CHAPTER 86— First semester exam(7)
Chloe dashed forward through the haze, keeping low.
'I roughly understand what his plan is, but...'
She glanced sideways at the blinding, roaring waves of fire Seraphine was continuing to pump out across the arena.
'Will this actually work?' She doubted it for a fraction of a second before shaking her head. 'Ah, screw it. Let's just try. Whatever happens, happens.'
She replayed the tactical breakdown Ritvik had given her just moments before.
"First off, what's your resonance stage and affinity?" Ritvik had asked.
"I'm at mid-depth Stage 2 Resonance, and I'm a dual-elementer. I use both Fire and Earth."
"Brilliant. Here is what we're going to do..."
Now, under the cover of thick, billowing steam generated by the clash between Seraphine's fire and Jareth's water-casting, visibility was practically zero.
However, by tracking the directional trajectory of Jareth's spellcasting, it was easy to pinpoint roughly where his two defensive reserve teammates were stationed.
Through the grey smoke, Chloe caught sight of a pair of silhouettes lingering a short distance away from Jareth's position.
Jareth himself was completely locked in his grueling mana-struggle against Seraphine.
Her raw, raging flames were growing hotter and more oppressive by the second, evaporating his defensive water torrent at a terrifying speed.
Meanwhile, Jareth's two flanking partners—Silas and Miracas —stood cautiously on either side, maintaining a rigid perimeter and keeping their staves primed to throw up fresh barriers at a moment's notice.
Suddenly, Ritvik and Chloe broke through the smoke from opposite flanks, closing the distance instantly.
Wind Sphere!
Ritvik thrust his staff forward, launching a dense, swirling sphere of pressurized wind.
Fire Fin!
Chloe immediately followed up, hurling a concentrated spear of fire right alongside Ritvik's projectile.
Both Silas and Miracas snapped their heads around, caught completely off-guard as the spells materialized out of the fog. Snapping into action, they scrambled to dodge out of the trajectory.
The wind and fire spells slammed into each other dead-center, triggering a violent, medium-sized concussive explosion that threw up a wall of debris and forced both Silas and Miracas to stumble backward, completely breaking their defensive formation as they were driven straight toward Jareth.
Thud, thud.
Both of their backs collided directly with Jareth's position.
"What the hell?! What are you two doing?!"
Jareth snapped, breaking concentration for a split second as he realized his flankers had been forced right into his personal workspace. "Didn't I tell you to hold your positions?!"
Suddenly Jereth stopped as he saw Ritvik and Chloe standing at their flanks.
'Did they use the steam cover to slip right past our perimeter?' Jareth thought, his eyes widening.
The execution of Ritvik's blueprint clicked into place exactly as he had mapped it out for Chloe earlier.
"See, that red-haired tyrantness isn't going to listen to a single word we say," Ritvik had explained to Chloe.
"Yeah, that much is painfully obvious," she had agreed.
"But at the same time, she undeniably possesses the highest firepower output on our group."
"..."
"So here is our counter-play. We use the steam and smoke as visual cover to sneak around their flanks, force their defensive line to collapse, and herd all three of them into a tight, concentrated cluster."
"Okay. And then?"
"Then we just leave the rest entirely up to that red-haired tyrantness." Ritvik had finished with a smug smirk, glancing over at Seraphine.
Back in the present, the enemy team was crammed into a single, tight spot, causing Jareth to suffer a critical lapse in focus.
Sensing the sudden hesitation in her opponent's mana output, Seraphine pounced on the opening without a second thought, aggressively flooding her wand with raw flames.
"Where the hell do you think you're looking?!" Seraphine yelled, ramping up her output.
Her flames surged forward, vaporizing Jareth's remaining water cannon into a wall of scalding steam in a matter of milliseconds.
"Shit!" Jareth cursed, staring in horror as the roaring wave of fire bore down on them like an avalanche. "Twin Shell, right now!"
At his command, Silas and Miracas slammed their staves into the ground.
A thick outer shell of reinforced stone erupted around them, while an inner layer of circulating water cascaded down to absorb the extreme ambient heat.
Seraphine's fire crashed into the barrier instantly. Her output was so violently intense that the stone shell began to glow white-hot, threatening to melt through to the core.
Inside the dome, Jareth and his teammates were completely safe from the direct fire, but the trapped heat turned the interior into a literal oven. They were drenched in sweat, gasping for breathable air.
Outside the barrier, Ritvik stood watching the trap spring shut.
'Well... now that the situation is locked down, we've basically won even if I just stand here and do nothing. But...'
Ritvik leveled his staff directly at the glowing stone shell, which was already softening under Seraphine's unrelenting heat.
'I'd rather wrap this up quickly. No point giving them a window to adapt or counter-attack.'
He shot a sharp hand signal over to Chloe. Catching his cue instantly, Chloe raised her staff, pouring her own active fire directly into the tail-end of Seraphine's wave.
The combined thermal output spiked exponentially, and the stone shell began to liquefy at an accelerated rate.
Waiting for the exact micro-second the outer layer compromised, Ritvik flicked his wrist.
Wind Shear Burst!
A condensed, rotating disc of high-pressure vacuum waves shot from his staff straight into the heart of the blazing flames.
The moment the compressed wind touched the fire, the entire wave violently spiraled outward, detonating in a massive, earth-shaking shockwave.
"What the—?!"
"Oh, no!"
In the spectator stands, the surrounding students flinched at the sheer scale of the blast, gasping in shock.
As the dense cloud of dust and steam slowly cleared across the arena floor, the extent of the damage was revealed. Jareth was flat on his back, coughing violently.
His two teammates were sprawled out unconscious nearby, while Jareth himself was barely propped up on one elbow.
"Cough... cough... what the hell... was that...?" Jareth wheezed, his vision blurring.
When he managed to lift his head, his eyes widened.
Sitting right in front of him was Seraphine. With a casual flick of her mana, a majestic, burning throne made entirely of crimson fire materialized beneath her. She sat atop it with an air of arrogant dominance, resting her cheek lazily on her knuckles while leaning her elbow against the fiery armrest.
She lazily extended one hand, letting wisps of victorious flame dance across her fingertips.
"It was a decent effort, repeaters,"
Seraphine declared, her voice echoing coldly across the silent arena.
"But the outcome was obvious from the very beginning."
Jareth closed his eyes, his head dropping back against the stone as he formally accepted defeat.
Whoosh.
A wave of cleansing fire swept over them, signaling the end of the simulation.
"The winner is Freshman Group 26!"
Ritvik let out a long, ragged breath he hadn't realized he was holding, his shoulders dropping.
'Gosh... thank god that actually worked. For a second there, I thought I was genuinely going to—'
"Honestly... this entire match was rather disappointing," Seraphine muttered, brushing a speck of dust off her sleeve.
Ritvik's left eyebrow twitched violently at her pronouncement.
'Really? Says the girl who did nothing but spam raw, uncalculated flames for ten minutes straight? If you had actually bothered to execute a single strategic spell, we would have wrapped this up in thirty seconds,' Ritvik ranted internally. He desperately wanted to scream it across the arena, but his internal survival instincts aggressively slammed the brakes on that suicidal thought.
"Yay! We won, Ms. Seraphine!" Chloe cheered, jogging over to the fiery throne with a bright smile.
Seraphine raised a hand without opening her eyes, keeping her palm extended for a casual high-five.
Ritvik watched the pair from a few paces away, a profound sense of exhaustion washing over him.
'Seriously? Not a single word of recognition? Not even a curt 'good job' for the guy who actually orchestrated the whole breakthrough?'
He looked over at Chloe, suddenly remembering what she had told him earlier about not wanting to be on Seraphine's bad side. Ritvik scoffed quietly to himself.
'Whatever. At least we passed the damn exam. That's all that matters.'
Just as he turned to head toward the exit, he caught movement.
Chloe was standing behind Seraphine's fiery throne, peering around the glowing crimson armrest directly at him. She caught his eye, broke into a wide, supportive grin, and gave him a cheerful thumbs-up.
Ritvik blinked in surprise, staring at her for a second. A small, genuine smile finally touched his lips, and he slowly raised his own hand to return the thumbs-up gesture.
"The hell are you flashing thumbs-up signs at?!"
Seraphine's sharp voice snapped across the clearing. Completely misinterpreting the gesture and assuming Ritvik was trying to smugly take credit in front of her, she glared down from her throne.
Ritvik and Chloe both jerked upright in sheer panic. Ritvik violently shoved his hand deep inside his uniform pocket, whistling innocently as he stared up at the ceiling.
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CHAPTER ENDS