Note regarding the sparring session: This match will not meet the precision of physical science elements, sometimes even contradicting them, but because this is a magic duel and magic was born to 'bủ bủ lờ mao' (blatantly mock) physical science elements anyway.
Stepping inside the enclosed training area, I began rotating my wrists and bending slightly to stretch my muscles, warming up my body. Unlike pure mages who usually just stood still to circulate mana, I understood clearly that a physical system needs its joints smoothly primed before operating at high intensity.
Kanade stood not far away, her hands lightly clasped together. She looked at me with a hesitant expression:
"What will be the rules of our match, Sir Zero?"
I stopped my hip rotations, offering a polite smile in return:
"There are no restrictive rules at all, Kanade. Just go all out."
Hearing that, worry clearly showed in her eyes, her eyebrows furrowing slightly:
"But... your mana core... If I fight with all my strength, what if you get severely injured?"
I waved my hand slightly, keeping my smile as composed as possible to reassure her unease:
"It will be fine. Back in my hometown, I clashed and got injured quite a few times. This body can endure much better than you think."
Despite my words, Kanade still looked quite anxious. To clear her thoughts, I continued with a more articulate and systematic tone:
"Kanade, the core purpose of this sparring match is for me to gather data. Only if you go all out can I clearly understand your true capabilities, magical parameters, and combat habits. At the same time, it is a practical test for me to re-evaluate my own limits. Two birds with one stone, reasonable for both of us, right? Therefore, please do not hold back."
Kanade took a deep breath. It seemed my argument had convinced her. She nodded resolutely:
"I understand. I will do as you wish."
After completing the warm-up routine, I moved to the center of the yard, standing opposite Kanade at a distance of about ten meters. The tranquil atmosphere of the training area began to shift. I raised my hand, gently stepping one foot back to anchor myself, signaling for the match to begin.
Immediately, Kanade's lips moved, murmuring the complex verbal flows of the traditional magic system.
"Oh blazing fire, turn into an arrow to pierce my enemy... Fire Arrow!"
Three blazing red magic circles instantly appeared in mid-air, condensing the surrounding thermal energy before launching three fire arrows that tore through the wind toward me. Their flight trajectory was a straight line, their estimated velocity relatively fast.
My nervous system automatically established a spatial coordinate axis system. Without wasting time chanting or erecting a defensive shield, just a tenth of a second before the first arrow arrived, I slightly lowered my center of gravity, sliding my feet to the right at just the right angle. The three fire arrows grazed past my clothes, plunging into the ground behind me and creating charred black streaks.
Seeing her attack dodged so easily, Kanade did not stop. She continued chanting continuously, magic circles opening up one after another in mid-air. Wave after wave of fire arrows flew at me relentlessly, crisscrossing to lock down my movement angles.
"Left, half-step back, rotate shoulder..."
I mentally read the trajectories and continuously moved my body. Strangely enough, I could clearly feel every muscle bundle and every joint operating precisely to the microsecond as my brain issued commands. Everything was rhythmic to the point of perfection.
I didn't understand why my reflexes were so good. It seemed the information processing speed of this nervous system had exceeded the normal threshold, making the barrage of incoming fire arrows suddenly appear much slower on my retinas. Although the "software" was the soul of an engineering Ph.D., this physical "hardware" possessed practical combat reflex parameters far exceeding all initial calculations.
After the first wave of attacks completely failed, Kanade paused for a beat. She panted slightly, surprise evident in her eyes.
"Sir Zero... your agility and reflexes are truly astounding. You completely did not use analytical magic, yet you can still read the trajectories of the fire arrows?"
I maintained my stance, smiling modestly:
"Just some trivial survival skills, Kanade. Do not mind it, please continue."
Kanade nodded, her expression becoming incredibly serious. She clasped her hands together in front of her chest, closed her eyes, and began to chant a long string of incantations, significantly more complex. Immediately, a large magic circle appeared between her palms, glowing with blazing red ancient runes and spinning continuously.
The temperature in the training ground spiked abruptly. Around Kanade, the space seemed to boil. Specks of fire continuously flared up, quickly taking shape. Ten, twenty, fifty... and then hundreds of fire arrows hovered, swarming the air, all pointing their deadly tips toward me.
Facing this scene, I narrowed my eyes slightly. The massive quantity of fire arrows emitting scorching heat truly made one feel overwhelmed for a moment. If I used human stamina to dodge this entire rain of ammunition, my muscular system would definitely overload and exhaust itself before she ran out of mana.
But instead of panicking, analytical thinking immediately took control. I focused my gaze on the glowing magic circle between Kanade's hands. In the eyes of a normal mage, that was a symbol of destructive power. But through my lens, it appeared exactly like a complex circuit diagram blueprint. All those hundreds of fire arrows were not operating independently; they were being controlled and powered by the motherboard between her hands. The ancient runes acted as microcircuits, circulating the mana flow.
If mana flows like an electric current, it must obey fundamental physical laws.
My nervous system accelerated its processing. I observed the distribution of light on the magic circle, applying Kirchhoff's circuit laws (ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING SIUUUUUUU) regarding nodal and mesh analysis (KCL and KVL) to that geometric structure. The total mana current entering a node must equal the total current leaving it. At a tiny intersecting point on the right edge of the circle, I noticed the light intensity converging there was extremely harsh before branching out into hundreds of control signals for the arrows.
That was the most critical "node." A fatal design flaw of classical magic.
Just by shifting the phase of the current at this node, the entire system would experience a short circuit.
Without moving my lips to utter a single incantation, I channeled a tiny bit of my meager mana to the tip of my index finger. By dropping the localized temperature, I condensed the moisture in the air into a microscopic ice bead, the size of a pinhead, but incredibly dense.
I calculated the trajectory and flicked my finger lightly. The ice bead tore through the wind with the absolute precision of a decrypted orbital equation, striking precisely into the overloaded intersection "node" on Kanade's magic circle.
The moment the deep sub-zero temperature of the ice bead interfered with the mana core operating at high intensity, the sudden interruption of the energy flow created a perfect system "short circuit."
"What...?" Kanade exclaimed in astonishment.
The magic circle structure between her hands immediately flickered frantically, cracked, and shattered like blazing red shards of glass. Losing their control center and mana distribution, the hundreds of fire arrows hovering in mid-air simultaneously lost their stability. Unable to launch, they detonated directly in place, creating a massive roar and turning the entire training ground area into a dense cloud of dust and smoke.
The chain explosion flared up, creating a significant shockwave. Taking advantage of the thick black smoke rolling up from the shattered fire arrows, I smiled, my clear voice piercing through the hazy dust:
"Now, it's my turn to attack, Kanade."
Without hesitation, I lightly stomped my toe onto the ground, activating a bit of earth-element mana to kick the layer of dirt up into the air, while simultaneously blending tiny frost particles from the ice element into it. The mixture of fine dust and cold mist immediately formed a dense smokescreen, completely swallowing the visibility in the training ground area. I gently stepped back, totally concealing my presence within that hazy fog.
Suddenly deprived of her vision, Kanade flinched, but she didn't panic and scatter magic indiscriminately. Through the thin layer of dust, I saw her slowly close her eyes, her ears twitching slightly. She was concentrating entirely on her hearing to catch my footsteps or the sound of my chanting.
"Excellent adaptability," I said inwardly. The speed at which she switched her combat senses was much better than I had anticipated.
But in combat, when you allocate all your resources to a single sensor, that is also when that sensor is most easily overloaded.
I compressed a small amount of mana into my palm, fusing the light and lightning elements with maximum luminous intensity but a duration measured only in milliseconds. A homemade flashbang. However, the special point was that I initiated the magic right in the blind spot above Kanade's head, not near myself.
BANG!
A flash of blinding white light, like rows of candles igniting simultaneously, erupted, accompanied by an ear-splitting explosion that tore through the space. This bit of magic had absolutely no physical damage, but the sudden pulse of light and sound immediately crashed the opponent's receptive nervous system—especially for Felines, a species with incredibly sharp sight and hearing.
"Ah...!"
Kanade clutched her feline ears, staggering backward. Her hearing and vision right now were definitely reduced to a pure white screen and a continuous, unending ringing.
Yet, the survival instinct of a mage hailing from a great noble family still held her ground. In the moment of losing her two most important senses, Kanade bit her lip, trying to force out a disjointed incantation:
"Invisible wind... become my eyes... Wind Domain!"
From beneath Kanade's feet, streams of wind began radiating outward in the form of circular wave bands. This air current would sweep past every obstacle in the training ground, and upon touching me, its variation would echo back, helping her accurately pinpoint my coordinates. An operating mechanism completely analogous to a radar system or sonar scanning waves.
Unfortunately, I am a telecommunications engineer. And electronic warfare, signal jamming, is one of my primary specialties.
Any type of scanning wave, be it electromagnetic waves or mechanical waves generated by wind magic, possesses a periodic nature. I calmed my mind, calculating the sweep frequency of the diffusing wind current, then slowly transmitted microscopic mana pulses into the air.
I didn't create a tornado to counter her wind current. I merely created incredibly small air ripples, but with an oscillation phase completely opposite to the surface wavelength of Kanade.
According to the physical principle of wave interference, when two out-of-phase waves meet, they undergo destructive interference. The bands of feedback signals Kanade expected to receive were immediately distorted, broken, and vanished into nothingness the moment they touched my jamming barrier.
In Kanade's spatial awareness right now, everything had hit rock bottom zero. No light, no sound, not even signal bands from the flow of air. An absolute, blind emptiness. She had been completely stripped of her spatial awareness, becoming a defenseless target in the center of the training ground.
End of Chapter 16.