"Blood Needles," Vala chanted.
Five floating needles formed above his, each one composed entirely of a dark red liquid. For the moment, they remained perfectly still, hovering roughly ten centimeters above his head, as if patiently awaiting an order.
Macro immediately activated the bracelet's shield mode, raising the circular barrier of high-pressure water in front of his upper body.
Seeing the fear he had successfully instilled in the Minister of Technology, Vala smiled with clear satisfaction and gave a simple command.
"Go!"
At that instant, all five blood needles shot straight toward their target. With the shield already active, it initially appeared that they would meet the same fate as the Air Bullets before them. After all, they were both smaller and visibly slower than that previous spell.
But just before they could strike the shield, the needles suddenly changed direction with astonishing fluidity and speed. They slipped effortlessly around the high-pressure water barrier, as if it barely existed. Macro had anticipated this possibility and immediately attempted to move the shield to intercept them, but Vala's control over the needles had clearly improved dramatically since the last time Macro had witnessed this spell.
The needles easily evaded even his sudden adjustments.
Each of the five needles pierced through Macro's body and then instantly returned to their original position, floating calmly above Vala's head.
Two pierced his forearms, two more struck his thighs, and the final one passed through his stomach. Despite the alarming sight, they caused virtually no direct damage. The needles were extremely thin, far too thin to inflict serious wounds. All they managed to do was draw a small amount of blood from each puncture.
The sensation Macro felt was almost identical to that of a blood test: a brief sting, uncomfortable but far less painful than almost any real cut.
Even so, Vala wore a deeply satisfied grin.
The spectators watching from the stands were visibly confused. Considering what he had just announced to Macro, it seemed as though Vala had finally decided to become serious.
Yet the attack he had just performed…
Yes, he had bypassed Macro's shield and successfully struck him, but the damage inflicted by those five crimson needles appeared completely insignificant. It would take hundreds, if not thousands, of such attacks to bring down the Minister of Technology.
However, there was one person who knew with absolute certainty that this spell was anything but harmless.
That person was Macro himself.
After all, this was not the first time Vala had used this spell on him.
Most people hadn't noticed, but now five incredibly thin threads of blood connected the puncture wounds in Macro's body to the needles floating above Vala. If someone looked closely, they would notice that the blood forming those threads was constantly moving. It flowed steadily from Macro's wounds toward the needles.
And if one observed the needles carefully, it became evident that they were slowly, but continuously, growing larger.
'I really hoped I could stop them…' Macro thought, his chest tightening with sadness and nervous tension.
Vala had just set a timer for this match.
The blood composing those five threads was his own, and it was being used to enlarge and strengthen the needles under Vala's control. This meant that the longer the match continued, the more blood he would lose.
The only way to stop this spell was to destroy the needles themselves. Cutting the threads was useless, and evaporating them was just as ineffective. As long as there was blood inside Macro's body, the threads would reform instantly.
Even attempting to block the wounds was nearly impossible. The mana infused into the needles had transferred directly into the five punctures, preventing both healing and natural clotting. Sealing each wound with some kind of barrier would theoretically work, but doing so would require bandages stronger than steel. Anything less durable would be pierced immediately by the blood threads the moment he tried to block them.
Unfortunately, Macro had not yet managed to invent such bandages.
So the only feasible option was to eliminate the needles themselves. The problem was that as long as they remained small, they were extremely difficult to hit, especially considering that Vala could move them freely at will. And the larger they became, the more resistant they grew, in addition to significantly increasing their pure offensive power.
This left Macro with only one possible course of action: defeat his opponent before he passed out from blood loss.
But his body would not stop shaking.
The sight of this spell was dragging a memory back to the surface—one that, for the most part, he desperately wished to forget, but at the same time extremely precious.
It had happened more or less at the beginning of his second year at the Frassino Academy.
Macro remembered finding himself lying on the ground in a small rectangular arena, his complexion deathly pale. Standing before him was Vala, with five large blood-red thorns floating ominously above his head. The grin on his face back then was almost identical to the one he wore now in the present, although at that time there had been a faint trace of disappointment in his eyes.
Surrounding them was a large crowd of students, all watching in silence.
"What a waste of time," Vala had said coldly. "I decided to challenge you personally because a friend of mine gave me one of your inventions, the one that dries your hair quickly without using any mana. I was curious about what kind of person could create something so genuinely useful. But what a disappointment."
His gaze hardened.
"I didn't expect much from someone who, at eighteen years old, still hasn't learned how to use his Derived Magic. But this is worse than I imagined. Your skills in each of the Original Magics are nothing more than average. None of them stand out. It's as if you don't even have any magical affinity at all. Without your gadgets, you're nothing but a failure…"
The disgust in his voice had been unmistakable.
Macro's already anemic body had begun to tremble uncontrollably. It wasn't the first time he had been belittled by another student, but the one mocking him now was Vala Bloodhory—the prodigy of the academy, the student who had mastered her Derived Magic at just ten years old.
Most people in his position would probably have been jealous of him.
But Macro wasn't.
Until that moment, the emotion he had felt toward Vala had been pure admiration.
It was precisely because of that admiration that he had accepted the duel when Vala had proposed it to him earlier that morning. He had never expected to win, of course, but the match itself had gone much worse than he could have imagined. He had used at least one spell from each of the Original Magics he knew. Yet every single one had been repelled or blocked with absurd ease by Vala.
What little pride Macro had built by committing himself to learn at least one spell from each original element had been completely crushed in less than five minutes.
Worse still, because these words hurtful came from someone he admired so deeply, they cut even deeper. He couldn't even bring himself to look him in the face. Above all, because deep down, even Macro himself believed what he had said about his magic was true.
And yet, to his own surprise, his fists were clenched tightly at his sides.
It was a small gesture, but unmistakably one of rebellion—something no one else noticed except Macro himself. He didn't fully understand the reason behind it, but there had been something in Vala's words that he simply could not accept, even if he couldn't yet identify exactly what it was.
As Macro struggled to understand which word had triggered this reaction, Vala spoke again.
"But I have no doubt that what you create is useful," he said calmly. "So since I won, as we agreed, until the end of your years at this academy, if I ask you to build any object for me, you will do so without any right to refuse."
His voice was dripping with superiority.
Hearing this, the trembling in Macro's body slowly subsided, and his hands relaxed.
That "agreement" had been the second reason he had accepted the challenge in the first place. He hadn't minded the idea of his inventions being used by someone he admired. Even now, despite the doubts beginning to form in his heart after that match, those doubts were quickly swept away by a single undeniable fact.
Vala found his inventions useful.
And for Macro, at that time, that had been enough.
So, with the little energy he had left, he replied, "C-certainly," in a voice filled with joy, and then immediately fainted, having lost far too much blood.
As he lost consciousness, he heard the laughter of the spectators, almost certainly directed at him. Yet in that moment, he didn't care. The sound was swept away from his mind by the happiness born from that promise, and by that unresolved spark of anger for which he had still not found an answer.
A full month passed after that encounter.
Macro now sat alone in his room at the academy, lost in thought. On the surface, everything seemed to be unfolding exactly as he had hoped. Vala took clear pleasure in using his inventions and frequently complimented them. Thanks to that, his creations had become more popular than ever in the school.
That was, of course, leaving aside the one time he had shown her the design for his Elmental Crossbow, only for Vala to absolutely forbid him from building it, ordering him to burn every design related to it, along with any other weapon he had already begun developing.
It was also true that the people who called him a failure had not stopped doing so. But that was not something he had ever expected to change. After all, when it came to magic, they were obviously right.
And yet, something still didn't sit well with him.
There was something that continued to gnaw at his mind, something that still made him angry. Even a month after that question had first formed in his thoughts, the answer remained elusive, and his mental state worsened with each passing day.
"What am I missing…?" Macro asked himself aloud, his voice barely above a whisper.
Suddenly, the door to his room burst open.
An elderly human man stepped inside, his neatly combed gray hair and immaculately groomed thick mustache immediately standing out. He appeared to be in his sixties, if not older, as evidenced by the deep wrinkles lining his face. Yet his body showed none of the frailty one might expect from someone nearing the later decades of life. His amber eyes sparkled with unrestrained passion.
He wore an open lab coat that fit his tall frame perfectly. Beneath it was an elegant dark red jacket, paired with a midnight blue and orange striped tie. Elegant midnight blue trousers completed the outfit, secured by a leather belt from which a small brown bag hung, fastened with a delicate gold cord.
The man glanced around the room briefly before spotting Macro sitting on the edge of his bed.
Then, without warning, he rushed toward the boy. Grabbing one of Macro's hands, he squeezed it tightly, while with the other he pulled out an extremely large pen. It was so big that it seemed impossible for it to fit in such a small bag. Leaning in close, he asked with overwhelming enthusiasm and vehemence:
"Boy, did you invent this automatic pen?!"
Macro was completely speechless.
Not only because of the man's sudden and dramatic entrance into his room, but above all because he recognized him instantly.
Standing before him was Archiego Piano, the current Minister of Technology of the Kingdom of Yggdora—one of the very few humans who had ever risen to such a position in a kingdom populated primarily by elves.
And the person Macro had admired more than anyone else in the world.