Chapter 46: The Storm Descends

The arena had become a cauldron of chaos and raw noise. The crowd’s roar rolled across the white marble stands in continuous waves, rising and falling with every exchange. Students stood on their seats. Senior mages leaned forward with narrowed eyes. Even the knights who had come out of curiosity now watched without blinking. The air itself felt charged — thick with residual heat, ozone, and the sharp scent of scorched sand.

Elias did not give the princess time to press her advantage.

He raised both hands and cast.

Hundreds of rock bullets materialized in a spinning storm around his body, each one dense, sharp, and rotating at high speed. The air filled with the dry, grinding sound of stone against stone. Before the projectiles could launch, another white-hot fireball slammed into him. The explosion bloomed in a brilliant flash, vaporizing the entire cloud of bullets and the patch of sand where he had stood. A second shockwave raced outward, forcing the nearest spectators to flinch.

For a moment the smoke was too thick to see through.

In the stands, Elaric’s face went rigid. Selene’s hands covered her mouth. Liora’s violet eyes widened in genuine dread. Several students began shouting that the village boy was dead.

Princess Seraphina narrowed her eyes, analytical even in the middle of combat. Something about the way the explosion had dispersed felt wrong.

Then she saw him again — standing several meters to the left, clothes still smoking.

She fired instantly.

Another detonation. Another cloud of smoke and vaporized sand.

When it cleared, two identical figures stood where one had been. Then three. Then four. Within seconds the number climbed — ten, twenty exact copies of Elias, each one raising its hands as though preparing to cast.

Seraphina’s expression hardened. She unleashed a frenzied barrage of white fire, sweeping the arena floor in overlapping explosions. Clones vanished one after another in bursts of steam and shattered stone, only for more to appear in their place. The princess moved with clinical precision, destroying every image she could lock onto, yet the copies kept multiplying.

Hidden among the residual heat haze and the swirling dust, the real Elias watched calmly.

Rock for the body, water for the illusion. They look exactly like me. The mana cost is ridiculous… but compared to what I’ve spent years expanding, this is nothing more than a drop in the ocean.

Seraphina continued her assault, face tight with concentration and rising irritation. The more clones she erased, the more that took their place. Finally she changed tactics. She formed a wide, razor-thin disk of compressed air and white fire, then detonated it across a broad section of the arena. The explosion carved a deep, smoking crater into the floor and cleared every remaining copy in a single violent pulse.

When the dust settled, she was breathing harder. Sweat traced thin lines down her temples. Her mana reserves, vast by ordinary standards, had been noticeably drained by the sustained multi-circle bombardment and the relentless pursuit of the clones.

She scanned the crater and the surrounding sand, searching for the real target.

Above them, the sky began to change.

Elias had been preparing something far larger while the clones bought him time. He poured enormous quantities of mana upward, shaping and feeding a growing cumulonimbus. The clear afternoon light dimmed. Clouds thickened with unnatural speed, turning the open sky over the arena a deep, bruised gray. A cold wind swept across the stands, carrying the first scent of heavy rain.

In the higher seats, Liora’s lips curved into a small, knowing smile. She was one of the very few who had ever seen him work weather magic on this scale.

What are you going to do now, little prodigy?

The rain began as a light scattering of drops, then intensified into a torrential downpour that hammered the sand and hissed against the residual heat of the earlier explosions. Water sheeted across the arena floor. Lightning flickered faintly inside the dense cloud mass overhead.

Elias dispelled the last traces of his concealment and stepped into the open, rain already soaking what remained of his clothes. He raised one hand toward the darkened sky.

The rain itself seemed to answer, streams of water twisting upward against gravity and gathering into a single, concentrated point high above the arena.

Princess Seraphina felt it before she fully understood it — a primal, instinctive chill that raised the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. Every survival sense she possessed screamed at once.

Far away, in the training grounds of the Canine Tribe, the village chief watched Elara complete another relentless series of strikes. Sweat poured down her face. Her wooden blade moved in sharp, obsessive arcs.

“How strong is your brother, really?” the chief asked.

Elara did not stop moving as she answered, voice tight with both pride and old frustration.

“He’s the most talented mage I’ve ever seen. He reached Rare-class in water and wind at five years old — a record that sits above even the nine Grand Sages. He’s a marvel. And he’s the reason I refuse to stay weak.”

At that same moment, back in the rain-lashed arena of Cairone, Elias completed the final shape of his spell.

A single bolt of deep blue lightning tore down from the concentrated point in the clouds.

It struck the sand less than a meter from Seraphina’s feet with a deafening crack. The flash was blinding. The shockwave of displaced air and raw energy knocked her backward. Her legs gave out. She dropped hard onto one knee, golden hair plastered to her face by the rain, eyes wide with genuine fear.

For a long second she could not speak.

Then her voice rang out across the stunned silence that had fallen over the entire arena.

“I concede!”

The words hung in the air like a physical thing.

The crowd, which had been roaring only moments before, fell into complete, disbelieving quiet. Thousands of students, mages, and knights stared down at the rain-soaked boy standing calmly in the center of the cratered floor, and at the royal princess kneeling in defeat before him.

No one moved.

No one spoke.

In that heavy silence, one truth settled over every witness:

The village prodigy was something far beyond ordinary talent.