It wasn't possible - no human could move that fast. His trained eyes hadn't even registered a blur of movement. With a growing sense of dread, Damien slowly turned his neck...
But before he could fully turn, a devastating punch landed on his face with bone-crushing force. The impact resonated through his skull like a thunderclap, sending him flying across the arena, his body carving a path through the air as spectators gasped in collective shock.
'Uhh, how is she this strong?' Damien thought, still suspended in the air, the impact reverberating through his skull. It felt as if he had been struck by a boulder. As he soared through the air, his gaze instinctively darted back to the spot where he had just stood, and his eyes widened in disbelief. She had vanished again.
And then he sensed her presence once more behind him – a cold, deadly aura that chilled his spine. This time he twisted his body, muscles burning with effort as he prepared to counter-attack... but wasn't nearly fast enough...
She struck him again, her fist connecting with his stomach with such overwhelming force that it sent him flying upwards, his lungs emptied of air in an instant. Pain exploded across his chest like wildfire.
He had fought countless E-ranked monsters in his previous life, because that was what his capability could amount to. But none of them had exhibited such terrifying difference in raw strength and blinding speed.
Normally it's said that participants taking the Magic Knight entrance exam's strength are equal to those of an E-ranked monsters, but not her, not Anita von Britton. She was a monster just like Giovanni, hell even stronger than him. It was as if he was staring at a C-ranked monster.
With Damien still suspended helplessly in the air, she leapt upward with effortless grace, ascending until she hovered directly above him. Her leg, now shimmering with a brilliant coat of blue Mana that crackled like lightning. With a swift, decisive motion, she struck him downwards, the impact of his fall reverberating through the entire arena like a thunderclap, stone tiles fracturing beneath his body like brittle ice.
"Kueks!" Damien gasped, blood spilling from his mouth, his body overwhelmed by a wave of pain.
"This battle is so one-sided that I'm beginning to feel pity for the guy," murmured some of the students, their faces contorted with winces of sympathy.
"As expected of the princess," a noble scoffed with a derisive laugh that echoed through the arena. "She would never lose to peasant blood like him. The outcome was decided before it began."
Meanwhile Giovanni, watching from the sidelines with clenched fists and a rigid posture, felt rage boiling within him. His knuckles turned white with pressure, nails digging into his palms, yet there was nothing he could do even if every fiber of his being screamed to intervene.
Damien slowly pushed himself up from the crater his impact had created, each movement sending waves of agony through his limbs. Blood dripped freely from his mouth, painting crimson droplets on the fractured stone beneath him.
'Tsk... if I hadn't shielded that last kick with my hands, I would've ended up with completely shattered ribs instead of merely cracked ones,' Damien thought grimly. Even though the defensive maneuver had been executed perfectly, it left a searing pain in his hands that made them tremble uncontrollably, nerves screaming in protest.
"Your tenacity is admirable, Damien," Anita von Britton remarked coldly, her voice echoing across the silent arena as she turned away with regal dismissiveness, "but you should just quit while you can still walk away. You're simply... just too weak." Her words hung in the air like poison as she began to stride away, expecting Damien to forfeit the match immediately.
But little did she know that her sentence just now, shifted something in Damien.
"What did you... just say?" Damien's voice emerged as barely more than a growl, each word dripping with barely contained fury. The air around him seemed to grow heavy, charged with tension.
Anita stopped mid-track and slowly tilted her head backwards. She observed Damien's face darkening like storm clouds gathering, his fists clenched so tightly that blood seeped between his fingers. A slow, predatory smirk crept across her flawless features as she fully turned to face him once more.
"I see," she purred, satisfaction evident in her tone, "you're one of those ones who can't accept reality or should I say, that particular word." Her smirk widened into a taunting grin that made her eyes glitter with cruel amusement.
"No matter. If you want me to repeat it, I'll do so loud and clear." She inhaled dramatically, savoring the moment. "Damien, YOU ARE WEAK...!"
Before she could complete her sentence, Damien vanished from her field of vision, moving with such explosive speed that the ground cracked where he had stood. He materialized mere inches from her, his left hand already arcing upward in a vicious uppercut aimed at her chin.
But nonchalantly, she dodged it, tilting her head to her left side with that infuriating grin still plastered across her face. Her triumph was short-lived, however, as her eyes suddenly widened in shock. Damien's right hand, previously concealed by the feint, was already mere inches from connecting with her face.
'What!? His left hand attack was just bait!' Anita's mind raced as her hands, instantly coated with swirling blue Mana, instinctively flew to her face. They formed an X-shaped shield just as Damien's punch connected with devastating force. The impact sent tremors through her entire body, forcing her to slide several centimeters backwards, her heels digging furrows into the stone floor.
'What unbelievable strength,' Anita thought with a mixture of shock and grudging respect. 'Even though I blocked it with concentrated Mana, I can still feel the impact vibrating through every bone in my body. How is this possible?'
"Take it back," Damien demanded, his voice trembling with barely contained rage.
"Huh?" Anita exclaimed, momentarily caught off guard.
"Take back what you said," Damien repeated, his face shadowed but his eyes now glowing with an unnatural crimson light that seemed to burn through the very air between them. The sight sent an involuntary shiver down Anita's spine, though she quickly suppressed it.
Anita's lips curled into another smirk, more defiant than before.
"Why don't you make me!" she challenged, her voice rising to a battle cry as her magical aura intensified around her like an azure inferno. Her stance shifted fluidly into combat mode, body coiled like a serpent ready to strike, but then...
VHOOM!
The air itself seemed to part as Damien rushed forward with such tremendous speed that several spectators swore they saw afterimages trailing behind him. He appeared beside her in an instant, moving with an urgency born of desperate calculation.
Despite being consumed by rage, his tactical mind remained clear and focused. If she were to draw out her grimoire now, everything will go to shit. So he needed to strike her down decisively before that possibility became reality.
He extended his right leg in a sweeping kick aimed at the back of her knees, but she anticipated the move with uncanny precision. Pivoting gracefully, she snatched his leg mid-strike, her fingers digging into his flesh with bruising force before using his own momentum to thrust his entire body forward like a ragdoll.
'What the... is she using Mana observation?' Damien thought in alarm as he somehow managed to land on both feet, sliding backwards while maintaining his balance through sheer willpower. The implications were troubling.
Mana observation – an advanced technique employed by martial arts masters to predict their opponents' movements and attacks with almost supernatural accuracy. It allowed practitioners to see beyond physical tells, reading the flow of Mana itself to anticipate strikes before they even began.
'If she's using that technique, then this changes everything,' Damien calculated swiftly. 'I'll have to employ that martial arts style – the one specifically designed for this scenario.'
Anita launched herself toward him with blinding speed, the air whistling around her as she closed the distance in the blink of an eye. Damien, meanwhile, closed his eyes completely, seeming to surrender to the inevitable.
Just as her punch was about to collide with his face, Damien dropped into a low crouch with fluid precision. In the same motion, his left hand gently redirected her strike upward, disrupting its trajectory with minimal effort. Then, gathering immense strength in his right hand, he drove his fist directly into her unprotected stomach. The impact forced a shocked gasp from her lips as the air exploded from her lungs.
But that wasn't nearly enough to stop a fighter of her caliber. With remarkable recovery, she twisted her body mid-air, transforming her fall into an attack as she aimed a devastating kick with her left leg. Damien slid backward just in time, the kick missing his face by mere millimeters as he felt the displaced air brush against his skin.
Without hesitation, he lunged forward again, his right fist rocketing toward her face. She smirked confidently, having already predicted this attack through her Mana observation. Her hands, once again sheathed in brilliant blue Mana, rose to shield her face – only to find that the punch stopped abruptly mid-trajectory. Another feint.
The true attack came from his left hand, which connected with her stomach with bone-jarring force. This time, the punch contained enough power to send her flying across the entire arena, her body carving a trench through the stone floor before finally skidding to a halt against the far wall.
The Waterless Martial Arts – a legendary technique specifically invented to counter Mana observation users. It worked well against Anita von Britton because Mana observation functioned by tracking the opponent's attack pattern through their Mana flow. Since Damien couldn't use Mana, the effectiveness of her technique was drastically reduced, leaving her vulnerable to his unpredictable strikes.
Anita von Britton spat out a mouthful of blood that spattered against the pristine floor, its crimson hue stark against the white stone. She slowly pushed herself upright, one hand braced against the wall for support while the other wiped the blood from her mouth with deliberate care.
"I'll commend you for trying, Damien," she said, her voice stronger than it should have been given the attack she'd endured. A knowing smirk played across her bloodied lips.
"You think I don't know that you've been planning to end this match before I draw out my grimoire." It wasn't a question but a statement of fact that froze Damien's blood in his veins.
'What?! If she knows that then...' His mind raced with implications, none of them favorable.
"I'll admit I can't defeat you without my grimoire," she continued, her smirk widening into something predatory and dangerous, "but I think this match has dragged on long enough. I just happen to have a spell that will work especially well against someone like you." The confidence in her voice sent a chill down Damien's spine.
'Shit, I have to stop her!' He attempted to surge forward, muscles tensing for explosive movement – only to discover that something invisible but unbreakable was binding his legs in place, anchoring him to the spot.
"What the— when did she...?!" Damien exclaimed, shock evident in his voice as he looked down at his legs. They were encased in crystalline ice that crept upward with alarming speed, magical frost that had materialized without warning.
"You think I'd let the same attack hit me twice without implementing a backup plan?" She asked, satisfaction dripping from every syllable.
'What, so she deliberately let that last attack connect so she could immobilize me,' Damien realized with growing horror.
'Damn, I gravely underestimated her tactical mind.' Damien admitted painfully. He might have regressed to his younger physical self, but mentally he remained a thirty-year-old veteran warrior with extensive battle experience.
Acknowledging that he had been outmaneuvered by someone who appeared to be a child was profoundly unsettling. Maybe that was the problem – she might appear young, but she remained the kingdom's greatest talent for good reason.
What concerned him even more was the revelation that she possessed ice magic. Before his regression, he had known her as exclusively a water attribute mage. If she now wielded ice magic in this lifetime, then his entire strategy required immediate and drastic revision.
"Water magic..." Anita began to cast, her grimoire hovering before her, pages fluttering as if caught in an invisible breeze. Damien's eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing horror as realization dawned.
'She can use both elements!' His mind raced with frantic calculations and dire predictions. That came by as an awful surprise. She wasn't merely talented – she was a true magical anomaly, a monster among monsters.
"Water Bubble Counter Shield!" she declared with ringing authority.
Immediately, an immense wave of Mana erupted from her slender form, so powerful that it was visible even to non-mages as shimmering blue waves. The magic transformed into crystal-clear water that circled around her with increasing speed, forming a perfect transparent bubble shield that encased her completely.
'Damn this monster!' Damien thought, desperately searching for any weakness in her technique as the ice continued its inexorable climb up his trapped legs.