Chapter 146. A Beautiful, Deadly Machine, Now Reduced to This Disappointment
A torrent of orange flame roared toward William. It was massive, filling his entire field of vision. The heat was instantaneous and terrifying.
FROOOOOSH!
William didn’t retreat. He stepped into the heat.
He channeled every ounce of his mana into his forearms, creating a barrier of compressed air so dense it acted like physical armor. The flames washed over him, swirling around his wind barrier in a deadly dance of orange and white.
Grrrrrr!
William’s muscles strained. His teeth were clenched so hard his jaw ached. The heat was blistering, the roar of the flames deafening.
’Come on... hold it...’
"Break through it!" Kaela screamed, pouring more mana into the attack.
With a guttural roar of his own, William drove both palms forward. "Wind Burst: Shatter Point!"
KRA KOOOOM!
The wind barrier exploded outward with the force of a cannon blast. The collision between the fire and the compressed air created a concussive shockwave that sent dust and debris flying in every direction.
The force was so violent that Kaela’s flames were literally blown back into her own face, forcing her to abort.
The training ground fell into a ringing silence, punctuated only by the ragged, desperate breathing of five exhausted combatants. Smoke curled from the ground where the fire had burned, and the air still hummed with residual magical energy.
William stood at the center, his chest heaving, sweat streaming down his face, his shirt torn and smudged with dirt. His eyes burned with the intensity of the fight, but as he looked at his students, all of them panting, some bruised, all of them stunned, the intensity faded into something softer.
"Better," William panted, wiping blood from a small cut on his lip where a stray ember had grazed him. "That... was significantly better."
William wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, his eyes narrowing. The momentary spark of competence from the students had been impressive, but it was fleeting, a brief candle flame in a hurricane.
"You think that’s enough?" William’s voice was low and dangerous. "You think because you landed one coordinated strike that the lesson is over?"
"You still haven’t learned the most important rule: Victory isn’t about the attack; it’s about what you do when your partner fails you."
"We didn’t fail!" Kaela barked, wiping soot from her forehead, though her hands were shaking. "We were just... recalibrating!"
"Recalibrating your incompetence, you mean," Lia muttered, though she was still panting heavily.
"Alright then," William said, a wolfish grin spreading across his face. "Let’s see how you recalibrate this."
"Wind Stance: Zephyr’s Wrath!"
WHOOOO SHHHH!
William vanished. He didn’t just move fast; he became a streak of displaced air.
Kaela was the first to react.
"I got you—!" She thrust both hands forward, unleashing a twin stream of flame. "Fire Lance!"
FWOOOOSH!
But William wasn’t there. He had used the air pressure to launch himself off the ground like a spring.
He appeared directly above Kaela’s blind spot.
"Behind you, Kaela!" Lia shouted, reaching for her water pouch.
"I know, I know--wait, what--" Kaela spun around, but she was too late.
WHAM!
William’s boot connected squarely with Kaela’s ribs. The sound was sickening: a wet, heavy THUD followed by the unmistakable CRACK of cartilage protesting.
"GAAAAH!" Kaela’s scream was cut short as she was sent spinning across the dirt like a ragdoll.
She crashed into a wooden training dummy with a bone-jarring CRUNCH, collapsing into a heap of coughing and clutching her side.
"Kaela!" Lia cried out, panic overriding her training.
She swung her arms wide, summoning a massive wave of water to create a barrier. "Get back, Instructor Wade! I’ll drown you!"
SPLASH SHHHH!
The water wall surged forward, but William didn’t dodge. He danced through it.
Using micro-bursts of wind from his palms, he carved a tunnel through the water, the droplets spraying past him like bullets.
Pitter-patter shink!
Lia’s eyes widened. " Impossible--"
BAM!
William’s elbow connected with Lia’s shoulder, then his palm swept across her sternum. It wasn’t a killing blow, but it was precise.
The force sent her backward, her legs tangling in her own robes. She tripped over her own conjured water, face-planting into the mud with a wet SPLAT.
"Lia! You are an absolute disaster!" Kaela yelled from the ground, trying to push herself up only to wince and collapse back down with a groan. "You didn’t even... ugh! You didn’t even block him properly!"
"Me?!" Lia shouted from the mud, spitting out dirt. "You’re the one who charged in like a... cough...! Like a headless chicken!"
"Oh, shut up, both of you!" Clara commanded, though her voice wavered. She looked at Ellie. "Ellie, we need to synchronize!"
"Now! No more mistakes!"
"Right," Ellie whispered, her face pale but determined. "On my mark."
William turned his attention to them. His movement changed.
The brutal, bone-crushing efficiency he had used on Kaela and Lia vanished. His steps became lighter, almost graceful.
The wind around him stopped screaming and started to hum.
"Ellie, suppressive fire... NOW!" Clara yelled, her fingers weaving a complex binding spell. "Light Spear formation!"
Ellie unleashed a barrage of light.
ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP!
William moved through the light with the delicacy of a dancer. He wasn’t dodging to escape; he was dodging to position himself.
As Ellie’s light faded, William appeared between them.
"Soft touch, girls," William murmured.
He didn’t strike them hard. Instead, he used the wind to manipulate their own momentum.
As Ellie prepared another bolt, William tapped her wrist with two fingers, sending a tiny gust that deflected her spell harmlessly into the sky.
Fwish.
"What...?" Ellie blinked.
Before she could react, William spun, his cape fluttering like wings. He placed a gentle but firm palm against Ellie’s shoulder and another against Clara’s sternum.
He didn’t punch; he pushed with a controlled release of air pressure.
FWOOP.
It was like being hit by a soft pillow that weighed fifty pounds. Ellie stumbled backward, her legs giving way as if her muscles had turned to jelly, landing on her backside with a soft thump.
Clara, caught off guard by the lack of violence, found herself swept off her feet by a gentle spiral of wind that deposited her seated on the grass.
"Hey!" Kaela yelled from her position, bleeding slightly from a scraped elbow. "That’s cheating!"
"Why do they get the nice treatment while we get the meat grinder treatment?!"
"Because they actually stayed focused until the end," William said, standing between the two seated girls, his breathing perfectly controlled.
He offered a hand to Ellie to help her up. "You two maintained your composure even when the chaos started... That earns you a gentle landing."
He then looked over at the heap of limbs that was Kaela and Lia. "As for you two... if you can’t coordinate, you don’t deserve to be treated like scholars."
"You get treated like combatants."
"I hate you," Lia mumbled from the mud.
"Love you too," William smirked, extending a hand to Clara.
...
William stood over them, the sun casting a long, imposing shadow that seemed to swallow the two arguing students. He didn’t look angry he looked disappointed, which was somehow worse.
His chest still rose and fell from the exertion of dismantling them, and a thin trickle of blood from his split lip dried against his skin.
"Alright," he said, his voice cutting through the humid air like a blade, forcing both girls to stop their incessant bickering long enough to actually meet his gaze. "I need to point something out, because what I just witnessed makes absolutely no sense given what I watched both of you do back then."
Kaela, who was currently trying to wipe a smear of mud off her cheek while simultaneously nursing a bruised rib that made every breath feel like a knife twist, rolled her eyes.
"What do you mean?" she snapped, her voice strained and defensive. "We were doing fine until Lia started acting like she’s the only one with a brain."
"Me?" Lia shrieked from her position sprawled in the dirt, pointing a muddy finger at Kaela. "You were charging in like a berserker who lost their lunch!"
"You almost took my head off with that flame swing!"
"That’s different!" Kaela shouted back. "I was providing pressure!"
"Pressure? You were providing a headache; that’s what you were providing!"
"Enough." William’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a sudden, crushing weight that silenced them instantly.
The air around him seemed to grow heavy, the residual mana from his fight still crackling faintly. "Do you two not remember what happened when that fucking monster attacked?!"
"The two of you held an entire defensive line together against a swarm of monsters! I watched you."
His eyes darkened as the memory surfaced. ’I saw them...’
’I saw the way they moved in the chaos, two halves of a single weapon.’
’Lia would sense the opening before the monster even committed, her water magic bending the trajectory of their attacks, and Kaela would follow through with lethal precision.’
’No words. No screaming. Just instinct and absolute trust.’
"You fed each other targets without needing to discuss it out loud," William continued, pacing slowly between them, his boots crunching on the gravel. "Lia redirected, Kaela finished, over and over, seamlessly, as if you’d drilled that exact partnership for years."
"You were a machine. A beautiful, deadly machine."
He stopped abruptly, looking down at them with obvious exasperation. "And right now? In a controlled training exercise with considerably lower stakes and zero threat of being eaten alive?"
"You can’t manage to stay out of each other’s way for more than ten seconds without turning into two toddlers fighting over a toy."