Chapter 99: The Wager

Chapter 99: Chapter 99: The Wager

Aina furrowed her brows tightly, completely unable to comprehend this suicidal action of the opponent. With the ghostly movement speed he had displayed from the beginning of the match, even if he couldn’t weave through the entire ice rain, cleanly dodging the first spike was as easy as flipping his hand.

Before she could calculate further, the Fang of Abyss chain in Lucius’s hand suddenly morphed, extending to its maximum tension. The metal chain tore through the storm of ice spikes, carrying a thousand-pound force as it shot straight towards her throat.

Aina’s expression changed slightly. This bastard completely threw away all defensive barriers, going all out to charge and slaughter. Was he insane?!

The ice spike rain was a semi-instantaneous cast magic, different from standard summoning spells. To maintain the bombardment rhythm, the caster was forced to stand still and continuously pump magic power. Facing Jeremy’s death-match combat style, Aina had no other choice but to interrupt her skill, decisively stepping back to dodge.

However, the very moment her heel touched the ground, a bone-chilling death aura suddenly closed in from a blind spot behind her. Aina’s combat reflexes were extremely sharp. She bent over, leaning backward in an unbelievably contorted posture, narrowly escaping the pitch-black scythe of death that had slashed over since who knows when.

Aina hastily retreated backward, widening the safe distance. She raised her eyes, staring fixedly at the two backs fighting side by side. An incredibly complex emotion surged in her chest.

...So the reckless attack just now was merely bait to distract her attention. Should she applaud the coordination of these two guys, or curse their ruthless cunning?

Jeremy clicked his tongue softly. He truly hadn’t expected Aina’s reflex speed to be that sharp. His slender wrist rotated, swinging the scythe to trace a brutal cross slash, roughly shredding the first wave of ice spikes that had just poured down.

His sharp phoenix eyes quickly skimmed over Lucius’s bleeding shoulder and side profile. During their brief eye contact earlier, he had only signaled for this guy to try and stall for time; he completely didn’t expect someone with mysophobia and arrogance like Lucius to cooperate to the extent of ignoring his own battered injuries.

Aina’s ice spikes were clearly laced with frost poison. Placed on the scale, the magic power reserve of someone bearing a Holy Covenant like her obviously overwhelmed theirs. Her maintaining the ice spike rain for a while longer wasn’t a difficult task at all. With the sneak attack failed, remaining rooted in place to endure the bombardment within the absolute strike zone was definitely not the best strategy.

Jeremy frowned, decisively mobilizing his explosive magic power. From behind his back, a pair of brilliant golden wings unfurled. Tiny magic elemental light particles scattered, sparkling and blinding like a nebula falling to the mortal realm, enveloping his tall, lean, masculine physique.

He reached his firm hand toward Lucius, his deep voice carrying an undeniable decisiveness: "Take my hand."

Lucius didn’t reply. His long eyelashes lowered slightly, concealing the glint flashing through the depths of his phoenix eyes. He reached out his hand, his slender fingers interlacing tightly with Jeremy’s warm palm, obediently letting the other party pull him soaring into the air, tearing through the coverage zone of the deadly ice rain.

Right at that moment, Aina decisively interrupted the ice rain skill, once again controlling the highly toxic Puppet Butterflies to frantically pursue the two.

As the ghostly butterflies tailed them like a heat-seeking missile system, Jeremy’s biceps bulged. He forcefully swung his arm, throwing Lucius straight toward Leon’s position, his razor-sharp tone commanding: "You go over there and cover Leon."

"?"

Being roughly and unexpectedly thrown away, Lucius was utterly speechless. This callous, use-and-discard attitude completely deviated from his calculated trajectory. But thinking about it again... this captain was inherently heartless like that.

The howling wind made the cut on his cheek sting. Right at the moment his back was about to smash into the stone pillar, Lucius, expressionless, erupted his magic power, summoning silver wings to absorb the impact force. He hovered in mid-air, paused for half a beat, then gave a cold snort, ultimately deciding to obediently follow that tyrant captain’s command.

Having thrown him, Jeremy completely shifted his attention. He leaned his body back, focusing all his vision and reflexes on dealing with Aina’s firepower, agilely weaving to dodge the remaining ice spikes and the hungry swarm of Puppet Butterflies lunging forward.

Due to the overwhelmingly dense number of butterflies, Jeremy was forced to separate more phantom clones to mutually defend.

Fortunately, Aina did not continue pouring magic power into the ice rain. When the final spikes shattered, only the Puppet Butterflies remained on the arena.

Aina didn’t bother chasing after Lucius. Her sharp, cold eyes pinned tightly onto the red-haired youth in front of her. Right now, she frantically wanted to know at what damn moment this chessboard had slipped from her hands.

"Answer me one thing. When did you guys break the Puppet Butterfly cocoons?" Aina growled.

Jeremy calmly controlled a Mirror Clone to slash through several butterflies, replying with a bland tone: "Right after the moment Lucius’s black fog erupted. What your teammates saw... was an illusion from the very beginning."

His [Mirror Prison Confinement] skill not only possessed a phantom separation effect. It also integrated the ability to reflect attacks or roughly devour the opponent’s magic power. Aina’s skill, although sharp, using it to imprison him for that long was completely a pipe dream.

The moment the Puppet Butterflies spun their silk to wrap around their bodies, Lucius had coordinated by accelerating, successfully drawing all the attention of Aina—the only person bearing an unsealed Holy Covenant on the arena—while simultaneously unleashing the pitch-black fog to obscure all vision.

It was precisely during that golden timeframe that Evelyn’s [Reconstructive Ideation] skill was cast to its maximum limit. When Evelyn’s exclusive Holy Covenant was activated, it diffused an invisible, colorless, odorless, and tasteless aura. Merely inhaling it unintentionally, any entity possessing a lower realm than Evelyn would have their memories forcibly altered.

Although the remaining four Begonia Team members had quickly used magic to dispel the fog, Evelyn’s crowd control effect had firmly embedded itself into their cerebral cortexes. She had also leisurely torn through the encirclement before the fog completely dissipated.

This meant that the woven vine dummy in the eyes of those four was actually just a hallucination implanted by Evelyn to replace her true body.

As for her real body, it had silently hidden within Aina’s visual blind spot. Coordinating with the absolute invisibility skill of Phoenix—who had also long since shattered the butterfly cocoon—they easily bypassed everyone to close in and press a blade to Vivian’s neck in the backline.

Of course, standing in the middle of a life-or-death battlefield, Jeremy didn’t have the free time to meticulously explain every single move or detail since when he and his teammates had mapped out the plan. Want to know the truth? Wait until the arena match ends and drag your own face to rewatch the video recording.

"...You people, truly cunning to a terrifying degree." Aina didn’t press further. Her voice was laced with a trace of bitter self-mockery: "No. Rather, it was my own arrogance that caused me to underestimate this team too much."

At the same time, the matrix system’s notification that Evelyn, coordinating with Phoenix, had successfully eliminated Helyn rang out clearly.

Hearing that sound, the frustration in Aina’s heart conversely vanished completely. She swept her eyes towards Lucius and Leon’s area.

Clearly, during the deadlock with her earlier, that silver-haired guy had burned a massive amount of magic power, yet now Lucius could still continuously unleash skills tirelessly. Whether it was long-range bombardment or bloody close combat, his movements revealed absolutely no openings.

Sze initially intended to launch a strike to force Lucius out of the red boundary line for an elimination, but Lucius was exactly like a devil seeing through human hearts. The moment before his heel touched the line, he frantically drained the final drop of magic power in his sea of consciousness as a sacrifice, powerfully swinging the Fang of Abyss chain, wrapping tightly around Sze, and dragging him down out of the arena together.

An absolute extreme one-for-one life exchange.

In the other corner, Leon—who was in a death match with Davion—despite his torn armor, a body covered in deep cuts, and magic power scraping the dry bottom, under the lightning-fast covering support of his two freed-up teammates, had also successfully kicked Davion out of the arena.

Aina bit her lip. If this were an individual tournament, she was absolutely confident she could sequentially crush any one of these five.

But tragically, this was a team stage.

To try and maintain an advantage for her allies, right from the opening seconds, she had personally drained a large amount of her magic power reserves. At this moment, even if she erupted the [Order of the Spatial Time Interval] one more time, she couldn’t possibly mow down all four of those murderous monsters simultaneously. At most, it would only force a one-for-three outcome.

Everything... was too late.

Aina slowly raised her Phantom Flute, holding it horizontally to block the Scythe of Death that Jeremy had just swung over after shredding the remnants of the butterfly swarm. She stood there, silently looking straight at the tall, lean youth in front of her—the one who, since enrollment, had been mocked and humiliated by the entire academy as a piece of trash, yet now used his arrogant spirit to lead his team to trample over all the world’s proud prejudices.

She sighed, a bitter yet fair acknowledgment towards the strong. In this match, she had lost with complete conviction.

"Jeremy Valmont..." The corners of Aina’s lips drew a faint but sincere smile: "I hope you can maintain this form, bringing back a glorious ranking for the Anima department in the upcoming five-academy great battle tournament."

The meaning of surrender in that sentence was already all too clear.