Chapter 517

As exciting as the start of the duel had been it had quickly devolved into a predictable battle of endurance that the elf was bound to win. The simple reason for this was that the elf was mostly only using his Mana to attack and float where as the earth mage was forced to not only use large amounts of Mana for his attacks to even get close to hitting the elf but he was also forced to use the earth around him defensively.

“This is why certain items are usually not allowed in tournaments.” Lancel explained for Ajax’s benefit. “At least not at the under fifty age group. It makes counters like this so one sided that the power and skills of the fighters almost doesn’t matter.

It took five minutes before Ramus ran out of mana and had his three enchanted shields broken, during this time he had only been able to break one of his opponents enchanted shields and even that had come with a hefty Mana cost as he threw a wave of stones towards him.

Despite the arena floor looking fine Ajax felt it took almost two hundred Mana for him to fill in the pockets of earth Ramus had left in his wake despite everything looking fine on the surface. Ajax made a note to always double check the ground after an Earth mage used it for anything as they could leave some nasty surprises that wouldn’t even require Mana to trigger.

Unlike the duel that just finished Ajax was much more invested in this next duel. Benedict was about to fight Emeris and so far it looked like this wouldn’t turn out well for his friend. 

“Mages generally have an advantage when it comes to duels.” Xavier wasn’t pleased about his friend’s chances either. “Not to mention that despite them being close in age they also have similar Stat totals, the difference is that Benedict gained his Stats through dungeons and Emeris by being a higher level.” 

The duel didn’t last long like the previous one. It wasn’t quite as quick as Leandra’s victory but Emeris showed why he was the only young elf that joined the group delving Gryndor’s dungeons.

The duel’s format worked against Benedict even further as his high Endurance was nearly worthless with the defensive enchantments activating even when whatever was left of the spell wouldn’t be anything more than a small inconvenience to him. Emeris launched spell after spell as fast as he could cast them. 

Emeris wasn’t bothering with long and powerful spell though Arianwyn assured them all that he did have access to them. Instead he focused on keeping Benedict at a distance while using wide area of effect spells to cause the enchantments to trigger eventually breaking all three of them.

“I want to fight him.” Anna said with the same emotionless expression she wore during any negotiation but the words felt cold, almost like a sentence being given to Emeris. 

The reason why Anna wanted to fight the elf was because unlike most elven mages Emeris seemed to prefer Fire Mana. He wasn’t as much of a purist as Anna was but it was clear Fire was his best element by far. Ajax would actually enjoy seeing how the elf would react when he came face to face with Anna’s Legendary Skill. 

“You’re up next Elara.” Emeris’s words were clearly a provocation. “Hope you don’t go easy on your opponent just because your boyfriend got his ass kicked, I didn’t even have to use my Domain.” 

The ending was clearly a provocation, everyone knew that if Emeris had tried to use his domain given the short distance between the fighters at the start he risked Benedict reaching him by the time he could complete even a simple follow up spell.

 Elara and James took to the arena, there was nothing for Ajax to fix as Emeris and Benedict didn’t do more than leave a few burn marks here and there on the arena floor. Unlike most other mages James was a runic mage. He would definitely have the advantage in terms of speed but Elara would have flexibility with her chanting and she also had the edge in raw power between the two of them. 

The start of the duel seemed to go in James’s favor as he landed two quick attacks, a lightning bolt and a follow up fireball that smashed the first of Elara’s enchantment defenses and her second took a beating. 

But that was enough time for Elara to establish her Storm Domain. By the time the third attack was heading towards her Elara had already created a powerful Wind wall around herself feeding the basic spell with a lot of Mana courtesy of her Domain.

“She’s gotten a lot better with her Domain.” Ajax pointed out as he compared Elara’s mastery of her Domain from how it was back when they last saw each other to now. “But it’s still missing something. How’s the other thing she was working towards?” 

Ajax was being intentionally vague when he asked Arianwyn the question. It was petty of him but he was looking to get back at Emeris for his taunts and it was clearly working as the young elf clearly couldn’t suppress his outrage at his own lack of information on the subject.

“She’s been making progress but she doesn’t yet have the Skill.” Arianwyn answered.

The answer was better presented in the next moment as Elara launched a naturally formed bolt of lightning. The bolt was so powerful that it smashed through not only his defensive spell but also two of his enchanted shields. The real trick however followed shortly after as Elara used a Vibration spell to focus the thunder as a follow up attack, smashing James’s final enchantment barrier.

Ajax could see the difference in how well Elara used Vibration spells compared to last time he saw her. She hadn’t yet managed to unlock the affinity but her intent and image of how the spell worked had been refined over the last few months of practice. 

“That’s quite the progress.” Ajax let out an impressed whistle. The pat on the back he gave Benedict in congratulation for his girlfriend’s success was like throwing coals on the fire that was Emeris’s annoyance. “She’s catching up to you in terms of using her Domain.” 

While it may have taken Elara longer than Arianwyn to unlock her Domain, to the point Ajax had helped her to finally break through and unlock it, her affinity towards the Storm Domain seemed to be even higher than Arianwyn’s towards Winter.

“You’ve yet to see my own progress.” Arianwyn responded with a smile as she headed towards the arena grounds, pausing to give Elara a hug as the two passed each other.

The final duel wasn’t  even as close as the previous had been. Both participants had Bonds but while Regalia was a level seventy size changing snake that could help protect Arianwyn as she established her Domain, Levy on the other hand didn’t even bring his own owl Bond to take part as the creatures barely gained any Mana infusion following their Bonding and would have been more of a liability than an asset. 

Unlike James, Levy knew he would only get one chance to win this duel. The sheer speed Arianwyn could launch attacks with after she established her Domain would make it impossible for him to keep up with her. He instead bet everything on his opening attack hoping to win with a massive spell while Arianwyn was busy setting up her Domain.

Ajax actually agreed with his plan but it all fell apart when Regalia wrapped her tail around Arianwyn and moved her out of the way of the scorching fire breath that was Levy’s family’s namesake. Even more impressive was that despite Arianwyn’s Domain being cast before Levy finished his fire breath spell the Winter Domain still wasn’t able to weaken the spell enough to the point Arianwyn could take the hit. 

“If that hit it would have smashed all three of her enchanted barriers.” Anna said as she watched, fascinated by the powerful fire spell. 

The duel came to an end quickly as Arianwyn fired off six ice lances that were enough to break and spell shields Levy put up before smashing through his enchanted barriers and marking the end of the duel. 

Ajax was barely paying attention to Arianwyn’s Domain however. His full focus had been on the fire breath spell Levy had cast. Not only was it a combination of both Wind and Fire Mana but somehow the spell actively made use of the mage’s body to further infuse the flames with Mana. 

Besides the incantation Levy had actually taken a deep breath and then released the flames out of his mouth, with Ajax’s being able to get a small glimpse of how the spell started in Levy’s lungs despite the breath only igniting after it left his mouth.

“It does seem that the duel format is a little advantageous to us.” Fealin said as he gripped Emeris’s shoulder in a vice to stop him from gloating. 

Fealin knew very well that while Elara and Arianwyn were both able to dominate regardless of their openents the same was not true for himself, Emeris or Leandra. Fealin knew his own shortcomings well enough that he wouldn’t actually be able to beat Levy in a duel. He suspected that both Anna and Lexi stood a good chance to beat Emeris and pretty much anyone else could take Leandra. It was best not to provoke their hosts any more, especially with the Empire arriving tomorrow, they had managed a perfect demonstration of their superiority with a five nothing opening. 

“With any luck the Empire and Gryndor will be at each other’s throats.” Fealin murmured to himself. Much as he actually found himself respecting House Hearthbound and recognising they actually had intentions of friendship with Sylvanthal he still hoped that the Empire would split their focus and target them as well because of the presence of Kate and Jake.