The final is finally here. It's the battle between the woman who uses Cut Magic and the man who uses Space Magic. The woman's name is Ellie Sabbeth while the man is Matt Gregor.
Everyone is anticipating their battle, even the ones who have lost. They want to know who will get the requirement to challenge a Wizard Saint. Of course, it makes the betting very intense and Ben also joins it.
The match starts at 1 PM after they held the 3rd rank match in the morning. The one who becomes the 3rd rank is the Plant Mage woman. She overwhelmed her opponent who used Light Magic.
Now, the battle between Matt the Space Mage vs Ellie the Cut Mage has started. The beginning is quite intense but not so much. It's because Ellie sends a barrage of attacks at Matt but nothing hits him.
Every attack that Ellie sends just passes through Matt's body as if he is just an illusion. Most people don't understand what happened but Ben understands perfectly. Matt distorts the space around his body to make Ellie's attacks pass through him.
Well, in simple terms, Matt's body is in a different space from Ellie's attack. He isolates himself in a different space. It's like he is there but also not there at the same time.
Ellie tries to use some spells and methods but nothing works. Then after some minutes, Matt suddenly makes a move after just staying silent for a few minutes. He suddenly teleports right behind Ellie and sends a punch.
Matt's punch is filled with Space Magic which makes it bluish-black. He punches immediately after he teleported so it's really fast. Normal Mages will get hit cleanly but surprisingly Ellie can barely block it by applying her Cut Magic on her back.
She gets flung quite far but her magic defense has reduced a lot of Matt's attack power, hence reducing the damage she takes. Before she can even stand, Matt makes another attack. He isn't flustered after getting his attack blocked.
Well, this is final so he knows his opponent is formidable. Also, he has shown his first attack many times in this tournament. So he has anticipated that his opponent can block or evade it.
But his 2nd attack is a spell that he hasn't used before in this tournament. Instead of teleporting himself, he teleports Ellie quite high. But it's not too high because Ben's enchantment barrier blocks his space manipulation.
He wants to just throw his opponents out of the stadium and win if he can. But Ben's barrier can block his Space Magic so he can only manipulate the space inside it. It's not a problem for this tournament but it will be a problem if he wins and challenges Ben.
Just from his barrier, Matt knows that Ben has some understanding of Space Magic. That means Ben might be able to counter his Space Magic spells. So Matt is thinking of not challenging Ben if he wins the tournament.
However, the match hasn't ended yet and he hasn't won. Ellie surprisingly again can handle the fall from 50 m height. 50 m is the height of Ben's barrier which is quite high.
She uses her Cut Magic's recoil to slow her fall which impresses everyone there. Everyone gets more impressed when she immediately attacks Matt after she landed. Her surprise attack also surprisingly works and cuts Matt's right arm.
Matt hasn't put his space distortion spell for protection and barely avoids Ellie's attack. Now everyone knows that Matt is weak to surprise attack. But they also know that it will be difficult to surprise Matt after this because he will be more cautious.
Matt takes his cut arm and put it back in its place then it reconnects again. Ellie's Cut Magic doesn't cut like how sword cut things. It separates objects and they'll reconnect again if they are placed back in their place correctly.
That's why there's no blood when Matt's arm gets cut, just like when Gildarts's Crush Magic breaks people's bodies. Well, it can be said that Crush & Cut Magic comes from the same source so they are similar in concept.
But it seems Ellie's mastery over her magic is still lower than Gildarts. Ben is sure that Gildarts can break Matt's Space Magic and defeat Matt. It won't be easy though if Ben calculates Gildarts's strength when they spar before the S-Class exam and Matt's current strength.
Currently, in the match, Matt has a higher chance of winning than Ellie. Most people start to bet for Matt because Ellie has been overwhelmed since the beginning. She has just landed an attack but Matt has landed many attacks on her.
The match really turns in Matt's favor and Ellie starts to get cornered. She keeps trying to find a way to pass Matt's Space distortion spell but nothing works. Long-range and short-range attacks fail to hit Matt's body.
But Matt also can't defeat Ellie yet. She is a better fighter than Matt with better battle skills & senses. Every time Matt attacked, she would always respond by blocking or evading even his surprise attacks.
The current development makes Matt has a very bad feeling. His feeling tells him that he needs to defeat Ellie as soon as possible. He doesn't know why he feels that way but he knows that he needs to listen to his feeling. A high-ranked Mage's feelings can't be ignored easily.
Time passes and Matt still can't defeat Ellie. He also finally understands his bad feeling from before. Ellie is improving at an incredible rate in their battle.
She even starts to manage to break his Space Magic spells like Space Blade and Space Bullets using her magic. Matt needs to defeat her soon before she succeeds to cut through his Space Distortion spell.
But he fails to do that because now Ellie has been used to his attack patterns. He tries to use spells that he hasn't shown but Ellie has predicted it too. She is very smart and has predicted what Matt will try to do if his attacks failed.
Matt is regretting the fact that he didn't go all out from the beginning. If he took Ellie more seriously from the start, he will be able to win. Well, it's just his wishful thinking because even Ben never thought that he would win even if he went all out from the start.
"See? Just like I've told you, Ellie will win," says Ben while smirking at Jura.
"Sigh, yeah, you really have good eyes. Even I've just thought that she would win just now when she got the upper hand," says Jura.
Ben smirks and says, "Well, most people think the same as you. Maybe almost everyone here thoughts like that. However, if you watch this tournament very seriously, you would find out that Ellie has almost gone all out since the start."
"She wasn't this strong a few days ago but she kept growing to this point by fighting strong opponents. Someone who can grow in a battle like her is the most dangerous. If I need to guess, then she must've met a wall that she can't surpass so she tried this tournament. Her goal is to fight strong people that might help her break that wall."
"Woah, you can understand just from seeing her performance?" asks Lyon impressedly.
"Well, that's just a wild guess, but this is a common problem even among high-ranking Mages. Everyone will always feel that they've found their limit one day. They will try to overcome that limit but only a few will succeed. Some even give up without trying to overcome it at all. Though if they succeed, they'll reach a height that was unimaginable to them and defeat opponents they were never dreamt to defeat," says Ben.
As if to prove Ben's words, Ellie defeats Matt after her Cut Magic managed to cut the space that Matt manipulated.
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