they glowed with red energy. Her eyes were also aglow with a flaming red energy, so much so that it looked like her pupils were on fire. Her hair, on the other hand, had actually taken on the appearance of flames. Gigi's ginger colored hair was infused with fire element, causing her strands of red hair to catch alight and defy gravity. It gave the appearance that her entire head was on fire. For a moment Agni felt as if she was staring at a goddess from some sort of fairy tail. What she was witnessing was amazing and it defied the logic of everything she knew up until that point.

*Magic is really capable of something like this?* Agni found herself subconsciously taking a step backwards, she felt unsure of what to do next. Meanwhile Katrin was having a similar dilemma. In order to compensate for the speed of conjuring earth element, she needed to use additional mana to quicken the process. Firing so many blasts for so long had depleted over half of her mana. While she was relieved that Gigi wasn't injured, she felt a sudden shift in the woman's demeanor. In a word, it was intimidating. She got the distinct impression that Gigi wasn't taking the battle very seriously before now, but that just might change.

While this wasn't a battle for life and death, Katrin resigned to pushing herself at all times after her First Death experience. The most prominent thought which came to mind is that she didn't want to be seen as useless. Despite coming to fetch her after the battle, Agni had never directly asked her about her death experience. In a way it bothered Katrin, she knew Agni cared but she could also tell that Agni was somewhat perceptive of Katrin's complex. This in turn made her feel somewhat insecure. In order to combat this Katrin had been feverishly attempting to study magic and make plans for contingencies in combat. This shift in her own combat style was definitely a step in the right direction, but she was currently ill equipped to handle such an opponent. Her lack of experience as well as her lack of spells didn't give Katrin very many options and even with Agni she doubted that they would be able to successfully defeat Gigi based on the display before them.

She didn't really have an effective way of conveying all of these thoughts, so instead she simply pushed them away.

*Winning or losing doesn't really matter in this instance.*

Katrin thought to herself as she formed her resolve. She lifted both her right and left hands, calling forth earth and air element masses of magic. These were the two specialties Katrin chose after much consideration, partially because they were plentiful and easier to manipulate for her.

*The important thing is to get some experience, as much as possible.*

Thus Katrin stepped forward, despite the gnawing feeling urging her to do the opposite. A bead of sweat slowly dripped down her brow as she leveled her hands at Gigi and fired both orbs of magic at her. She didn't even wait to see whether the spells made contact, she then began to activate two Scribe Script runes to activate Terra Rising and Earth Shard. By using her Scripts she would have less freedom than using free-form magic, but more speed.

Agni took several deep breaths as she watched Gigi step out of the small crater created by the explosion. The sudden flurry of spells activated by Katrin snapped her out of her distracted mind.

*Is this some kind of intimidation spell?* Agni thought to herself as she recovered and quickly began to follow suit. This time Agni decided on adopting a tactic similar to Katrin's first attempt. Agni disliked using water element for one reason only, it was much too weighty. Conjuring and manipulating the magic simply felt "heavy" in comparison to all of her other elements save earth. In fact, this was also the reason that Agni avoided using earth element whenever possible. Agni noticed that Gigi only used fire and wind elements thus far, so she decided to try using opposing elements for the time being.

Much like before, Gigi swatted her rune blade to destroy Katrin's projectiles, but this time a single wave of her blade caused the flames to extend several meters in an arcing strike. The rolling wave of flames destroyed several of Katrin's earth shards and also moved like a whip, threatening to lash Agni across the chest. She bought her arms up at the last moment but the impact once again caused her mind to briefly flicker. In that instant Gigi chose to strike her first. With her quick step it was a simple matter to bridge the distance and perform two strikes. Agni half expected her arms to be cleaved in two, instead she felt a heavy, oppressive weight as Gigi's magic infused blade bared down on her, forcing her guard apart. The second blow came just moments later, catching Agni on the shoulder. She instantly knew that if she weren't in a training area her clavicle would most likely have been shattered.

*How can she be so powerful!* Agni thought, her mind racing back to their encounter with the snatchers.

*Were they really just that weak?*

Agni was forced to kneel by the consecutive blows but she still leapt backwards and released a small flurry of water element orbs. They stretched and undulated as they flew forward, pelting Gigi across her chest several times before she was able to swing her blade again. Despite her speed, when swinging her weapon she couldn't manage to deflect smaller more accurate attacks. Agni thanked Katrin for exposing this weakness and quickly began the process of creating more magic orbs. While Agni didn't need to use her hands for this task, it simply felt more natural for her to do so.

Gigi didn't stick around to take more water blasts though and she twisted, pivoting on the balls of her foot as she swung her blade once again. Another large wave of fire magic lashed out, this time it was much faster and difficult to evade. As Gigi used several mid range attacks, Katrin focused on long ranged ones to provide support. Since she was now using Scribe Script to activate spells she was forced to abandon any measure of control, these were more like summoning spells that performed a set action. She used her magic with both precision and aggression, her hands seemed to almost blur as several pillars of condensed earth jutted upwards and quickly began to catch up with Gigi who skillfully darted around them. Now that Katrin was using spells Gigi could easily anticipate the size and shape of the strikes, thus they were little more than distractions.

At first Gigi thought that Katrin might be the more troublesome of the two, after all she had seen Grimoire users in action quite often and their ability to combine spells was something to watch out for. But when Agni used such a powerful attack it forced Gigi to not only use a great portion of her mana on a mana expensive barrier, but she also took quite a bit of damage as well.

If she wanted to end the battle and not be shown up by two complete novices she needed to end things quickly. The pot shots the pair were peppering her body with weren't helping either.

*When did zero ranks get so strong? This is nuts!* Gigi thought to herself as she felt her senses sharpen. Although she was slowly being pressured by both of her opponents her Spellsword ability 'Dominion' was now in full effect. It was responsible for the change in her appearance and had the added effect of enhancing the power of her own elemental strikes within a certain radius -- ten meters.

This could be considered a medium range on any battlefield, the only trade off was increased mana costs. In addition to this , Gigi was now using wind magic in combination with fire magic to extend the range of her flame strikes even further. With less than six more swipes she would be running on fumes practically. Still, she couldn't complain, more than anything she felt alive when pushed to her limits. Gigi couldn't help but smile as the two new recruits rose to meet her expectations!

*Wind steps, each one uses mana.* Gigi thought to herself as she used mana enhanced evasion magic to help avoid Katrin's cascading earth strikes.

*Flame Strikes..* She thought as she swung her rune blade towards Agni who was struck by the first blow and even managed to retaliate before using some of her own fire magic to lessen the impact of Gigi's second flame strike. At this point even infusing her blade with mana was becoming difficult. She noticed the mass of flames covering her weapon flicker slightly even as she had this thought.

*At best one or two more strikes. I better make them count.* Gigi thought inwardly as she reared back and cleaved downward with her blade. The vertical flame strike was meant for Agni who, as Gigi predicted, would side step it. She purposely slowed the attack and used less energy to bait her opponent. With Agni now leaping to the side both she and Katrin had become aligned. Gigi stepped to her left even further and then dashed forth at an awkward angle for Agni. Gigi's body maintained a low posture and rose into the strike, at the last possible moment she flared up the remainder of her magical energy, choosing to commit fully to the attack.

A large wave of vertical fire magic, twice as powerful as the previous one was released at near point blank range against the Succubus. Katrin was just three meters behind Agni and also directly in line with this blow. Gigi's intent was to strike them both with a single blow and either way after this bold move the spar would be done!