"BEGIN!"
"Fall!" Alaric roared, voice cracking with manic triumph as he slammed his staff into the ground.
And the massive, burning asteroid above obeyed before it plummeted toward Nico.
From the sidelines, Vice-Commander Kurogane stiffened, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword as he took a step forward, "That boy will not survive that with mere Ice Pebbles!"
But Dove threw her arm sideways, halting him mid-stride, "So? You will desecrate the sanctity of a knight's duel?"
Her blue eyes narrowed, locking on the man standing with an unflinching grin beneath the asteroid's shadow.
Under the influence of Ice Reinforcement, Nico's mind was a frozen lake.
Raising his hand along with the four Ice Pebbles, he aimed directly at the center of the descending mass and let loose.
-Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa - !
-Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom -!
The air in front of Nico exploded into a supersonic barrage so dense and rapid that the four Spells blurred into four solid, blinding beams of white light akin to four Gatling guns screaming in unison and began obliterating the asteroid piece by piece.
Even the physics of the collision were brutal.
The first wave of Armor-Piercing Ice Pebbles struck it at Mach 1, cracking open stress points. A microsecond later, Fragmentation rounds detonated onto those same stress points with ice shards and concussive force.
It was the principle of a single drop of water wearing down a stone over centuries, compressed into the span of a single heartbeat.
A massive cloud of steam erupted before expanding outwards as the ice sublimated instantly against the lava, completely shrouding Alaric's descending spell in a violent white fog of steam and dust.
"What in the…" Kurogane's jaw went slack as he watched, Nico's mere Ice Pebbles eviscerating the massive asteroid inside that thick fog above.
Nom-Nom, with her hands crossed behind her head, just grinned, watching the display with a smug satisfaction that said, 'I saw this coming from way over there.'
Beside her, Peko's eyes went wide. For the first time, she was seeing the true extent of her 'brother's' capabilities and his sheer, overwhelming mana output.
Even Alaric stood frozen, his brain unable to comprehend what his eyes were seeing.
"This is stupid!" Alaric gritted his teeth, "The amount of mana he's already used is…"
The noise overhead reached a fever pitch of shrieking roars of AP Pebbles and Fragmentation Pebbles annihilating the flaming boulder.
By the time Alaric's spells 'reached' halfway to Nico, it had ceased to exist, made obvious by Nico's pebbles flying past the fog of steam and dust in the sky.
"It's gone…?" Dove whispered from the sidelines as she stared above at the thick cloud of steam and dust in utter disbelief.
All that fell from that fog was just gravel and small pebbles that pattered harmlessly onto the ground around Nico as he slowly lowered his hand, still keeping the spell active.
Exhaling, he let out a stream of white mist and looked through the haze at the stunned 'War Mage'.
"You know, the old fogies were onto something," Nico said with a widening grin as he levelled the pebbles at Alaric, "… There is indeed strength in numbers."
"Shit!"
-Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa - !
Acting on pure survival instinct, Alaric shrieked and slammed his staff into the earth, erupting a wall of magma from the ground before –
-Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom -!
The impact was continuous and deafening as Nico's Ice Pebbles slammed into the magma wall, drilling holes faster than the eye could follow.
Alaric had no choice but to grit his teeth and pour every ounce of mana he could carry through his circuits into the barrier, forcing the lava to regenerate and fill the gaps the very second they were created.
And the duel instantly shifted from a clash of spells to a brutal contest of attrition.
On the sidelines, Vice-Commander Kurogane watched the stalemate with stunned eyes.
He saw the sheer volume of mana Nico was casually expending, an amount that should have drained an average mage in seconds.
"The report on Nico did say he claimed to recover mana faster than he could spend it..." Kurogane muttered, unable to look away from the boy who was firing a literal river of magic without breaking a sweat.
A spell wasn't just a way to conjure complicated magic. It was also an optimizer for the mana it would otherwise take conjure the magic through manual manipulation. That Tier-4, Sovereign's Ruin cost was less than a few hundred MP at best.
Yet the amount of MP Nico had spent against Alaric's asteroid alone had long surpassed a 'few hundred'.
"Apparently, he wasn't overstating..." Dove replied with shock apparent in her voice.
"Maybe he will mentally tire?" Kurogane asked, looking for any logical weakness. "Even if he recovers mana faster than he spends it, maintaining that rate of fire requires immense focus."
"I wouldn't count on it," Dove said, crossing her arms as she watched Nico continue without so much as a bead of sweat rolling down his temples. "… But in any case, the match is already decided. Alaric is using every ounce of mana his circuits can carry just to stay alive... he has no way to escape."
While behind the wall of magma, Alaric was living a nightmare.
His world had narrowed down to a single, agonizing purpose: repair the wall.
He felt his circuits burning as though boiling oil was being pumped through his veins, but he didn't dare stop as he gritted his teeth through the rhythmic torture that hammered against his eardrums.
Every time he managed to close a hole, three more blasted open less than a foot away as though patching a sinking ship with his bare hands,
Through a small, momentary hole in his wall, Alaric caught a glimpse of his opponent.
He expected to see Nico straining, expected to see sweat, shaking hands, or at least a grimace of effort.
Instead, he saw Nico standing there with a bored expression, looking as if he could keep this up until the sun burned out.
That's when the realization dawned on him: He really could keep this up until the sun burned out.
The arrogance that had carried him since birth, the pride of being a noble War Mage, skilled enough with the sword to become a proud Knight of Shinkotsku, crumbled into dust.
Tears of frustration and physical agony pricked at the corners of Alaric's eyes as his knees began to buckle. He had bitten off far more than he could chew, and now, he was going to choke on it.
And just as his mana capacity neared its limit, and the inevitability settled into his soul, Dove's voice thundered in everyone's ears –
"HALT!"