The original Hammerhead had no interest in attack magic, yet he had a peculiar fondness for everyday-life spells—the sort that at most fetched an object or blew a cool breeze—and this was the one spell he had truly mastered.
Ye Chui had tossed the scrolls out so carelessly earlier precisely because he was waiting to use this 【Breeze】 spell to control them and attack Kairui.
It was an attack method he'd hit on in a flash of inspiration. The number of times he could cast attack spells was limited, but everyday-life magic like 【Breeze】 and 【Dust Removal】 came to him as naturally as breathing and could be sustained for a long while. So he used scrolls to make up for his shortage of attack spells, turning those everyday-life spells into attack spells.
Under his control, scrolls flew at Kairui one after another, and he activated them just as they came close to him.
Flame, lightning, dust, water, gale...
Because Ye Chui was steering the scrolls remotely with his wand, he could send four or five of them at Kairui at the same time, and the angles were unspeakably vicious—a scroll hurtling at your face suddenly darting in at your crotch. Just try blocking that.
To Ye Chui it felt like he was playing a video game, and a motion-controlled one at that... and in his last life, as a peak-level hacker, Ye Chui had been peak-level at games too!
When Ye Chui had simply thrown scrolls straight at Kairui, Kairui could still dodge on raw reaction speed. Now he was completely on the defensive, swinging his longsword blindly with all his strength, and still getting pounded by scroll after scroll.
Fire had burned every hair off his head; his face was scorched black, his body caked in mud, and of the gleaming armor he'd worn there was no trace left.
Watching Kairui bounce and shriek amid the scroll bombardment, the onlookers no longer knew how to react. They'd never imagined Ye Chui would attack Kairui this way. This was crushing the man with raw money, wasn't it?
In that short stretch Ye Chui had probably flung out a hundred scrolls in all. A hundred scrolls—what kind of number was that? Fifty silver coins!
They weren't stunned that a rank-two mage had completely suppressed Kairui, a rank-four swordsman. They were stunned by Ye Chui's spendthrift, filthy-rich style of attack...
One scroll after another kept going off.
Walled in by scrolls, Kairui soon stopped making any sound. Thanks to the dust scrolls, he was completely shrouded in flying dust, and only a vague black silhouette could be seen standing there.
Ye Chui steered scrolls at that black silhouette; now flames burst out, now lightning flickered.
And the silhouette did not move at all, as though it were already dead.
"Kairui..." Busca's face was filled with indescribable worry. He shouted at the top of his lungs, but there was no response whatsoever.
Everyone around was thinking the same thing—
Had Ye Chui really just played Kairui to death like that?
Bang!
The last flame scroll flared up inside the dust, and the shadow in the flying dust still gave no response at all.
By now Ye Chui was panting with exhaustion too, his eyes fixed unmoving on the figure in the dust, his wand pointed at it, not daring to shift by a hairsbreadth.
All around was dead silent; only Busca's voice, endlessly calling Kairui's name, rang out.
Debbie came over to Ye Chui with her greatsword in hand, the girl's face a picture of bewildered shock. "Hammerhead, you actually beat him this way? That's... that's..."
Ye Chui smiled rather smugly, about to tell the girl she didn't need to praise him, when Debbie followed up with: "How much money did that cost?! Where did you even get that many scrolls?"
"...I inscribed them over the last few days," Ye Chui explained.
"Impossible. Our shop only had seven scrolls in stock. You inscribed a hundred scrolls in a few days?" Debbie said, astonished.
"Yeah..." Ye Chui explained, a little sheepishly. "Maybe with disaster staring me in the face I performed above my level, so I got a lot faster..."
Debbie fell silent—whether from excitement or something else, it was hard to say—and then she sighed again. "If we sold that many scrolls, how much money could we make..."
"..." Ye Chui was speechless. Couldn't the girl focus on something else?
Debbie's eyes went to Kairui in the flying dust as well, and her voice was worried. "He hasn't moved at all. He's not dead, is he?"
"Hard to say. A relentless bombardment like that can't feel good," Ye Chui said hesitantly. He wasn't certain what he'd actually done to Kairui either. He thought for a moment, then aimed his wand forward. "Dust Removal!"
The everyday-life magic 【Dust Removal】
Its effect was to clean the dust out of the air and leave the air fresh as new...
As Ye Chui's spell went out, a faint breeze swept past, so slight it was almost imperceptible, and yet the flying dust filling the air seemed to be seized by some force and settled to the ground one after another, piling into a layer of dirt there.
The view opened up all at once, and there in the middle of the road was Kairui, half crouched on the ground, both hands gripping his longsword, which was planted in the earth. At first glance, the pose was actually pretty cool...
"Don't tell me this guy had to get his pose just right before he died?" Ye Chui couldn't resist snarking.
But Debbie's expression changed abruptly. "Oh no—I know that stance. It's a defensive move only intermediate swordsmen can learn: War God's Protection!"
"Holy shit, he's popping his ultimate!?" Ye Chui was stunned.
Almost at the same instant Ye Chui spoke, the motionless Kairui moved. A look of utter fury spread across his blackened face; he threw back his head and let out a roar, rose from the ground, and a thin, faint light flowed over his body.
Debbie had already raised her greatsword. "War God's Protection is an incredibly powerful all-or-nothing move, but it takes your own sword aura to trigger, and using it once damages your own rank... but it lets the user enter the War God state for a very short time, and both strength and speed double outright..."
Kairui's speed had indeed grown much faster; in the blink of an eye he had rushed right in front of Ye Chui and Debbie.
"Watch my Great Top..." Debbie had been ready since she started talking to Ye Chui. She brought her greatsword up and went spinning to meet Kairui.
But Kairui swept his longsword, and with a clang it struck Debbie's greatsword. Her top hadn't even gotten fully spinning yet; taking the force of that blow, Debbie and her spin were carried off to one side, and then she went down flat on her backside on the ground...
In the War God state, Kairui's strength had multiplied!
Ye Chui cried out in alarm and lunged toward Debbie, but Kairui had already flashed up in front of him with incredible speed, seized him by the throat, and hoisted him clean off the ground. His voice was hoarse: "Kill you. I'm going to kill you..."
Ye Chui's arms and legs dangled in the air; he could barely breathe, his life hanging by a thread.
And yet, at that moment, a faint smile appeared on Ye Chui's flushed, purple-red face.
The truth was, he still had one last trick he hadn't played.
He pointed his wand at Kairui's armor—
Kairui's armor was already a battered, sorry-looking mess, covered in scars left by fire and lightning; yet, looking closely, there were also some strange black lines on it.
Those lines were something Ye Chui had quietly hidden in the magic scrolls and, amid the chaos of the earlier attack, used 【Breeze】 to imprint onto Kairui's body.
The black was magic ink.
And the lines formed a simple magic matrix—the simplest and most practical magic matrix there was: the furnace-fire matrix used in magic stoves.
Ye Chui's wand touched Kairui's armor, and he fed his magic power into it.
The switch of the magic furnace-fire matrix was activated.
The next instant, Kairui's whole body burst into flames...
Begging for recommendations and bookmarks~~~~ First time writing xuanhuan—magic-flavored xuanhuan, no less—so I'm pretty nervous, but this Cannon has full confidence in this story. So I hope you'll all lend your wholehearted support. Thank you~~~