Each lance strike that hit Marcus's body was counted, and once it was all tallied, Eloise had racked up 14 wins in total.

"Oof," Aylin said and Eloise turned to see the grey-white haired perfect beauty had a smile on her face as she shook her head and said, laughing,

"Harsh."

"It was, wasn't it?" Eloise said and she looked a bit sheepish and then sorry as she looked back at Marcus's prone body still on the ground.

Aylin laughed even more and was within a foot of Eloise in seconds.

"Come on, I was kidding," she said and wrapped an arm around Eloise's neck to pull her so close that Eloise was leaning against her breasts.

Eloise didn't seem all that concerned about the cushioning against her back as she kept her eyes on Marcus, still looking sorry for the 'harm' she had caused him.

Aylin mellowed in her expression of mirth but she was still smiling as she gestured at where Baler was with her thumb,

"If you think you were harsh, then what would you say about what I did to that moron over there?"

"Well, with that you were just being needlessly cruel," Eloise said.

Aylin shrugged,

"I don't know about 'needless'. Every act of violence, no matter how flippant serves a purpose," Aylin said and looked like she lost herself in that bit of philosophy before she shook herself out of it and looked at Eloise to see she was now sporting a smile.

"There you go," she said with a smile to brighten up her perfect face as she then looked at Marcus and added,

"You know for all your talks about not liking combat, you're surprisingly good at it."

Eloise shrugged with a melancholic smile.

"Unfortunately, you can't hail from a family like mine and not pick up a few things. A lot of what I tried to shut out of my memory has been making its return in the past week or so.

It sucks."

Aylin opened her mouth, about to offer some encouragement to keep Eloise on the Combat Mage path but she decided to just let the moment pass.

*BANG!!!!!*

The sound came from behind and it was so loud and impactful that both Aylin and Eloise flinched as their eyes went wide and they turned around as one to see a still-ongoing duel.

…

Kaya was still sealed up tight in her vine construct and thanks to its incredible defense, she saw no need to move away from where she was and was effectively rooted to the spot, completely protected.

At first, Ralph Eisen had tried his hardest to break through the construct but then he gave up and decided that the fact that she was so rooted could be an advantage. And so, whenever he wanted to avoid Kaya's attack, he just moved out of her optimal range.

Just as Professor Kragsten said on the first day of Combat Magic class; While distance is important to a Combat Mage, anything beyond 60 meters and you've lost sight of your opponent.

60 meters is an extreme example though. Really, thirty meters is more than enough to be out of reach of most Mage spells.

Or so Ralph thought.

You see, once he put his plan into effect and got beyond 30 meters away from Kaya, he expected to be able to gather himself and plan his next attack since she couldn't follow up with that Vine construct still so solidly around her.

Alas, Kaya didn't need to move.

They were in a Forest. Nature was quite literally at her command.

All she needed to do was infuse the very environment with Nature Motes and she could technically keep contact with any of her spells to attack Ralph even from more than 30 meters away.

"What in hell—?" Ralph had said at this display and then tried to put more distance between himself and Kaya.

Surely, she had to have a limit.

He got quite far and was even almost completely removed from the vicinity as he vanished into a thicket of trees. Only for those trees he had run into to be infused with Nature notes that turned them from rigid to rubbery. The trees grabbed Ralph in a tight grip, slammed into the ground a few times to earn Kaya a few wins before tossing him back to the battlefield.

He landed within ten meters of Kaya, and had lost the metal disc he had been using to float above the ground so he was very easily grabbed up by the grasses which had once again become longer and tougher thanks to Kaya's Nature Motes infusion.

Ralph resisted being completely wrapped up and cast more spells, mostly defensive to keep the thick grasses and then thorny vines away.

Kaya had learned from the time she used a thorny vine to whip him that the protective vest was keeping the thorns away from Ralph's body. And if she couldn't stab him with the thorns, then she couldn't siphon his Mana and reduce his reserves.

So essentially, her thorny bones were useless, right?

Well, not exactly. Because, with the Protective vest feature of allowing some amount of pain from the attacks to get through the protective field to add more stake to the duels, Ralph still felt the thorns stab his body. It still caused him pain. It just didn't rob him of his mana and Kaya was fine with that.

Plus, a thorny vine was considerably more intimidating than a plain one.

Ralph defended against a majority of Kaya's attacks but enough got through to keep tallying and adding to her wins. Plus, she kept up the barrage for so long that Ralph had no room to breathe. He couldn't counterattack, he couldn't retreat. He could barely even defend.

'How the fuck can she go for so long?' He asked himself.

The output Kaya had shown thus far was greater than what Ralph had observed Aylin do to Baler. With Baler, there hadn't really been any defense for Aylin to worry about so almost every attack was precise and connected. The ones that missed were barrages that were never actually aimed to all hit in the first place.

Kaya on the other hand missed about 80 percent of her attacks and she didn't seem even close to relenting.

"Arrrggghhhhh… How long can she fucking keep this up?!!" Ralph asked, so frustrated that he said his thoughts out loud.

Kaya heard him and she smirked within the green glow of her construct.

The answer to the question of how long she could keep it up?; A very, very long time.

In the past week or so, she had hit a new milestone in her Magical Advancement and had learned that Nature Magic was bigger than her. Literally!

There was Nature all around and she needed to stop seeing it as just something surging within her and more as something within her she could use to connect with something outside of her.

Due to this, she had learned to listen to Nature all around her and tap into the magic that existed within it. It was how she was able to extend her spell cast beyond thirty meters. She had just used her Nature Motes to communicate with Nature and call it to action.

So in other words, she currently wasn't using more than 10percent of her Mana Reserves. She was only using enough to connect herself to the greenery all around and with such a reduced strain on her physical and magical energy, this could go on far longer than Ralph could afford to have it go on.

Because neither could kill or terribly maim the other, this was a battle of endurance. One that Ralph was sure to lose.

Really, the fight wasn't fair.

It never was.

Kaya was aware and she was only too glad to exercise her advantage.

Because she could afford to be 'wasteful', she let Ralph think he was successfully defending himself from most of her attacks while she prepared a large spell cast beneath him. When he noticed, it was already too late, and thick, thorny vines sprang out to wrap around him.

But Ralph wasn't actually totally defenseless because in the split second before the thorny vines touched him, he turned his hand causing the Arcane symbols within his spell circle to transform which caused the thick metal shield he had been using against Kaya's attacks to turn into Liquid Metal.

The Liquid Metal wrapped around Ralph, protecting him from the constricting vines similar to how Kaya had defended herself from his Liquid Metal attack earlier.

He even managed a smile at this smart turn-around of her technique.

Alas, constricting was never Kaya's goal.

Once her thorny vines had wrapped around Liquid Metal-protected Ralph, it began to grow. It became a thorny stalk that rose high into the sky.

10 feet…

15 feet…

20 feet…

25 feet…

30 feet…

35 feet…

40 feet…

50 feet…

60 feet…

Thanks to the abundance of Nature energy around her, Kaya didn't really have a known limit to how high she could make the stalk grow but she decided that was good enough.

"Surely, he won't die, right?" She asked herself but she was already controlling the stalk to flex in a snappy way that sent the very top part that was wrapped around Ralph falling incredibly fast to the ground.

Ralph realized what was about to happen at 30 feet and his eyes went wide as he tried to use his Liquid Metal spell to break free. When he failed, he decided to put as much effort into keeping the Liquid Metal spell active because he was going to need defense for the coming fall.

*BANG!!!!!*

It was the sound and impact of the fall that drew the attention of both Aylin and Eloise, whose eyes were wide with shock at the 6-foot crater that had formed from the impact.

They saw the Liquid Metal splattered all around a prone Ralph and saw as he twitched while the Liquid Metal dissolved into nothing.

"Kaya," Eloise said with a gasp,

"You killed him!"

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