Practice duel

Part 7

She approached, inspecting the armor rather than immediately attacking.

“Fine. Full force—but I’m still not trying to seriously injure you.”

She stepped back several paces.

“First, something controlled.”

Her fingers moved through a short sequence of signs.

A handful of small stones lifted from the ground.

They began circling her.

Then—

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Three stones shot toward Dev from different angles.

One high.

One toward his ribs.

One low toward his knee.

Not enough force to be dangerous, but considerably faster than the pebble she’d thrown before.

Elira watched his eyes carefully.

“Let’s see if your reflexes are as good as your jump.”

He side stepped and looked at her, “I wish.. but hey you’re gonna really have to go all out I think”

Elira stared at him for a moment.

Then she sighed.

“You’re really determined to make me regret agreeing to this.”

She lowered her hands.

“All right. But I’m setting the rules.”

She pointed at the ice armor.

“Keep that up. And I’m stopping the moment I think something is actually wrong.”

She moved farther across the field, putting roughly twenty paces between them.

The playful expression faded.

“Ready?”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

The air around her compressed.

A sharp gust tore across the grass as she accelerated, her body propelled forward by wind magic. At the same time, three blades of compressed air formed around her and shot toward him from different angles.

One high.

One low.

One aimed directly toward the center of his ice armor.

She wasn’t trying to overwhelm him with raw power.

She was testing whether his newly awakened senses could track multiple threats while his body moved at unnatural speed.

And for the first time since they’d begun experimenting, Elira wasn’t smiling.

Dev smiled seeing her get serious. As the three wind blades approached he jumped up over them while compressing the air around himself

The three blades tore beneath him.

Elira’s eyes widened slightly as he cleared them.

Then she noticed the compressed air forming around his body.

“Oh, you’re adapting already…”

She changed tactics immediately.

Rather than giving him time to settle into the defensive technique, Elira drove her palm forward.

The air beneath Dev suddenly bucked upward.

At the same instant, the pressure surrounding him was disturbed from two directions, creating a violent cross-current designed to destabilize his flight rather than simply overpower it.

Elira moved with it, using a burst of wind to reposition herself several meters to his right.

A fourth compressed-air blade formed beside her.

She waited until his trajectory became predictable.

Then fired.

The blade curved in midair.

Not toward where he was.

Toward where he was going to land.

Twisting mid air in response to the her wind currents he expelled the compressed air to speed his decent rather than aiming to land in a different location he wanted to simply get there before the wind blade and he simultaneously had conjured one of his own to collide and block her attack

Dev’s compressed air burst  downward.

The sudden acceleration pulled his body through the disturbed currents before Elira’s curved blade could reach the landing point.

At the same instant, his own compressed-air blade met hers.

BOOM.

The two pressure edges collided in midair and dispersed into a sharp gust that swept across the field.

Elira’s hair whipped backward.

She grinned.

“Okay. That’s new.”

She didn’t give him time to settle.

Her foot struck the ground.

A thin sheet of wind raced across the grass toward him, almost invisible except for the way the grass flattened ahead of it. It wasn’t aimed at his body.

Instead, the pressure wave hit the ground beneath his feet, trying to steal his footing while Elira launched herself forward behind it.

Her fist was wrapped in a dense layer of compressed air.

She was testing something different now.

Not whether he could dodge a spell.

Whether his newly enhanced body could react when the terrain itself became the attack.

Seeing the attack coming Dev did a front flip over the wind wall and the second he landed he created a low pressure zone in-front of himself that destabilized the compressed air enveloping her fist and pulled her slightly off balance turning his ice armor into mist as he caught her and sweeped her off of her feet into a princess carry spinning around with her for a moment laughing “that was fun”

Elira’s eyes went wide as the world suddenly spun.

One moment she was driving forward with her fist.

The next, her attack had unraveled, her footing was gone, and she found herself safely caught in Dev’s arms.

For a heartbeat she simply stared at him.

Then she burst out laughing.

“You—”

She tried to regain her composure and failed.

“You completely cheated!”

Her hands instinctively caught against his shoulders as the spinning stopped.

“That was supposed to be a reflex test, not a demonstration of how quickly you can turn me into a damsel.”

She glanced down at the ground, then back at him.

“But…”

Her grin widened.

“That was really good.”

She tapped his shoulder.

“You didn’t just react to the attack. You recognized what my wind was doing and disrupted the spell itself.”

Her expression became thoughtful.

“That low-pressure zone wasn’t something you’ve practiced before, was it?”

She studied him for another moment, then smirked.

“And I’m beginning to suspect that ‘new Level Four body’ isn’t even the most interesting thing about you.”

She looked toward the field.

“Put me down, show-off. I want another round.”

“Gladly ma-Lady” Dev teased setting her on her feet before jumping back a good five feet resummoning the ice armor with a thought. And that’s when her jaw dropped “wait… what, that’s impossible… you just manifested that spell without any words or handsigns!”she exclaimed

Elira froze.

Her eyes dropped to the ice armor, then snapped back to Dev.

“Wait…”

She took a slow step closer, staring at the armor as though it had personally offended everything she had ever learned.

“You didn’t even start the casting sequence.”

Her gaze flicked to his hands.

“Your hands didn’t move. You didn’t speak. There wasn’t even the usual preparatory mana circulation.”

She looked genuinely stunned now.

“That isn’t silent casting, Dev. Silent casting still uses hand-signs. You just—”

She stopped herself, searching for the right words.

“—thought about the spell.”

A long silence followed.

Then her expression changed from shock to fascination.

“Do it again.”

She immediately raised a finger.

“Actually, no. Don’t change anything. Don’t try to figure out how you did it. Just make the armor disappear.”

Her eyes narrowed with intense concentration.

“Then bring it back.”

She took another step backward, giving him room.

“If you can reproduce it twice in a row, then whatever happened in Spell Construction wasn’t a fluke.”

The excitement in her voice was unmistakable.

“And if it isn’t a fluke…”

She glanced at the ice armor again.

“…I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at.”

He was also surprised in truth the admit to perform the casting sequence but the spell manifested as soon as it’s finished form was envisioned in his mine’s eye. “

yeah I definitely need to practice this and get control of that I can’t have this happening accidentally in front of anyone” Dev replied and attempted to go as instructed, but at first nothing happened, then after a few minutes the armor dissipated and then he resummoned it in an instant. “Okay I think I know what’s happening… it’s not enough for me to just to picture a spell happening, I have to know how to cast it, has the intention of casting it, have the finished process for casting it mentally and the finished result actively held in my mind and then will the outcome to happen as if casting a spell by hand.  that’s why every time it’s happened by accident was when I was essentially in the middle of casting a spell and the spell completed itself…” he trailed off contemplating the implications of being able to cast faster than anyone else and he realized “ shit but I still need to figure out how to stop this from happening when it’s not intentional, any ideas?”

Elira stared at him for several seconds.

Then she slowly lowered her hands.

“Okay. First…”

She pointed at the ice armor.

“That’s insane.”

A beat.

“Second, I think you’ve actually figured out the important distinction.”

She paced a small circle, thinking aloud.

“You aren’t replacing the casting sequence with imagination. You’re compressing the entire sequence into intent because you already understand the spell well enough for your mind to supply the missing steps.”

She looked back at him.

“And that explains why it happened during Spell Construction. You weren’t trying to cast faster. You were already constructing the spell in your head, and at some point your intent crossed whatever threshold makes the magic respond.”

Her brow furrowed.

“So the problem isn’t necessarily learning how to do it.”

She tapped her temple.

“It might be learning how not to do it.”

Elira’s expression became increasingly analytical.

“Let’s establish what triggers it. You said you need four things: knowledge of the casting process, intention to cast, the complete process held mentally, and the desired result.”

She held up four fingers.

“So we test those separately.”

She raised one finger.

“First, think through a spell completely. Don’t cast it. Just construct the entire thing mentally.”

A second finger.

“Then deliberately imagine the finished spell while removing the intention to actually cast it.”

Third.

“Then do the opposite—intend to cast, but don’t finish constructing the spell in your head.”

She lowered her hand.

“If nothing happens during those tests, we start combining them until we find the point where your magic decides, yes, we’re doing this now.”

She paused, then gave him a sideways look.

“And until we know that threshold, I’d avoid practicing this anywhere near other students.”

Her expression softened slightly.

“Because you’re right. If someone sees you casually manifesting spells without gestures, questions are going to start immediately.”

She glanced toward the distant academy towers.

“And considering what happened under the arena…”

Her voice dropped.

“…I’d really rather you figure this out before someone else figures out you.”

They spent the next few hours practicing and trying out different ideas and before they knew it the sun was setting but I had made wonderful progress Dev  learned exactly how to use this silent instant casting, as well as how to stop it from happening without his desire for it and thus gaining control to not slip up in front of other students or professors, at least he hoped so.

The sun had dropped low enough that the mountains beyond the academy were turning orange, their peaks cutting dark silhouettes against the evening sky.

The training field was a mess.

Scorched patches of earth. Shallow craters. Frozen grass. A few stones that had been sliced cleanly in half.

But the hours of testing had paid off.

Elira sat on the edge of a stone slab, notebook open across her knees. Several pages were covered in diagrams, arrows, crossed-out theories, and increasingly frantic notes.

She looked up at Dev.

“I think we’ve got it.”

She tapped the page.

“Your normal casting process is still there. You haven’t somehow forgotten how to use gestures or incantations. You’ve basically developed a second pathway.”

She flipped to another page.

“Traditional casting: intent → construction → gestures and words → mana circulation → spell formation → release.”

She drew a line beneath it.

“Your awakened casting can apparently do this.”

Her pencil moved rapidly.

“Intent → complete mental construction → manifestation.”

Elira looked almost disturbed by how simple she’d made it sound.

“And the really important part is that you figured out the off switch.”

Over the last few hours, they’d discovered that the silent manifestation wasn’t triggered merely by imagining a spell. Dev could think through a spell’s structure without anything happening. He could visualize the completed spell without releasing it. He could even mentally rehearse the entire casting sequence while deliberately withholding the final intent.

The phenomenon only occurred when all the pieces aligned and he consciously willed the completed spell into existence.

And once he recognized that distinction, controlling it became dramatically easier.

Elira closed her notebook.

“You should still be careful.”

She stood, stretching her shoulders after hours of testing.

“But…”

A grin slowly appeared.

“Do you realize what this means?”

She pointed at him.

“You just spent several hours learning how to cast spells faster than someone who has to physically perform an entire casting sequence.”

She shook her head.

“That could be terrifying in a fight.”

Then she paused.

“Assuming you can actually use it under pressure.”

Her expression became mischievous.

“Which means we obviously have to test that.”

She took a few steps back.

“Tomorrow.”

A small gust of wind curled around her boots.

“Because I’m not letting you walk back into class thinking you’ve mastered something just because you can reproduce it standing around in an empty field.”

She smiled.

“And besides, I want another fight.”

The last sunlight caught the edge of her hair as she glanced toward the academy.

“Preferably before we’re caught sneaking around out here.”

A distant bell rang from the academy towers.

Seven times.

Elira’s eyes widened.

“Oh.”

She looked toward the setting sun.

“We’ve been out here hours.”

Then she looked at the ruined training field.

“…Veris is going to kill me.”

She glanced at Dev.

“Or worse.”

A pause.

“He’s going to ask what we were testing.”