‘Right now, Diella must be training.’
A separate mansion had been prepared for Aiselin. Many flowers swayed in the wind among statues adorned with beautifully carved lilies on their pedestals.
Creak.
Aiselin, seated in the garden reading a book, suddenly nodded, her mind preoccupied with concern for her younger sister.
Although the magical duel with Denise was to take place at Diella’s mansion, the outco would surely spread throughout the Rose Salon.
‘I just hope nothing serious happens… And that no unnecessary gossip cos of it…’
Comparing others was a social habit. Even when it ant nothing, people evaluated and contrasted, deciding who was better or worse.
Beyond right or wrong, it was inevitable—and if one wanted attention, it was sothing they had to endure. Aiselin understood that well.
Having recently gained notoriety after entering Ebelstein’s social circles, she had beco nearly synonymous with the face of the Rose Salon.
Receiving glances from noble ladies, becoming the subject of whispers, judgnts, and comparisons—this was as natural as breathing. And the figures she was most often compared to, of course, were others equally prestigious and exceptional.
If anyone could be ntioned in the sa breath as Aiselin, it would be Ellen and Denise—the daughters of the three great noble families.
Ellen was transparent both inside and out, but Denise was the complete opposite.
‘She always maintains the appearance of an elegant lady, but her true nature seems more indolent than expected…’
Aiselin’s insight was sharp.
Occasionally, when they crossed paths in duel arenas or academic challenges, she had managed to glimpse Denise’s essence.
Sotis, Denise’s gaze held disinterest, a clear sign of boredom with everything.
Even her passions seed driven only by necessity.
Most noble ladies were unaware of Denise’s background, but the perceptive Aiselin had discerned part of her true self through repeated encounters and careful observation.
No matter the situation, Denise just wanted to resolve it quickly and move on, and if the burden beca too great, she would rather drop everything and live comfortably, ard with extraordinary survival instincts.
She had never wondered what would happen if Denise gave it her all.
“…”
Aiselin and Ellen had always defeated Denise in magical duels.
Since Denise wasn’t obsessed with winning or losing, once the spell exchange reached a certain intensity, she would simply surrender and end the match. Not only Aiselin and Ellen, who were relatively close to her, but no lady in the Rose Salon had ever seen Denise fight with everything she had.
In other words, no one in the Rose Salon truly knew her full potential.
Ironically, that fact unsettled Aiselin.
When she saw Denise simultaneously conjure five first-level combat spells—Shockwave, Ice Lance, Magic Arrow, Rapid Freeze, and Thornbush—she couldn’t help but be amazed.
Diella, furious, was trying to utterly shatter Denise’s magical defenses without holding back.
If one of them ended up seriously hurt, it could escalate into a conflict between families. That was sothing Aiselin would deal with when the ti ca. With that brutal thought in mind, Diella hurled spells as if she were pouring them out.
*
Though her montum was as threatening as a tiger on the attack, Denise smirked mockingly and raised her left hand to form a magic circle.
‘The mage won of the Duplain family certainly have strong personalities.’
Denise had already gathered information on the three great noble families.
Compared to Aiselin’s magic, which followed a well-structured path, Diella’s was free and wild.
Though she used seemingly ordinary first-level spells, the way Diella freely modified them made them difficult to deal with.
However, Denise’s specialty was bringing order to chaos.
When she observed closely, she could clearly see the patterns within scattered magic. No matter how free the style, personal habits and temperant would always show through.
Bang!
She easily dodged the falling ice lances and the pillars rising from the ground.
Evading Diella’s magic wasn’t hard. But that didn’t an defeating her was easy.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
An overwhelming offensive power. The gap she created wasn’t sothing easily overco.
Denise had an exceptional talent for handling magic with precision, but she wasn’t particularly skilled at defeating opponents through brute strength alone.
She simply sensed the opponent’s magic, dodged, exploited, and found openings.
Her combat style resembled that of a swordswoman who had refined her technique to the limit.
‘She’s clearly intent on giving
no chance to attack. Does she know this instinctively…?’
While Denise analyzed her opponent with calculated moves, Diella attacked like a natural disaster—wild and unrestrained.
If this were an academic duel, logic and reason would be key to victory, but in a magical duel, montum and intuition weighed more.
In the end, this duel in the training hall was favorable terrain for Diella.
‘Haa…’
A competent strategist never walks into the enemy’s trap. If Denise had truly wanted to win, she wouldn’t have allowed things to reach this point.
But since her original plan was to lose, that’s how it had co to this. Now that things had changed, all she had to do was find a path to victory from here.
Amid the magical storm, Denise’s vision darkened for a mont, then lit up.
She understood the flow of thought, took in every detail as information, and ticulously observed the movents of her petite opponent.
Ti slowed. For a mont, even sound disappeared.
Her heart pounded; her mind accelerated. She grasped every thread swaying from the frills of her dress, constructing the logic needed to defeat her.
In the seconds that Diella’s spells flew—
She saw Diella’s figure through the gaps between countless ice lances and magical arrows.
She was small and delicate. With abundant blonde hair, marble-like skin, blue eyes like Denise’s, the habit of dragging her right foot slightly, inhaling deeply when casting, and clenching her left fist when launching ice lances.
“Lady Denise.”
“The ability to sense magic can be honed through repeated practice. But the eyes that perceive a person’s habits and essence before their spells—those cannot be taught. They co from experience.”
Her sharp eyes followed the direction of the magic.
Her frilly dress was slightly oversized, her left arm moved awkwardly, and the black rose hairpin on her head sotis blocked her view, making her shake her head now and then. When the stormy wind of her spells blew, she would firmly grip her skirt.
From fingertips to toes, the girl nad Diella had beco information completely absorbed into Denise’s mind.
“Lady Denise’s observational skill is a gift no one else can learn. Isn’t this an age where countless rcenaries risk their lives in labyrinths to sharpen their senses?”
“Don’t underestimate the value of that ability, Lady Denise.”
The words of Dereck, repeated many tis during their lessons, echoed in her ears, turning her gaze serious.
While many of her Beltus family peers only cared about family prestige, it was her ntor’s advice—soone who saw her true nature—that nurtured her talent.
Though his face always looked like he was chewing gravel, she engraved those words in her heart while pretending to be indifferent.
Thud!
Diella’s spell hit and dust billowed—but Denise’s magic barriers did not activate.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Instead, Denise’s magic began to radiate from within the dust cloud.
Instantly, a magical burst engulfed the area, sweeping the dust away in a blink.
With silver hair fluttering, Denise invoked the two-star tracking spell “Vigilance.”
It was the culmination of exploration magic, honed to perfection under Dereck’s tutelage.
Denise’s magic circle spread across the entire hall in an instant, dominating the space.
“Oh!”
A spectacle of scattered stars appeared. Not only the servants but even Diella widened her eyes in surprise.
Denise was one of the three most respected ladies in the Rose Salon. Naturally, her magical skill was assud to be considerable.
But no one had expected her to be at the two-star level.
Even the renowned Aiselin had only recently mastered two-star spells and received praise for it.
Yet Denise had reached a comparable level—and had hidden it until now.
“W-What is this…?”
Diella stared blankly at Denise erging from the dust. Denise wasn’t in perfect condition.
Her skirt was torn, covered in dust, and the ribbon that tied her hair had co loose, lying on the floor.
Her face was stained with dirt, but most shocking was the line of blood running down her temple.
It was hard to believe what she was seeing. Typically, magical duels between noble ladies always included high-level protective barriers.
Because no scratches or wounds were allowed on their bodies. But seeing Denise, it was clear the barriers hadn’t activated at all.
Diella’s eyes sharpened as she sensed the magical aura surrounding Denise’s body.
She could clearly feel a powerful magic barrier. It must have been embedded in her jewelry, sothing not easily deactivated.
Only one possibility remained.
‘She… deactivated her own barriers!’
Amid the dust, she had removed the enchanted jewelry and deactivated her barriers. The reason was clear. The duel’s result was determined by whether or not the opponent’s barriers activated.
Since the rule was that a triggered barrier ant defeat, she deactivated hers montarily when no one could see. And when visibility returned, she could resu the facade of having her barriers up.
That action didn’t just exploit a loophole in the rules—it mocked them.
Until now, no one had avoided defeat in such a way. Of course, noble ladies were considered too precious, and even a minor injury could cause a scandal.
How important was honor in a magical duel among nobles? Relying on tricks like this was unheard of.
That’s why the idea of removing one’s jewelry to disable the barriers was unthinkable. But Denise wasn’t bound by convention. Even if there was no honor in winning this way, she had done it without hesitation, risking serious injury.
The reason was simple. It wasn’t just about honor. Her ntor Dereck’s fate hung in the balance of this duel.
“An insect caught in the web.”
With blood trickling down her temple, Denise smiled slyly and activated a massive magic circle. What did it matter if it was a bit cowardly or underhanded? In the end, only victory mattered.
If Diella thought it was cowardly, she could do the sa and deactivate her barriers.
In fact, if she chose to, Diella could reveal her own barriers. But if the duel reached that stage, it would turn into a bloody brawl far beyond a legitimate magical contest.
Even so, if it ca to that, the servants would surely step in to stop it. That wasn’t a bad option, but Denise didn’t want to risk any further escalation.
So she activated the two-star spell “Vigilance.”
It hadn’t worked on Dereck, but against a fellow mage like Diella, it was completely different. Once caught in Denise’s magic circle, the world would be hers until her magic depleted or the circle faded.
Like a venomous spider’s web, there was no escape. As proof, Diella’s movents began to slow.
*
“W-What… what is this…?”
The sensation of every part of her body being pierced by energy.
Even the slightest movent of her fingers, the faintest tremble of her feet—everything seed to be under Denise’s conscious perception. It was terrifying.
Shocked, Diella tried to summon an ice lance, but a magic arrow was already flying toward where it would have ford. The arrow had been launched before the lance even existed. The implications were massive.
It ant Denise knew all of Diella’s actions seconds in advance.
“Ah…!”
No matter what she did, the counterasure was already underway. Denise’s eyes, focused to the extre, were those of a huntress effortlessly capturing a clumsy beast.
“Haah… Haah…”
The mistress of the web, crouched down to cast her spell, slowly rose to her feet. Her disheveled silver hair fell over her shoulders.
Her gaze was that of a sinister creature approaching its pitiful, ensnared prey.
Diella understood imdiately. Within this circle, it was impossible to create any variable outside Denise’s expectations.
She had to escape the circle and use her wild, unpredictable magic to counter Denise’s advantage.
She quickly looked around to assess the range of the spell.
“…This is ridiculous.”
Unfortunately, Denise’s magic circle covered the entire pavilion. Though she had learned the two-star spell “Vigilance” so ti ago, its original range was only a few ters.
But after training with Dereck in the art of magical detection, her limits had expanded.
‘All mages trained by Dereck surpass their own limits.’
She’d heard that rumor in the salons. And Diella had overlooked the fact that Denise, too, was one of his students.
“What… is this…?”
No matter how brilliant Diella’s talent was, she was still a rough gemstone.
But her opponent was already one of the most prestigious figures of the Rose Salon, and the top student of the greatest teacher Diella knew. Denise had always thought she could never match Aiselin, but in magical skill, she was already comparable.
Once Diella realized this gap, the duel was already over.
Bang!
“Ahhh!”
A magic arrow slipped elegantly through a blind spot in Diella’s awareness and triggered her barriers.
She hadn’t even had ti to react.
“Ah!”
As her protective barriers activated in an instant and enveloped her, her pupils finally dilated.
It was Diella’s defeat.
“…No, it can’t be…”
“How could she… reach such a level…?”
The attendants who had witnessed the duel were drenched in sweat. They had known Denise’s magical level was high, but never imagined it was this high.
In the silence that followed, Denise calmly brushed the dust from her dress and spoke.
“It was a good duel.”
Denise, regaining her elegance, smiled.
Silence lingered a mont longer. As the atmosphere slowly settled, Diella bit her lower lip hard.
Tears welled in her sparkling eyes.
Such was the world of competition.
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