Chapter 93: Chapter 92: Life and Death _1
Translator: 549690339
“Ha!”
Rives scoffed, his tone dripping with irony. “At this particular juncture, you’re still playing these sycophantic tricks.”
As he spoke, Rives’ face twisted into a grimace of contempt, his teeth gritted. “It’s because of these very tricks that you managed to cozy up to Ayla Smith, thus enabling your reelection in the senior division.”
At his words, Antoine Hilton’s complexion turned even graver.
Today, he had already suffered a significant setback with completely no saving face.
Rives had essentially stripped him bare.
If Rives were allowed to continue, he doubted there would be any favorable impression of him left in Wizard Palo’s heart.
“If you want to fight, then fight. Stop with these idle talks!”
Antoine Hilton interrupted Rives’ verbal onslaught, somewhat itching for a fight with an unsteady mindset.
At this moment, Peter Lionel no longer feigned concern about Wizard Palo’s opinion and simply gave a direct look to Zoran Lucia, a wizard who bore some resemblance to Sophie Lucia.
Zoran Lucia got the hint and immediately informed the Colosseum’s staff.
Besides the central colosseum where the life-and-death duels took place in the Flesh Mill Arena, there were several smaller battle platforms for distinguished guests to settle personal disputes.
The fighting platforms were fully enclosed, with no spectators allowed on-site—only specific boxes could watch the battles in real-time.
Peter Lionel had been planning the second event for today for a long time and had made a reservation in advance.
Two staff members arrived quickly with clear division of tasks. One led Rives and Antoine down, while the other adjusted the glass window into a large screen.
Soon, the unoccupied battle platform appeared on the screen.
Though it was a small platform, it still spanned nearly 200 square meters.
While waiting, Link started reviewing the various events that had transpired that day.
From the current results, his hunch was both right and wrong.
Wizard Palo indeed had something for him to do, which wasn’t the horse racing-like battles as he had imagined, but rather a bet concerning the inter-region competition.
Perhaps it was because the “New Blood Mutual Aid Association” hadn’t managed to find any promising candidates within the first-year students;
After all, Lanny Taylor, who ranked first in qualifications and jointly top in grades, was a loner who hadn’t joined any apprentice organization;
Jasmine Kidman, who ranked sixth in overall performance, had joined the association and then withdrew;
The five considerable qualified and highly-graded brothers, because of the bash-up incident, not only withdrew but targeted members of the “New Blood Mutual Aid Association” relentlessly;
Other first-year new bloods who were in the top ten each had their own affiliations and had joined different apprentice organizations.
While “Pure Blood Will,” an organization that focused on developing local wizard apprentices in the North School District, outperformed the “New Blood Mutual Aid Association” in terms of member quality and even more overwhelmingly in resources.
In the two-region competition over the years, the “Pure Blood Will” members somewhat outperformed the “New Blood Mutual Aid Association” ones.
Given the “New Blood Mutual Aid Association” was not doing too well, lacking in strong first-year new blood members, Link became an indispensable reinforcement.
This eased Link’s tension quite a lot.
He was going to participate in the two-region competition anyway. Having multiple bets on him would not affect him at all.
As long as he didn’t have to fight against unknown competitors, he was fine!
At this moment, Rives and Antoine appeared at both ends of the screen on the platform.
There were no emcees, no referees, and no rules.
The fight was imminent.
Who would live and who would die would soon be revealed!
On the platform.
Rives launched an attack, catching everyone off guard.
He threw out a secondary exploding fireball almost instantly.
A fireball as big as a human head, burning fiercely, whistled and crashed towards Antoine Hilton.
Its momentum was enormous, and its speed astonishingly swift.
While in flight, sparks splashed out, littering the battlefield.
Antoine Hilton did not dodge. He stood still and conjured a thick earth wall in the fireball’s path with just a thought.
Without any rune objects or magical tools providing effects such as speed, hovering, or acceleration, even third-class wizard apprentices would be deficient in dodging magic.
After all, it was not possible to achieve “instant cast” for all magic spells.
Rives grinned cruelly, and his body burst into intense flames. He tilted his head back slightly and spread his arms wide.
The fireball about to hit the earth wall suddenly curved in mid-air as if a pebble skipping over the water, and passed over the top of the wall.
The heatwave swept over, slightly charring his hair.
Antoine Hilton, facing the imminent explosion of the fireball, was startled but not panicked. The earth shield hidden behind him quickly flew to his front.
With a loud bang.
The fireball exploded, scattering sparks and fire snakes in all directions.
The earth shield was shattered into seven or eight pieces, falling to the ground.
Antoine Hilton was pushed back two steps by the outwardly spreading shockwave and repulsion.
Several fire snakes quickly closed in while he was off guard.
Antoine Hilton hurriedly summoned a curtain of water overhead to extinguish the fire snakes.
But it was somewhat too late.
The same secondary exploding fireball, hurled by Rives, was amplified tremendously in power thanks to the super affinity of the fire element and the “Rage Inferno Meditation Method.”
Antoine Hilton’s earth wall spell was bypassed, and the earth shield spell failed to fully defend him.
Although he had not suffered much physical damage, his hair was burnt, his face was charred, his clothes were burnt several holes, his arm skin was scalded to blisters, and his whole body was soaked. He looked thoroughly bedraggled.
From the looks of things, he seemed in a real disadvantage.
But Antoine Hilton didn’t just stand there and take hits.
As he retreated two steps, the stone ring between him and Rivers Francis, turned into a muddy swamp.
The combined effect of the Secondary Mudstone technique and the Purification Water spell.
He did this to counter River’s Flame Collision.
Just as he stepped forward, ready to charge Antoine Hilton and get into close quarters, Rivers was forced to stop in his tracks.
“Change of landscape?”
Pulling back his next step, Rivers glanced at the counterattacking Antoine, the cruel smile on his lips grew wider.
Fire was never limited by terrain.
Nor was witchcraft bound by rules!
Pressing down hard with his feet, the intense flames throughout his body converged towards the soles of his feet, violently erupted, and Rivers, turned into a rocket, soaring into the sky.
This was a variant application of Fire Arrow Magic, using flame propulsion as power, turning one’s own body into an arrowhead, fearless, hell-bent on mutual destruction, a cruel way to fight.
After tracing a parabola, Rivers became like a human-guided missile, rapidly charging towards Antoine.
From where he originally stood, sharp earth spikes sprung up from the ground, narrowly missing Rivers’s soles.
Antoine’s meticulously prepared sudden Earth Spike attack was in vain, only piercing the fierce tail of the flame.
In a dramatic turn of events, when confronted by Rivers, who wanted to die together with him, Antoine finally used the Zero Ring light magic spell, Flash Art.
He raised his right hand high, a ball of bright light appeared in the palm of his hand, which immediately exploded.
A strong white light flickered, stimulating Rivers’s eyes in a short time and causing a blinding effect.
Antoine took advantage of this flash to use the Zero Ring spell, Light Refraction Illusion, duplicating his figure into six.
The speed of light, the fastest in the world.
Six figures of Antoine instantly surrounded the arena, one real and the rest illusions.
Yet, the illusions looked incredibly lifelike.
The six figures of Antoine had the same appearance, same posture, and same demeanor.
For Rivers, who had no choice but to release his charged arrow, he directly collided with the first Antoine he saw.
A flash of light flickered, and the figure of Antoine disappeared.
Rivers was propelled off the stage, nearly crashing headfirst into the stone pillar supporting the dome.
Thankfully, Rivers reacted fast enough. Otherwise, he would have killed himself instead of his enemy, which would have been utterly humiliating.
He flew around the pillar, just as he circled back above the stage, Antoine’s attack arrived.
Three water balls, the size of human heads, were positioned like a pin, waiting quietly for Rivers to land on the stage, and standing in the way of Rivers’ return trajectory.
After several turns, Rivers was incapacitated to change his course and could only collide headlong into them.
Though the water balls were enormous, they were not potent in essence.
Antoine did not covet the measly damage inflicted by the Water Ball Spell.
He only needed two things: one, to extinguish or at least mitigate the flames engulfing Rivers; two, the high-temperature water mist generated after the water balls are burned by the fire.
You Rivers, like to play with fire and high temperatures, right?
Let’s see if you can withstand the scorching heat of high-temperature water mist!
Having a high affinity for the super Fire Element grants resistance to fire, not high temperatures.
By the time Rivers passed through the three water balls, his body was covered in burn blisters, a heartrending sight.
Rivers was not angered but excited, the remaining flames on his body burst open, following the water mist that covered more than half of the stage and landing on the five remaining figures of Antoine.
When faced with any attack, even a minuscule one, the illusions created from the Light Refraction Illusion will dissipate.
The real figure of Antoine just like that, simply and plainly revealed itself to Rivers’s eyes.
This is what being hoist by one’s own petard means.
The moment Rivers’ feet touched the ground, his whole body turned into flames and disappeared, appearing beside the real figure of Antoine with the aid of the sparks around him.
“Fire Leap?”
At this point, Antoine was too shocked to think about dodging or building a defense and inadvertently cried out in alarm, which shows the shockwave Rivers’s action brought him.
Fire Leap is a First Ring spell!
Rivers had not long ago advanced to a third-class wizard apprentice, it was impossible for him to reach the threshold of promotion to an official wizard so quickly, let alone master a First Ring spell!
“Antoine, die.”
Rivers would never miss such a good opportunity, opened his arms wide, and immediately hugged a momentarily stunned Antoine Hilton tightly.
Mighty flames fiercely burned once again, enveloping both Rivers and Antoine.
“Err…ah!”
Antoine was awoken by the severe pain of his burns. He wanted to break free from River’s restraint, but it was already too late. He could only shriek in agony.
Life hung by a thread, this duel was about to end.
Antoine Hilton knew there was no way out for him. He hardened his heart, enduring the severe pain. Amidst the intense flames, he consecutively cast two Secondary Mudstone Spells.
If he was to die, then both of them had to die together!
The two of them together sunk deeply into the swamp.
Right before he lost consciousness, Antoine tried his best to cast the last spell, a Zero Ring Earth spell, Stone Hail.
A grindstone-sized rock appeared above the heads of the two men trapped in the mud swamp, and in the blink of an eye, it crashed down.
The next second, blood and bone fragments splashed on the fighting ring.
Death was upon them..