An Owl's Rise

Chapter 490: Chapter 490 Crushing a Pest

Evelyn pushed the foreign magical energy that had invaded her body away.

She could tell it had come from someone of the arcanist rank, otherwise the magic likely would not have affected her at all.

Unfortunately, she did not have any time to search out the exact user of the spell, as Wilfried’s sword was coming at her from the front and his magic from behind.

Immediately she disregarded the Blaze Vipers that were lunging towards her.

Even if she ended up fully engulfed, they were not going to be able to hurt her.

Instead, she focused her full attention on the sword aimed at her stomach.

She did not have enough time to get out of the way unless she wanted to use her gravity magic. Something she really did not want to show off here.

If she had used it, stopping Wilfried in his tracks and moving herself out of the way would have been easy.

Still, things were not so dire that she wanted to reveal one of her strongest trump cards.

To combat the sword coming towards her, she tapped into closer to her full strength and swung her spear to meet it.

There was a loud clang of metal on metal before Wilfried was overwhelmed and pushed back several meters.

He had fully committed to his thrust, so his footing was not in a good position to absorb the force of the hit.

However, while Evelyn successfully deflected his attack, the spear that Maeve had hastily prepared for her snapped in two under the stress.

It was not an item meant to be used by someone of Evelyn’s rank and could not stand up to her strength. Especially when it was being melted by the flames that had wreathed Wilfried’s weapon.

Her concern for the now broken spear did not last for long though. As an instant latter, the Blaze Vipers struck.

Evelyn felt her knees bend from the impact of them throwing their flaming body’s against her, but that was they really did.

She could feel the heat of the fire surrounding her, but it did not hurt in the slightest.

Even Melisandre could not burn her, so there was no chance that someone like Wilfried would be able to.

’It might be suspicious if I came out of this unscathed.’ Evelyn thought her mind racing to figure out how to handle this unexpected situation.

Honestly, she had not considered that anyone would interfere in the duel, even though she probably should have.

Maeve had told her that it was supposed to be an honorable match and that there would be grave consequences should anyone offer assistance from outside to one of the participants.

From what little she had time to read about the subject, it correlated to what Maeve had said.

’Shouldn’t have expected people willing to side with someone like Wilfried to follow their own rules. It’s only obvious that they’d do whatever they thought necessary to have him win. I’m a fool for thinking otherwise.’

Evelyn’s opinion of the Taidale Family plummeted even further than it had already been.

She had kind of hoped that there might be more like Maeve, but it seemed that she was truly an outlier.

’That should do it. Now to dispel this.’ Evelyn thought, whipping of the wind around her and turning it into a twister.

An instant later, she blew the flames surrounding her away.

The first thing she heard were audible gasps of surprise from the audience.

No doubt many of them had thought she would be incapacitated or even dead after taking such a powerful spell.

From what Evelyn could tell, even though this was not supposed to be a deathmatch, no one would have held Wilfried accountable had he ended up killing her. Not that that was a possibility.

’It’s been so long since I’ve been burned that I forget how much it hurts.’

Evelyn had blisters on her hands and neck, and there were a couple small, blackened spots on her face.

Naturally, these injuries had not come from Wilfried’s magic, she had inflicted them on herself.

While she had only been engulfed in the fires of his spell for a little more than a second, that had been long enough for her to sneakily use her own heavenly flame to give herself a few noticeable wounds.

They were not anywhere near as bad as they looked, but to anyone in the audience, it must have appeared like Evelyn had just barely fought her way out and taken some serious injuries to do so.

To really sell the act, she was breathing heavily and stumbling around a bit.

She did glance at the person that was supposed to be refereeing the match, but he showed no signs of calling out the outside magic that had been used on Evelyn.

Either he had not noticed, which Evelyn doubted, or he was willfully ignoring the interference.

There were others in the stands that must have felt the magic being cast upon Evelyn, but they did not say anything either.

It was easy to interpret their intentions.

They did not care about the rules of this duel, they just wanted Wilfried to win. It would bring shame to the family if he lost to some mercenary girl whose own family was defuncted and should not have had first-class citizenship. Even if that was just the cover story Evelyn was using.

’I can tell that my friends noticed the cheating as well. Bylur looks ready to start busting heads. If Lucia and Rehni were not holding him back, I bet he already would have started.’

Evelyn smiled when she glanced over at her friends, but it was quickly replaced by a frown when Wilfried opened his mouth and started talking.

"Truly, you are impressive to have broken free of my magic. However, your weapon is broken, and you are clearly badly injured. I would not want you to end up with scars, so surrender already. I’ll make sure to have a healer look after you. You’ve already done enough to maintain your honor. There’s no need to continue fighting." Wilfried said, trying to flash Evelyn a charming smile.

Except, the gesture was undercut by the lustful look in his eyes. It was obvious where his thoughts were. He was only thinking about the "prize" he would win.

"You seem to be under a mistaken impression. My condition is not as bad as it appears, and I’ll only need half of my spear to be someone like you."

Evelyn waved the remaining shaft of the spear at Wilfried tauntingly.

From the way that he critted his teeth and glared at her, it was obvious that she had gotten under his skin.

The gentlemanly act of his was clearly a façade and one that was easily broken with just a bit of provocation.

Wilfried began tracing the formation of another spell, but Evelyn was done playing around.

She felt that she had already made a good enough show out of the match. It was time to end this.

With far greater speed and precision, Evelyn cast her own magic long before Wilfried finished his.

She truthfully found it pitiful how bad his conjuration skills were.

For her, using magic in this way was only meant as a disguise. It was merely something she had picked up to blend into human society

Yet an actually magic practitioner from what was by all counts supposed to be an esteemed family was far worse than her.

"Twister."

Evelyn thrust her right hand forward, and the air around her rapidly began spinning around before shooting off towards Wilfried.

The vortex was several meters wide and rushed towards the man like a raging bull.

At first, he hesitated to stop casting his own magic, but when he realized that he was going to get hit before he finished, he tried to jump out of the way.

Of course, his indecision meant that he was never able to get far enough away from the twister spell to avoid getting hit. Though, Evelyn would have just manipulated the magic and sent it after him even if he had miraculously dodged to first blow.

Needless to say, he got dragged into the rapidly spinning wind where he was shredded and tossed around.

Evelyn easily could have pushed him out of the ring, but she did not.

Instead, she slammed the twister into the ground and dragged Wilfred across the titled floor.

By the time the spell had dissipated, her opponent was in rough shape.

He had lacerations all over his body, along with server bruising from being slammed around.

Still, Evelyn had held back enough not to knock him unconscious.

’I think I managed to only give him a few fractures as well. I was afraid that he would be unable to stand after that. Which would be a bit of a shame.’ Evelyn thought as she walked towards him.

Wilfried was pulling himself off the ground despite his wounds. A testament to how tough his body was after reaching the peak of the mage rank.

A normal person would likely not be getting back up in the condition he was in.

His expression was one of shock and fury as he looked at Evelyn. He rapidly never considered that he would take such a thrashing during their duel.

"Oh, you survived my strongest spell. But you look too hurt to continue. Allow me to give you the same mercy you extend to me. You should surrender and see a healer." Evelyn said mockingly.

For someone with a strong ego like Wilfried, he could not keep his emotions under control when being insulted and humiliated like this.

He rushed towards Evelyn, his sword that he had somehow kept ahold of raised high as he prepared to strike her. An idiotic move that he was soon to find out was going to cause him a great deal more pain than he had already experienced.