"Fwoosh—!"
The bowstring thrummed. The light arrow shot free.
It was so fast it blurred past the limits of sight—like daylight tearing through the night sky—threading perfectly through the gaps between the swirling paper familiars.
Any pale paper that tried to block it was pulverized on contact, the force riding the arrow shredding them into a storm of confetti.
Ivan's smug, relaxed smile froze, then crumpled into pure shock.
He had not expected that after swordsmanship and bizarre flames, this brat still had such terrifying long-range firepower hidden away.
He barely had time to pull mana in front of him and twist aside.
Squelch.
The arrow punched through.
It missed anything vital, but still bored straight through his left flank.
Unlike the shallow cut on Shane's waist, Ivan's wound was ragged and deep. Blood welled out in sheets, soaking his clothes red in an instant.
"Ghh—! You little brat!!" Pain and humiliation ripped a roar from his throat.
He'd wanted to end this gracefully, like a superior playing with a bug—only to be wounded by the "ant" he'd dismissed.
"Consider it repayment," Shane said flatly. His hands didn't stop moving.
Since he'd taken the initiative, he had no intention of letting up.
He drew the bow again—fingers flicked.
Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!
Arrows of light fired like a machine gun, carving vicious curves through the air as they came at Ivan from different angles.
Ivan stumbled, dodging and blocking. Paper familiars flocked to his front, gathering into dense shields, only to be punched through and blown apart in bursts of light and paper scraps.
Booms and the rustling of shredded talismans overlapped nonstop.
He was terrified and furious, forced to grit his teeth through the pain as he retreated, defending desperately.
Once the distance opened up, he was trapped in a purely reactive position, unable to organize any effective counterattack.
For a while, the fight entered a strange stalemate.
Shane kept firing—arrow after arrow, seemingly endless.
Ivan, leaning on his deep S-Class mana reserves and battle experience, barely kept up. But cuts kept piling across his body, and his magic was steadily draining. It was getting harder to breathe.
Seeing neither could finish the other, frustration built. Being forced into this position by a kid stoked his humiliation white-hot.
He finally accepted that this brat wasn't an "ant" at all—but a venomous hornet with a stinger he'd underestimated.
"Enough!!"
Ivan's shout cracked the air. The magic that had lain low surged out in a wave.
His sheer magical pressure blasted outward like a shockwave, sweeping away the drifting scraps of paper. The ground itself shuddered.
He abandoned finesse and control. He was done playing. Now he would crush with the raw, brute might of an S-Class mage.
In that state, the paper familiars he unleashed were faster, stronger, and tougher than before.
They packed together into thicker, wilder torrents of pale force, crashing toward Shane again and again like pounding surf.
Under that raw pressure, Shane's arrows still shredded familiars in their path—but he could no longer disrupt Ivan's rhythm the way he had before.
He was forced to move more, to dodge more. The flow flipped; now he was on the back foot.
Sssht.
A razor edge of paper nicked his cheek, leaving a thin red line.
He wiped the blood from his face and glanced at it, thoughtful.
He was getting a very real lesson in how important mana was in this world's fighting.
Attack, defense, speed, spell power—all scaled with it.
Even after gaining a decisive advantage, a foe with a larger mana pool could just brute-force their way back into the fight.
"…Yeah. I really need to figure out how to increase my mana," he sighed quietly, thinking of his pitiful E rank.
As he spoke, Arash's red streamers and the huge bow receded like a returning tide, leaving him in his regular clothes.
Ivan's face twisted into a cold, triumphant smirk. "Hah. I knew it. That transformation of yours wouldn't last. Out of juice already? And you thought you could match my mana? Delusional child!"
He was already savoring victory.
But even as he gloated, something nagged at him. It burned that he'd been dragged into a war of attrition with a kid, forced to win by grinding him down.
He thrust that away and lifted his hand, ready to command the familiars for a finishing blow.
Across from him, Shane slowly shook his head.
"You're right about one thing—I can't sustain that spell for long."
His voice was calm as still water. That very calm scraped at Ivan's nerves.
"But you got one thing wrong. It's not that I can't maintain it."
He raised his eyes, gaze slicing through the blizzard of paper like a blade. "I dropped it on purpose."
"Because I don't feel like playing with you anymore. Letting this drag out against someone like you and still not finishing it… is embarrassing."
In a strange twist, on the point of "it's shameful to let a fight drag," the two actually agreed.
"W—what?" Ivan faltered.
Before he could process it, light flared around Shane again.
Flames coiled up his body like living things. His clothes twisted into Muramasa's signature single-sleeved red coat.
Ivan stared, then burst into derisive laughter. "Hah! Out of ideas, are we? You know this form can't break through my familiars, but you change back anyway? Just giving up now?"
He shook his head, scoffing. "I almost thought you had something else hidden. Nearly fell for it."
To him, Shane looked like a cornered animal randomly lashing out.
"Out of tricks, huh—" Shane lifted his hand.
The black blade appeared once more. This time, its surface wasn't just swallowing light—it was wrapped in dense fire, red sparks leaping and spitting along the steel.
Heat flooded the air, a scorching intent that felt like it could burn straight through the soul.
"Before we answer that," he said, leveling the burning blade at Ivan, the flames in his karmic eyes blazing higher than ever, "I have a question."
"Ivan," he asked quietly, "have you ever experienced true despair?"
~~~
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