Breakfast ended swiftly. The three of us immediately moved to Aiselin's personal training area. It was still the familiar vast training room with gray walls reinforced by layers of eternal defensive magic. The only difference was that today, the presence of its true master seemed to make the space thicken.
Along the corridor leading to the training room, the atmosphere had clearly changed. Aiselin walked slowly in front. No longer playful or coaxingly teasing Kanade like she was in my room. Her back was straight, each rhythmic footstep making no sound. An aura of majesty, elegance, and aloofness emanated from her smallest gestures. Her brilliant sapphire blue eyes were now tranquil and sharp. In front of the estate's servants, she had completely reverted to being the perfect eldest daughter of the Shirakawa family.
Upon arriving, I stepped into a corner, beginning my basic warm-up routine as usual. Joint rotations, stretching, muscle loosening—purely mechanical movements aimed at warming up the body, bringing muscle groups and ligaments into a ready state to respond to sudden acceleration. In a world where people prefer using mana to enhance their physique, my habit of manual warm-ups probably looked quite bizarre, but military discipline was something I never discarded.
At the same time, Aiselin stepped into the center of the training ground. She murmured an incantation. An invisible wave of mana rippled outward, clinging along the walls. It was a soundproofing barrier again, but the energy density was significantly thicker and more stable than the one she used this morning.
Once finished, Aiselin turned to look straight at me.
"Zero, you fight me first."
Without waiting for my reply, she turned her head slightly to the side, the corners of her lips curling up into a confident smile directed at the maid standing at the edge of the field.
"Kanade, watch how much I've improved."
Kanade's feline ears twitched slightly; her eyes lit up as she happily nodded in anticipation. As for me, standing on the opposite side, I silently took a deep breath to stabilize my heart rate. The hardest math problem of the day officially began.
Aiselin turned to me, her eyes brilliant under the light of the mana stones shining down from the training room ceiling. The atmosphere inside this enclosed space was somewhat more suffocating than usual, yet she smiled lightly. Even so, I still clearly felt an invisible pressure radiating outward.
"Are you ready, Zero?"
I took a deep breath, suppressing my tension, and replied:
"Yes, My Lady. We may begin whenever you are ready."
She nodded, her smile vanishing, replaced by the extreme concentration of a genius. Aiselin muttered something, then gently reached her hand forward, her clear yet authoritative voice echoing throughout the training room:
"Oh coldness from the silent abyss, condense and blockade the footsteps of my enemy... Ice Pillar!"
The moment the incantation rang out, the area around me immediately exploded. Through my lens, those epic-sounding chants were actually a command sequence to establish a coordinate origin. Dozens of pale blue magic circles appeared simultaneously beneath my feet, forming a three-dimensional coordinate grid covering the dirt surface within a 3.6-meter radius. Damn it, she hadn't just mastered coordinate assignment magic—something I had only taught her the theory of—but she was also overclocking a parallel casting system. Did she whisper something before starting to prepare this?
I only had time to read the mana flow concentrating at the bottom-right vector, immediately applying a bit of wind-element mana to my legs, dodging to the side. The dirt floor shattered; a sharp ice pillar erupted right where I had just stood at maximum speed.
Before I could recover my wits, Aiselin continued chanting, the mana flow around her erupting even more fiercely.
"Thorns of the freezing winter, obey my command to besiege and pierce all barriers... Ice Arrow!"
The air was torn with a screech. Multiple ice arrows formed with absolute precision darted straight toward me. I hastily rolled backward, clearly feeling the freezing air graze past my arm. Clearly, my rigorous physical training exercises had paid off; otherwise, I would have become an ice mummy right in the middle of this training room.
I immediately moved, running in a circle around Aiselin, trying to utilize the area of the dirt floor to find a blind spot to approach her. However, just as I turned, I suddenly discovered a third magic circle flashing behind my back.
At this moment, a terrifying variable appeared. The ice arrows no longer flew in simple straight trajectories. They seemed to come alive, abruptly changing their flight angles, curving in mid-air, and forming a homing trajectory locked onto me.
My brain scanned through a series of hypotheses and settled on a single answer. Aiselin was applying a mage's perception—what Kanade had explained as the way nobles instinctually controlled magic to "lock" onto a target—while perfectly integrating it with the spatial math equations I had taught her. Behind those traditional magic incantations, she had just transformed a static coordinate system into a real-time dynamic target-tracking system.
Abundant instinctual mana combined with mathematical thinking. Clearly, I was facing a true monster in both the academic and practical combat realms.
The ice arrows were still altering their trajectories to hound me. In a split second, my brain decided to reuse the tactic I had employed against Kanade. If her targeting system relied on perception and vision, I simply needed to create a blind spot.
Instantly utilizing the dirt surface, I outputted a small amount of mana, combining the Earth and Ice elements. A small dust explosion flared up, forming a dense smokescreen enveloping me, completely severing optical vision. I clearly felt the cold draft of an ice arrow grazing my shoulder as it lost its target.
But my blind-spot plan fell apart the very next second. Aiselin's clear voice rang out without the slightest hint of panic:
"Invisible wind... sweep away all barriers... Wind Domain!"
An extremely strong pressure burst from Aiselin's position. A tornado swept across the dirt floor, completely clearing away my interference screen in the blink of an eye.
Such fast reflexes! As soon as the dust cleared, I immediately used the coordinate assignment magic technique. By fusing a microscopic amount of Light and Lightning mana at a spatial point less than 1 meter from Aiselin's face, I created a flashbang. A blinding flash accompanied by a crisp explosion went off, aiming to crash her visual sensors.
However, as the light dimmed, what struck my eyes was an ice wall that had sprouted out of nowhere, perfectly shielding the young lady. Without needing to see, she could still erect a reflex shield.
Realizing I couldn't stall for time any longer, I decided to press the attack. I swung my hand, outputting a 1-star Fire magic—a basic fire arrow. I intervened in its flight path, forcing the fire arrow to curve in a large arc to attack the blind spot right behind Aiselin's back. At the same time, I channeled strength into my legs, charging straight forward to act as bait, drawing all her attention. A pincer attack.
The fire arrow tore through the wind, flying close to the back of Aiselin's neck. Just a little more.
Clang!
A dry sound echoed. Beneath Aiselin's feet, a hidden magic circle flashed. Without any control command or incantation from its master, a hexagonal ice shield automatically crystallized right behind her back, blocking my fire arrow and turning it into a harmless wisp of white smoke.
My brain crunched the numbers instantly. Kanade's words echoed in my ears. To prevent assassination or sneak attacks, noble mages always maintained a passive defensive art—a type of pre-programmed automatic command that triggers when an object carrying killing intent approaches.
Trap failed. Her offensive and defensive capabilities had no blind spots.
At this moment, I knew all my calculation efforts seemed futile against this overwhelming power. But having thrown the spear, I had to follow it. I gritted my teeth, maintaining my charging acceleration in hopes of closing in for melee combat; I figured if it came down to close-quarters combat, I might have a chance of winning.
However, just as I was only a few steps away from her, the dirt floor in front of me suddenly split open. A massive pale blue magic circle glowed brilliantly. A thick, transparent ice wall, carrying a freezing cold, abruptly thrust up, blocking the path between Aiselin and me.
My acceleration was too high. If I slammed into this solid block of ice, I would probably break some bones. Panicking, I clenched my teeth, concentrating all my muscular strength into my right leg to steer, clumsily tumbling to the side, narrowly avoiding turning myself into a squashed painting pasted on the ice wall.
"Let us end this here."
Aiselin's voice echoed from behind the ice wall, flat and absolutely confident. At the same time, the air in the training room became so freezing cold that it froze my breath. Looking up over the edge of the wall, I saw a terrifying sight: thousands of ice arrows were condensing in mid-air, floating behind her back like a giant missile launcher ready to unleash its payload. A dense target-locking network, with not a single blind spot.
My brain overclocked to its final limit. The escape probability was 0%. There was only one way to bypass that giant ice wall and force Aiselin into melee combat: Dark teleportation magic—an anomalous spatial coordinate intervention art I had just successfully tested yesterday.
But there was a fatal risk. My innate mana capacity was already depleted, like a failing battery. The fire arrow magic earlier had consumed a lot of my mana capacity. If I forced my mana core to activate another costly teleportation command like this, I would definitely be completely drained of mana.
Whatever, high risk, high reward.
I gritted my teeth, forcing the last bit of mana in my body to erupt. A pitch-black region of space instantly expanded, swallowing me whole. It felt as if my body had just been torn apart and pasted back together in a different frame of reference.
In just a blink of an eye, the darkness faded. I had pierced through Aiselin's absolute spatial defense line and appeared right in front of her.
The eldest lady's eyes widened to their limits. The composure of a genius mage from a moment ago shattered, replaced by a completely stunned expression. I had entered her melee blind spot.
But right at that moment, I clearly felt my body stalling out. My vision darkened; my limbs felt heavy as lead. Using the last bit of physical inertia, I swung the wooden knife forward.
Clang!
A dry sound echoed. The tip of the wooden knife collided and stopped a mere few centimeters from Aiselin's neck, blocked by her hidden automatic magic shield. It was over. The match had ended.
The corners of my lips curled up into a tired smile. I gathered my last tattered shred of strength, keeping my tone as polite as possible:
"You win, My Lady."
The moment the words left my mouth, my body's energy percentage officially hit rock bottom. My legs lost their supporting strength, and my entire body just collapsed.
But I didn't hit the cold dirt floor. A pair of soft arms mixed with a faint fragrance rushed in just in time to catch me. My consciousness faded, and in my ears, I only heard a panicked voice, completely stripped of its usual majesty:
"Zero? Are you alright? Zero!"
End of Chapter 21.