She had been curious about one of the only two surviving members of the Yamata family and she wanted to find out what she was truly capable of. Unfortunately, Shiranui's previous opponents had all been too weak compared to her and as a result the matches ended before they even began. This was the match that would bring her true strength to the front for all to carefully measure what Shiranui was truly worth.
When the two participants had taken their respective positions in the match arena, the referee made the announcement for the beginning of the next round. The match officially started but the participants were still busy measuring each other up with their eyes.
The suspense was killing the audience. They kept betting amongst themselves as to who would be the first to take action.
Shiranui put her hands inside her clothes and took out her weapon. It was a dark red fan that appeared as if it had been flaming for real before she had even called out her flame to imbue the weapon with it.
Rebecca too transformed both of her arms with her diamond transformation skill. She had to be ready for anything since she had yet to test the limit of the new opponent.
Shiranui called forth her black flame and a flame tide appeared behind her and entered the fan that she had been holding in her left hand. It acted as some kind of conduit for her flames. As soon as she swung her fan with a flick of her wrist a flaming flower rushed like a bullet towards Rebecca who was waiting for an attack like that ever since Shiranui had taken out the red fan.
Rebecca could tell that the attack was quite powerful so she didn't try to use her defensive ability. Instead she fired off a laser of her own to intercept the incoming fire lotus.
The black laser beam which was already destructive enough collided with the flaming lotus in the middle of the field and cause a huge explosion that cause the centre to be shrouded in layers of smoke.
The visibility of the audience was reduced and some of them even began to curse for it to clear. On the other hand, those who had been too close to the explosion felt as if their ears were about to bleed. The explosion had been so loud that the audience had been shaken enough to bleed from their orifices. If it hadn't been for the medics on duty, some of them might have even lost their hearing ability permanently.
Shiranui was surprised to see that the black flame that specialized in devouring every other kind of magic skill had been unable to devour the black laser shot by her opponent. This was the second time that this had happened to her. The first was obviously Zavier's cold flame which was anti-thesis of her own dark flame. But the laser was obviously inclined towards the destruction attribute so it shouldn't have been able to avoid the devouring power of the black flame.
The only possible reason was that the two skills were equal in terms of strength and the black flame had been unable to exercise its attribute suppression because of that.
Under normal circumstances, the black flame had the ability to suppress the basic attribute of the skills cast by her opponents. This basically rendered the skill of the opponents useless and allowed her black flame to devour the magic power in those attacks in order to get stronger just like normal fire used wood as kindling to get stronger.
The attribute suppression effect hadn't triggered which implied that either the opponent's laser was a similar skill with the same attribute suppression effect or it was simply equal or stronger than her black flame in terms of strength.
Shiranui also noticed that the laser was more agile, more flexible and easier to manipulate when compared to her black flame. There was no way that she could last a long time against such an advantage. She had to take her opponent out as soon as possible otherwise, her own weaknesses would be revealed.
Since attribute suppression had no effect whatsoever, Shiranui knew that she could not get an upper hand against Rebecca that way. Therefore, she had to fight in a way that would prove to be advantageous towards herself.
She didn't hesitate once she had decided on the next course of action. She brought her fan in front of her chest and slid her other hand over the fan slowly. When her hand slid past the fan, it changed into a katana of the same fiery red color. The audience was mesmerized as if she had performed some kind of magic skills. Of course in reality it wasn't anything like that. This was just a magic weapon that had the ability to transform into different forms as per the need of the user. She had been using this weapon for a long time and it had never failed her.
Shiranui imbued the red katana with her black flames and continued to swing the blade back and forth in order to break through Rebecca's defense that was practically made up of diamond.
She might have had the ability to break through her defenses when Rebecca hadn't yet advanced. Her normal diamond transformation might have even suffered under her black flame but the black diamond had no such weaknesses. The defense had improved beyond anything Rebecca could have ever imagined. Even when Shiranui tried her best, she was unable to get past her hard defenses.
Rebecca had improved in all aspects as she had advanced. There was no apparent weakness that her opponents could exploit. She had an inexplicable amount of mana, a diamond defense, and a precision guided offensive that would track down her enemies no matter how much they dodge. Her abilities had come closer to perfection. She even began to feel that there was no one in the whole group who would be able to beat her not even the trio now that she had become a C rank mage.
Neither the attacks from the katana nor the black flame that it had been imbued with was able to hurt Rebecca in the slightest. As Rebecca got used to the attacks she started to defend against the katana by transforming parts of her body into diamond. It seemed as if she had thrown caution to the wind but in reality, Shiranui could already tell that Rebecca had found the limits of her strength and had decided that she wasn't a threat to her dominance.
Shiranui felt a kind of shame that she had never felt before. It felt as if Rebecca was humiliating her since she was weaker but of course that was only her own imagination. Rebecca was too busy having fun enjoying her newfound strength to be dissing her.
Shiranui gradually lost all advantages as all her attacks had been plain in front of Rebecca's defenses.
Rebecca too began to fight back and exploited every opportunity to deal damage to Shiranui so as to win. She started to manipulate her laser attack and continuously bombarded Shiranui but the black flame was still powerful enough for Shiranui to defend herself at the very least.
The only ones who were being inconvenienced were the audience who were close to the field as the constant explosions were messing with their ears. Still no one was willing to leave without knowing the result of this fight. Therefore, the audience close to the field cleared towards the back and witnessed the thrilling fight from afar in order to protect their ears from the frequent explosive sounds that ensued whenever the black flame collided with the guided lasers.
Rebecca was slowly getting the hang of manipulating her lasers. It wasn't long before she managed to control multiple lasers at once that kept following after Shiranui as she used black flame to defend against the continuous offensive.
Rebecca wanted to end the match as soon as possible as she had clearly found that she was stronger than her opponent. Intoxicated by her new strength, she madly chased after the dodging and parrying Shiranui and madly threw her laser attacks without a care for her consumption. This was the last opponent as far as she knew because the last participant might as well have not been there. He was the same idiot that had been put together with her in initial match up and the only thing he had been good at was his perception ability. Considering the layout of the matchup, he appeared to be the weakest of the Merion High bunch. So as far as Rebecca was concerned, this match was the last match.
Beating Shiranui could get her into the finals and that was all she was thinking while constantly increasing her mana output to the point that everyone in the audience could tell that she was being reckless. She looked like a psychotic woman chasing after the man that had scorned her. But Rebecca didn't care at all and put everything into bringing down Shiranui.
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