The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 278. Everything Was As Easy As Slicing A Cake! (I’m Now Better At Magic)
Therion started the battle with earth magic without casting any spell. The ground trembled beneath his feet as he summoned the raw power of the earth itself, causing the terrain to shift and rise.
Rex found this intriguing because earth was the element that had just doubled in his operational catalog. Therion’s unique signature of earth magic suggested he had been practicing for decades, refining his technique to a precise form through years of experience.
The earth construct came up from the ground in a spiral configuration, the specific geometry that maximized structural integrity while minimizing the energy cost of the initial formation. It was well-built.
Rex noted it and ran the Elemental Mastery’s read on its structure simultaneously with the Foresight’s read on its trajectory.
’Thanks to the Elemental Mastery Full Potential... I could read any magic information just by looking at it.’
’Finally, a skill that didn’t fuck me up sideways.’
The construct was directed at the area where Rex stood, not with the intent to harm him but to confine him. This move indicated a strategy employed by someone who prioritized positional control over brute force.
Rex manipulated the construction sideways using a unique windwork that he had developed himself, rather than relying on any external system. This was the most potent wind working that the Elemental Mastery could grant him.
With each small change, the construct obeyed his orders smoothly, moving around him in a dance of power and accuracy. Rex felt a rush of excitement when he realized that he had really mastered the elements, pushing his skills to new heights.
The effect on the construct was evident. Its spiral shape was designed to withstand vertical and horizontal forces applied at the base. However, the wind exerted force along the entire length of the construct simultaneously, which the design was not intended to accommodate.
The structure fell apart.
Therion looked at the result like someone who had just learned something.
"Interesting... now I know why Lady Valentina chose him as one of the honored students in the Grand Academy."
He then adjusted what he was about to do next.
The next magic he was using was lightning, Therion’s secondary element, which traveled at the distinct speed characteristic of lightning: the speed at which the gap between the Foresight window and the available reaction time became critically significant.
Rex let it come to two meters and reflected it. The energy crackled as it ricocheted off the barrier he had created, illuminating the room with a blinding flash.
This was not a deflection, which would have redirected the object along a different path. Instead, a reflection sent it back along its original path with great accuracy, requiring knowledge of how the internal structure works and a reaction to that structure instead of just its visible direction.
And then Therion stomped on the ground as lightning crackled around his body until he started to make his move.
For a man of his age and build, his movements exhibited a level of quality that could only result from consistent and genuine physical training over time. He managed to evade the reflected bolt’s path just before it could close the distance.
"You read the structure," Therion said.
This was not an accusation; rather, it was the observation of someone who had just revised a crucial element in their evaluation of the engagement.
"Yep, I did," Rex said.
Therion made something that Rex had only seen in the Academy’s theoretical archives, which he had read weeks ago during a productive afternoon in his class. It was a combined operation that utilized both earth and wind elements in a simultaneous dual-axis configuration.
Each element reinforcing the other’s structural weakness, which produced a magic that was significantly more resistant to the counter-strategies that either element alone would have been vulnerable to, allowed for innovative applications in combat scenarios where versatility and adaptability were crucial.
It was complicated. Rex acknowledged its complexity, recognizing it as a formidable opponent. He then conducted an interaction analysis using Elemental Master on the structure.
The two-element reinforcement made the dual-axis system weaker at the integration node, where the two elemental signatures met, instead of fixing it, which ultimately hindered the overall performance of the system and complicated the analysis further.
It was a modest objective. It required a high degree of precision to accomplish the goal without triggering defensive reactions from either element’s component.
Rex ran his ice magic through it.
Ice, at the full potential of the Elemental Mastery’s ceiling, had a crystallization property at the molecular level that the theoretical archive had described in terms that Rex had found interesting at the time and was now finding practically relevant.
The ice magic struck the integration node of Therion’s dual-axis system during the crystal formation stage, and instead of applying force, it caused a mismatch at the point where the two elements were trying to work together.
The dual-axis system came apart.
BAMMMM!
The common room at the back was hushed.
Elaris appeared captivated, as if she were witnessing something more intriguing than she had anticipated.
Elizabeth’s expression mirrored that of someone deeply engaged in revising a critical aspect of their assessment.
Lily had stopped writing altogether.
Rex looked at Therion.
Therion looked at the space where his magic had been.
"Where did you... learn that?" he asked, and he meant it.
Rex said, "I read a lot of books, and it’s the one that Elizabeth’s wrote."
Elizabeth looked at Lily. "He’s really talented just like what you said, Lily... and I’m even more proud to know he learns from my books."
"Right? Rex is someone that you can rely on everything!" Lily smiled at her. "Maybe aunty should just ask him for help on the upcoming expedition."
"Yeah, I’ll think about later."
Rex rolled his neck once, the kind of motion that meant he was done being polite about the pace of this engagement.
"Okay," he said. "Let’s actually lock in on this one."
Therion’s eyes narrowed.
The next earth construct that came up from the ground was larger than the first. Not a spiral this time.
A flat compression wall, three meters tall and moving fast, designed to pin rather than trap. The geometric difference told Rex that Therion had already adjusted his read of the first counter and was not going to repeat the same structural vulnerability.
Rex walked through it.
He initiated a wind dispersal that targeted the molecular density of the construct from the inside out, which was a direction the construct was not designed to handle, as constructs are built to resist force from the outside. The wall lost coherence from the center and fell apart around him like sand.
He didn’t stop walking.
"You’re going to need to go bigger than that," Rex said.
The courtyard fell silent in that peculiar way when onlookers recognized that what they were witnessing was not unfolding as they had anticipated.
Therion looked at him.
Then he brought both hands up, and the ground responded in a way that was noticeably different from the first two workings. Four columns of compressed earth rose at the cardinal points around Rex simultaneously, angled inward, designed to converge at the center point where he was standing.
It was a beneficial design. The four-point convergence meant that countering one column would not address the other three, and the angular inward trajectory made a simple dispersal complicated because each column’s path intersected with the others’ lines of force.
Rex read the integration structure of all four columns in the two seconds it took them to begin their inward movement.
He put an ice spike through the load-bearing node of the column at the north point, which was the one carrying sixty percent of the convergence force because of the slight asymmetry in the ground’s natural density at that position.
When that column lost structural integrity mid-movement, the force redistribution hit the other three columns faster than their formation could compensate for.
All four came apart.
Rex was already looking at Therion when the last one fell.
"Nice try, old man," Rex said pleasantly.
"Maybe try harder now?"
