Alicia continued to bombard me with her magical bullets, the devastating projectiles pounding my Scutum Sobiescianum and slowly chipping away at it. Realizing that I couldn't afford to cower forever, I stepped back and kicked it up.
The summoning had to wait. For now, I had to go on the counteroffensive, or I would have holes blown in my body before I could summon anything.
Devising a plan quickly, I kicked my shield up and used my foot to hurl it toward a surprised Alicia. The spinning Constellation shield sailed through her web of bullets, weathering the blows. Even though each powerful projectile chipped away at its surface and tore out small pieces of metal from its body, Scutum Sobiescianum continued inexorably toward Alicia's position.
She wasn't the only one who could fight at range. I could do it too. The only reason why I didn't summon Orion and resort to a shooting contest with her was because I knew I would lose. Alicia specialized in ranger magic – her aim, accuracy and reflexes in terms of shooting would all be superior to mine.
"!!"
The rapidly spinning shield was too fast, reaching Alicia before she could retreat. She instead chose to dodge by bending her spine backward, just barely evading the deadly projectile. As she did so, I seized the opportunity to close the distance, swinging both my Gemini twin swords down to cleave her into three.
However, Alicia was already prepared for that.
Even as her back was still bent backward, both of her arms snaked out, a pistol still gripped in each hand. The two guns barked furiously, and a couple of bullets arced toward my position in a graceful curve, homing into my location.
"Amazing!" Miranda's eyes widened. Beside her, the Black Roses cheered raucously when they saw the impressive move their goddess pulled off. "Even from that sort of disadvantageous position, Alicia is still able to execute a double arc shot!"
"Slay him! Long live our goddess!"
Her fans were shrieking with all their might, throwing their hands high up and jumping to their feet as they cheered. Seated away from them, and inside the VIP spectator's box, Vincent Violet, Alicia's father as well as the academy director, watched on in amazement.
"Alicia has already reached this level?" he gasped in awe.
As for me, I had no choice. I didn't have time to charge up my twin swords and cast my ranged spells (Castor and Pollux), so I threw the both of them. The spinning Gemini twin swords also twirled about in a graceful arc and met the incoming bullets, slicing through them.
"Now! Cancer!"
At that moment, I finally completed my summoning spell, having bought myself just barely sufficient time to pull it off.
A gigantic orange and white crab materialized and smashed downward from the heavens, his pincer crashing against Alicia. The leader of the Black Roses quickly dove to the side, rolling away as Cancer pursued her. She brought both her guns up and fired almost pointblank into the enormous crab.
However, her magical projectiles didn't possess enough firepower to penetrate Cancer's sturdy shell. The gigantic crab scuttled about, swinging his pincer to try and grab her. Alicia elegantly jumped atop the swiping pincer, landing gracefully on the balls of her feet, and then flipped above him, still blasting him at close range with both of her guns.
The magical projectiles pinged off Cancer's armored shell, but in return for his impervious defense, the gigantic crab was slow. As he tried to turn around, Alicia had already withdrawn to a large distance, and continued to shoot him from afar.
"This is a new spirit," she remarked with a frown. I shrugged, and then nodded to my Constellation spirit.
"Cancer, bubble beam!"
Bubbles…well, bubbled out of his mouth, each one as hard as a rock. Like I said, Alicia wasn't the only one capable of ranged attacks. Instinctively, she dodged the incoming bubbles, her eyes widening slightly when she saw several of them smash tiny craters into the ground. She then glanced at the giant crab warily.
"What sort of spell is that?!"
Evidently she hadn't played Pokémon before. Her loss.
"Cancer! Altarf!"
My version of Crab Hammer, but I would rather name my Constellation spirits' attacks after the prominent stars in their constellations. Otherwise Taurus would be using flamethrower instead of Aldebaran, which would just be weird.
The massive pincer smashed the ground to bits, forcing Alicia back. She continued to pummel Cancer with pointblank range shots, but he shrugged them off and continued to pursue them. Clicking her tongue from frustration, Alicia continued to widen the distance between them, retreating to where she thought was a safe location.
Cancer continued to chase after her, scuttling forward on his spindly legs. Alicia took a deep breath, but she halted her firing. I could sense enormous amounts of mana spiraling around her, coalescing into her twin guns.
She was getting ready to cast another spell.
"Crush her with Altarf before she can complete it!" I cried out. Cancer obliged, trying to speed up as quickly as he could. As for me, I was tempted to summon another Constellation spirit, but at that moment I was in the process of casting an ultimate spell of my own and was reluctant to pause that for another less effective summoning spell.
Well, on the bright side, it wouldn't exactly be a straight cancel. It was more like a pause, actually. Suspending my current spell to cast a new one. There were disadvantages, of course. Even if the new spell was fast, I still had to cast it from scratch, which meant that it sometimes was more strategic to stick to completing the spell that I was currently casting. The advantage, on the other hand, was that the current spell would merely be paused in favor of prioritizing the new spell, instead of being cancelled outright.
That meant I could resume the casting process and complete the spell I originally intended to cast after unleashing the new spell, without needing to start the entire process from scratch again. That was why many mages didn't hesitate to switch spells in the middle of casting. It allowed them to be a lot more flexible.
Even so, as I mentioned earlier, it was sometimes a lot more strategic to complete the casting of the current spell than to try and fire off a new spell. As the new spell required you to begin from scratch, sometimes the faster casting period still wouldn't allow you to make it in time for counterattacking or defending yourself.
A battle was never easy. I might have said that many mages didn't hesitate to switch spells, but a good fraction of them found out that it was a mistake, and paid for it with injuries or defeats. Some even died in the process. The battlefield was ever-changing, and to survive, a mage had to be flexible and adapt to the current circumstances.
"Huff…"
Alicia was tiring, but she continued to dodge with impunity. Like me, she decided to withhold any spells in favor of completing the casting of her current one. Cancer advanced toward her, delivering another devastating Altarf attack that gouged a colossal chunk of concrete out of the arena, but Alicia tucked her head in and rolled away. Springing to her feet, even as debris showered her and left a small line of blood trickling down the side of her pretty face, she raised her guns and smiled.
She had finally completed the casting of her spell.
"Railgun Maximus!" she shouted. Words contained power, and many mages found it much easier to visualize the products of the spells they cast if they voice out the words and imageries associated with their spells. They amplified the power of their spells by several folds. So it actually made sense for them to be shouting the names of their spells.
Sometimes, anyway.
Twin colossal beams of destructive energies lanced out of Alicia's guns and pierced through even Cancer's sturdy shell, puncturing massive holes through him. The gigantic crab slumped over, smoking, before he began to dissipate into nothingness.
Wow, what an amazing spell. To think that Alicia would be able to imbue her guns with the terrifying power of a railgun. She had materialized projectiles and used her elemental spells to charge them with electromagnetic forces before launching them from her guns at astronomical velocities. The result was a pair of deadly projectiles with enough firepower to sink a destroyer-class ship or demolish a building.
Panting, Alicia raised her guns to aim at me. But I didn't panic.
After casting an enormous spell like that, there was no way Alicia could pull it off again in succession. At least not at her current level. She knew that as well as I did, and was already moving, firing off a bombardment that was weak when compared to her earlier railgun spell.
Even so, her current bullets were more than enough to incapacitate me. I wasn't a powerful monster like Cancer, clad in impenetrable armor. I was a human with soft flesh. Those normal bullets were sufficient to punch through me and render me unable to battle.
Even so, I was not without my own techniques of evasion. Having calculated the trajectories of the bullets with my glasses, I dodged them. It was easier to evade from a distance as the bullets would take some time to reach my position.
"?"
Alicia noticed that something was amiss. I was maintaining my distance instead of closing the gap like I did earlier. Furthermore, she saw that I was unarmed. Tensing, she glanced around, expecting me to summon something.
I obliged her.
"Black Tortoise!"
The enormous tortoise materialized in the arena, the serpent that served as his tail snaking about and hissing. A tidal wave of water rose and washed away Alicia's bullets, knocking her aside.
However, Alicia was a strong swimmer, and she even had magic to aid her. Bursting out of the tidal wave, she jumped up, magical circles appearing underneath her feet. She ascended, jumping from one spot to another in the air, with only those appearing and disappearing magical circles to serve as a foothold.
She didn't just go higher. As a geyser of water surged toward her position, she chose to dive downward instead. Flipping her body around at the last moment, she cast another quick spell and landed on a magical circle before she dropped into the sea of water that now swirled around the arena. Then she switched position, kicking off and landing on a new magical circle before a tidal wave washed over her previous position.
After a moment of evading, Alicia finally raised both of her guns. While jumping about, she had paused, resumed, paused, resumed, paused and restarted the casting of her ultimate spell. That sounded a lot easier than it was, but the actual process was a lot more complicated and required a lot of skill. Alicia had to calculate down to the smallest second. A single mistake, a single misjudgment, and if she paused the casting of her ultimate spell too early or too late to switch to the magical circles that kept her aloft in the air, she would have plunged straight into the water or miss. Not to mention, she was doing all this while dodging all of Black Tortoise's hydro attacks simultaneously. Even I wasn't confident I could pull off that multiple casting with such finesse under such tremendous pressure.
Yet Alicia was executing it flawlessly, and making it look easy.
"Railgun Maximus!"
All the while she was dodging, Alicia had been building up to the second casting of her ultimate spell. Raising her guns, she fired in midair, the two colossal beams of energies hurtling toward Black Tortoise. The recoil was so strong that she found herself plummeting through the air uncontrollably, but she was able to arrest her fall with a magic circle.
Black Tortoise glanced up before the two enormous beams slammed into him, engulfing him in an immense explosion that incinerated the entire center of the arena.