Chapter 171: Reflection of the Moon on the Water
His main opponent was Zak Van Spina, a young man with mid-length black hair and piercing green eyes marked by determination. A fifth-circle mage specialized in nature magic, he made thick, grasping vines burst from the frozen ground.
Zak’s fingers traced green runes.
Living wooden tendrils burst forth, seeking to ensnare Jasper.
Another, thinner and faster, cracked like a snake toward his legs. Jasper barely dodged, one dagger cleanly severing a third vine.
Jasper tried to counterattack but the younger brother showed raw and aggressive talent, leaving no room for maneuver.
Not far away, a scene contrasted violently with the fury of the fight. Rosalinda Van Spina, sixth in the overall rankings, was kneeling beside a Twilight student who was bleeding from a gash on his leg.
She had long silky green hair and eyes of the sa deep, worried color, set in a face with fine, slightly angular features. Her hands, enveloped in a soothing glow of tender green, passed over the wound.
But her body trembled, a visceral timidity and fear nearly paralyzing her. She lifted her eyes toward the combatants, and her soft voice broke under the effort. "Please... stop... We’re going to end up hurting each other needlessly..." No one was listening.
Katrina, for her part, was a storm of frost. Her bow fired Piercing Frost Arrows that left trails of crystals in the air and froze everything they touched.
But she was pressed by Jezabel, Lady of the Sun, a fifth-circle mage. Jezabel had activated her , her eyes glowing with a cyan light to analyze flows and assess threats.
"You’re holding up well, half-elf," Jezabel called out.
She conjured a vivid fla in her palm and shaped it into a delicate-winged bird of fire. With a gesture, the bird launched, spiraling to evade Katrina’s frost arrows and diving toward her with intense heat.
Katrina countered with a
to protect herself, but the insistent fire bird forced her to keep moving constantly.
Jezabel followed up, this ti defensive.
A wave of scorching heat emanated from her and solidified into a luminous, rippling shield that lted the surrounding snow and vaporized the ice projectiles.
Under the pressure, Katrina had no other choice. She closed her eyes, and a deep bond activated within her.
The air around her vibrated, then an ethereal silhouette erged from her back. It was an Epic-rank sylph spirit.
The creature, barely a ter tall, had eight delicate, translucent dragonfly wings that beat silently. Its face possessed a fairy-like, adorable beauty, a perfect resemblance to Katrina’s fine features, but imbued with a serenity unlike the psychopathic expression she wore.
The spirit rged into her in a burst of bluish light.
Katrina’s silhouette beca haloed in an icy glow. Eight dragonfly wings made of frost and wind appeared at her back. Her white hair with black tips seed to co alive, bathed in an aura of frozen wind. Her glacial blue eyes shone with tenfold power.
A fourth-circle mage with an affinity for wind and ice.
She was now a hybrid entity, both half-elf and elental spirit.
Even if this transformation lasted only a few minutes.
She raised her bow without touching it. The wind charged with frost and ford a Swirling Arrow of Ice and Wind by itself.
She released it with a flick of her hand. The arrow, far more powerful and faster than the previous ones, sliced Jezabel’s Pursuit Bird into two clouds of steam and crashed against the Solar Veil with a violent crackle, making the heat shield waver.
Jezabel’s gaze grew more serious. The balance of the duel had just shifted.
Resonance was one of the exclusive elven techniques that fused for a few minutes with one’s guardian spirit to boost mana and attacks.
Faced with Katrina’s unleashed power in resonance, she knew she might have to resort to her most powerful spells, or even her ultimate transformation: .
The frozen battlefield had now beco the stage for a clash between two exceptional elental powers.
The intensity of the battle on the field reached a deadlock. Katrina, though strengthened by her resonance with the sylphide, realized she could not break through Jezabel’s solar defense alone and save her clan from defeat.
’Lady Lynn, we need your help.’ she said in her mind.
As Jasper nocked arrows, the air grew heavy with moisture before a translucent silhouette, shaped from pure water, materialized. It embraced him from behind, its liquid and cold arms closing around his neck.
The features of the aqueous figure were a perfect replica of Lynn, but imbued with a supernatural serenity.
"I’m here, darling," murmured Lynn’s projection, her voice a crystalline echo in Jasper’s mind.
"Lynn," Jasper breathed.
"What are you doing here?"
"I ca to help my man," replied Lynn’s projection, her watery palm pressing against his back. A powerful and soothing flow of pure, regenerative water elental mana seeped through his armor, pouring directly into his mana heart like a revitalizing tide.
Jasper’s fatigue partially vanished.
It was one of Lynn’s abilities: using her elental spirit to project pure mana, even across hundreds of kiloters.
The duel between Jasper and Zak Van Spina was reaching its climax. Jasper was an exceptional archer, and Lynn, his fiancée, one of the most versatile and powerful mages of their generation. But it was when they fought in concert that their true, almost symbiotic synergy revealed itself.
Boosted by the influx of energy from Lynn’s projection through Katrina, Jasper seed to draw from a deep reserve.
In one fluid motion, he emptied his virtual quiver, firing twenty arrows in a sequence so rapid they ford a silver curtain in the air.
Then he slightly slid his blindfold. His left Moon eye, usually veiled, was exposed. It shone with a pearly, supernatural glow, and a thin trickle of blood imdiately flowed from his eyelid, the consequence of sensory overload.
He articulated the words that only the bond with Lynn could make possible: "Reflection of the Moon on the Water!"
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