Chapter 115: Trap Ball!

"Kai! Catch!"

Kai heard his name as he swerved through open air, dodging incoming spells shot up from the field below. A sharp duck sent a thick lance of lightning screaming over his shoulder and into the ward ceiling, where it broke apart in harmless sparks. months in the Academy had turned flight from a borrowed trick into an extension of his own balance, as far as Kai knew flying was a walk in the park. He cut left, rolled under another binding shot, and kept his eyes on the object ripping toward him through the air.

What he was meant to catch came in on a burst of flame, accelerated hard by the force of the throw.

Below, in tactical wear with her red hair tied high, Mira braced through the follow-through of the launch and shouted again.

"Move!"

Mira was his closest friend in the Academy for a reason. She never wasted encouragement during live play. She threw, she covered, and she trusted him to meet the line.

Kai dropped fast to intercept the ball.

The System cut across his focus before his hands closed around it.

[Warning.]

[Incoming high-output fire projection from rear-left quadrant.]

[Impact probability: elevated.]

Kai’s attention snapped off the ball at once. A huge fire spell tore upward from the opposing half, thick enough to swallow a body whole. He forced a gust of wind out in a hard outward burst, and dispersed the flames into scattered heat before they reached him.

But his eyes had left the ball.

That was enough.

The flaming sphere swerved past his hands, climbed, and became open prey.

A green-haired boy on a reinforced magic broom cut across the upper lane with ugly timing. He caught the ball against his side, giggled out loud, and sneered down at Kai for a full second of open mockery before kicking the broom into a surf-stance. The shaft locked horizontal under his feet like a hoverboard, and he rode the air toward the scoring channel with pure smug on his face.

"Too slow, Valerius!"

Kai frowned hard and looked back toward the source of the fire.

Baylor Baste stood on the opposing field line with one arm still lowering from the cast, shirtless in the middle of a graded exercise like dress code was a suggestion . Heat shimmer clung faintly around his shoulders. He was tall, cut, and aggravatingly handsome but he was annoying and as far as Kai knew he was his mortal enemy...he hated him so much in the exact way that made him want to commit an academic crime. In Kai’s private ranking of Academy irritations, Baylor occupied the top position with no serious competition.

Mortal enemy was not too strong a phrase.

Kai had imagined killing him more than once in purely hypothetical terms and then filed the fantasy away because expulsion would destroy months of carefully forced progress. He was close to intermediary promotion. This exercise was one of the determinants. He was not about to ruin that over Baylor’s face or mouth

Baylor caught him looking and smiled like he always did when he knew he had gotten to him.

"Eyes up, white bunny," he called. "You lose the ball when you stare."

Kai turned away before he could reply harshly.

"System. Help me out."

[Current Host combat-magic inventory available.]

[Acquired spell expertise: 15.]

[Composition: basic elemental forms and supporting attribute techniques.]

[Highest stable offensive category: Water, A-rank.]

[Recommended sequence for current pursuit:]

[1. Water containment to trap airborne target and kill broom momentum.]

[2. Lightning immobilization to end resistance before score release.]

Kai’s eyes narrowed on the green-haired boy surfing hard toward the goal posts.

"Get him."

He lifted one hand and shaped the first spell without a spoken string of classic incantation. In this world Kai had learnt that spells normally required uttered form. Incantation drew mana into structure, and only the highest mages could consistently cast wordlesss. Kai could already do it in limited frames because the System had forced a compressed internal method into him months earlier. The moment he understood how rare that was, how closely wordless casting sat beside divine-tier practice, he locked the advantage under wraps the last thing he wanted was casting advanced tier magic with low tier skills.

For something as contained as this, the short call was enough.

"Water Ball."

The sphere detonated into existence around the green-haired boy mid-surf, not as a soft splash but as a sealed containment shell. Water slammed into place on all sides, locked denser than ordinary liquid through compressed mana structuring, and ripped the broom’s speed out of the lane. The boy’s smug expression collapsed into shock as he hung trapped inside the suspended globe, limbs jammed, broom skewed uselessly under his feet.

Trapball, for all its chaos, had simple bones.

The Academy used it as a graded multi-unit exercise across airborne control, spell accuracy, team sequencing, and objective priority under live interference. One reinforced scoring ball and two teams. Points came from carrying or projecting the ball through the opposing goal channel and locking it there for a full count. Players could pass, intercept, screen, and sabotage with approved spell categories. What made the game vicious was the rule that the ball could be contested at any altitude, and any player who prioritized style over sequence became an open resource for better teams.

Mira had explained it to him in month two with a bruise on her cheek and absolute joy in her voice.

"It is not a ball sport," she had said. "It is air war with scoring conditions."

She had been right.

Kai shot forward while the containment still held and snapped the second spell through a tighter frame.

Lightning jumped from his fingers in a hard white line, struck the water shell, and ran through it without shattering the structure. The green-haired boy convulsed once, froze, and lost all remaining claim on the ball. Kai tore the sphere open from the side, seized the ball cleanly, and kicked upward before the nearest opposing flyer could close.

"Mira!"

She was already moving.

He did not throw wildly, He drove a controlled lateral pass into the lane she was climbing, and Mira caught it against her chest with both arms, spun under a binding net from the left flank, and barked out a short reinforcement spell that hardened her trajectory toward the goal channel. On the lower board, Rolf Damar slammed a barrier up just in time to stop an intercept caster from clipping her angle.

"Go!" Rolf shouted. "If you drop this I am haunting your dorm!"

Mira laughed once, and punched through the final ward-line pressure with the ball locked under her arm. The goal channel flared gold as the count took. One. Two. Three.

Score.

The hall sirens cut across the field in a clean official tone and the Players dropped from the air in uneven stages of triumph and outrage. The green-haired boy hit the ground coughing water with his pride wounded. Baylor stood on the far line with his arms folded and an expression that could not decide between irritation and scheming.

Instructor Varn stepped onto the center mark with a slate in hand.

"The evaluation practice had come to an end and Team A came out victorious "

Mira landed hard beside Kai and immediately punched his arm.

"You almost let Jace steal my throw."

"I almost let a fire lance cook me," Kai replied. "Priorities."

"Romantic," she said. "Next time catch with your hands and your brain in the same second."

Rolf jogged over, damp with sweat and grinning like a man who had survived a huge war.

"That water lock was disgusting. I support it completely."

Before Kai could answer, the System layered the larger result over the field noise.

[Team objective complete.]

[Graded Trapball determinant: success.]

[Promotion conditions met for participating unit.]

[Host status updating.]

[Mage Classification: Intermediate.]

[Academy standing revised.]

[Note: Host progression velocity remains above standard first-phase expectation.]

Intermediate.

The word settled deeper than the score. Seven months of theory bruises, ranked evaluations, control drills, and refusing to remain a decorative recommendation case had compressed into one official step upward.

Instructor Varn raised his voice again.

"Team leads, remain for notation. Remaining units clear the field."

That should have been the end of the friction.

Baylor had no respect for should.

He crossed the field with his shirt open even when he decided to put something he always managed to show his body someway or the other, sweat running clean down the line of his chest, and stopped close enough that Kai had to tip his head back slightly to meet his eyes. The height difference was crazy. He planted one hand on the wall of the player tunnel entrance and leaned in until Kai stood under the frame of him.

"What is it, Baylor?" Kai said, dragging the name out flat on purpose, toning the second syllable into open disrespect.

Baylor’s mouth curved.

"Mmm. White bunny. You got me real good."

Kai smiled

"I mean...its only natural i did...When have you ever been superior to me?"

The air between them pulled tight. Students passed wider around the tunnel mouth without committing to stare too obviously. Mira stopped a few paces back. Rolf made a face of pure suffering.

Baylor reached out and held Kai’s chin up with two fingers, not rough enough to create an incident, firm enough to make the contact unmistakable. His eyes dropped to Kai’s mouth. That was new. In months of insults, blocked shots, fouled lanes, and mutual attempted humiliation, he had never made that exact move.

"Why don’t you come to my dorm by midnight," Baylor muttered, low enough for privacy and clear enough to land, "and see how superior I can be."

Kai’s thoughts blanked for half a second.

"What?"

Baylor leaned out, winked once, and walked off with an unbuttoned shirt and the swagger of a man who had thrown a match and still left with the last word. Kai remained where he was, chin still remembering the contact, face hot with a reaction he refused to name in public.

Rolf stared at both of them, then at the ceiling, then back at Kai.

"You two really need a room."

The awkwardness that followed was astonishing in its completeness. Mira covered her mouth. A passing student nearly walked into the doorframe. Kai opened his mouth, found no dignified rebuttal, and shut it again while the heat in his face refused to disperse on command.

He hated Baylor most of the time.

That remained true.

What refused to stay simple were the other moments, the ones where Baylor stood too tall and too close and talked down at him with that particular heated arrogance that left Kai furious and confused in equal measure. None of it was resolved by winning a Trapball match. None of it was explained by promotion light or intermediate rank.

Kai dragged a hand through his white hair, forced his face back under control, and followed Mira and Rolf out of the tunnel before the silence became a second spectacle.