Lencar's world was a haze of white-hot, liquid fire. He had managed to sit up, his back against the Grimoire Tower's cold stone wall. His arms were a write-off; both forearms were shattered. His "Heretic Mode" had saved his life by toggling off his mana, but his "Mana-Forged" body, while tough, was not indestructible. He had tanked a direct, non-magical blow from Asta's sword, and the simple, brutal punch afterward had been the final, humiliating nail.
He was out. No, he was worse than out. He had failed.
"Lencar! Are you okay?!" He heard Asta's voice.
He forced his eyes open. Asta was standing over him, his manic grin gone, replaced with genuine, idiotic concern. His own hand, the one that had just punched Lencar out of the ring, was extended.
"That... was an awesome fight!" Asta beamed.
Lencar just stared at the offered hand. He didn't take it. He couldn't. His arms were broken.
"Go... fight your final, Asta," Lencar wheezed, the pain making his voice a low rasp.
Asta's grin returned. "Right!" He sprinted back to the ring.
Data... I need the data, Kenji Tanaka's voice screamed in his head, overriding the pain. He forced himself to focus. This was it. The main event. The two protagonists, uncut.
Asta stood on one side of the ruined ring. Yuno stood on the other, his expression as cool and placid as a winter lake. He hadn't even broken a sweat in his matches.
"Took you long enough, Asta," Yuno said, his voice carrying easily. "I was starting to think you'd lose."
"Shut up, Yuno!" Asta roared, planting his sword in the dirt. "I'm not the same as I was! I've got my grimoire! I'm gonna beat you, right here, right now, and become the Wizard King!"
"Not with that dirty look," Yuno replied, his hand resting on his own, glowing, four-leaf grimoire.
Lord Fungen, the magistrate, was practically salivating, his bored posture gone, replaced by the sharp, hungry look of a hawk.
"The... the final match!" the Tower Master stammered, clearly terrified of the power on display. "Begin!"
Asta's strategy, as always, was one-dimensional. He charged.
It was the same move he'd used on Lencar, a linear, bullish explosion of speed.
Lencar watched, his analytical mind dissecting every second. He's fast. But Yuno has seen his speed. He won't be caught.
Yuno didn't move. He simply held up a hand. "[Wind Magic: Tempest's Fang]!"
A horizontal, razor-thin blade of compressed wind shot from his palm. It wasn't a giant, flashy spell. It was a single, precise, impossibly fast attack.
Asta, in a brilliant display of the instinct Lencar lacked, sensed the danger. He didn't even try to dodge. He just brought his massive Anti-Magic sword up and cleaved the wind blade in two.
The magic vanished.
"See, Yuno! Your magic is useless!" Asta roared, not even slowing down.
"Is it?" Yuno asked calmly.
Asta, so focused on the one attack he'd negated, hadn't realized his feet were no longer on the ground.
With a single, effortless thought, Yuno had created a small, localized updraft directly under Asta's charge, lifting him a foot off the ground.
Asta's charge failed. He was airborne, his momentum gone, flailing.
Lencar's eyes went wide, a sharp, painful intake of breath hissing through his teeth.
He... he didn't attack the sword.
Lencar's analysis flooded his brain, the pain momentarily forgotten. I was a fool. I tried to counter the Anti-Magic. I tried to tank the sword. Yuno... Yuno just made the sword irrelevant. He targeted the wielder. Asta is useless in the air. He's a ground-bound, single-point attacker. Yuno controls the entire battlefield. He controls the X, Y, and Z axis. It's... it's absolute control.
"This is the difference between us, Asta," Yuno said, his voice still calm. He was now floating, a small, gentle cyclone at his feet, lifting him ten feet into the air. He looked down on Asta.
"[Wind Magic: Cyclone's Grasp]!"
He thrust his hand down. The air around Asta imploded.
It wasn't a tornado. It was a high-speed, crushing vortex, a dozen [Tempest's Fangs] combined into a spinning cage.
"GAAAAAAH!" Asta roared. He spun wildly, his sword a black blur as he negated spell after spell. He was a whirlwind of Anti-Magic, destroying every wind blade that touched him.
But he was defensive.
He was reacting.
Yuno was acting.
"You're just... swatting at the wind, Asta," Yuno said.
He stopped the barrage. Asta landed hard, his chest heaving, his sword raised. He was furious.
"Get... down here... Yuno!"
"No. This is over," Yuno said. He raised his hand.
His grimoire flipped open to a new page. A golden light flared.
"[Wind Magic: Towering Tornado]!"
It was the spell Lencar had copied. But this was not the clumsy, recoil-filled imitation. This was the original.
A massive, spiraling green cyclone, twenty feet wide, descended from the sky, its center aimed directly at Asta. It was beautiful, controlled, and utterly overwhelming.
It wasn't just an attack. It was a force of nature.
Lencar watched, his mind quiet. That's... that's the power I've been fighting. The power I've been trying to brute-force into my body. It's... beautiful.
Asta looked up at the descending wall of wind. He knew he couldn't dodge. He knew he couldn't cut it all.
So he did the only thing he knew how to do.
"NOT... YET!" he bellowed, and he charged, not away, but up, straight into the heart of the tornado, his sword held high, ready to cleave the heavens.
The cyclone hit him.
The plaza was consumed by a deafening roar of wind. Dust and rock were flung everywhere.
The crowd screamed, shielding their faces.
And then, as quickly as it had formed, the tornado vanished.
Yuno landed gently, his coat not even ruffled.
In the center of the ring, Asta was on his face, his sword lying a few feet away. He was unmoving.
Yuno had won.
He hadn't just won. He had demonstrated a total, overwhelming, absolute difference in power and control.
"W... Winner! Yuno!" the Tower Master declared, his voice trembling.
The crowd was silent, awestruck.
The Tower Master then cleared his throat, looking at the magistrate, who nodded. "And... as the two finalists, our regional qualifiers for the Magic Knight Entrance Exam are... Yuno of Hage... and Asta of Hage!"
Asta, who was just beginning to stir, shot up. "I... I lost... but... I CAN STILL GO?!"
The orphans from the church exploded in cheers.
Lencar just sat there, the cold stone seeping into his back.
They're both going.
Asta. Yuno. The two protagonists. Together.
His meta-knowledge was back on track.
But...
He looked down at his ruined arms. He looked at the celebrating crowd.
...I'm not.
His entire six-month plan had been built around arriving at the capital with them. His analysis, his training, his meta-knowledge... it had all just been proven inferior to Asta's raw instinct.
And now, he was left behind. A failure. A commoner with two broken arms and a secret, useless grimoire, stuck in a village at the ass-end of the kingdom.
This... this was not in the data.