I was fighting to protect my dignity, or maybe I was simply fighting for revenge for what Adem had done to Aarin.
"I don't care how strong you are, Adem. This attitude will stop right here!."
Although I had said this, it was more for me to hear than for Adem. I was collecting the strength to fight Adem and needed to hear my own bravery. It was perhaps my way of burning all the ships so that I could strengthen my resolve before jumping into the fight wholeheartedly.
"I don't care about your high spirits; I'll win either way."
In an instant, before I could even sense it, the prince of fire grabbed my wrist and threw me in the opposite direction.
"What, why did you?"
As I fell on the floor, my confusion was quickly wiped away by a loud bang followed by a small wave of wind from the impact between Adem's rocks and the prince of fire's fire wall defence. Had the prince not thrown me to safety, Adem would have successfully stuck me with his attack. The rocks that were aimed at me had hit the wall, leaving their rigged mark in the form of broken parts of the wall on the ground.
I quickly got up, even more determined to help in the fight. As the two exchanged complex patterns of punches, trading hard blows to each other's physical resilience, I realised that Adem had the upper hand by a long margin.
"Stop smiling, you bastard!"
I shouted at him as I sent multiple wind blades towards him.
"Heeeeeeehehe"
He shrieked in excitement, now broadly grinning. As the prince of fire attempted to kick him to free his hands from Adem's grip, Adem himself released his grip on the prince of fire and kicked him before he could get kicked, and my blades hit the prince of fire, injuring his back severely. I had not held back from the spell.
The prince fell across the floor and landed next to me, bleeding. By now, a lot of students had gathered; however, no one was hooting like before. Was it because they were worried about us, since the fight had escalated beyond simple bullying?
"Where the heck are the teachers?"
I muttered as I saw the prince standing back on his feat.
"Why are you saving me? Aren't our families not rivals?"
I quietly asked him, my chest tightening with regret for not being able to defend myself from Adem and, at the same time, feeling the burden of the Hearts family's debt on my shoulders.
"What have we ever done to each other to carry on the hate passed down by our families for each other?"
"You!"
At that moment, I saw the difference between the other nobles, their families, and the prince of fire.
"We can talk later, and how can we do that if we get crushed here?"
A strong aura began to rise from the prince of fire, and it felt to me that my skin was going to burn. Slowly, the temperature around me began to rise, and at first I thought it was a regular power-up. However, the heat emanating from his body was not normal, and slowly, the air around his body began to slowly glow orange.
"What the heck are you intending to do? Is this seriously your true strength, prince of fire!?"
Adem, who had sensed this, screamed out of joy. He seemed to enjoy watching us struggle.
"You should stop with that. Isn't that dangerous, prince?"
The prince turned towards me and smiled.
"This is a forbidden spell in my family, but now I will use the secret magicode to drastically inflate our magic power. This will be the requirement to win against that monster."
I didn't know much about the fire magic of the Hearts family; however, it was known amongst the elites that the Hearts family of fire, although the weakest, had once been the strongest of all four houses. The reason for their strength was their forbidden magicode, which relied heavily on WR-93B, the hottest star in the Milky Way galaxy, with temperatures reaching 288,000 fahrenheit.
"Is it that technique where the user's life force can be compromised if not properly performed?"
"It does not matter. Secret magicode Scorpius: Wolf-Rayet WR 93b!"
"aaarhhhh"
I screamed in pain and quickly jumped back, covering myself with a blanket of air that was rotating to keep the hot air away from me. If the heat from before felt like a very hot day, this felt like standing on fire.
From a distance, I could hear the prince speaking in a changed voice, his clothes slowly burning.
"Adem. Why are you not smiling anymore?"
"You idiot. You'll die before you can even hit me with that type of energy. Cut it out."
Although Adem had been laughing until now and had clearly stated his intention of wanting to break our pride, I could feel the emergency in his voice. This really was a serious situation, and I still kept wondering where the damn teachers were. If it continued this way, the prince could even die.
"Damn it. I can't believe this."
I had to act immediately because waiting for the teachers to help had left us stranded up until now. I had to be the one to put an end to this.
My throat felt dry when I tried to gulp before maintaining the right posture. I saw Adem's gaze on me.
"So he's noticed already that I'm readying myself to make a move? He's good."
Still, Adam didn't say anything or act like he had any intention of stopping me. He understood my plan. As I jumped forward towards the prince, Adem sent a particularly large rock flying towards the prince. This rock was to distract him, and I had intended to cut off the oxygen supply around the prince and strike him unconscious. The fast-moving rock, however, burned to dust the closer it got to us. I activated the secret technique and sucked the oxygen from around the prince. Thankfully, the hot atmosphere slightly cooled down. Right when I leaped towards him to hit him on the neck and cut off the oxygen to his brain temporarily, the prince turned and glared at me. I quickly pushed against the air in midair and changed my trajectory. Although I wasn't sure, it felt to me as if I would have been burned had I not diverted my direction away from him.
"This is bad."
All of a sudden, multiple rocks crashed into the prince.
"You bastard. You didn't intend to save him from the start!"
"Exactly. I used your diversion to hit him in his weakened state."
I had cut off the oxygen in the prince's body, and this had reduced his strength. However, Adem now had the upper hand once again, and large rocks continuously slammed into the ground, covering the prince under the dirt. It seemed that multiple large clots of the earth were putting the prince's fire out.
"So, will you put the prince in danger again by returning his oxygen supply to him? Or will you see this hero get crushed by me, just like that stupid maid of yours?"
"No. What do I do? This-"
The hatred I had for Adem had now increased exponentially. He had put me in a tough situation, and it had been my mistake to trust him. Maybe I was wrong for trying to save the prince. I heard Adem laugh as he dug his hand into the broken rocks and pulled out the prince from under the rubble. The prince was unconscious now because he had expended too much energy and had been prevented from completing the magicode wait time.
"Where is all of that courage now?"
Adem punched the unconscious prince so hard that beads of blood and saliva flew out of the prince's mouth as he landed into the glass window that had already been broken and almost fell outside. I quickly rushed to save him from falling and pulled him back into the school gallery.
Adems' footsteps slowly came closer to me, and although I was extremely angry, I knew it was useless to try fighting him. I slowly turned around when the footsteps felt as if they were right behind me, and before I could even raise my head to look at Adams dark silhouette against the light, a sharp pain flew across my entire back. I had been kicked mercilessly as I covered the prince's now-vulnerable body.
"Get up, or are you guys tired already?"
I saw frames of Adem's feet, this time with more force closing in towards my head. Was he aiming to actually kill me? Whatever the reason was, I felt sad for being weak.
"Even if I survive, will Adem continue to bully me? What pride do I have left as a heiress to the Souls family of air? I was too weak."
Right when the kick was landing and Adem's feet came into contact with my head, I felt a rush of wind blow across me, and I was in a different place from Adem. Where I had been moments before, I sat with the prince, and Adem's feet were pushing against his temple. However, it seemed the prince was still unconscious, and yet his body was now emanating the same heat that it had been emanating before he had used the secret technique.
"Although you have no energy left, you're scraping every last bit you have. Why? Why do you intend to go all the way to save me? I do not understand. But right now, to thank you for standing with me, I will trust you."
Tears flowed down my eyes as I looked at the prince. If there was something I could do to help him, I would, but no matter what I thought of, it seemed in vain.
The prince had firmly gripped Adem's shin, and Adem, despite trying to pull with all his might, seemed shaken by the grip strength that the prince of fire had.
"Leave my leg, you loser. I'll kick you again then. You like being kicked, don't you? Leave my damn leg there, already!"
"Fireball: maximum luminosity, maximum heat, maximum density, one hundred percent. Activate."
A fireball appeared right in front of Adam's face, revolving at a high speed, as if it were a mini tornado of fire. I could see that the prince was unconscious, and his eyes were closed, so he was fighting out of instinct.
"Do it now, prince of fire!"
I screamed at the price, desperate to put Adem down. However, to my shock, the prince didn't move—not his fireball.
"Hoho? Having trouble making it move?"
Adem snared. Taking this as a sign of diminishing strength, he forcefully pulled his leg that had been gripped by the prince, but I too was surprised that there was still no lack in the prince's grip strength. Was he waiting for something before he could shoot the fireball?
"Shoot it now! This is your chance."
I once again shouted out of frustration, but still, the fireball kept spinning without any sign of moving.
"Is he not sure that this will be enough to defeat Adam? Then... is he waiting for me to do something?"
I quickly stood up and looked around in frustration.
"What can it be? What can it be?"
In the distance, I heard a bird sing. For some reason, a story regarding a singing bird flashed into my mind. It was a story my father had told me a long time ago.
"Do you like the singing bird?"
He had asked me one time, when I had been intently listening to the birds song.
"Yes. It is nice to hear."
I had been a little girl then, and the world had been more peaceful.
"I wonder if you like the bird or the song."
"Both. Both are good."
"Do you know, Laiba, that without one, the other cannot be as nice? The bird sings, and the song is simply air that was moulded into the song. The bird needs the air around it, and the air needs the bird to make it sound beautiful."
All of a sudden, I understood what needed to be done and what the prince was waiting for.
I began to concentrate large amounts of oxygen near the fireball, and within moments, its size had grown multiple times, and the heat it generated was now sending flares across the gallery.
I heard Adem scream with anger, and then the fireball pushed him through the wall, into the air, and crashed into the ground below, finally exploding.
I fell to the ground, losing my conscience, but I was happy. I had successfully defended my family's honour, and most importantly, I had found an unexpected friend.
"Ha! I guess I'll ask you your name later."