Chapter 159: Golden Children [3]

"Speculum Caeli!"

Every plane shifted.

Ilya felt the incoming attacks through Cold Sense and immediately allowed the blizzard to throw him upward, only for the reflected javelins to change direction again.

They curved back toward him from several angles, forcing him to accelerate as the entire forest around Tristan became part of the spell.

The first javelin came from behind, prompting Ilya to twist aside before another crossed directly over his shoulder.

He barely avoided the third by dropping several meters, but the moment it passed him, another translucent plane appeared along its path and sent it downward after him again.

"Ugh...! He’s tricky..."

Unlike Aleksei, who had been blinded by rage, Tristan was thinking through every exchange.

He wasn’t throwing spells around just because he had the power to overwhelm Ilya. Every time Ilya avoided one of his spells, Tristan adjusted the next angle.

Whenever Ilya repeated the same movement twice, Tristan was already positioning another plane along the route he was most likely to take.

It was annoying.

Cold Sense warned Ilya of another javelin coming from behind, and he immediately dropped lower before allowing the blizzard to push him abruptly to the left.

The javelin missed, but Ilya had barely begun accelerating when he sensed another attack approaching from the direction he was heading.

The blizzard threw him upward.

A javelin shot beneath him, confirming what Ilya was beginning to suspect. Tristan wasn’t merely redirecting attacks toward wherever Ilya happened to be.

He was watching how Ilya reacted to danger and using those reactions to narrow down where he would move next.

The bastard was adapting to him.

And unfortunately, Ilya was doing the same.

Ilya accelerated toward the ground and changed direction just before the javelin struck.

Cold Sense warned him of two more attacks approaching from opposite directions, and the blizzard immediately carried him between them, only for both javelins to cross through another pair of planes and turn back toward him.

There was no longer any point in trying to predict them visually.

Ilya stopped looking.

The Whiteout had already rendered his eyesight unreliable whenever it thickened around him, so trusting Cold Sense came far more naturally than it would have for another wizard.

He allowed his awareness to spread through the surrounding cold, following the movement of every javelin and Tristan himself without needing to turn his head toward any of them.

The blizzard threw him forward.

An ice javelin passed behind his back.

He dropped immediately afterward, allowing another to cross overhead before the blizzard caught him from below and sent him diagonally between two more attacks.

Even then, Tristan continued shifting the translucent planes throughout the forest, constantly creating new paths that allowed the same handful of javelins to attack Ilya again and again.

"Tsk."

Ilya clicked his tongue.

Destroying the javelins would have been easy enough, but that wasn’t the real problem anymore.

The enormous magic circle behind Tristan continued rotating.

As long as Speculum Caeli remained active, Tristan could keep repositioning the planes surrounding them, which meant anything Ilya threw at him could potentially become another weapon under Tristan’s control.

Ice javelins were particularly bad for that, since changing their trajectory didn’t require Tristan to overpower or seize control of Ilya’s magic.

He only needed to change where they were going.

Ilya extended his hand.

The temperature dropped.

"You’re going to try that again?"

"No."

Ice began spreading across the ground instead.

Tristan looked down just as a layer of frost raced between the trees and reached his feet, climbing over his boots before thickening into solid ice around his ankles.

He reacted quickly and shattered it with mana, but Ilya had never expected something that simple to hold him for more than a second.

That second was enough.

He shot forward and crossed the distance between them with enough speed that Tristan barely managed to turn before Ilya came within striking distance.

No javelin formed this time, leaving Tristan without a projectile to redirect as Ilya drove his fist toward his face.

"Ah—"

Thwack!

The punch landed cleanly against Tristan’s jaw, snapping his head to the side before he could react.

Ilya narrowed his eyes, having crossed the distance so quickly that Tristan hadn’t even managed to raise his arms.

"You ever wonder why I never failed a major course in the Knight Department despite being unable to use Aura?"

"...."

"Because I can fight."

When it came to pure physical combat, with no Aura, no magic, and no abilities to compensate for a lack of skill, Ilya Valentinovich Belozersky was second to none among his peers.

He had grown up in a family where children learned how to hold a sword almost as soon as they were strong enough to lift one.

Although his inability to use Aura had eventually made the difference between himself and the true monsters of the Knight Department impossible to overcome, it had never erased everything he had learned before that difference mattered.

Tristan recovered quickly and swung back.

Ilya slipped past the punch effortlessly, but instead of immediately retaliating, he stared at Tristan with genuine disbelief.

"...What was that?"

"...A punch."

"I know it’s supposed to be a punch."

Ilya caught Tristan’s wrist before he could pull it back and looked at him as though he had just witnessed something personally offensive.

"I’m asking what the hell that was."

Tristan tried to wrench his arm free.

Ilya pulled him forward instead.

Thwack——!

His knee drove into Tristan’s stomach hard enough to bend him over, and before Tristan could recover, Ilya shoved him backward and followed immediately after him.

Tristan raised both arms to protect his face, only for Ilya to strike his ribs instead and force another grunt from him.

"Why are you using your hands, Southern Grand Duchy heir?"

Thwack——!

A fist slipped through Tristan’s guard and struck him across the cheek.

"Do you even know how to throw a punch?"

"Shut... up."

Tristan swung again. Ilya leaned back just far enough for the fist to pass in front of his face.

Ilya stepped inside Tristan’s reach before Tristan could recover and drove his shoulder into his chest, knocking him off balance before catching his wrist again.

A sharp turn of his hips dragged Tristan forward, and another knee slammed into his stomach before Ilya released him.

Tristan staggered back several steps.

"I’ll admit it. You’re better at magic than me. For all I know, I might never even catch up to you."

Ilya flexed his fingers as he watched Tristan recover.

"But I will never lose to you in a fight."