Chapter 559: The Bear Protects the Last Flag
I LOOKED AROUND AND SAW that things had progressed while I was protecting my flag. Two flags on each side had gone down. I saw Shia was still there, though. Looked like things were still okay on her end. She had either beat her opponents back, or none had appeared yet. She didn’t have anyone she was up against right now at least.
I looked ahead. I wondered whether someone stronger than the last girl would come. Or would I get two opponents? Would Seleiyu challenge me? I could think of lots of possibilities.
A different girl came by. Yeah, of course. It’d be bad strategy to send Seleiyu in or come in a pair. If they took down my flag, they would lose those players. It was a normal tactic to slowly increase the level of competition.
The girl from Yufaria stood in front of me.
“I heard you can use wind and earth magic.”
“Well...” I said the exact same thing I had to the other girl.
The girl held a wand aloft and gathered her magic to create six floating golf-ball-sized spheres of water in front of her. She waved her wand and shot the balls toward me. It was a feint to target the flag behind me. If I dodged, they’d hit the flag, so I didn’t evade them.
I decided to cut them off with air shots. It seemed like she saw this coming, and she already was running around the perimeter of the line around the flag. I flipped around to make sure I was facing her. As she ran, she waved her wand from side to side and shot more spheres of water at me. The water was arcing above my head and between my feet. If they got through me, they’d hit the flag or the pole from below. My only recourse was to block everything, so I smacked the water globes down.
“You’re pretty good, but how are you going to deal with this?”
As she said that, water appeared from her wand. It came out in a long and thin trail, wriggling like a snake. I cut through it with my wind magic, but the water recovered immediately and reformed into the same shape.
“Even if you cut through it, you won’t be able to fully destroy it.”
With a wave of her wand, the water snake started wriggling and writhing, trying to skirt around me. I lobbed an air shot to destroy the thing, but then the girl supplemented it with more mana, reforming it and growing it even longer this time. This was becoming a real pain.
I went into thought as I chipped away at the growing water snake. Maybe that would work? I conjured some water from my bear puppet, then I copied the girl and created a long, thin current of water. The girl seemed shocked.
“Even if you can use water magic too, it still doesn’t mean you can win against me. I specialize in water magic.”
Her water snake went on the move. I copied her and made my stream move like a snake too. They collided with each other, but her snake found an opening through mine and headed toward the flag behind me. My snake caught up and I smacked it down.
“Ugh, okay, then I’ll do this!”
The girl made a second snake that she also started to manipulate. But it wasn’t as nimble as before, and both her snakes started to make rough, choppy movements. It was difficult to think about two things at once, so her magic had gotten sloppy. Because of her split attention, I was able to slip past her snakes and smack her wand out of her hand.
“No way...”
The wand fell to the ground and her conjured snakes disappeared too.
“So what now? Have you finally had enough?”
She picked up her wand and shook her head.
“I’m frustrated by the outcome, but it looks like I’m not capable of winning against you.”
After saying that, she left. Still, the girl had surprised me. No wonder she’d been selected for the gathering.
While I was protecting my flag, other flags had also been toppled. Two more flags had been taken from each side, so we both only had two flags left. Shia had disappeared too, which meant her flag had been taken. I looked over at the Yufarian flags and saw that Shia had paired up with another girl to attack one of the flags. The other flags were being fought for too.
“Looks like it’s almost over.”
Seleiyu approached. I could almost hear a final boss theme playing.
“I really wanted to fight you while you were at your full strength, but the rest of the team wouldn’t let me go after you.”
“Well, that’s to be expected. I wasn’t even part of the contingent of students who should have been participating.”
“Now, I’ll finally get a match with you. If too much time passes, someone will try to come to help me, so I’ll finish this before then.”
Seleiyu started to run around the perimeter of the white line. She shot off some wind magic blasts. I used my own wind magic to cancel it out. She was faster than the first student who had used wind magic against me, but I could still block it easy enough. The wind magic from Mr. Jyubei’s blade was way faster. On top of that, she was prevented from crossing the white line, so she couldn’t fire at me from close range. As long as I paid close enough attention, I could block everything.
Seleiyu conjured up a sphere of water and sent it flying off toward me. I thought that was all it would be, so I sliced through it using wind magic, but the sphere of water curved around and dodged my wind blade. It passed right by my side and swerved around. She was controlling the orb from far away.
Marina and Elle had taught me about this when we were slaying the moles, they had mentioned that it was really hard to manipulate water that was far away. Apparently, Seleiyu could do it though, and she was doing a pretty good job of it right now. The sphere turned again and took aim for the flag. I had to create an earth wall to block it.
“You did a good job countering that. What will you do about this?”
Three spheres of water appeared in front of Seleiyu. She unleashed them on me all at once. I summoned three water spheres myself and aimed them at Seleiyu’s. Her spheres dodged. She was able to control all three of them at once, but I made my spheres pursue hers.
“You’re not serious?”
My spheres collided with hers and they splashed down onto the ground. That was close. If I had been a little slower, she might have gotten to the flag. I thought she was supposed to be bad at water magic? That said, it looked like she needed to work on precisely controlling all her spheres.
We kept clashing like that for a while. We mostly used wind and water magic, but we also used the occasional earth or fire spell. Since she used lots of different magic, it was hard for me to keep swapping to counter.
As I was defending against Seleiyu’s attacks, I heard a loud cheer. We both looked around us. Another capital flag had been brought down. Mine was the only one left.
The student who had lost their flag glanced at me, then ran off to join the offense. But that wasn’t all. Yufaria’s second-to-last flag had fallen too. That meant the student who had been protecting the other flag would be coming by.
“It seems that this is the end of our duel.”
The other student who had been defending the second Yufarian flag came over to join Seleiyu.
“I’m sorry, Lady Seleiyu.”
“It’s all right. I really wanted to take the flag on my own, but will you help me?”
“Yes!”
“There isn’t any time left. Let’s do it.”
They both started attacking me at once. At this point, it was a race to see who could take the other’s flag first. Out of all the outcomes, I had ended up as the last one standing. But for the first time in a while, this wasn’t a real fight, and I could enjoy it like I enjoyed my games.
“Elisa, just like during practice.”
“Got it!”
Seleiyu and Elisa took off running. The two of them ran at an angle, attacking as they sprinted. Elisa shot a clod of dirt at me. I blocked that and watched Seleiyu to try and counter her too. She created three water spheres that she shot off. As they hurtled toward me, they changed their trajectory.
I had to use my left hand to block Elisa as I used my right to block Seleiyu. I could use both my hands to cast spells just fine, but my head couldn’t follow everything that was happening. I couldn’t see both of them at the same time. They kept a good distance away from me to make sure of that. I could tell that they’d gotten here through practice.
Wow. This was fun. I actually had to think. I had to move. I’d been attacked by more than one enemy in my game before multiple times. I’d died in some cases, and I was able to protect myself in others. I’d had multiple battles where I’d just barely survived.
I moved nimbly, shooting off defensive spells. Instead of tracking Seleiyu and Elisa’s attacks with my eyes, I used my whole body to feel them. Sometimes I was able to do this in the game too. My body would move before I could think. This was a key skill for surviving situations like these.
I moved right, left, up, sending magic flying and guarding the flag as I moved. Right as I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to keep going, a loud whistle pierced the air and a teacher called the end of the match. Just then, the loudest cheer by far erupted.
“It’s done?”
“It seems so.”
Seleiyu stopped and looked over at her teammates.
“Unfortunately, it seems we lost. I didn’t expect that we would fail to take the flag as a pair.”
“I would’ve been in the danger zone if you kept up for a little longer.”
“I feel bad for the girl who protected the last flag for so long.”
She looked over at the defender. She had also protected her flag until the very end. It might have been a paper-thin difference between whether I gave out first or she did. Protecting something was more exhausting than I anticipated.
“I’m still not a student from the capital,” I said.
“We all knew that and accepted your participation anyway. It was a great match, Yuna.”
Seleiyu smiled and walked over to where the other Yufarian students were gathered. The capital students came over to take her place.
“Yuna!”
Shia ran over and hugged me.
“It’s Youna,” I said.
“Ah, of course. But we still won the match!”
Shia was beaming.
“Thank you, Youna.”
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