(Oct 16)

“Let’s rumble.”

I declared with a grin on my face.

“Tch, well I guess Briggs did personally train you after all… Let’s see what you can do.”

Unlike the other soldiers, I was an actual threat to Mona so she was serious to a certain extent.

Mona raised both of her arms with her daggers in hand and slowly approached me.

I didn’t have a shield on me, so I couldn’t be reckless.

My three dragon missiles shot forward towards Mona, which just like before was simply parried away and avoided.

Not even worthy as a distraction… seems like I still needed to improve my dragon missiles.

Mona was using dual daggers as her weapon and her main focus was speed, unlike the tournament where she was more of an all rounder and was wielding a bigger blade.

I couldn’t afford to use strong attacks on her because of the high chance of it being parried or dodged, so I stuck to quick and light attacks.

In the current situation, Mona’s combat style was somewhat like Cornelia’s combat style, which I had experience fighting with.

“Let’s have a friendly competitive fight, shall we?!?!”

I shouted jokingly at her as I also swung my sword at her repeatedly, trying to hit her.

Of course, Mona was able to dodge them and retorted back with, “says the guy coming at me with the intention to kill…”

“I don’t stand a chance against you without going all out!!! RAHHH!!!”

Me and Mona clashed for a moment, my sword pressing down against her smaller daggers creating a burst of sparks.

She quickly pushed me away and thrusted one of her daggers at my face, but luckily Alisha shot a lightning arrow at this exact moment forcing Mona to use her other blade to block and also averting her attention for a brief moment.

Using this chance, I reeled back my sword behind me and tossed my sword with all the strength I could muster at Mona.

Before Mona could parry my sword away, I transform my hands into dragon claws and went in for an attack as well.

I punched forward hoping to land a hit, but Mona just hopped on top of my fist and did an elegant backflip off it, while avoiding the sword I threw at the same time.

Cornelia did something similar to me once, when she jumped onto my shoulder during my training (in chapter 48) and it pissed me off how they were able to just jump onto me…

…so I came up with a countermeasure…

After Mona did her backflip in the air and landed on the ground perfectly on both feet, that was when she noticed my ‘trap.’

“What’s… this?”

When Mona looked down, she realized that a thin thread of magic was attached to her leg.

She jumped back and tried to shake off the magic thread, but it was stuck to her pants and wouldn’t fall off that easily!

Honestly, even I was partially surprised that it worked.

“Haha! it’s made out of my dragon essence, so it won’t come off that easily!”

Mona frowned and used her hands to try to rip off the dragon essence thread that I had attached to her when she jumped on top of my fist, but instead of coming off, it got stuck to her hands as well!

This was a new ability I had invented when I saw a spider web in the corner of my house, and it gave me inspiration.

When I went to clean it off and kill the spider, some of the spider web got stuck on my fingers.

It’s softness and texture reminded me of my own dragon essence, and caused to me to think… what if I modified my own dragon essence’s density and purity to create a sticky and stretchy substance similar to a spider web?

In theory, its possible to solidify magic into a slightly more solid state, but still able keep its formlessness like a spider web can. However, the amount of control and concentration needed to do this would require even a skilled wizard to stop doing anything else and focus.

My dragon essence on the other hand, is different.

Dragon essence is already able to solidify and turn into dragon claws and other physical dragon parts, so all I needed to do was to activate one of my dragon abilities halfway, so it turns into a jelly like substance but not fully solid.

From there, I just had to train myself to control its stickiness and stretchiness, which still does require concentration but much less than if someone were using normal magic! Meaning that this is a spell exclusive only to me since no one else would be able to actually use it practically!

Because of that, I also have the honor of naming it since I invented it.

Web Essence… that’s what I’ll call it!

Web essence possesses the properties of both rubber and gum… and if I can get creative and use this special ability well, it’ll be super useful, especially against an agile opponent like Mona!

I grabbed my web essence thread—that’s attached to Mona’s leg—and yanked it, causing Mona to stumble forward.

Three more electric arrows zapped across the sky towards their target. Mona tried to evade them, but I gripped my web essence and swung it, pulling Mona along knocking her off balance, allowing two of the three electric arrows to hit her.

“GAHH!!!”

Mona was strong and her powerful magic allowed her to passively resist a lot of the electrical effects, but she wouldn’t be able block out all the pain.

While she was stunned, I summoned a dragon missile behind me wrapped in web essence.

Since web essence has the properties of both rubber and gum, it has high elasticity, and I could use it to further increase the speed and power of my dragon missile even further.

However even with the bonus elastic energy, I wasn’t sure if it was fast enough to hit Mona though, considering how she managed to dodge or block all my dragon missiles thus far.

So in the spur of the moment, I summoned a dragon tail attached to the back of my dragon missile.

While I was training with Cornelia, I had used my dragon tail like a jet engine to create a new ability called ‘dragon’s jet’ to boost my speed tremendously.

The magic consumption was ridiculous when I first used it, but I had improved my magic control since than, so it’ll be a lot more efficient now.

But instead of using dragon’s jet on myself, I’m using it like a magical rocket thruster to propel my dragon missile!

With all these combined, the speed and power of my dragon missile would be as fast as a real missile!

I stretched my dragon missile far behind me with web essence like a slingshot while simultaneously activating my dragon’s jet, so it shot out as much dragon essence behind it as possible. Then I released it all once, launching the dragon missile forward in an instant like a rocket.

The moment the dragon missile became airborne, I was blown back from the pressure of its speed.

The missile quite literally broke the sound barrier creating a sonic boom and exploded right into Mona sending her flying into the air.

The sound of the dragon missile breaking the sound barrier combined with the explosion created a deafening sound that rippled throughout the forest.

Summoning a dragon missile, using dragon’s jet and using web essence all at the same time takes quite a toll on me though, so I’m not quite sure how many times I could do it in a single day.

Additionally, the dragon missile’s explosion caused my eardrums to ring and clouded my magic senses temporarily, so it really messed with my senses.

To top that all off, the shockwave and vibrations ran through my entire body causing my body to go slightly numb, as if it fell asleep.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to launch it at an opponent that’s only a couple meters away from me…

Regardless, I couldn’t find Mona since she was sent flying and had disappeared...

I wasn’t sure if she was defeated from that or not.

After a bit, the ringing in my ear stopped. My hearing returned and my senses started to clear up.

I could once again feel the flow of magic around me, bristling with life.

Once I was back to normal condition, I was able to feel several presences in the distance including Mona as well.

I quickly grabbed my sword which I had thrown earlier and ran towards where I felt Mona’s presence.

When I got closer to Mona’s location, what I saw was not what I was expecting at all…

There were several soldiers laying on the ground.

They seemed to be unconscious, but their bodies were twitching and shaking rampantly as if they were having a seizure.

On closer inspection, they were bleeding out of their ears, foaming out of the mouths and their inner magic was scrambled and messed up.

Looking over, I saw Mona on her knees, doing CPR on one of the soldiers on the ground.

‘What… was going on? What happened here???’