Chapter 103 Converging Attack
Zavier was slightly surprised because he knew the girl. It was none other than Shiranui who had gone her own way with her new team. From the looks of it, either she had been abandoned by her team or she had gone her own way like them.
But what he failed to understand was the reason why the opposing team was able to hold her down so easily. She was strong, stronger than she looked. No team should have been this strong after all the university had made sure that the teams all had an average strength at best.
Zavier didn\'t have time to monitor her any longer since the situation was getting disadvantageous for her fast. He told Andrew to stay put for a while as he handled the situation.
Zavier stayed in the shadows and in the bushes as he headed towards the battle.
Shiranui was surprisingly in serious trouble. She was unable to hold them off all on her own. Her clothes were torn in several places and there were some slight wounds, some were more like scratches while some were deep enough to cause bleeding.
The more Zavier witnessed the battle, the more he came to believe that all three individuals had similar fighting prowess to that of Shiranui. She was essentially fighting three enemies who were equally as powerful as her.
Since Mabel had explained that each squad could only have average power at best, Zavier was sure such a powerful three man cell could not exist. Therefore, there was only one possible explanation for what was happening in front of him.
But he needed to observe some more before he could come to a final conclusion. Although he was worried about Shiranui, he knew that she was a strong mage who could handle herself even against a tough enemy like that so he continued to keep watch to save her if she actually was in trouble.
At the same time he needed to assess the information to predict how the rest of the participants had been operating. Unlike him who was earning the totality of his points through completion of tasks, some had resorted to stealing cards using the strength of the whole team like the ones he had stumbled upon in the start with his clones. Some had ganged up with those from other teams and were going about terrorizing people like Kevin\'s team. The scenario in front of him was clearly another loophole that the participants had made use of to make up a stronger team.
"Keep pushing her, she is about to run out of mana. She can\'t keep this up for much longer."
"Yeah, there\'s three of us and only one of her. This is going to be a breeze."
"I can\'t help but admire Teacher Bert for coming up with this method. This way we can definitely all progress to the second round and deal a blow to competition at the same time. We have to make sure that our high school ranks first in the next test."
The three of them took turns attacking Shiranui in an attempt to get her to run out of mana. Therefore at all times, two of them would be free to chatter. Zavier found this fortunate as he was able to guess a lot from their conversation.
From the looks of it, the three belonged to the same high school.
His earlier suspicions had turned out to be correct after all. The third method that the participants were using was this one. Students from the same school were banding up together right after the start of the competition. They had abandoned their original teams and had joined up with the students that they were able to trust whole heartedly. This not only helped them be at ease, their overall team strength also increased by leaps and bounds.
Zavier felt that he was such an idiot for missing something this obvious. Finally he was able to understand the reason that Mabel had announced the next test earlier. It was to generate this type of situation. Competition between different schools was the best method to reduce the number of participants for the next round as far as the university was concerned.
Zavier stayed still and kept an eye on Shiranui.
Shiranui was unable to attack with all her strength after she had been surrounded since she had to be ready to defend herself from all the sides. Therefore, her fight was purely defensive while her opponents were the ones who were constantly on the offensive.
Her opponents were slowly tiring her out but her black flame was truly a powerful skill that kept disrupting the rhythm of her opponents.
They were unable to defeat her even after surrounding her. The major credit for such a feat had to be given to the skill with which Shiranui wielded her black flame. Even Zavier learned a thing or two while looking at her; after all he too had a similar flame skill in his arsenal and an even more powerful one at that.
Still, one against three Shiranui could not hold on for much longer and was about to be hit by one of her opponents after faltering a bit due to exhaustion.
Zavier had already noticed her predicament and launched a long range illusion from the shadows.
[Skill level is very high. Some of the restrictions will no longer be applied on the user.]
[No eye contact is necessary. User can now cast the illusion without making any eye contact with the target.]
[Dizziness Lv. 3 has been cast successfully.]
[Your mental strength is very high. The target will unconditionally fall into a state of dizziness. The skill can\'t be resisted because User\'s mental strength is excessively higher compared to the target.]
This was one of the earliest skills that he had learned. With constant meditation and practice of the clone with the Mesmer system, Zavier now had a high level of mental prowess and could cast low to medium level illusions as easily as breathing without even tiring himself out.
The target of the skill felt his world spin for some time and when he came back to his senses, the skill he had cast had landed so far out from his target that he could not help but curse out loud.
His teammates who had been waiting for the end of the fight were dumbfounded at such an obvious miss. Of course they had been unable to sense the interference of a certain illusionist.
"There is someone else hiding around us. The girl has another teammate. Whoever it is, just cast an illusion skill to make me miss."
As soon as they heard the target of the skill speaking about another hidden enemy, they finally knew what had happened.
Since they had been together in school, nobody amongst the three doubted the other and they got their guards up in order to draw out the one who was still in hiding.
Although the other did not know who it was that had saved them, Shiranui could already make an educated guess about her not so mysterious helper. She was sure that it was Zavier.
Although ordinary mages were capable of casting low level illusions using mana, there were subtle mana fluctuations accompanying such skills and could be found out very easily. Moreover her helper was so skilled that they had managed to cast an illusion successfully on a mage who was as good as her which she knew for a fact was quite close to impossible. But she had heard about one person who was that good at it and had even succeeded in casting it on an A rank mage.
Not just everyone could boast that achievement. It was none other than Zavier from her school. Therefore, she was sure that it had to be Zavier who had saved him.
Although it was close to being correct, she needed her guess to be the truth. She couldn\'t afford another enemy eyeing her card.
Thankfully, her opponents had gotten cautious and they started to throw all sorts of long range spells towards the bushes, which was the supposed hiding spot of her helper. Despite having guessed the identity of the helper, she couldn\'t move out to help them because she had to make sure.
Thankfully, her guess seemed to be correct as Zavier came rolling out of the bushes in order to avoid one of the skills and finally revealed himself to everyone.
Shiranui felt at ease knowing that Zavier was in the vicinity. More than that, conflicting emotions plagued her mind. She didn\'t know if she should feel happy that Zavier had helped her out when she was in trouble or if she should be worried that Zavier might be thinking that she was a heartless girl who only cared about winning and didn\'t care if she hurt anyone in the process.
Shiranui wanted to tell everything about herself to Zavier in order to apologize but whenever she tried to say something, her voice would get stuck somewhere inside.
And currently she wasn\'t in any position to discuss such things with him. She had to focus her attention on the fight at hand.
Since the blockade around her had been disturbed by the arrival of Zavier, Shiranui rushed to his side and stood beside him.
"These three are all from the same school and are incredibly strong. Each one of them has a unique skill that distinguishes them among a hoard of participants. Their skill level is almost on par with me. If you had come any later, I would probably have been eliminated by then."
Zavier nodded in return with an expressionless face. In fact he had wanted to smile so as to reassure her but the way she had been acting around him ever since their journey had started made him reconsider. He didn\'t want to make her feel awkward. So he kept their interaction as formal as possible.
"Anything I should know about these three?"
"One of them uses blood magic since he is one of the Vampires. One has inherited the powers and inhumane strength of a werewolf. He can transform into one at will. The last is a supposed Dragon Rider but I have yet to see his so called dragon. But even without it, he is plenty strong."
Zavier nodded in understanding. He knew that the situation was dire but after he heard about the skills of the enemy he finally knew how powerful they actually were. Zavier felt that they must be saving their energy for later otherwise they might have already taken down Shiranui by now.