Carlo looked as though he still didn’t understand what had happened to him.
But the fact that he was down on the ground, and that Ludger was pointing his staff at him, was unmistakable.
Gritting his teeth, Carlo swatted Ludger’s staff aside with his hand.
In his palm, fiercely burning flames gathered.
Using the recoil from knocking the staff away to push himself upright, Carlo ignited flames around his legs and used them as propulsion as he charged at Ludger.
But Ludger was already gone from that spot.
Using mana while shaping elemental forms directly around the body... That really is a primitive way of fighting.
It was a style of combat you’d expect from street vagrants brawling on the roadside.
It plainly showed the kind of environment Carlo had grown up in.
To take the refined art of magic and apply it like a back-alley fighting technique.
It should have been like water and oil—things that could never mix—but Carlo had fused the two together with astonishing talent.
Fwoosh!
Carlo’s leg swung toward Ludger’s jaw.
Along its trajectory, vivid crimson flames spread outward, leaving residual heat lingering in the air.
The heat is fixed in place.
Within the heat left behind where the flames passed, mana flickered and triggered a succession of small explosions.
The raw power was barely enough to cause mild burns, but visually, the explosions were anything but subtle.
His intention was obvious. He was trying to block his opponent’s vision. And naturally, this tactic was no different in nature from thugs throwing sand into someone’s eyes in a back alley fight.
Amid the flashy explosions obscuring Ludger’s sight, Carlo slipped into a blind spot and threw a punch.
“For a freshman, you’re not bad.”
Without even looking at Carlo’s fist, Ludger raised his staff and blocked it.
Through the scattering sparks of flame, Carlo’s eyes widened.
The look clearly said, How did you know?
As his instructor, Ludger decided to kindly explain.
“A skilled mage doesn’t rely solely on vision. They also perceive the mana wavelengths their opponent carries. Once you grasp that, responding to ambushes like this becomes possible, to a certain extent.”
Of course, raising one’s senses to that level required tremendous effort and real combat experience—but Carlo had no way of knowing that yet.
Carlo tried to throw another punch, but Ludger moved first.
His staff traced efficient arcs, striking Carlo’s forearm, waist, and shin in quick succession.
“Ghk!”
It wasn’t enough to break bones, but it must have caused considerable pain. Carlo swallowed his scream and staggered backward.
The fighting spirit blazing in his eyes still hadn’t gone out.
“Will you continue? Or would you prefer to accept the outcome peacefully?”
“Shut up!”
Carlo’s gaze sharpened even further. His expression had already been intense to begin with, but now it almost looked beast-like.
His muscles twitched—and then his movements became noticeably faster.
A strange glint gathered in Ludger’s eyes.
“Oh?”
As Ludger tilted his head, Carlo’s claws tore through the space where his face had just been.
Along the arc of those claws, scarlet flames left afterimages like the tail of a meteor.
They were compressed far more sharply than when he threw punches.
Ludger raised several condensed spheres of mana around himself and fired them toward Carlo.
They carried enough power to subdue the opponent—but getting hit would hurt badly.
Yet Carlo blasted flames from his legs and performed all kinds of bizarre, three-dimensional maneuvers in midair, evading every single attack.
Almost like an animal’s movements.
Rather than acting through rational judgment, it was closer to instinctive evasion.
For a human, his senses were extraordinarily sharpened.
“Good. Then show me more of what you’re hiding.”
As Ludger lightly stomped his foot, a stone wall abruptly erupted from the training ground floor and slammed into Carlo.
Carlo crossed both arms to block, but his body was sent flying high into the air.
Ludger extended his staff toward the floating Carlo.
A blue mana projectile shot out, tracing an intricate trajectory like a mechanical circuit.
Carlo clenched his teeth and wrapped his body in stone. He had activated an earth-attribute defensive spell.
But if that had been the extent of his response, calling him a genius would have been a waste.
Fwoosh!
From the gaps in the rocky armor encasing his body, blazing flames burst forth.
Like crimson fire racing across the surface of the sun, the stone armor glowed red-hot, and Carlo himself became living magma.
Bam-bam-bam-bam!
Combining two elemental magics, Carlo smashed aside every one of Ludger’s mana projectiles with his fists.
With his innate physical ability and reflexes added in, he was practically a War Mage incarnate.
Landing back on the ground, Carlo lifted his head and stared at Ludger.
Wrapped in magma, his appearance was undeniably menacing—but regrettably, it stirred nothing in Ludger beyond mild interest.
For someone who had once fought an elemental lord of fire, Carlo’s magic was no more than a child’s attempt to light a match.
“Since you’re coming at me seriously, I’ll raise the intensity a little as well.”
Having seen Carlo’s skill, Ludger decided to adjust his own output accordingly.
Purple lightning gathered around Ludger.
It pulsed and writhed in midair—then shot toward Carlo like a spear.
If he waited to see it with his eyes, it would have been too late, but astonishingly, Carlo had already kicked off the ground and was moving to evade it.
However, his body abruptly jerked to a halt.
From beneath his feet, shadows rose up and wrapped around him with countless tentacles.
At the same time, a massive metallic cube formed above his head.
A perfect cube roughly two meters in height, width, and depth dropped straight down.
With his feet bound by shadows, escape was impossible.
Watching this unfold, the Special Class students began to seriously wonder if they should intervene.
A creeping fear rose among them that this might end with someone seriously injured.
BOOM!
The cube shattered into pieces in a violent explosion.
The one who broke it was Carlo—or rather, the translucent human-shaped figure floating behind him.
“As expected. You were hiding a trump card.”
The human figure hovering behind Carlo stared straight at Ludger.
It raised what appeared to be a spear—the very weapon that had likely shattered the cube—and hurled it toward him.
Ludger raised shadows, swallowed the spear, and sent it right back.
But the opponent was no pushover. With ghostlike reflexes, it caught the returning spear midair.
No. Calling it a ghost isn’t even metaphorical.
And that thing was no ordinary ghost.
“A hero from history.”
That’s right. It wasn’t the soul of an ordinary human, but the soul of someone who had achieved great deeds and elevated the very rank of their spirit.
And there was only one kind of magic that could borrow the power of such heroes.
One of the special-type magics.
Origin.
That magic, which allowed its user to connect to the Great Flow and inherit the power of those within it, was also used by the Iron Mask knight, Lotheron.
It can’t be directly related to Lotheron. Special-type magic isn’t something you can just teach someone.
If someone with innate talent was discovered, it could be passed on—but it rarely formed an ideal mentor-student relationship like Mandelina and Aidan.
More often, special-type mages failed to find teachers and learned on their own.
Carlo was one such case.
Especially Origin magic—it didn’t even require instruction. As long as one could connect to the Great Flow, it could be learned naturally.
Normally, hardly anyone can connect to the Great Flow itself.
Among mages, only an extremely rare few—those born with brains of a peculiar nature—were capable of it.
An expansion of the spiritual perception tied to the mana their brain could process.
“You were hiding quite an impressive magic.”
At Ludger’s words, Carlo made a troubled expression.
His hidden ace—kept secret even from Seorn’s Headmaster—had been exposed far too easily.
What confused Carlo even more was that Ludger seemed to have known from the very beginning that he was hiding this magic.
That was inevitable.
No matter how exceptional Carlo’s talent was, he was still immature.
No matter how hard he tried to conceal it, he couldn’t escape the eyes of Ludger, who had reached the standards of the 8th-Circle.
If anything, managing to hide it from the Headmaster was impressive in its own right.
“Since you’ve already brought it out, why not use it properly?”
“...Can you handle it?”
Carlo asked, his voice noticeably calmer than before.
“If I couldn’t handle it, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.”
“....”
Carlo didn’t respond. Instead, he quietly stirred his mana.
A new figure appeared behind him. This time, it was a hunter cloaked in a hood.
That, too, must have been the body of a legendary archer and hero.
Wearing his magma armor, Carlo charged at Ludger with the hero providing rear support.
* * *
The fight itself ended anticlimactically.
After giving it his all, Carlo failed to so much as touch a speck of dust on Ludger, and collapsed flat on the training ground.
“I, I—”
Panting heavily, Carlo staggered to his feet.
He quietly closed his eyes, then bent at the waist toward Ludger at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
“I lost, Professor.”
It was a sincere apology, containing all the rudeness he had shown until now.
“I’ve seen your skill. But it’s far too unrefined—there are many rough edges. You may think you don’t need guidance, but if you keep going like this, your magic will eventually go astray. So don’t think of instruction as interference. Think of it as a process of refinement.”
“...Understood.”
Carlo stepped back, and Ludger turned his gaze to the remaining Special Class students.
“Next.”
Having witnessed the previous fight, Hermoa—who had been ready to step forward as soon as Carlo finished—shrunk her shoulders.
As everyone hesitated, exchanging looks, Ludger called her out directly.
“Hermoa Entiro.”
“Y-Yes.”
Hermoa squeezed her eyes shut. Her shoulders sagged as she stepped onto the training ground.
“You’ve already seen Carlo fight. Use everything you’ve learned.”
“I, I—”
“Don’t worry. I’ll adjust my strength accordingly.”
In Carlo’s case, he needed his bad habits corrected, so Ludger had gone a bit harder. There was no need to do the same to Hermoa, who was earnest about his class.
At Ludger’s words, Hermoa felt relieved.
If he’s going easy on me, at least it won’t be like when he fought Carlo!
And three minutes later, Hermoa screamed.
“You said you’d go easy! You said you’d go easy!”
Tears welling in her eyes, Hermoa ran across the training ground as all kinds of magic rained down on her.
If there was anything praiseworthy, it was that she never let go of her staff until the very end.
“I am using magic matched to your level, Hermoa Entiro. Make proper use of that sensory ability you possess.”
“I-I don’t even know how!”
In the end, Hermoa was shot down by Ludger’s mana projectile and collapsed.
At least, unlike Carlo, she wasn’t completely wrecked—it ended at a moderate point.
Of course, from Hermoa’s perspective, it wasn’t moderate at all.
Unleashing and chaining countless spells by the second was something you could never truly understand unless you experienced it firsthand.
“Next.”
Ludger called the next ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) student.
Thus, the tests of the elf Elmarra and Robert were concluded.
In Elmarra’s case, her laid-back and lazy personality led her to not take things seriously, which annoyed Ludger enough that he treated her a bit harshly.
Robert’s case, however, was serious in a different sense.
To think he can’t even properly use magic.
More precisely, this format of sparring itself placed immense pressure on him.
Robert couldn’t properly cast magic—he couldn’t even meet Ludger’s eyes.
His talent was undoubtedly exceptional, but his inability to utilize it left Ludger feeling deeply regretful.
At least he hadn’t run away. Perhaps that was something to be thankful for.
Ludger’s gaze then turned toward Eric Willow.
As if he had already sensed it, Eric had stepped onto the training ground without being called.
“Eric Willow. Use everything you have to push me. You don’t need to worry about putting me in danger.”
“...Yes. Understood.”
He had already watched Special Class students on a similar level to himself get thoroughly crushed by Ludger.
Seeing that, Eric discarded any thoughts of worrying about his opponent or holding back.
He adapts quickly. I thought refusing class meant he’d be emotionally unstable, but he’s more resilient than expected.
With slightly hesitant hands, Eric removed the glasses from his face.
Then he brushed his thick bangs up and back.
“Oh.”
As Eric’s face was revealed, Hermoa let out an unconscious gasp.
She hadn’t realized it before because he always kept himself hidden, but Eric was far more handsome than expected.
Contrary to his timid image, his gaze was sharp—like a finely honed blade.
“I’m going in.”
The moment Eric said that—
From both his eyes, terrifying beams of light erupted and shot straight toward Ludger.