'I didn't even do anything. It was all him! That also being vague.' Levy felt like she had been wronged.
Every step she took only served to raise her panic.
'I need to find a way to contact somebody else. Maybe escape. Just—'
"What took you so long?" Gray said, leaning against a tree.
"Took a while to find her," Cana said, pointing towards Levy, before continuing her walk.
Gray joined her on the side.
'She also roped in Gray in this. Escaping would be hard now...' Levy looked left and right, trying to find any opportunity to be not here.
Her eyes widened as she noticed red in the usual green forest.
"Oh, you are here too. I thought you had already reached the location before." Cana raised a brow.
"I got lost."
"..."
Erza joined the group.
'What the hell is happening? How did they rope in the ever-strict Erza to bury me?' Levy couldn't understand what was happening.
They soon reached the location.
Kazu was sitting on a branch of a tree.
'Kazu too?... Wait, what's happening exactly?'
He jumped off the branch and landed on the ground.
"We have quite a crowd for a simple duel."
Cana shrugged. "It would have been better if we did it behind the guild building."
"So, that you could bet?" Gray deadpanned.
"What's the problem with betting?" Cana folded her arms.
Meanwhile, Erza took a spot a few metres away from Kazu, standing opposite to him.
"Ready?"
Erza summoned a sword in her hand, along with multiple swords that appeared around her, all pointing at Kazu.
Erza nodded.
Kazu ignored the bickering duo and looked at Levy.
"Can you say start?"
Levy nodded. "Start." She said from her position only, which Kazu hadn't expected.
He barely had time to duck as a fist grazed past him.
'The hell!?' He punched Erza's stomach.
KLANG
A sword intercepted him.
7 small yellow spheres were created around him and immediately shot at Erza at lightning speed.
However, Erza ignored them and swung her sword at Kazu, who rolled sideways.
All those seven magic bullets got neutralised by Erza's swords, which swung in the air with blinding speed.
They then shot forward at Kazu.
'Lock.'
CRACK
Just as Kazu tried to immobilise Erza, his barrier instantly broke a moment later.
She had summoned a sword just as he made a barrier around her.
"Amazing." Kazu made multiple barriers around himself to stop the flying swords while backing away from Erza.
'To think that she already surpassed me in physical strength despite my Enhancement magic, I guess the genes really are unfair.' Kazu wryly smiled.
The only reason he was able to compete with her was due to his instinct magic, which was able to predict her movements before she did them.
'She had also clearly practised against countering my Lock. And her telkinisis had improved even further. Not only are her sword swings so fast, but the speed and coordination of her swords are way better. Her multi-tasking had already surpassed mine or Gray's. Guess, she really is worth of her future epithet 'Titania'.' Kazu was seriously impressed by Erza's progress.
In the last year, he had not only continued working on his physique, but due to his work on his new technique, he saw some improvements in his Ethernano manipulation too, increasing his effectiveness of enhancement.
Yet he was still getting overpowered.
"So, where is the new technique you wanted to show me?"
"Yeah, I was just thinking of whether to use it or not." 'The thing is, I still have a chance to defeat Erza with a 25 per cent or 50 per cent Ethernano-powered One-Hit Ko. But, there's a chance that she won't be knocked out, making my magic use risky.'
"I thought the point of this spar was that only." Erza kicked at Kazu, who elbowed her leg away, deflecting it.
"Yeah, you are right. I was just pointlessly ruminating." Kazu shook his head to all the thoughts.
'Active Instincts.'
The world lost all its colour, turning to a colourless world for Kazu.
He then looked at Erza's swords—specifically at how the Ethernano flowed around them, enabling them to be controlled telekinetically.
Kazu didn't know how long he had observed, but everything in the world other than him and swords disappeared.
He wasn't worried about Erza defeating him at that time. His instincts won't allow him to get hit.
"Done." Kazu lightly smiled.
He stopped firing any more magic bullets or putting up barriers and let the swords come near him.
Erza raised a brow at that. However, before she could say anything, tendrils of ethernano shot out of Kazu's body.
"What?" Erza watched in shock as she felt the telekinetic connection between her and the swords break just as those swords came in contact with those tendrils.
She paused completely, looking at Kazu with a wary gaze.
The latter didn't reply immediately. He just stared at her. This happened for a few moments before he opened his mouth.
"I neutralised your magic by arranging the Ethernano in the exact opposite way from the arrangement in your magic."
"...What?" Erza blinked, processing what he said for a few seconds. She was not the only one. The other three were shocked too.
"How is that even possible? Isn't the spell pattern dynamically changing at each moment?" Levy was the first one to challenge Kazu's statement.
"Indeed, but at the base level, a spell pattern is still fixed. That's how a mage uses a unique spell in the first place. But when you materialise that fixed structure, the spell structure starts extending, which depends on your intention.
What do I mean by intention? Like, just take Erza's telekinesis as an example. Her intention involves the power and the direction at which she's making that sword swing. I could even break it down more, like the direction could be denoted by angles and all that. However, almost everything there is done instinctively.
My point is that—her intention is changing continuously, leading to the spell pattern change continuously too. What I did was mimic it at one instant and neutralise it completely there itself."
Kazu didn't hold back with his explanation. The reason was that first, everyone here was close to him, and second, this is going to be one of his signature techniques, for which he would be known.
He was confident that even if everyone knew how it worked, not many would be able to replicate.
For one to replicate this, not only do they require a very high degree of Ethernano manipulation, one which would take too long to reach without a proper affinity, but they will also ability to do numerous calculations instantly—which Kazu does using his 'Active Instincts.'
The clearing was now silent. Everyone was trying to process the technique in itself.
"Also..." Kazu broke the silence. "This makes me pretty deadly in close combat." He kicked the ground, appearing in front of Erza with his fist cocked back.
Erza punched in return while summoning multiple swords.
BOOM
The air pressure generated when their fists met was enough to almost blow Levy away, who was more than a hundred metres away from the impact.
Erza frowned when she looked at the tendrils of mana that touched her swords.
'I need to recreate distance. Though I can't directly use telekinesis, I could just throw my swords with high force. In that case, it won't matter if he disables my magic then.' Erza immediately noticed a flaw in Kazu's new technique and prepared a countermeasure for it.
She swung her sword as she combated Kazu while trying to create distance.
"I could probably guess what's going on in your mind. That's not a bad plan. Unfortunately, it would have worked if you already had a great distance between us." Kazu shook his head.
"What—" Erza suddenly felt her body go still.
'Lock.'
However, she didn't panic. Almost instinctively, she used her requip magic to summon a sword around her to break the barrier—
only for nothing to happen.
Erza's eyes widened in shock. "You... neutralised my requip?" Unlike the swords, this one didn't have a physical form and the magic circles could be sensed for only a moment where they appeared.
Kazu smiled. "Yeah. Took a bit to analyse, but yeah." 'My instincts are helping me predict where she would make the spell.'
Erza tried to summon a sword at multiple different positions simultaneously.
However, to her shock, Kazu neutralised all of them simultaneously, too.
"Do you have any other tricks left up your sleeve? If you want to, I can free you, and we could continue." Kazu proposed.
"Unfortunately, no, I didn't make any new techniques, just focused on improving what I know. If it were a real battle, I would have already lost. Let's end this here."
Kazu nodded and removed the barrier around her.
"Whoa, that technique was so cool! Is that the one you were talking about? This really is a broken technique." Cana had literally stars in her eyes.
Kazu grinned. "Yup, I took the risk and spent a few months on it. This is the first of the two I had envisaged. It's called Destructive Interference. Funnily, I was inspired to develop it from you."
"Me?" Cana tilted her head in confusion.
***
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