Chapter 221: Chapter 203 – A Symphony of Violence

"While most mages tend to fight with similar basic techniques, the higher they climb in power, the more unique and personalized their fighting styles tend to be. In general, it was a very rare occasion to find two archmages who had identical fighting styles, even for those with the same affinity." - Vark of Clan Greentusk, Head Instructor of the Practical Uses of Magic in Combat course, Levain Institute of Higher Learning, circa 676 FP.

"Mithril… Adamant… and that staff is Ebony Heartwood I think? Pretty sure normal wood would've broken apart by now" asked Adelheid after they separated from another clash in which Cal blocked her sword with the shaft of her halberd. "Quite an extravagant weapon you got there, girl."

 

"Could say the same about yours," replied Cal as she eyed Adelheid's unusual frosty blade. The sword had not taken any damage in their clashes, as those had just dispersed the frost that built up on it at most. "What is that thing made of? Doubt you just conjured it on the spot."

 

"Technically… I did. Long, long ago, that is," answered Adelheid with a smirk on her face. The diminutive woman swung her sword lightly, and the frost on it dispersed, which revealed the crystalline clear blade once more. "It is made of ice I conjured, shaped, and compressed. It has been refined and reinforced constantly… ever since the day I became a champion. So that's about… a bit over a millennium now?"

 

"No wonder," said Cal with an understanding nod. Generally objects made from conjured elements would degrade over time, until they eventually disperse back into the air.

 

On the other hand, Cal had heard of someone who did what Adelheid did before. The constant reinforcement on the conjured item strengthened it constantly as time passed, and such items tend to degrade far slower, and even then it would only happen after the constant reinforcement came to an end.

 

With a burst of magic power, Cal pushed her blood magic's bodily reinforcement to its limit for a split second. The soil beneath her feet cratered as she launched herself at Adelheid, moving so fast the eye only registered a blur, with her halberd held ready for a strike.

 

Adelheid started moving the instant she felt the mana in Cal's body move. At her caliber, when she fought a mage, it was far more effective to keep an eye on the movement of mana itself than their bodily movements.

 

Simultaneously, she set a sheet of nearly frictionless ice where Cal had to thread, and slid away on a strip of similar ice, which carried her away from the trajectory of Cal's rush swiftly.

 

The ice failed to impair Cal. While most people would indeed have a hard time to even find their footing or stand on the ice, she just stomped down hard when she landed on it. The impact shattered the ice, and the crater naturally made for far better footing.

 

Adelheid was somewhat surprised at how Cal dealt with the issue, doubly so as she saw Cal use the momentary stop to alter the direction of her charge towards her. Moments before the halberd reached her, a pillar of ice shot up from beneath Adelheid's feet, and she leapt off from it right as Cal's halberd shattered the pillar into a thousand pieces.

 

Instead of landing, Adelheid stepped on platforms made of ice that appeared right beneath her feet, and vanished soon after she leapt off it. The maneuver allowed her to gain some distance from Cal, who despite a leap into the air, just missed her.

 

Conjured sheets of ice caught four throwing daggers that Cal threw her way even as she fell back, and Adelheid landed a safe distance away, even as those daggers vanished from where they had stuck into the ice.

 

"You use those as well? I might as well join in then," said Adelheid as she snapped her fingers. A dozen spikes made from crystalline ice came into existence as they floated in the air above her head, arrayed almost like wings with how they stood vertically next to each other, six to a side.

 

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As Cal watched, the spikes - which looked like two cones glued together at their bases, with one of them blunted - turned to point their sharp ends her way, and then they struck.

 

Cal was caught somewhat off guard by the erratic movements of the spikes. Most mages who used controlled projectiles used natural, swooping movements with them. The spikes Adelheid used were anything but that. They moved in a completely erratic manner, as they turned at sharp angles on a dime, which made their trajectory much harder to predict.

 

Even so, Cal still managed to deflect or evade those spikes as they came for her. What she had not expected was how after those spikes passed, they fired smaller, finger-sized ice projectiles from their blunted ends, which she noticed now had a hole from which those projectiles were fired.

 

Fortunately though, the smaller projectiles were far weaker in power, and she cleared a chunk of them out of the air as she spun her halberd in a circle. Most of the rest, she evaded, while the few that landed on her reinforced body only caused wounds that were barely larger than pinpricks.

 

Adelheid charged in right at that moment while the projectiles had Cal momentarily distracted. She had jumped onto the side of another ice pillar, her body nearly horizontal to the ground for a moment, before another pillar grew from the one beneath her feet, which propelled her at Cal with great speed.

 

To her surprise however, Cal neither tried to dodge the blow nor moved to block it. Instead, she swung her weapon with the intent to strike Adelheid and take the blow. Both of them stopped their blows at the very last moment, the crescent blade of Cal's halberd so close to Adelheid's head that it cut a few strands of her hair, and the tip of Adelheid's sword almost touching Cal's chest.

 

"Huh. You're a blood mage… would it have bothered you if your heart and lungs were pierced and frozen solid?" asked Adelheid as they both withdrew their respective weapons.

 

"Not really. Why?" replied Cal with some curiosity in her voice.

 

"Dammit," said the other woman with a dissatisfied grunt. "My loss then. That wouldn't have been a mutual end if I was just me and not a champion. Unlike you I couldn't survive a halberd to the head."

 

"Good fight, nonetheless."

 

"Indeed. Good fight."

 

 

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