Chapter 64: The Battle Festival (Part 2)
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With none of the five, sorry, four because Daniel didn’t want to anger the Oni race by being a possible candidate for their prize like his other four friends. He forfeited the match and an Oni got into the quarterfinals. Now Shalia, Silva, Allan, and Valeria along with four other Oni were left to fight for the chance to enter the semifinals. Who will be victorious in the end? Let’s see!  

The first battle during the quarterfinals to decide who’d enter the semifinals was between Allan and Shalia, or at least, it was supposed to be. The moment Shalia went on stage after finding out who she’d be fighting, however, she forfeited the match as Daniel had. Allan was her partner in crime and had also proven himself capable in battle far more than herself albeit her support from the spirit world. I guess being a Battle Mage runs through his blood.   

Besides Allan being more talented in terms of battle than she was, there was their relationship after one of them had lost the battle to consider. The winner wouldn’t let the other live it down if they screwed up in the middle of a battle. Better save herself the embarrassment. And Shalia was also the pure and noble princess of the Sunfire elves. Drawing too much attention to herself might have unintended consequences for not only Marcel but herself as well. People are highly perceptive as much as we’d like to think they’re all stupid. Also, spirit magic tended to draw the attention of others whenever it was used. If she wanted to defeat Allan, her only chance of doing so would be to bring out the big guns, which would just complicate things.  

With a decisive winner for the first battle, came the start of the next battle. It was between Valeria and an Oni.   

From the ‘Swordsman’ class, the massive Oni came into the battle with a giant sword the length of two meters. How he managed to hold that thing is with his raw strength despite being a youth like all the other participants. He was a talent of the Oni race, one of the many sons of the Oni Leader, and an adventurer of the B-class.  

When the sound of the bell to commence the start of the battle, Valeria quickly made her move. She equipped herself with two dark daggers made of the sharp fangs of the ‘Imperious Claw Grasshopper,’ a B-class dungeon beast that dominated its enemies with their sharp claws and fangs capable of shredding B-ranked adventurers. Sure, she wasn’t going to murder her opponent but she wasn’t not going to fight him seriously.  

Wielding the twin daggers, she enhanced herself and partially transformed, cat ears appearing atop her head. Normally, she wouldn’t need those but to reach her goal, she was willing to use them.  

With her super sensitive cat ears to sense even the subtle movements and changes in the wind and her enhanced body to make moving around even much easier, she cranked up the super speed. The moment she started moving towards him for an attack, however, she sealed her fate.  

Coming towards the sword-wielding Oni, she quickly planned out her feint attacks as well as her real ones. When she reached him, she quickly got to hacking and slashing at him and thought she was doing a good job. She didn’t know that this battle had ended the moment she faced that Oni with her blades.   

Before going into battle, she accounted for an Oni’s body strength as well as their normal speed and reaction speed, and this assessment was what led her to use the ‘Imperious Claw Daggers’ against her opponents. It was a suitable weapon to tackle an Oni’s strength with, but the keyword here was ‘normal’.   

She knew not much about the Oni race except for the many legends and tales that mentioned to never underestimate them. She went into this battle fully prepared but, at the end of the day, she was still not ready to face a proper Oni opponent.  

As she slashed his body with her daggers, she noticed something a few moments after her attacks. The Oni parried her dagger attacks and seemed to allow her to come close to his body. He did all that while wearing a stoic, uninterested expression from the moment she landed her first attack on him. Their exchange of bouts or rather, Valeria’s one-sided attack frenzy and the Oni’s subtle defense moves, quickly ended the moment Valeria let her guard down after a few more attacks.  

Thinking that all her attacks had reached him and that he was in that last moments before he fell to the ground and collapsed from his injuries, she quickly landed a few more attacks which the Oni hardly defended against, and then turn around to leave. This was the move that lost her that battle.  

The moment she turned her back, she realized something grave. This Oni... had not injured in the slightest. He just took it all in because he could and now that her attack frenzy was over, it was his move.  

Raising his massive sword and taking an unshakable stance, he took a swing of his sword at her. The force carried within that sword swing alone was enough to crush his opponent. The mere phantom of his true attack brought down his opponent.  

Valeria fell to the ground under the immense pressure and strength behind the Oni’s blade. Her entire body was being forced into the ground by this pressure. It was a shame that she didn’t want to show her true form just yet, so this defeat was one she could only accept.  

“I... admit... uh... defeat!” She grunted under the pressure. She knew when to give up in a fight and now was the time.  

“It was nice to fight you, lady!” The Oni put away his sword in its sheath with a smile of brilliance that made the lady wonder why he didn’t just do that from the start. The Oni race was full of men with terrible visages that made it look like murder was on the horizon from looking at them that when they smiled, it took almost anyone by surprise. It was at this moment that Valeria fell for a giant hunk of an Oni. Just kidding! He’d die because of her if anybody from her home learned that she fell in love with anybody.   

Love was the furthest thing away from her mind. Evan, as usual, made everything worse. He’d made her numb to romantic feelings by showing her how easily he can fall in and out of the thing. If anything, she despised romantic love and vowed to never be bothered by such a flimsy feeling. ‘SINGLE GIRLS FOR LIFE’ is her motto.  

With Valeria having given up the fight, the battle was over and a healer team took her away for some healing. She’d managed to endure the Oni’s sword’s pressure all thanks to her body but she still suffered some injuries. She needed some quick treatment to help her recover faster.  

“That’s my son!” The Oni Leader cheered for his, um, 198th son. Again, this man had way too many children.   

“YYEEEAAAHHH!!!!” The crowd cheered for the Oni who’d won the battle. It was a quick and decisive battle that came to a swift conclusion in a little over a minute. In their eyes, battles like these were truly the best.  

With that, the Oni had entered the semifinals as one of the four semifinalists. He would face off against one of the other semifinalists to decide who’d enter the finals and win three favors from the VIP. He could hardly wait.  

For the next actual battle of the quarterfinals, it was Silva vs an Oni mage.  

After the swift and splendid conclusion of the first battle, the entire crowd was excited for the next one. They cheered joyously and the entire arena was filled with deafening noises.  

Below them were the two who’d battle it out: Silva and a mage of their own. A C-ranker and B-ranker were about to fight. Like all the others, he was well-built like the average Oni, but he still looked like he’s hardly touched a weapon in his life. Finding an Oni wielding only magic at this stage of their development is quite rare. More on that later. Now the battle of the two mages was about to begin.    

The two took out their magic staffs; Silva, her crystal staff that increased the potency of her spells by 30%, and the Oni mage, a cursed staff made of average materials but so well made that it could stand up to Silva’s. With their staffs out on the field, the battle would now commence.  

Silva, when the bell rang, took quick action. With her title of ‘Spell Master’ activated, she quickly got to swiftly casting her spells. As usual, she was going to go big with little regard for her magic power. She recovered fast, so everything would be fine. With haste, she cast her first spell of the battle, a composite spell of wind and earth with a masterful manipulation of magic power, shaping them into sharp needles which she’d rain down on her opponent, [Stone Rain].  

Her opponent, the Oni mage, also made his move, using [Darkness Barrier] and [Water Curtain] to block her attacks, the [Darkness Barrier] spell absorbing most of the spells like quicksand and the [Water Curtain] breaking up any of the rock needles that got past the [Darkness Barrier] into small, harmless pieces.  

With his opponent having made her first move, it was time for his own. He cast flame spells imbued with the mind-afflicting spells of the darkness element, [Confusion], [Groggy], and [Slow Speed] to create composite mental-attack spells and the battle’s winner had already been decided.  

The darkness element was one of mystery and impossibilities. From it, many unknown spells could be born. They influence the minds of others, like with illusion magic, grants cover to others like with transformation and stealth magic, and also be used to afflict others with various conditions similar to curses. It was a rare and mostly unknown gem that could be polished into anything its wielders desired in terms of magic.   

After the spells were cast, Silva blocked them with [Stone Wall], having not noticed the mental attacks infused into the seemingly normal flame spells and when she dispersed the flames, the mental attacks reached their destination, causing grogginess, confusion, and slow moment. She was doomed to lose this fight, or at least, so thought her opponent.  

When her opponent noticed the slow moment and the other symptoms of his spells, he immediately took action and added more darkness-afflictions to her. He added, [Extreme Confusion], a higher-level form of the former spell, [Fatigue], [Darkness Curtain], a spell for making opponents lose their vision, and lastly, [Stagnant], a higher-level form of [Slow Speed], to freeze her in place. The battle was more than decided after he made his next move. In less than a minute, this battle had also concluded, or at least, so he thought. He’d made a fatal mistake that would cost him the battle.  

In this world, there are some with identities that one can hardly imagine, except if you’re Marcel, that is. There exist masters who can make the world move around with a few spells and then there are those with darkness resistance, doomed to never feel groggy or confused by the effects of the darkness’ mind-corroding afflictions.  

Silva’s opponent focused on mental attacks delivered via his darkness-afflicted composite spells because he thought an attack mage like her would have no mental defenses but boy was, he wrong.   

Since the very first spell he cast, the little miss had duped him, pretending to have fallen for his afflictions while waiting for the perfect chance to strike. In this world where true masters of magic existed everywhere, one needed something to keep them safe against opponents who might come after your mind, and she was one of the people prepared for it.  

In his relaxation after he thought his mental attacks had kicked in on his opponent’s mind and that he’d won, he was no match for a direct attack with the [Water Prison] spell which trapped him in a ball of water, stripping him of air and quickly left him unconscious. With a bit of pretense and the advantage that was occasionally being underestimated by slightly more powerful opponents, she’d easily won the battle.  

With her victory, she earned one of the three remaining spots into the semifinals, leaving two more spots before the semifinals begin.   

With the conclusion of her battle came the battle of the other Onis who fought for the place of the last entry into the semifinals. The next youth to get into the finals was a burly-looking swordsman with an odachi which he used to deliver a swift speed-based attack at his opponents. And with the last entry for the finals decided, the finals were about to begin.  

  

After about half an hour’s break for the participants to rest in preparation for the finals, the four finalists were now to duel it out for the chance to enter the finals. The conditions for winning, like in the previous one-on-one battles, was to either incapacitate your opponent or get them to give up. You could go as big as you want and nobody would die as long as a Sephana-certified doctor was around.  

For the first battle of the semifinals, the last entry into the semifinals, and the first entry was to battle. Allan vs the Oni swordsman with the odachi were to fight to decide who enters the finals. A mage vs a swordsman. How would this end? No one was sure having watched the previous battles! For the second time in the history of the battle festival, two youths not of the Oni had entered the semifinals for the chance at their race’s prize. Everyone waited in anticipation for the bell which would bring about the clash and when it finally came, they weren’t disappointed.  

With the sound of the bell, Allan quickly took to the sky with the wind element. He had to make sure that the swordsman didn’t get close enough to stop him from casting spells. He was a quick fellow, way too quick than he’d like to be around.  

Like in the battles he’d fought earlier during the competition, he surrounded himself with barriers; this time, [Blade Vortex Barrier], a multilayered wind barrier spell lethal enough to keep his opponent from using brute strength against him. It would also dampen his speed and stall him long enough for him to cast his next spell if he came closer.  

Having judged from his previous battles, the bodies of the Oni were way too strong. Even [Ifrit], his curse-inflicting spell didn’t do much to them because of their unique attribute embedded with it, more on this later. Fire was no good against them and neither would lightning because of their similar properties so his options were limited to the wind, ice, and spatial element. As of this moment, he’d also like to not reveal too much about his identity to others, so he would stick to the wind and ice elements for this battle. Revealing that he had more than four elements would lead any onlooker closer to guessing who he is. There were very few people except heroes who had that many elements.  

Having made his move with the wind barrier, his opponent got to making his own. From how fast he was moving, one could easily determine that his magic was of the lightning element. Granting speed enough to make it look like he was flying in the sky with the momentum he began building up from running around the arena, he leapt towards the sky to attack his opponent.  

Allan knew his opponent would be first but had not accounted for how fast. When his opponent leapt towards him, he laughed a moving sword attack at him. It was so fast that it ripped his barriers apart and his opponent kicked him towards the ground.  

Having fallen to the ground, Allan prepared to make his next move but unfortunately, there wasn’t much time left. His opponent fell back towards the ground with unprecedented speed, enough to quickly reach and pin him to the ground with his sword if he got closer.   

He was approaching closer and closer with each millisecond he waited before making his move. He didn’t want to show more of his abilities than he wanted to, but for Marcel, he decided to use ‘that’. His opponent approaching, he warped space just a tiny bit, then with that warp, he launched himself towards the sky again and activated another flight spell to keep him afloat up there.  

His opponent wasn’t going to give him any legroom to breathe in this battle. He also showed more of what he could do. He took off the magic restraints on his arms and wrists. Yes, he had those. Did I, um, forgot to tell you? Oops!  

As one of the sons of the Oni Leader, he was born with unmatched talent and a special talent for the elements. He was exceptionally skilled in lightning magic and their race’s own special form of magic. His special talent was super speed, one so strong that even his strong body could easily be damaged by his speed. His mother had warned him to not use it more than once a week and he obliged his request but hey, this was the battle festival. It was the time to let loose. If he managed to win this battle and the finals with this power, then everything would be fine.  

Having released his restraints, he quickly run around the arena, building up even more momentum. This time, it was so fast that he built up enough power to ‘fly’ in milliseconds. The battle, to the onlookers, was over already. Everyone now waited eagerly for the kick he’d deliver when he reached his opponent and send him flying towards the hard ground. It was only a matter of time, they thought.   

Allan, as his opponent, approached could do nothing but wait for the attack his opponent would either deliver with his sword or a kick. He knew what the audience was thinking as well. They all thought he was going to lose and had not at all expected what he’d planned while waiting for his opponent to come at him with a seemingly unavoidable attack.  

With his opponent approaching, the end of this battle was already in sight. The Onis already cheered for their youth. He was surely going to win this fight.   

Unfortunately, they knew nothing about this youth their youth was facing. His opponent and the audience missed one thing that most people usually missed about him when they looked at him.  

This mage named Allan was not only a witch but also the son of a werewolf from one of the three noble clans. Although he wasn’t born a hallowed hybrid, he still had the blood of the infamous shapeshifters. This blood not only kept his body fit compared to other witches but also saved his life on multiple occasions.  

Nobody, including the watching Marcel, had expected that Allan would use the blood of the shapeshifters inside him to turn himself into a blue dove just in time to evade the attack of his opponent, then take the chance to attack him with the high-level ice spell, [Freezing Ice Coffin], to freeze him solid. Nobody had expected that, just like that, a non-Oni would enter the finals for their prize.  

Having frozen his opponent solid in ice that would take a while to melt, he carried him back down with a wind spell and transformed back to normal. Now even more people looked at him with eager eyes, trying to guess his identity. The rarity of witches with werewolf blood running through their blood made it easy for the more powerful and knowledgeable ones to guess who he was while the rest were left to wonder. He’d blown his cover and for what? His friend enjoying wine with a certain Oni Leader on a terrace and couldn’t help but choke on his wine when his friend change into a bird. Today was a day full of surprises for everyone and by everyone, he was included in that package.  

Having been declared the winner with his opponent incapacitated, it was now time for the last battle before the finals; the battle which would decide which two participated in the final to sit beside the special VIP and get three wishes granted by him.   

The last battle before the final battle was between the second entry and third entry: the Oni swordsman with the giant sword and Silva.  

Even before the bell rang, Silva had already planned her moves. She carried a grave expression on her face as if this battle was a matter of life and death; one which she couldn’t afford to lose. She looked at her opponent with no intention of holding back, unlike her last battle.  

When the first bell rang, she cast her first spell [Ice Field], an intermediary water and wind composite spell generating massive amounts of ice, creating ice crystals, and freezing the ground. The audience thought she was going to play the ‘slip’ trick but that wasn’t her intention at all.  

Her opponent smirked at her, then wrapping his giant sword in fiery magic aura, blasted the ice away, melting the rest with more magic power. In his earlier battles, he hadn’t used his magic power at all but his current opponent was forcing him to. He was also going to try his best to win this battle.  

While he melted her ice spell with his magic, she continued forward with her next move. She really wasn’t holding back, this one. As always, in preparation for a large wide-range attack, she took to the skies and began casting. Her opponent, the moment he finished melting the ice, unleashed his weapon’s pressure at his opponent. He shaped his sword’s immense pressure into arcs and unleashed it as his flying opponent like blades. Unlike his odachi-wielding half-brother, he didn’t have a technique to help him fly at this stage in his development, so he could only rely on his energies and his giant sword.  

With the blade-like arcs of compressed pressure launched at her like attacks, she launched the counterattack she prepared from having watched Valeria fight him: [Multi-Compressed Wind Blades]. She created it after watching her friend struggle against her current opponent’s sword’s pressure.   

‘How nice it must be to be a ‘Spell Master’?’ Marcel thought.  

This spell she’d just created was a compressed version of her already lethal [Multi Wind Blades]. Having compressed the force of the winds involved in the spell to make them strong enough to cancel out her opponents’ sword’s pressure blades.  

As she’d expected, the spell canceled out the sword’s pressure, and her opponent, surprised, wondered what move to pull next. His opponent was in the sky while he was down below. If he couldn’t force her to come down, then the only thing he could do was use a special technique.  

Taking a sword stance, his legs fastened to the grown, he unleashed a technique taught to him by his father: ‘Gravity Storm Slash’, a technique which borrowed the creator of the technique’s mastery over the special ‘gravity’ element and the wind element to bestow upon its user a pulling force so great that if not careful, could lead to someone being swallowed by the effects of the attack. The technique opened up a small portion of space and if not careful, his opponent and himself could get stuck inside it.  

Yes, to use this technique, he borrowed power from his father, instead of converting his own power into the various forces needed to call forth the power of the technique. The power needed to execute this technique wasn’t one he could pay at this moment, so his father allowed him to borrow the power for said technique. All he needed to do was to wrap it around his blade and with a slash, unleash the furious power of the ‘Gravity Storm Slash’.  

With the sword technique unleashed, Valeria felt herself being pulled from above and closer to her opponent. The suction force was powerful enough to cause her flight spell to slowly disintegrate. It brought her closer and closer to the ground and when the flight spell finished disintegrating, her opinion stopped using it and unleashed another pressure blade at her.   

Having prepared for another such another, she launched [Compressed Wind Blade], a concentrated version of [Multi Compressed Wind Blades] but with just one blade at the attack, and just like that, her opponent had lost his footing. The advantage that the ‘Gravity Storm Slash’ had given him was slowly vanishing. If he didn’t do anything and let the lady recover long enough to cast her flight spell again, then all he’d be left with was to fight a battle of attrition until someone eventually, lost, or so he thought.  

Unfortunately, his opponent’s expression was as grave as it was from the beginning, with the same determination to win the fight. He launched another pressure blade and then, um, twenty more, and his opponent countered it in her fall with her wind blades. She kept on falling towards the ground but she didn’t look panicked or anxious to make her next move like he was.  

Falling, she launched her next spell, [Wind Hook], in the form of a hand, she attached to her leg, and with a bit more force from [Blowing Winds], she catapulted herself back up into the sky. It was a hilarious sight to see. No one had expected that the little lady had it in her to treat herself like some cannon fodder or harpoon to be launched.   

Her hair rattled and unkempt and her clothes ruffled from the force of the winds, she flew upwards with her unconventional method and when she reached an altitude of a hundred or so meters, she regained some control over her body and cast the flight spell on herself again. With this, came her decisive move. She prepared the last spell she’d be casting for this match: a grand composite spell.  

With immense mastery over magic control, she called forth the power of two elements: water and wind. Moulding the water like clay and helping it keep its shape with the help of her wind element, she shaped them into water bullets with a diameter of 3 cm and a height of 10 cm. She created over, um, a thousand of those. Having given them shape, she gave them lethality next. She quickened the velocity at which the winds keeping the water bullet’s shape moved to create bullets fast enough to pierce her opponents’ tough skin. This caused the surface of the water to freeze into ice, creating even more lethal bullets.   

When did she come up with this spell? Just now. And what did she call it?  

“[Oni Piercing Bullets]”  

With her words, she launched the water bullets at her opponent who looked above in awe. He never thought this day was going to be like this. Now he’d all about lost his chance to enter the finals. It looks like no Oni will be getting this years’ special VIP prize.   

No, he wasn’t going to give up just yet. There was still a way to turn this around. There has to be! He thought to himself. He didn’t even notice when his opponent launched one of her bullets at him when he was about to take another stance. This bullet she’d just come up with, tore a sizable hole in his sword-wielding arm, and now, blood gushed through this hole like a pipe.  

“Hey! You over there...” Silva shouted at her opponent whom she had their full attention, “I suggest you give up now or else, the number of wholes in your body might increase exponentially by the second!” She said with the same serious expression she’d held since the beginning of the match, this time, with a menacing tone that made everyone question who was the Oni in this situation.  

She spoke, knowing that Onis wouldn’t be able to easily give up a fight like she was taunting him. This made the audience think that she was maybe bluffing and that all the thousand bullets surrounding her up above in the arena, might be fake.  

“I warn you! If you don’t give up, I will pierce holes through both your arms, legs, and some vital organs!” She continued to talk to her opponent in her serious and menacing tone that made everyone think that she was bluffing and not serious even more, including the Oni Leader.  

He looked at the girl and thought that she might not launch them all at her opponent in an attempt to preserve power for her next battle if she won but Marcel looked at the scene happening down below with an equally grave expression like hers which made him think that the little lady might not be bluffing after all.  

“She isn’t!” Marcel confirmed after looking at the lady who looked ready to pierce her opponent if she didn’t hear, “I surrender!” soon. He knew something nobody except those in their group of friends knew; that this girl never lied. She really would blow holes into the Oni if he didn’t give up very soon and lucky for the fellow, he did.  

Having his sword-wielding arm compromised and an unavoidable threat up above him, the only thing that would save him in this situation was some kind of miracle. It was better to give up just this once. Besides, what was the worst his mother would do to him after learning he lost in a fight? Get him to train harder? That wasn’t so bad, so he’ll take that punishment instead of looking at the murderous young lady above him.  

Having given up, the battle to decide who’d be the top two finalists ended. For the first time in history, none of the two finalists were Oni. These people with mysterious backgrounds have taken over their race’s festival and even threatened to put their geniuses out of commission. For the first time ever, an Oni youth wasn’t going to gain the honor to sit beside the special VIP or ask them for three wishes. It was going to go to one of the two unknown brats; both mages.   

It isn’t an understatement that the entire Oni race was unhappy because of Marcel’s two friends. How much they wanted to go down on the stage and kill them for sullying such the biggest Oni battle festival of the year by not being eliminated before they got to the quarterfinals, however, they couldn’t do that. Their rules admired only those who proved themselves in battle. These two finalists embodied that, so as much as they’d like to kill them, they won’t, tch!  

With the finals upon us, it was finally time to decide who was to win. Oh? It wasn’t. Silva already won? How come I didn’t know of this? What happened?  

Ah, I see! So, um, the two fought as mages should and what ultimately decided who would win was their magic capacity. Silva also recovered faster for some reason you aren’t allowed to know yet because, secret. Having recovered a bit more than Allan after their various spells clashed, she launched her last attack, [Water Curtain], directly atop Allan to knock him out, and just like that, the battle was over.  

Hah, in the end, Allan and Silva turned the battle of Oni youths clashing against each other with their respective weapons for the chance to get three wishes from the special VIP into a battle of mages from two separate races. Now the Oni Battle Festival was over and nightfall was on the horizon. It was time for the big banquet and the winner of this year’s battle festival was about to get her prizes. 

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