Dance with the Nightingale-Chapter 126 - 121: Win

Ruhr was on his last legs. A violent storm of cyan panels was attacking him from all directions. Some, he could defend, some he couldn’t even predict. It was an onslaught that went on and on, with no end in sight.

With his tough body, the warrior endured and even protected his companion. In exchange, Liora also did all she could. As a traditional magic user, she buffed him, erected a barrier around them, and even casted a few spells as a counter attack.

But even then, there was a limit to how long they could endure.

Serina was strong and relentless and though Garren attacked in intervals, his charged-up attacks were the real cause of the duo’s peril. He only had the time to attack twice, but both times he attacked, he did devastating damage on the duo. Obliterating their defenses and exposing them to the onslaught of cyan panels.

The only reason they were able to hold on was because Serina was worn down and thanks to their previous efforts, Garren was battered. That was the only reason that the situation was despairing but not hopeless.

The cyan panels surrounded them, trapping them inside Liora’s own barrier. With gritted teeth, Ruhr watched as Garren charged his attack again. The blood-mist around his body thickening as he braced himself for impact.

"Prepare a big one.", he informed Liora, who was firing many spells to disrupt Garren.

And just as he thought, Liora’s spells were blocked by Serina’s well-placed cyan panels, while the Lycan spearman rotated midair, the blue energy around him congealing to become almost solid, before…

-Crash!

…he crashed into the elf’s barrier, easily piercing through it.

But instead of a blood-red Ruhr, what met his spear was a golden statue with a viciously strained expression on its face.

"Haaa!!!!", the statue roared, its heavy frame moving to catch the tip of the spear surrounded by the drill-like almost solid energy.

-Screech!

A grinding noise echoed in the air, as the ground cracked under Ruhr’s feet and the air popped like corn. Golden dust was carried by the mighty winds that were expelled from the point of contact. Despairingly, the dust quickly changed colors, a hint of red accompanying them.

"HAAAAAA!"

Of course, Ruhr didn’t give up even as his flesh was being grinded. He held, and pressed. Squeezing the mighty spear with all his might, until it finally gave in, and shattered.

"Uwahh!"

As the shaft finally landed in his bloody hands, the golden statue pivoted and turned, slamming the Lycan on the other end of the spear into the ground, pinning him down with his heavy leg.

"Now!", Ruhr shouted, and in response, the elf who had prepared her spell launched it.

A transparent orb surrounded by four magic circles, which held a multi-coloured lotus made of elemental essence within – the so called ’big one’, aka [Prism Lotus].

The shiny, elemental lotus moved slowly, heading towards the pinned down Garren. And even though Serina’s reaction was a tad bit slower thanks to her being exhausted, she was still faster than Liora’s spell.

"No, you don’t!", she exclaimed, her cyan panels aiming for the spell. With how slow the lotus moved it was easy to infer that it was a delicate spell. It would lose its balance and detonate as soon as it was disturbed, and her cyan panels were planning to do exactly that.

Of course, the distance between Liora and Garren was negligible to begin with, so she didn’t have much time to work with. Not to mention, she would have to contain the spell, after it exploded prematurely due to her interference.

Honestly, it was a well-used spell. Ruhr’s golden defence would hold out against the explosion and her own mana won’t hurt her directly, so a simple barrier was enough to defend Liora as well.

It would only leave Garren exposed, but with his battered state, and him having used a big move just now, any defence he could conjure right then would be meaningless. The explosion would leave him deeply injured even if not dead.

But that was only if she failed to contain it.

And right now, she was absolutely sure that she could indeed contain it!

Within a second, several cyan panels whooshed through the air, biting onto the ground as they formed a somewhat conical dome around the lotus, with the last panel piercing the transparent orb of the spell, disturbing it while also covering the small gap on the conical top.

Of course, Serina didn’t stop here. Several panels arrived after the first ones in a second and third wave, reinforcing the cone-like structure with three layers.

Just before the third layer arrived, the glow of the lotus inside the orb had already transformed, from a glimmer to glaring one, so when the third layer arrived – Boom!!

The lotus exploded causing everyone to close their eyes.

It exploded with such violence that the ground trembled with a huge shockwave, as if a miniature earthquake had happened. Or maybe it had, with how powerful the explosion was.

Though, all this while, it wasn’t that explosion or even the trembling ground that was on Serina’s mind even as she lost her footing, instead, ’Hurry, I have to hurry! If Liora was trying to time, she succeeded buying 5 seconds, but that’s not enough! Ruhr’s already gone all out and will drop anytime now. Considering she still has a few cards, if I can take her down in next 30 seconds, we can still win-’, she was thinking, when her instincts literally started screaming at her to dodge.

And she did, a dagger flashing right below her eye as she tilted her head to the left. Saving her eye but allowing the dagger draw blood.

Of course, her peril was far from over as Haze’s left hand thrust a reverse-gripped dagger, wreathed in dark blue energy, straight toward her face.

’How’s he here!? Is Rayne stalling both of them?’, Serina’s eyes narrowed as she lifted her sword and created cyan panel to defend against the dagger, her reaction impeccable even if half a second late.

But she was only truly shocked when she felt a flaming hot blade saturated with lightning right on her neck, "Peekaboo, Ms. Serina. It’s my win now, right?"

"What!? How!?", Serina exclaimed almost innocently, as she looked back. ’There was no way this is over.’, she refused to believe it was possible.

But when the silhouettes that she kept sensing as her teammates dispersed in the wind right before her eyes, ’An illusion… I was caught in one? But when? Since when was I being fooled?’, she wondered.

A little spark from the sword covered in both flames and lightning brought her back into the real world. After all, "I… have lost."

"That’s correct! You have indeed lost. Well, you had me as your opponent so it’s not really a shame. Anyways, you shouldn’t have any doubts about my abilities now, right? We can go for a round two if you want.", I said.

And the knight-like girl just stood still, eventually asking, "Just why did I lose?"

"Huh? Isn’t that obvious? You lost because you didn’t prepare enough to contain me, our teams were pretty well matched otherwise. Or do you think I won ’Strongest of the Younger Generation’ by fluke?", I shrugged, praising the old Rayne without any shame. After all, I wasn’t technically praising myself.

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

Well, that wasn’t the real reason they lost. It was because my optimal condition, Perpetual Equilibrium, is more than simply being fully healed and having full mana or mental power at all times.

As for how it was more, one had to know how magic worked.

First, mana was the hardware needed for magic, and the runes which made up the magic circles were the software.

To activate a spell, one first had to pull the mana from the spirit body, channel it throughout the body to stabilize it and stain it with the user’s attribute, then program it to do whatever the user wanted using a combination of runes which was essentially called a magic circle.

That was also the reason why there was a recovery time whenever a magic user used a big move, because all the channeled mana was used up and new mana had to be pulled and channeled. That was how it worked at least at the lower levels.

Not to mention, the amount of mana that could be channeled in the body at a time was quite less compared to the mana stored in the spirit body. Effectively, it was the amount of mana one could use to power a single spell, it was also the thing I was working on improving right now, but that was not important.

What is important is that, I saw the state of my body having maximum amount of channeled mana as the optimum state, so… yes, Perpetual Equilibrium made it so that I had the maximum amount of channeled mana at all times.

Meaning, there was little to no time lag between my spells regardless of how powerful the spell I used was, of course, I still had to weave the runes for these spells.

Also, the maximum amount of mana a body can channel was something that depended on the body, to be more specific, it depended on the mana circuits of the body. It wasn’t something that was easy to train, but considering how fast it was growing in my case, I was certain that Limit Breaker was at work here. And keeping the maximum amount of channeled mana that my body could handle at all times was the best exercise to increase that limit, that only I could practice.

For others, this exercise would only result in bursting their mana circuits. At this rate, one month would be enough for this limit to reach my current mana capacity.

Just realizing that, I was quite happy, and thus, I left Serina alone and went to my team. Healing them with Vitae Restorare first, I high-fived them before speaking, "Good work, team. It was thanks to you guys keeping the rest of Serina’s team busy that I could slowly wear her down. Especially, Ruhr and Liora towards the end. Honestly, I didn’t plan on letting Serina fight you guys, but you handled it really well."

"Ughh, don’t say that.", Ruhr who was sitting on the ground groaned. "The best we did was take down one guy, while you took down two people including their leader, within seconds at that."

"Hey, I’m still here!", Garren who was captured by Ruhr and was sitting nearby, growled. Yes, I had also healed.

As they chattered, the barrier around the field went down, and plentiful cheers entered my ears. Each mercenary group was cheering for their leaders, but regardless of the group, except Serina’s I guess, I heard my name being spoken.

"He’s so strong!!"

"How come he’s using those big spells back-to-back??"

"He’s a hero that’s how!"

"What is that movement spell?"

"He’s so handsome and kind, he even healed the opposing team members!"

"Fool! Didn’t you hear that he’s is the Prince of Light? Of course, he’ll heal them!"

’Ah, Cana, you didn’t need to nudge the crowd in that direction, it’s a little embarrassing.’, I rubbed my nose as I heard those comments.

The crowd grew silent as Roan made his way to the center of the field. Mirroring Serina, I came to his side, shaking hands with her, following the etiquette.

"It was a good match.", she said.

"Indeed, it was good match.", I said, feeling amazed at how fast she recovered emotionally.

Then as we both took a step back, Roan announced, "The duel has concluded and the winner of this duel is Young Master, Rayne Von Elsworth!"

"Woah!!"

At this exact moment, the crowd thundered, chanting my name in a steady rhythm.

"Young Master Rayne!"

"Young Master Rayne!"

"Young Master Rayne!"

And though there weren’t such many moments in my past life, I was strangely calm, as I bowed at the crowd, inwardly thinking, ’Yep, acknowledgement received!’

Just like that, I became the leader of Loana’s attack party.