Chapter 178 Exchange Of Pointers

Cleo was caught mid-sentence, as a |Fireball| collided against her. It was thanks to the warding enchantments on her attire that most of the damage was mitigated.

"Thi-"

BOOM!

Cleo's eyes widened in shock. Just as the smoke from the previous attack cleared in front of her, she saw three spell circles, covering one larger circle, spinning rhythmically around Markus' wand-bearing hand. The one at the centre produced another |Fireball| of identical size and propelled it without pause. This time, Cleo was prepared. She immediately activated a |Lesser Ward| and blocked the incoming attack.

Right as the |Fireball| dissipated over the ward, another one rushed towards here. Cleo was dumbfounded. 'Is he trying to end it quickly by overpowering me with spells?'

​ She gritted her teeth and blocked the attack once again, only to field another one, then another one, and another one. The barrage of |Fireball| spells was unending and relentless. No matter how she dodged the spell, her path would be intercepted by a |Fireball|.

'I can outlast him, as long as I keep my pressure up within the overlapping domain, he should be expending more mana to propel the |Fireball| spells,' Cleo concluded. Although the attacks hadn't physically hit, it was an exhausting endeavour to dodge, weave and block. What she thought would be a trivial victory had turned into arduous labour.

However, her plans wouldn't come to pass. 'His tempo hasn't changed. He isn't exhausted. And I can't feel his influence in my mana domain at all! Why isn't the Fire Mana being agitated with all these |Fireball| spells flying around?'

If the other Guy were here, he would preach that Markus' spells communicate directly with the Truth of the World. Without the need for elaborate lies, the world does half the work for you. To top it off, Markus was barely tapping into his mana pool to cast these |Fireballs|. By offsetting the cost of combustion with a more efficient fuel called Nitor, he could go on for days.

Over the past year, Markus had updated the resources stored in his hands-free belt satchel, in large part thanks to his Junior Sister's assistance and recommendations. Nitor, for instance, is an alchemical intermediate ingredient created by concentrating the "burning" nature of coals. In other words, it's a type of alkane with an extremely high carbon constituency. Naturally, such a hydrocarbon is unstable, however, thanks to a few trivial steps, it is possible to create it in large quantities. In comparison, a small pinch of Nitor powder is equivalent to two hand-sized chunks of coal.

'I can't keep this up, I'm just exhausting myself,' Cleo concluded. 'I need to cover the distance.'

Cleo centred herself and allowed a few |Fireball| spells to collide against her enchanted gear. Then, by lowering her frame, she weaved through the successive onslaught and managed to reduce the distance between herself and Markus. Since the start, she had barely managed to move from her initial position. Even if she moved sideways, forwards or backwards, Markus would reposition himself to maintain the separation while pushing her back to the starting point. However, through expert maneuvring, she was now midway.

With another leap, she was a blade's length away from Markus. He could no longer cast |Fireball| lest he hurt himself. Cleo could metaphorically taste his blood at this point, but then it happened again. She miscalculated her push through an overestimation. She pushed too hard, and instead of landing within her blade's engagement distance, she was an arm's length away. At this position, she could not follow through with the sideward slash that she had prepared. She would have to either strafe backwards or switch to a body attack to push Markus into her engagement distance.

These calculations occurred within her head within split seconds. However, she knew she had lost her advantage. And Markus capitalised on this. The spell circles on his hand dispersed and new ones took their place. The change was near-instantaneous, well beyond the level of most mages in this cultivation realm. Furthermore, although she was at this close distance, she could still not make heads or tails of the simple yet functional designs within. Markus pushed his empty hand against Cleo's left chest and jabbed the wand under her chin. From the hand that contacted her chest, bloomed another spell circle.

Then, all of Markus' hair rose towards the sky, and sparks started to burst from them. Within Cleo's mana domain, she perceived a change. It was rapid and pervasive. In an instant, a sharp smell assaulted her senses, which was immediately followed by a rush of lightning flowing through her. It was an intense shock that undulated within her, spasming her muscles and organs. She lost control of her body in intermittent bursts. It was humiliating, not just the lack of control, but the fact that this interloper just laid his hands on her!

____

What Cleo didn't know was that the hand placed over her left breast may have saved her life. Markus was actively rerouting the flow of current through her nerves away from the heart. Good thing too, because he had vastly underestimated the concentration of ions in the atmosphere at such an altitude. His early trials back at the orphanage, it was much milder. He could only imagine the utter misery Cleo was going through as her neural network was overloaded causing all of her voluntary and involuntary muscles to go haywire. The constant surge to her brain should have also interrupted her thoughts.

'Hopefully, she won't die...'

Then again, someone would interfere if things got to that point. Markus had learned from his mistakes in the past. He could not show any mercy in a moderated duel. The last time he did that, he lost miserably.

With that in mind, Markus ramped up his attack and activated another set of spell circles, using the phial of sulphur in his satchel as the source. A mist of sulphuric acid formed around him, drenching the electrocuted girl. The distributed nature of the attack overwhelmed her attire's warding enchantments, and began eating into her clothes, hair, and skin, turning them a dirty yellow shade. In the beginning, her clothes started to regenerate, with the help of the enchantments within. But after a few more distributed acid attacks, the regeneration could no longer keep up and ceased working altogether.

'This should be enough, right?' After a casual ten minutes, Markus pondered whether to stop the shock attack. He hadn't tried it on another human yet, so he didn't know if this was enough to incapacitate her. Furthermore, her appearance had also deteriorated drastically after her unceremonious acid bath. It kind of hurt Markus' conscience to watch her suffer like that.

Thus, Markus stopped the |Acid Mist| spell and targeted the makeshift black powder in his satchel. He activated a short burst of anti-gravity to reduce Cleo's weight and shoved her forward, causing a disconnect in the flow of current. Then, with a quick cast of |Explosion| he propelled her further.

Cleo flew through the air and landed like a ragdoll at the far end of the stage.

"Umm... Do I win?" Markus asked the dumbfounded referee. The man, in turn, gulped and looked at the wrecked body of the girl. He was given instructions to not stop the match even if anyone surrenders. So, after dabbing his sweating forehead, he said, "The combatant isn't incapacitated. The match will continue!"

"FUCK!" A hoarse voice bellowed. Cleo coughed audibly as she stumbled to stand up. She turned to face Markus, with deathly rage bursting out of her eyes. The fact that her appearance had tattered to match a jaundiced person with large porous burn scars and disintegrating clothes simply amplified her murderous aura further. The last surge of electricity prior to her propulsion had caused her hairs to mat up and protrude outwards, adding a maddened garnish to her aesthetic.

"YOU-" The girl waved a trembling finger towards Markus as she prepared to spit out a series of insults. However, she was immediately interrupted by a mouthful of |Fireball|. The barrage was relentless. Cleo hurriedly activated one of the enchantments on her blade, causing it to shine a bright cyan. She then sliced through the incoming |Fireball| causing it to split midways.

"AAAARGGGHH!" She shouted as she continued to slice through the |Fireball| spells. As she gained proper footing, Markus raised his right foot and activated a spell circle at his sole. He brought it down, eliciting a hollow booming noise that vibrated throughout the stage.

Without stopping the fire attacks, Markus continued to rhythmically raise and lower his foot. With each drop, the booming noise rang louder and louder, until suddenly Cleo could physically observe the ground wave as though it were made of water.

With another drop, the wave gained a massive boost in amplitude, causing her to be pushed off the ground. Now off-balance, Markus ceased the fire barrage and started to accumulate a |Great Fireball| on his open hand with his wand pointing at it. The swirling ball grew larger by the second before Markus immediately released it towards the hovering Cleo.

"ENOUGH!" Cleo screamed as she swung her one-handed blade with both her hands grasping the hilt. With a mightly slice, the |Great Fireball| was dissipated. However, Markus anticipated it and followed the attack with an |Explosion| which hit her right in the face while she was recovering from the exhausting defensive manoeuvre.

Cleo staggered as she tried to stop herself from collapsing. Markus could see her chest rising and falling, as she tried to catch her breath.

"Is the match over?" Markus inquired, seeing as the girl explicitly called 'enough'.

"HOW DARE YOU! I WILL KILL-" The girl once again began monologuing, however, Markus reverted to his strategy and tossed a |Fireball| her way.

"Oh no, you don't!" The girl quickly strafed right and spun in a pirouette with her blade extended outwards, like a deadly top. From the tips of her blade, a white mist sprayed out. All around Markus, the water particles suspended in the air started to condense and washed his vision a translucent white shade. A heavy fog descended upon the stage.

"I've let this go on for long enough," the girl's voice echoed around Markus. His senses were completely overloaded. As he tried to extend his mana sense, he realised that the girl was actively enforcing her influence over their overlapping domain making it hard for him to do anything. He could not manipulate the mana around him at all.

"Within this fog, nothing comes in, nothing goes out. You are at my mercy," the girl said ominously. "Even if you call for a surrender, no one will hear you."

Markus was in a complete bind. At that instant, his only active sense suddenly warned him of an impending attack. He leaned back immediately, only to miss a sweeping slice an inch away from where his neck would have been.

'She's intending to kill me?' Markus thought. That attack was laced with an intent to decapitate. All this while, he had only been holding himself back. It appeared as though it was all for nought since the girl had intended to thoroughly disable him from the very beginning.

Markus' rogue thoughts narrowed to a single conclusion, 'I must end her.'

With a renewed focus, Markus once again extended his bogged down mana sense and turned off all of his regular human senses, tuning into a frequency that the girl had no control over.