“Firebolt!”

  Fire noises!

  Without any time to waste, Alice raises her left hand towards the elder and quickly launches a Firebolt towards him. Unfortunately, the Elder Black Wolf dodges it quite easily by simply sidestepping to his left; however, with this, the battle has officially started.

  Step!

  With all of her courage gathered and with her eyes dead set on the Elder, she bends her knees slightly while leaning forward by just a bit and with some force behind it, she dashes towards the Elder with some speed however, he stands still, carefully and meticulously watching what Alice is currently doing and what she might do, showing off his intelligence, battle intelligence I should say. In a matter of moments Alice closes the gap, getting near enough to take a swing at him.

  Woosh! Clash!

  With a heavy upper swing but one a little bit sideways, she tries to cut down the Elder head in half however, even though her claymore is ignited with blazing hot flames the Elder simply blocks it by using his claws from his left paw. It was a simple block on his part and while she is not surprised by this, it does not mean that, her swing didn’t have any force behind it and of course, seeing it getting blocked like nothing is a truth a little hard to swallow and while she still hasn’t noticed, fear and self-doubt is starting to creep on the back of her mind.

  You cannot stop now Alice, just keep at it!

  Slash! Clash! Swoosh! Clash!

  That’s it Alice! She quickly sends her self-doubt into the void and with it, she initiates a series of strikes towards the Elder, all aimed to cut him down.

  Up-Down

  Left-Right

  Right-Left

  Diagonal-Sideways

  Strike after strike, swing after swing, she tries everything she can to strike down the Elder however, he keeps on effortlessly blocking each attempt from Alice. Dammit, it really is a one-sided battle after all, the Elder is barely moving at all and yet, he is casually keeping up with Alice. There is no way that she wouldn’t quickly notice this, she’s no beginner at all, but with it, it’s time to change strategy or in other words, time to put even more effort behind her strikes.

  “Inferno Slash!”

  Fire noises!

  With her claymore way up in the air, as much as her arms physically allow her to do so, from above she tries to strike him down but this time, she uses a magic spell to do so, increasing the temperature of the flames of her claymore by a few degrees before striking him. It is supposed to be a heavy attack however, this time around, the Elder parries the attack instead of blocking it, and once again, doing so without much effort at all, sending her claymore upwards and somewhat backwards and consequently, herself, leaving him with quite the opening to strike.

  Bam!

  The hit was violent but the impact was even more brutal, sending Alice flying backwards a couple meters. It was a simple tail swipe towards her but he did so by first spinning around in place so that he could gain momentum behind his tail swipe and consequence, increasing the strength of such an attack without using too much effort behind it. However, before he hit her and right at the beginning of his spin, his tail gained a white colour to it, one that is quite bright or in other words, he’s using a skill or in this case, what we consider a Martial Arts skill. Amazing but, moving on, what he uses is the skill Iron Tail, a skill that covers the entirety of the tail of the user with something akin to a magic shield, increasing the weight of said tail by several times without actually making the user feel said weight, however the target sure will. There was nothing that she could do to protect herself; instead, she stiffened up the muscles in her abdomen in an attempt of creating a “shield” as the Elder was aiming towards the stomach and he did actually hit her on said spot.

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  “ALICE!!!”

  Thanks to the skill Fear, the majority of the students of the group are in a complete mess, some of them are biting the nails off their fingers, others are embracing themselves tightly as the fear of death consumes their very living soul, these ones are in fact, the weakest ones of the group and thanks to that cruel fact, they are suffering the most, not even able to process what’s happening in front of them. But at least two of them are conscious enough to see what’s happening, shaking down to their very cores from fear and despair of course but, still sane enough to be able to understand the situation at hand and when they see Alice getting hit and sent flying, with all of their might they shout her name, even though they weren’t the ones who got hit, they still felt the pain behind it, or in this case, as they see the worst getting clear and predictable.

  “Cough! Cough!”

  Thanks to what she did before getting hit, there is no blood coming out from her coughs however, that does not mean it did not hurt like hell. However, this is not enough and she knows damn well that she cannot stop now, she has to win somehow and with this determination in mind and with the fear and self-doubt slowly creeping at the back of her mind, she gets up and readies up once again.

  “(That thing is fast and strong… I cannot afford to get hit like that too many times as otherwise, I really won’t be able to stand up after a few of them, let alone win. I knew that, a single rank above is already leaps and above but, this is too much of a difference…)”

  I understand her worries but, there is no time to be thinking about this, it seems the Elder has other plans on his mind as for the first time, he has gone on the offensive. Quickly and faster than Alice, he dashes towards her and once he got close enough, around 15 meters or so, he leaped at her with his front paws ready to tear her apart. However, she was ready of him, somewhat, blocking his claws with her claymore as he tries to rip her a new face out of her, but even though she used the flat part of her claymore, one that completely blocked the attack from the Elder, thanks to the sheer strength behind it, the claymore itself ended up hitting Alice on her chest and after that, it was pressed against her for brief moments as the Elder uses it as a platform to jump backwards so that, he can do it again. This of course, not only hurts her by quite a bit, it’s also enough to push her backwards a step or so, destabilizing her form in the process.

  As I mentioned before, this is not over yet, right after the first failed attempt, the Elder tries again, getting the same results although this time around, Alice was more prepared, rather than blocking it with the flat part of the blade of her claymore, instead, she clashes with the claws of his paws, barely changing their trajectory but unfortunately, they still are able to damage her as they skim through her skin, cutting it in the process. She simply does not have enough strength to fully block the attacks or even parry them. This goes for a few times, she cannot counter attack and with each time that the Elder attacks her, Alice gets slowly but surely more damaged and also tired at the same time. If this keeps up, it’s a matter of time until it’s over for her. She more than knows this and that’s why she’s waiting for it.

  For the opportunity to strike back.

  Step!

  The Elder positioned himself right in front of her, ready to leap at her and to rip her apart; however, little did he know that this is exactly where she wanted him to be.

  Her counterattack begins.

  Magic noises!

  The Elder leaps at her with quite the force behind it; however, right in front of her and in the ground, a magic circle slightly bigger than him is formed, one that is red and ready to be activated at any given moment. He’s mid motion and mid-air, just mere moments from striking Alice and he’s also right above the magic circle, while Alice still hasn’t done any damage to him, that does not mean that she cannot do it and since he has no clue what will be coming out of the magic circle, he decided the best course is to dodge whatever she’s trying to do. If he wasn’t mid-air that is.

  “Flame Wall!”

  Fire noises!

  Or it would’ve been a problem for him if Alice didn’t wait for him to touch the ground first. Because of this, he was able to barely dodge the Flame Wall and he did so by jumping backwards although, this might have been quite the grand plan that I’m only now understanding as not only she was expecting this from him, he’s currently where she wants him to be, mid-air and wide open. Nice one Alice and since the Flame Wall is basically a wall made of fire, you are currently being “hidden” by it and while we can say the same about the Elder, since this was planned by her, it does not matter at all.

  “Fireball!”

  Swoosh!

  As fast as she can, she raises her hand towards where the Elder might be and from the palm of her hand, a red magic circle appears, one that has around 30 or so centimetres of diameter. From what seems to be coming out of the Flame Wall itself, a somewhat big Fireball comes through it and perfectly directed at the Elder, it more than seems that she used her Magic Sense skill to sense where he is.

  “He’s mid-air! He cannot dodge it! He will get hit!”

  Anyone with a single functional eyeball seeing this can easily draw this conclusion and those with two of them, the same happens however, reality is more than often what it does not seem to be and somehow, even more often what we don’t want it to be.