With a fast movement of his arm, he drew a circle in the air using his wand. The circle then glowed as he positioned his wand in the middle of the circle.

"I hereby challenge you to a duel" He said with the air of superiority.

"...what?" I asked, as I got confused with the sudden change of attitude. I mean, the guy looked like he was going to start a street fight moments ago, but now he's acting like a noble?

"We from the Andress University of Magic and Skills pride ourselves in having the best students in this entire kingdom. Don't think some lame excuse of demihuman like you could insult the founder of our university and get away with it. I'm challenging you to a magic duel, right here, right now" He said.

"Look, I don't know-..." He interrupted me as I was speaking.

"Lies, I know manaburn marks when I see one. You know how to do magic, you're just afraid to lose because of manaburn. Let's do it like this, I won't use my wand and you can have the first spell. If you win, I'll apologize and give you a charged mana crystal the size of my first, but if I win you'll have to apologize about making fun of the founder. What do you think? I think it's pretty fair" He said.

I was at a loss for words. What could I say to this guy to go away? I looked over to where Jana had fallen when the guy shoved her, and I breathed in relief seeing her already up and not hurt. She looked back at me and our eyes met. I tried to ask for help with my eyes but I think she didn't understand the meaning behind my gaze, because she nodded her head and the next thing I knew she sprinted away somewhere, leaving me alone with the guy.

Without any option I could think of, I turned to my own skill.

Can I even use magic? I asked.

[Affirmative, however due to the severity of the damages only the magicules that are stored in your physical body can be used, meaning the effectiveness of magic will drop considerably]

So it is safe for me to use magic. I affirmed after listening to the explanation.

[Negative] came the answer. [Shifts in the body magicules can affect the magicules inside your soul and increase the damage to the affected areas. However, the damage can vê minimized if you utilize [Automata, God of Axioms] as proxy and allow [Automata, God of Axioms] the formation and casting of spells]

"So? What's your answer? I'm waiting…" the guy said impatiently.

Ok, I agree. I said mentally and then said to the guy. "Fine, but I only know two spells"

"You could've fooled me" He dismissed my statement.

I just rolled my eyes and followed his lead to accept the duel, which involved putting my hand on the circle floating in the air. I touched the circle and it flashed white before disappearing and two circles appear beneath me and the guy.

"As promised, you can have the first spell" He said as he assumed a position to defend himself while putting his wand away in his vests.

I began drawing the magic circle of [Fireball] inside a virtual space made by [Automata, God of Axioms]. As I drew it, I began hearing whispers in the back of my head. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I could feel they were trying to get me to draw something on the spell I was making.  I wasn't paying much attention to them, such that I accidentally drew a small circle with runes written on it.

The moment I finished and noticed what I had drawn was too late, I could already see the circle forming almost instantly and the feeling like someone had stabbed me in some places as the spell activated.

Red flames took shape and I could almost make out a face in the flames before they shot forwards towards the guy. His eyes were wide open when he saw my casting, but he didn't let his surprise distract him for too long as he crossed his arms in an X pattern and shouted.

"I am the one who defies fate. Give me the power of protection. [SHIELD]!" He shouted and a translucent magical shield appeared around him. 

The flames hit the shield and wrapped around him and they danced like they were alive. It wasn't like the other times I casted [Fireball] and the flames just dispersed after hitting something, this time they looked like they had a mind of their own, and they wanted the guy toasted.

They took longer to disappear than normal and as I was starting to get nervous, they began to die down and were completely extinguished when the guy opened his arms and the shield exploded outwards. 

"You have the courage to tell me you just know two spells and then use non-verbal magic?" He said. "Now it's time to teach you a lesson. Pristine water from the ocean currents…"

What happened with my spell? I asked internally as the guy chanted.

[Unknown. Processing…. Data indicates the spell was altered by an unknown factor. Cannot extrapolate due to lack of data]

"...become an arrow that pierce the unworthy. [Water Arrow]!" He finished chanting and an arrow made out of water materialized from thin air and shot towards me.

I panicked a little and countered with [Ice Spear], but as I was making the spell the whispers came back and changed the spell again. When it was casted, the spell went flying and hit the arrow, freezing it instantly as it fused with it. The moment the water arrow froze, it changed direction and made a loop around me before going straight at him.

"[Water Wall]!" He cried as the arrow went flying towards him.

Water dissolved in the air rushed in front of him and condensed into a meter thick wall made out of water that was about 4 meters high. The air around us got so dry because of the spell it felt like we were in a hot desert. The arrow changed direction again and was about to go around the water that made up the wall, but with a movement of his arms the water also moved and intercepted the arrow.

The wall froze the instant the ice touched the water, cracks appearing where the arrow hit as it still had enough momentum to penetrate around half its length on the ice wall before suddenly exploding into a million shards, almost making a fog that dissipated into the air just a moment after it formed.

"Do you thi-..." He started talking but got interrupted as the ice wall that was his water wall spell suddenly grew spikes that targeted him, making him jump to the side to avoid being impaled by the spikes. "STOP CORRUPTING MY SPELLS!" He shouted while getting up.

I just blinked in confusion as I had no idea of what was happening.

[Hypothesis. Skill [Will of Destruction] is corrupting the magic circuit. Available data indicates latent will on both spells that have been cast and increased activity has been detected in the [Will of Destruction] skill]

Can you stop it? I asked mentally.

[Negative, as the skill hasn't done anything more than send suggestions to your mind, current processing power isn't enough to fully block the suggestions. Only you can disregard the suggestions sent to your mind]

Does it have any side-effects on me? I asked.

[Unknown. Scans shows no immediate damage, however there isn't enough data to extrapolate long lasting effects]

…I guess I just need to give you more data then. I said, determined to understand my own skill.

"Oh blazing fire that burns the unworthy…" the guy began chanting again, except this time I noticed the way he chanted meant he was going to cast a fire spell and I had Immunity to fire and wouldn't be burned…. Except if my Immunity has been affected by the manaburn like [Dragon Scales] has.

[Negative. Immunity skills have an effect on your DNA and soul. Every damage to your DNA had been reversed by [True Mimic] after assuming the form of a Pantherino Negro]

With the confirmation I wouldn't be affected by the fire spell, I began casting one fire spell myself, it was the modified [Ice Spear] that I call [Fire Spear]. The moment I began casting it, the whispers came back, but this time I was more aware of them and could hear them a bit more clearly. The whispers weren't words, at least none I could understand, no, they were something more conceptual, like symbols filled with meaning. 

As I focused on the symbols being whispered, their meaning briefly entered my mind. They were symbols depicting various forms to cause destruction and death using the spell I was constructing. As I didn’t want to kill the guy just because he challenged me to a duel, I ignored the symbols that had a sensation of death, instead I went for the ones that were almost like obscured by the skill itself, those were symbols that actually changed the damage the spell would cause to a more mental one.

After I built the modified spell with the symbols [Will of Destruction] gave me, it was time to cast it, and it was done automatically by [Automata, God of Axioms].

Flames appeared from nowhere as the cast was complete. The flames took on a shape similar to a cylinder, but instead of the plasma-like flames that the spell contained, this time the flames assumed a more ethereal form before I shot it towards my opponent, who had already finished casting his spell. I had regained the control of my own spells after I consciously used the symbols.

"[Fire Wave]!" He finished his incantation with the name of the spell and fire started spewing out of his hands like angry waves that were crashing down on me.

My spell went flying against his, though it was a lot slower than it usually was probably because it wasn't a real flame but an ethereal one, meaning his spell hit me before mine hit him. As the waves of fire came crashing down, I was hit with intense heat that would certainly burn me if I wasn't immune to high temperatures. The same couldn't be said about my clothes, though, as I saw they turn to ash while still on me, leaving me completely naked in the middle of the street. 

The fire also blocked my vision as the hot air created a pressure difference high enough to blurry every light that crossed it due to refraction. I only managed to learn that my spell actually hit the guy when I heard his scream, slightly distorted as well because of the difference in pressure.

As the flames died down, my vision cleared and I saw the guy on the ground holding his arm while screaming bloody murder.

"I YIELD, I YIELD, I YIELD!” He screamed as he rolled on the ground while he held his arm with his other hand as he groaned in pain.

As the circles beneath us disappeared, I saw Jana sprinting back as she turned a corner some distance away, followed by a guard using full plate armor. As they approached, I took notice of the situation I was in. I was completely naked, all my clothes burned away in the fire spell I let myself be hit, there was another person rolling in pain on the floor next to me and the air was still full of magicules from the spells we were throwing at each other.

“....I’m fucked” I said as the guard approached with a stern face.