CHAPTER 85— First semester exam(6)
Inside the simulation battlefield arena, Group 26 stood lined up on one side.
Seraphine stood with one hand planted firmly on her hip, her expression radiating absolute, unshakeable confidence. Beside her, Chloe held her staff with both hands, a pleasant, polite smile plastered across her face. And then,
Lingering a few paces behind them, stood Ritvik, clutching his staff limply in one hand. Despite having two Class S students on his team, his face was a portrait of utter, hopeless despair.
'I honestly have no idea how we're expected to win with this lineup.' Ritvik thought, staring blankly at the back of Seraphine's head.
Directly across the arena stood their opponents: Supplementary Team 4. The three senior repeaters looked battle-hardened, their stances cautious and steady.
BEEP.
"Begin."
The moment the match started, Seraphine didn't hesitate. She whipped out her wand, instantly channeling a colossal torrent of raw flame that roared forward like a tidal wave, rushing straight toward the enemy group with terrifying velocity.
"What the—is it already over?" a spectator gasped from the stands.
"Hah! That was entirely too easy," Seraphine scoffed, lowering her wand slightly.
For a brief second, it genuinely looked like the match was finished before the ink on the bracket had even dried.
'Over? I don't think so.' Ritvik muttered to himself, his eyes narrowing as he watched the smoke clear in the direction of the opposing team.
The moment Seraphine let up on her flames, the reality of the situation hit back.
"...?!"
A massive hemispherical stone barrier completely encased the supplementary students.
The rock had baked to a glowing, incandescent red from the intense heat, hissing wildly as thick plumes of steam billowed into the air.
'Just as I thought.' Ritvik analyzed instantly. 'There's no way repeaters who have survived an extra year at this academy would go down to a single opening blast.'
With a low rumble, the stone shell melted away, instantly replaced by a thick, swirling secondary barrier of dense water.
The three senior students stood safely inside, entirely unharmed despite taking the brunt of a Class S fire assault.
"Brilliant," Seraphine grinned, her eyes sparkling with competitive fire. "I would have been genuinely bored if you repeaters had gone down without a fight."
With that, she unleashed a second, even more violent wave of roaring flames from her wand.
"Split up and execute the defensive formation." the repeater leader—a sharp-eyed senior named Jareth—barked out.
His two teammates instantly vaulted to the left and right, creating a wide triangle. Jareth stepped forward, extending his staff to meet Seraphine head-on.
Water Cannon.
A dense, high-pressure geyser of water—darkened slightly by the simulation's dark rendering—erupted from Jareth's staff, violently colliding with Seraphine's raging flames.
The moment the two opposing elements met, a massive cloud of scalding steam exploded across the arena.
Seraphine smiled savagely, pouring more mana into her grip and scaling up her firepower. Sensing the shift, Jareth immediately matched her output, though it was painfully obvious his water was evaporating far faster than it could extinguish the flames.
High above the floor, the instructors watched the exchange from the observation deck.
"Wow..." Vanika murmured, tracking the blazing output. "Her raw power is genuinely terrifying."
"Yeah, but..." Valeria trailed off, her face twisting into a grimace. "Why isn't she using any spells?"
Down in the combat zone, Seraphine remained completely unbothered, not even breaking a sweat as she cranked her flame intensity even higher. The searing heat was devouring Jareth's defensive torrent at a frightening pace.
Jareth kept his expression cool. As his water cannon was whittled down to barely half its volume, he abruptly snapped his wrist.
The remaining stream split sharply in two, curving like twin serpents through the steam and completely bypassing Seraphine as if she wasn't even there.
The two snaking currents of water tore across the floor, aiming straight for Ritvik and Chloe.
Wind Cutter!
Ritvik jerked his staff upward, sending a razor-sharp crescent of wind slicing through the air to smash the left water stream to pieces.
Beside him, Chloe swiftly used a counter-spell, incinerating the second stream with a burst of focused fire.
Meanwhile, back at the center, Seraphine's massive wave of fire was barreling down on Jareth with lethal speed. But right before it closed the distance, Jareth's two flanking teammates converged, slamming their staves into the ground.
Twin Wall: Earth and Water!
A thick slab of reinforced stone rose from the floor, backed instantly by a cascading wall of water.
Seraphine's flames violently shattered both barriers, but the sheer force of the counter-defense completely extinguished her fire in the process.
"Nice cover, guys!" Jareth called out, taking a breath as his flanking teammates dropped their barriers.
From the back, Ritvik watched the sequence unfold, the cogs turning rapidly in his head.
"Wow... What's even happening." Rowan looked at the battle, amazed. "Why is only one person attacking from the enemy team. The other aren't even attacking and just making walls."
"It's their strategy." Sarina was standing beside him leaning on a piller with her arms crossed.
"Strategy?"
"Yeah... I'm sure Ritvik has already figured it by now."
'Hmm... I think I get their strategy.'
Up front, Seraphine threw her arm forward, unleashing another wave of raw, unfiltered flames. Just like before, Jareth intercepted it with his water cannon, holding the line while his two teammates hung back in reserve.
It's the classic 'Shield-Anvil' triad composition, Ritvik realized, calculating the geometry of the battlefield.
One high-output elementalist focuses entirely on locking down the primary threat, while the other two do nothing except cycle defensive barriers and redirect spells.
"If he's already figured out their battle formula, he should be able to turn this around easily," Rowan muttered from the spectator seats, leaning forward.
"I wouldn't count on it," Sarina replied quietly.
"Why not?"
"Because there's one more thing he have to deal with."
Down on the floor, Ritvik sprinted forward, diving in behind Seraphine while she was still locked in her casting stance.
"Hey! Listen to me, I've got a brilliant counter-strategy, if we just coordinate—"
"Shut up, let me focus." Seraphine snapped without even glancing back at him.
"Hey listen, Use Fire Fangs Tier 3, hit all three of them simultaneously, and then—"
"I don't need tricks or petty spells to crush a bunch of repeaters."
"Just do it, I tell you—"
Seraphine finally spared Ritvik a single scorching heat of a furious stare over her shoulder.
"I told you before battle, didn't I... do not get in each other's way."
Ritvik froze like a statue, the sheer attitude in her glare sending a shiver down his spine. A muscle twitched angrily along his jawline.
'THIS GIRL!!!'
Before he could vent his frustration, his internal survival instincts screamed a violent warning in binary code: WARNING. LOOK.
'Look? Look what?'
Before his brain could fully parse the binary alert, a high-velocity water bolt shot out from Jareth's position, catching Ritvik square in the chest and launching him backward across the stone floor.
High above, Valeria rubbed her temples, her expression collapsing into utter exhaustion.
"Vanika."
"Hmm?"
"I formally take back what I said earlier. She is definitely nothing like me."
"What brought this on all of a sudden?"
"Look at her! At least when I was a cadet, I used to listen to my peers. Well... mostly."
Vanika stared sideways at her friend with round, incredulous eyes.
'Maybe you forgot but, you literally never listened to anyone in your life, Ria. You still don't.' she thought, keeping the dry observation to herself as she turned her gaze back to the monitors.
Down in the audience, Rowan winced, gripping the edge of his seat. "Ritvik! Is he okay?!"
"He won't get knocked out by a basic secondary spell," Sarina sighed, shaking her head. "Sigh... but this is precisely what I was worried about."
"Hmm? You were Worried? about what?"
"His team. They seem to have no cooperation. No matter how brilliant plans Ritvik come up with, it would be useless if his own team doesn't listen to him. And judging by the look of things... he's stuck working with a brick wall."
"Oh..." Rowan mumbled, his gaze glued anxiously to the screen.
Down on the arena floor, Ritvik groaned, pushing himself up onto one elbow while clutching his ribs. "Ouch... dammit. I should have realized how stubborn she is right from the start."
"Hey, are you alright?" Chloe jogged over, offering him a hand up.
"Your name is Chloe, right?" Ritvik wheezed, taking her hand.
"Yeah... did you seriously forget after I told you ten minutes ago?"
Ritvik chuckled dryly, dusting off his uniform
"I saw you were trying to say something to her, got Any ideas of how we salvage this?" Chole asked sweat covering her face.
"Why don't you go and ask our dear leader? You looked enthusiastic enough when she demanded command."
Chloe wiped a streak of sweat from her forehead, glancing nervously toward Seraphine's back.
"That was because I don't wanna be on her bad side."
Hearing that Ritvik's eyes twitched as he looked at chole.
'Ahh... I think I get it. Seraphine is from house ignis. One of the core foundational house of Elemental house alliance. It would only be a fool who would want to get on her bad side.'
Ritvik's internal binary code flared up again as another stray spell clipped the ground nearby, forcing him to yank Chloe out of the path of a water stream.
"Well, I don't care about her elite pedigree," Ritvik muttered, gritting his teeth. "I'm already on her bad side anyway."
"...?"
"Hey," Ritvik whispered urgently, grabbing Chloe's shoulder. "Even you can see that at this rate, we're going to get swept out of the exam in five minutes."
"You're stating the obvious."
"So here's the thing. I have a foolproof plan that will win us this match with minimal effort."
"Really?! Tell me quickly, what is it? I'll do whatever you say if it means passing this damn exam!"
"Right, well... about that," Ritvik swallowed hard, his throat going dry.
"That red haired tyrantness is the core part of this plan."
"Red haired tyrantness? You mean Ms. Seraphine?"
"Yeah."
"But how are you gonna make her agree on the plan. she doesn't listen to anybody."
"Well it's simple..."
Ritvik glanced over at Seraphine, who was still pouring reckless, unmanageable torrents of fire into Jareth's barrier.
"I'm going to make her participate in this plan without her even Knowing."
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CHAPTER ENDS