Victor Garrick looked nothing like the rough, brawling students of the College of Valor. Viktor was a portrait of a magical aristocracy. He wore the traditional deep blue and silver robes of the College of Arcanum, tailored from the finest spider-silk, without a single crease or speck of dust.

His most striking feature was his hair, shimmering, metallic silver-white, worn straight and shoulder-length. It wasn’t the grey of age, but the physical manifestation of the Garrick bloodline’s immense mana density. His face was pale, with high, sharp cheekbones and glacial blue eyes that looked at the world with a bored, critical appraisal.

He held a staff of polished white ash topped with a sapphirine focus crystal, resting it lightly against the cobblestones.

Viktor had taken 3rd place in the Promotion Trial, earning him a spot on the Direct Entry list. But looking at his expression, a slight, superior smirk it was clear he didn’t view his placement as a victory. He viewed the existence of the person in 1st place as an insult to the sanctity of magic.

“Viktor,”

Ray nodded politely.

“Congratulations on the Direct Entry.”

“Save your pleasantries, Artificer,”

Viktor said, his voice smooth and disdainful.

He stepped forward, his silver hair catching the sunlight. He looked Ray up and down, his eyes lingering on Ray’s new coat with a look of distaste, as if Ray were a mechanic wearing a tuxedo.

“I see you’ve cleaned up,”

Viktor noted.

“But you still smell like oil and copper wire.”

Viktor stopped a few feet away, planting his staff. He stood perfectly still, embodying his philosophy: a mage should be a stationary turret of destruction, not a scurrying fighter.

“You’ve been playing assistant to the Headmaster I hear,”

Viktor continued.

“Hiding in your workshop, tinkering with your toys.”

“I have been busy.”

Ray said calmly.

“You have been diluting the quality of this institution,”

Viktor corrected him coldly.

“Look, Croft. I admit you are… clever. You build interesting contraptions like your glove. But the Azure Cup isn’t an engineering fair. We are going up against schools like Iron-Bastion and Tidal Reach. They wield real magic. High-impact, catastrophic elemental forces.”

Viktor’s eyes glowed with a faint, internal luminance.

“You are an Artificer. You rely on your contraptions and gears because you lack the bloodline for true dominance. If you enter the Dueling Event representing Solhaven, you will be exposed. And you will make the College of Arcanum look like a vocational school for blacksmiths.”

“Is that advice? Or a threat?”

Ray asked.

“It is a demand for hygiene, Do not enter the Dueling Event, Croft. Stick to the Runic Event where you belong. Leave the fighting to the Mages.”

Viktor sneered.

“And if I refuse?”

Viktor’s smirk deepened. He didn’t crack his knuckles; such gestures were beneath him. He simply tightened his grip on his white ash staff, and the air around him suddenly grew heavy, distorted by a massive, unseen kinetic pressure.

“Then I will expose you, I challenge you to a spar. You and me right now.”

Viktor declared, his voice carrying clearly to the gathering crowd.

He tilted his head, his silver hair shifting.

“If I win, you admit that engineering is a crutch for the weak, and you do not enter the Dueling Event.”

The crowd hushed. It was a direct attack on Ray’s entire methodology.

Ray looked at Viktor. He saw pride. He saw the rigid dogma. Viktor believed that without his artifacts, Ray was nothing but a powerless commoner.

The irony was delicious. Ray had just spent the past three months honing his fighting style using the Tactical Replication Protocol to do countless combat simulations, learning new techniques based on his experience and he had just improved his body recently making his body improve by leaps and bounds so he wouldn’t have to rely solely on magic.

“Acceptable,”

Ray said, unbuttoning the top clasp of his coat.

“But when I win, Viktor… you stop worrying about my path and start worrying about your own.”

The students formed a wide, eager circle in the center of the courtyard. The air buzzed with anticipation.

Viktor stood on one side, planting his white ash staff. He adopted the stance of a classic Battle-Mage: feet shoulder-width apart, posture rigid, staff held vertical like a scepter. He didn’t raise a guard; he believed his offense was his defense.

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Ray stood opposite him. He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t pull out a wand. He simply let his arms hang loose, his posture relaxed but perfectly balanced.

Inside Ray’s mind, he activated ‘Quad-Concurrent Partial Immersion,’ his innate skill ‘Cognitive Network’ immediately kicked in anticipation for the mental load..

His internal committee was excited and gave him advice.

Veteran: “He’s planted. He thinks he’s a turret. He’ll start small to test your reflexes, then escalate when you don’t break.”

Cultivator: “Watch the flow, Disciple. Before the lightning strikes, the air must charge. His intent precedes his action.”

“Ready?”

Viktor asked, his voice dripping with condescension.

“You can start anytime.”

Ray replied.

Viktor didn’t bother with a chant. He simply flicked his wrist.

“Ictus!”

He casted the cantrip level spell Kinetic Bolt!

Three arcane projectiles of force shot toward Ray. They weren’t lethal, but they were fast, designed to bruise and humiliate.

Ray didn’t dodge.

Weaver: “Kinetic Bolt? Please. Don’t waste a complex weave on that budget-bin spell. Saturate the hand! Raw density! Slap it out of the air like it owes you money!”

Ray raised his right hand. A shimmering haze of raw, unformed mana wrapped around his hand. It wasn’t a spell; it was pure, condensed energy, held together by sheer will, a technique he had practiced and learned based on his experience from watching K fight.

SLAP. SLAP. SLAP.

Ray literally backhanded the spells out of the air.

The kinetic bolts shattered against his mana-coated palm with the sound of cracking glass, dissipating harmlessly into sparks.

The crowd gasped. You didn’t slap magic. That was impossible.

Viktor’s smirk vanished. To a purist, seeing raw mana used so crudely, and so effectively, was an insult.

“Barbaric,”

Viktor hissed, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his staff with both hands, leveling it like a rifle. The sapphire crystal at the tip didn’t just glow; it shrieked with gathered energy, the air around it rippling from the pressure.

“Perforo!”

The recoil shuddered through Viktor’s arms. He casted a 1st-Circle Spell: Arcane Lance.

A rotating spear of condensed, translucent blue force erupted from the staff. It tore across the gap with a high-pitched scream, aimed dead-center at Ray’s heart. This wasn’t a warning shot; the lance was moving fast enough to punch through solid plate steel.

Veteran: “Vector confirmed. High velocity. Minimal spread.”

Assassin: “Flow like water.”

Ray didn’t block this time. He took a single, fluid step to the left. He moved with the eerie grace of a shadow, slipping past the lance with millimeters to spare. The spell tore past his coat, obliterating a stone statue behind him.

Shards of stone rained down on the spectators. The students standing in the line of fire scrambled, diving onto the cobblestones with yelps of panic. Viktor hadn’t bothered to check his background; he was firing offensive magic in a crowded courtyard with lethal disregard.

Viktor’s eyes narrowed. He stopped aiming and slammed the butt of his staff onto the cobblestones. The mana didn’t just gather; it howled, swirling around him in a visible vortex of white mist.

The temperature in the courtyard plummeted instantly. Ray’s breath turned to steam, and frost raced across the ground like a living spiderweb.

The front row of spectators realized too late that they were in the splash zone. Adepts shoved Novices backward, raising frantic shield charms as the frost licked at their boots, turning the edges of the viewing circle into a slippery hazard. The crowd broke formation, expanding the circle rapidly to escape the freezing radius.

Viktor was done playing games.

“Glacies… Disrumpe!”

This time Viktor casted the 2nd-Circle Spell: Glacial Shatter.

The air itself seemed to crack. A shockwave of flash-freezing cold exploded outward from Viktor, turning the humidity in the air into jagged shrapnel of ice. It wasn’t a projectile; it was an expanding dome of winter meant to flash-freeze Ray where he stood.

“You can’t dodge this!” Viktor roared, slamming his staff down.

A wave of jagged ice spikes erupted from the ground, rushing toward Ray in a deadly cone.

Ray’s eyes glowed gold.

With his ‘Fulcrum Principle’ that was already active and using the Stoic Assassin’s ‘Flowing Shadow Technique,’ he didn’t retreat. He charged into the spell.

With his recently improved body, he moved faster than the ice could form. He stepped on the rising spikes, using them as stepping stones, turning Viktor’s own attack into a ramp.

He blurred.

One moment, Ray was in front of the ice. The next, he was gone.

Viktor blinked, confused.

“Where…”

Ray appeared behind him, his movement silent, his presence erased.

Using the World Weary Healer’s Anatomical Strike skill.

Healer: “Target the diaphragm. Disruption point: Solar Plexus. Sever the flow.”

Ray’s hand, formed into a precise knife-hand strike, lashed out. He didn’t hit hard; he hit deep. He struck Viktor directly in the soft spot beneath the ribs, pulsing a spike of his own disruptive mana into Viktor’s core.

Viktor gasped, his breath seizing. The mana he was channeling sputtered and died. His connection to his core was momentarily severed by the physical trauma.

Viktor spun around, panic in his eyes. He tried to raise his staff. He tried to cast another spell.

“Incant…”

Nothing happened. His mana wouldn’t obey.

Ray stood there, watching him struggle.

“Your casting time is impeccable,”

Ray said, his voice calm, analyzing the fight like a professor grading a paper.

“But you rely too much on the staff. And once your flow is disrupted…”

Ray stepped in.

He didn’t use a technique this time. He didn’t use mana. He pulled his fist back and drove a simple, brutal punch into Viktor’s stomach.

THUD.

The sound was wet and heavy.

Viktor’s eyes bulged. The air left his lungs in a wheezing whoosh. He folded in half like a hinge, dropping to his knees, clutching his gut. He retched, dry-heaving, his expensive staff clattering to the floor.

Silence descended on the courtyard. Absolute, terrified silence.

A 1st-Circle Novice from the prestigious House Garrick, a prodigy who could cast 2nd-Circle spells like it was 1st-Circle spells, was on the ground. And the Artificer hadn’t cast a single spell.

Ray stood over him, barely winded. He adjusted his cuffs.

“Do you wish to continue?”

Ray asked.

Viktor wheezed, trying to inhale, but his diaphragm was paralyzed. He shook his head frantically, tears of pain pricking his eyes.

Ray nodded once.

“Good.”

A cool blue transparent window with a notification bloomed in his mind.

[SKILLED APPLICATION DETECTED]

[EVENT: 1v1 ASYMMETRICAL COMBAT]

[PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: INSPIRED]

[ANALYSIS: Host successfully maintained a Quad-Concurrent cognitive load, synchronizing four disparate archetypal skill sets into a cohesive combat flow. The unconventional application of the Crimson Weaver’s ‘Mana Weaving’ to physically deflect kinetic force, combined with the World Weary Healer’s anatomical precision to surgically sever a magical circuit, demonstrates a mastery of ‘Anti-Mage’ tactics. Host effectively proved that biological superiority and tactical disruption can override magical orthodoxy without casting a single formalized spell. Largest mastery gain.]

[Tactical Assessment +20% (CAPSTONE already reached, adding half of mastery gain to the next archetype skill ‘Survival Instincts (Passive)’), Mana Weaving +15% , Flowing Shadow: +10%.]

[INSPIRED RESULT: Your synthesis of anatomical precision and somatic timing has triggered an evolution of your existing innate skill.]

[TRAIT EVOLUTION: Spell-Breaker’s Rhythm has evolved into >> Aetheric Severance.]

[EFFECT: You no longer just sense the ‘vulnerability window’ in a caster’s motion; you can now exploit it to disrupt their internal flow. A precise physical strike delivered during a casting window will now trigger a ‘Mana Shock,’ forcibly closing the target’s meridians and preventing them from channeling mana for a short duration.]

He stepped around the fallen mage and walked toward Kaelen and Eliza who was waiting for him with a look of surprise. As they walk out together the crowd parting for them like the Red Sea.

The myth of ‘Frail Ray,’ the boy who needed artifacts to survive, was dead. In its place, a new rumor was born that Ray Croft didn’t need magic to break you.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep