Stronger Spells

Magnus had a smile on his face as he saw Ray and George teleport in front of him. He made brief eye contact with Ray as if to say, "Good job!"

"It is your lucky day," George announced.

"I suppose it is."

"I'll meet with you after the fight, stay safe until then."

"No worries, no worries. I'll be right here."

While Magnus seemed to be having a good time, a happy expression on his face. The other apprentices he came with didn't seem to be so happy. They looked at Ray with jealous glances on their faces, but what could they do with 2 official mages talking in front of them? They could only hope they would also be chosen after their next fight.

After a bit of back and forth with Magnus, George turned to Ray. "Let's go to my place, shall we?"

Ray nodded his head in response.

In an instant, they appeared in a luxurious room that overlooked the arena. You could tell it was expensive from the jewels and gold ornamenting the furniture and items placed around the room.

These items, however, did not attract any attention to Ray, since they were useless to him. Instead, he was looking through the window toward the current battle going on.

2 mages were battling it out in the pit. One was in a worse condition than the other, as he was bleeding profusely from his stomach area. The other mage cast a spell that caused vines to grow from his palms and stab into the injured mage's already bleeding area. A bit later, a shield stopped the vines and the mage won.

The winning mage had a grin on his face as he was teleported out of the arena, while the other one had already fallen unconscious. He could still see Grayn at the top of the arena without a change of expression on his face, even as the mage almost died.

A few seconds later, another set of apprentices fought it out again, this time with a level 3 mage. Ray noticed George started paying more attention to the match as the apprentice's status as rank 3 was revealed. But after the apprentice used his first spell, a fire-related spell, George quickly lost interest in the fight.

The cycle kept repeating for a while until George broke the silence. "Do you want to fight your third match?"

"What do you mean?"

"You don't need to fight it if you don't want to," George replied nonchalantly.

Ray was a little surprised since he thought he had to do all three matches, but after thinking about it for a while, it made sense. After all, the fights seemed to exist so the forces in the capital could pick the mages they wanted. And now that he had already been chosen, it didn't make too much sense to fight again.

"I'll fight again." Ray confidently replied.

George's face didn't change; Ray's decision was no surprise to him. "If that's what you want." He monotonously replied while keeping his eyes on the match going on below him. "Don't get discouraged though."

"What do you mean?"

George's eyes drifted to Ray, as he seemed to think about something for a moment. His attention quickly snapped back to the game as he replied, "You will see."

'Does he think I'll lose that terribly?' Ray thought to himself. He didn't know for sure what George meant by that, but what was the harm in doing the fight? He can't die anyways.

A few minutes later, Ray heard his name being called again.

"Ray Diant, Kruel Port." The voice called out.

After hearing his voice, Ray looked around the room for an exit. He didn't see one, but George quickly told him, "Don't worry about it."

A second later, he teleported into the arena. Grayn, who was hovering in the air like usual, looked a little surprised when he saw Ray teleport, but thought nothing of it.

A few seconds later, his opponent came walking through the gate. He gave off an arrogant aura as if the entire arena belonged to him. Upon seeing Ray's aura, his arrogant demeanor changed a bit, but not by much.

"3…2…1… start."

A ball of lightning energy was forming in Kruel's hands, consistently becoming bigger and bigger. Ray could see it happening, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Once the match started, he cast a light pillar hoping it would disrupt the opponent. But to his dismay, Kruel simply stepped out of the pillar and kept channeling energy into the ball in front of him.

Ray's mind raced as he tried to think of what he could do to stop the opponent, but he couldn't do much with the spells he had! All the spells he knew were purely attacking spells without any other use; they couldn't do much in this situation.

The scene reminded him of when he fought Zay, and he used a spell that instantly killed 40 knights. After remembering that encounter, Ray could only grit his teeth and bring up his sword in hopes it blocked something for him.

A second later, Kruel opened his eyes and let the spell go. The ball morphed into 2 giant lightning bolts and streaked toward Ray. After seeing the amount of energy within these bolts, Ray thought he was done for, but he soon realized that the bolts were not very fast!

They were still extremely fast, but they were slow enough that Ray could barely perceive where they would go. He tried moving a little so the path of the bolt wouldn't hit him, but his eyes widened further as he realized the bolt changed its path along with him.

Ray tried resisting one last time and attempted to reflex the bolt to Kruel. He put all of his focus into using his energy to reflect the bolts of his shield, but the energy couldn't come out fast enough, and he was quickly overwhelmed. Each bolt crashed into the left and right sides of Ray's shield, instantly shattering it to pieces.

The bolts broke through his skin without any resistance, then dug into his flesh until they reached his heart. Ray could feel the lightning coursing throughout his body, causing excruciating pain that halted all his thoughts to a stop. At that moment, all he could think about was how to make the pain lessen a bit.

Just as he felt he was about to black out, the familiar shield that saved his opponent stopped the lightning from damaging him any further. The pain also disappeared along with the shield, making Ray feel relief, even though the entire encounter happened in a matter of seconds.

Before he was teleported, he looked up one more time at the person who defeated him so quickly. Kruel was calmly standing there, as arrogant as before; he wasn't even looking at him.

A second later, he was teleported in front of George. He didn't have a disappointed look on his face, as if he expected this to happen from the start.

"As I thought. Homing attacks combined with pain amplifiers won't be a fun experience." George muttered while eyeing Ray's condition.

White light left George's hand and slowly wrapped around Ray's body. Ray's charred flesh repaired itself at a rate visible to the naked eye, and the skin on his wound repaired itself until it looked like a newborn baby's skin.

Ray stood up while inspecting the wound that was on his body a second before. Everything seemed perfectly healed, there was no imperfection left on his body. Even a few scars from earlier battles had disappeared, leaving shiny smooth skin.

"Thanks."

"No problem. It's a small issue for official mages."

After making sure his injury was completely healed, Ray thought about the fight he had with Kruel, if it could be called a fight. "How did he defeat me so easily? I felt his aura, he was only a level 3 mage too." He thought out loud.

"You still haven't learned about higher-tiered apprentice spells?" George asked with a surprised look on his face.

"Higher-tiered apprentice spells? What are those?"

"Man, your teacher was useless. Anyways, they are spells that use a lot of energy and are meant to finish fights quickly, or overwhelm the opponent like what just happened to you."

"How do I get those?"

"You can't exactly buy them, since you need to partially create them yourself. You can create it from scratch, or adapt a spell to fit your body/soul to take in much more energy and become a higher-tiered spell. They can't simply be learned from a scroll since it has to be personalized to yourself. If you tried to learn someone else's higher tiered spell, you simply wouldn't be able to cast the spell, since to create that much energy it needs to be specialized."

"Is it hard to create?"

"It does take quite a bit of time to create one. There are very few mages who can do so within a year, you were quite unfortunate to match up against someone so talented." He spoke with a noticeably envious expression.

"Now we need to sit through the rest of the matches, then I'll introduce you to your new home, Loyer."