?Looking at the two of them, Keira sighed. She had tried to change their minds about this duel, but both parties seemed adamant about it.


    Syra had already gone to her private tutoring ss. It was essentially a private school inside a private school, and while the Skrk family wasn''t actually that wealthy,pared to the people living inside dia, they were filthy rich.


    ''This won''t really tell me how strong I am since I don''t actually know how strong Lochras is... However, it should give me a baseline on which I can build upon


    "You both ready?" She asked while ncing at the two of them.


    "YES!" They both shouted, slightly fed up by how long they had to wait until the battle started.


    They had already told Rhea about everything that happened, or at least the portion that Ss told them about. He didn''t really want to take part in the conversation since he didn''t want to say anything more than what he had already said.


    Of course, Rhea was against Ss going to the forest ever again, but after a little convincing, she agreed that if he won the duel, he would be allowed to go.


    Of course, she didn''t think that Ss had the ability to win against Lochras, let alone put a scratch on his body. Actually, no one did.


    They all knew how strong Lochras was, and even though he wasn''t a mage, it didn''t mean that he was weak. It just meant that he was at a disadvantage when it came to long-range attacks and the creativity of his attacks.


    However, Lochras had a lot more experience on the battlefield. It was almost terrifying how much experience he had despite still being pretty young.


    Anyway, Rhea chose to not watch the battle since she was still pretty much stuck in bed with her newborn.


    "Alright then. Let the battle..." She raised her hand into the air.


    "Begin!" Her hand shed down, and in an instant, Lochras dashed toward Ss, while Ss created a magic circle in front of the staff''s crystal.


    ''Sh*t...'' Ss frowned. For some reason, he felt like he was spending more mana than he needed to when creating the water drill spell, but that''s when he realized why that was.


    The emerald crystal embroidered at the top of the staff had a small ball of mes inside it. It was linked to the fire element, so it was actively repelling the water element. Sure, mana coursed through the wood of the staff very easily, but the effort became far too much to be considered efficient when trying to push the mana through the crystal.


    However, that was not the case with other elements. It was only the case with elements that opposed the fire element.


    So while the water element might be weakened and the fire element might be strengthened by a multiplier possibly over 5, other elements would most likely be double their normal strength.


    Within an instant, Ss controlled the mana within the magic circle and changed them all to create an earth pir spell.


    Keira''s eyes widened when she saw the runes shift and morph. It looked like she was going to fall to her knees out of shock, but she quickly found her bnce again and stood up straight,


    Pointing his staff at his father, Ss shot a pir of earth toward Lochras'' chest, but despite the attack moving at blurring speeds, Lochras dodged it with the grace and effort of dodging a feather.


    His sword also became a blur, and before Ss could react to the sudden speed Lochras was showing, the pir was cut into a dozen pieces that fell to the ground with low thuds.


    Lochras then shot forward. He moved like a sh of lightning. His sword cut through the air and appeared beside Ss in the blink of an eye.


    ''Earth wall''<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    However, before it could even touch him, a wall of earth suddenly shot out of the ground and hit Lochras'' elbow joint, causing his arm to be raised into the air and for his sword topletely miss Ss.


    ''Is he trying to kill me?'' Ss snorted and created a two pirs under his feet to shoot him back.


    Stabbing the staff into the ground, Ss quickly stopped his momentum and created a tier-2 earth wave spell that sent a wave through the earth, causing it to bulge up and travel toward Lochras.


    It continued to get bigger and bigger until it was in front of Lochras and had already devoured the earth all from before.


    Bending his knees, Lochras shot several meters into the air, yet the moment he reached his peak altitude, he saw an earth st inches away from him.


    *SWOOSH*


    But just like before, his sword moved like lightning, and its sliced through the earth st and crumbled it to bits.


    Lochras then nced at Ss and narrowed his eyes at the tier-1 magic circle inches away from Ss'' other hand. He wasn''t doing anything with it, so Lochras threw that thought aside.


    Coating his de with toki, Lochras shed it through the air. Ss expected an arch of pressurized wind to suddenly shoot toward him, but what happened was much worse than he had expected.


    Toki, or to be specific, mana formed around the arch of wind. It created some kind of visual distortion around the arch, but that wasn''t all.


    The arch shot toward Ss faster than he would have ever expected, but without thinking twice, he pointed the staff at it and created three magic circles in front of him.


    Both Keira and Lochras'' eyes widened in shock when they saw this. Sure, Lochras didn''t know much about magic, but everyone knew that you could reach a certain mana core grade to create more than one spell at a time.


    Sure, most people used incantation anyway, so most people couldn''t create multiple spells at a time. However, this didn''t mean that they couldn''t create copies of the same spell multiple times. It just took extraordinary understanding and control over their own element to do such a thing.


    Even Keira, who has an amethyst core, was unable to do such a thing without a lot of effort. Yet, Ss was doing exactly that with a single wave of Keira''s staff.


    *Bang, Bang, Bang*


    Threat earth bullets shot out and hit particr points of the arch.


    The arch instantly broke apart, and the toki covering it disappeared as well, but by then, Lochras was already on the ground and charging at Ss again.


    Ss knew that Lochras wasn''t going all out. He looked far too rxed for that, but it made sense. He is an imperial knight. He had to be strong. Otherwise, he wouldn''t be an imperial knight.


    Ss knew he couldn''t beat him with just the earth element. Even though he felt like he had infinite mana since the staff used very little of his mana to actually create spells, he knew he wouldn''t win.


    All he needed to do was impress his father enough to show him he could care for himself, even in moments of danger.


    "You think you''re so strong huh." Ss muttered to himself and pointed the staff at Lochras. No matter Lochras''s strength, a saying back on earth gave Ss confidence in at least holding a candle to his father.


    "Brains over brawns."