Chapter 580: What Is This? Did You Come Here Just to Show Off Your Talent?
Hearing Heine's magically amplified voice declaring that Lady Irene was handling the situation, the panic coursing through the city instantly evaporated.
As the second strongest authority in the entire Alvarez Empire, Irene Belserion was viewed with absolute, unwavering faith by her citizens.
"Oh, it's Lady Irene! No wonder the explosions are so terrifying!"
"I can't believe Lady Irene is personally dealing with the intruder! That's incredible!"
"Since she's fighting him, the enemy will be eradicated in a matter of minutes."
"Exactly! She is the 'Scarlet Despair.' No one can stand against her!"
"This is exactly why I moved my family to this city. With Lady Irene stationed here, our safety is absolutely guaranteed!"
The citizens relaxed, excitedly discussing the distant, thunderous battle. In the decade Irene had governed this territory, she had always presented an image of absolute, overwhelming supremacy. No enemy had ever survived a confrontation with her, and her battles usually ended in a matter of seconds.
Heine, however, wasn't celebrating. While she maintained a calm facade to pacify the crowds, a deep, unsettling dread coiled in her stomach.
Lady Irene rarely took more than a few moments to obliterate a hostile force. The fact that this battle had dragged on for several minutes, generating deafening, apocalyptic shockwaves that shook the very foundations of the city, meant the enemy was terrifyingly powerful.
Even with her absolute faith in Irene, Heine couldn't help but worry.
She kept her concerns to herself, continuously barking orders to her guards to maintain order. Juliet, oblivious to the tactical implications of the prolonged battle, cheerfully helped direct the crowds, completely confident in Irene's inevitable victory.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sky outside the city continued to flash with blinding red and golden light as the two mages traded catastrophic barrages of magical artillery.
Seeing that her relentless swarm of crimson lasers was perfectly neutralized by Noah's golden light, Irene gritted her teeth in frustration. She aggressively ramped up her magical output, spawning thousands of thicker, denser crimson beams that screamed toward Noah.
Noah effortlessly matched her escalation, generating an equal number of golden lasers to intercept the attack.
KABOOOOOOOM!
The resulting chained explosions were even more violent, the shockwaves whipping the surrounding atmosphere into a chaotic, screaming hurricane.
Despite successfully stalemating the Scarlet Despair, Noah couldn't help but sigh internally.
He didn't care about winning this fight. He was fully prepared to strategically "lose" if it meant successfully establishing a dialogue. His primary goal was simply to demonstrate his strength to force her to take him seriously, and to let her vent her chaotic, volatile emotions through combat.
However, he had secretly hoped to use this opportunity to study Irene's legendary Enchantment techniques.
To his profound disappointment, after their initial, incredibly complex exchange of atmospheric and earthen enchantments, Irene had completely abandoned high-level technique. Because Noah had switched to Light Magic, she had simply brute-forced her response, relying entirely on her monstrous, four-hundred-year-old Ethernano reserves to overwhelm him.
Her current strategy lacked finesse; it was pure, unadulterated "might makes right."
While Noah could easily match her output, it was incredibly frustrating. He wanted to see her genius, not her stamina. But he understood her logic. She possessed the body of a dragon, granting her an insurmountable advantage in raw magical density and regeneration. Why bother with intricate techniques when she could simply crush her opponent with infinite power?
He would just have to wait until they established a peaceful dialogue to ask her for lessons.
BOOM! BOOM!
After a few more minutes of continuous, apocalyptic orbital bombardment, Irene realized her strategy wasn't working.
Initially, she had been thrilled that Noah chose to engage in a raw magical shootout. She was absolutely confident that no human could outlast her draconic stamina.
But as the minutes ticked by, Noah's magical signature hadn't diminished by a single fraction. His output remained perfectly steady, showing absolutely zero signs of fatigue. An exchange of this magnitude should have completely drained any of the other Spriggan 12 shields, leaving them gasping for breath. But Noah was matching her shot for shot without breaking a sweat.
Irene quickly deduced that Noah's Ethernano regeneration was utterly anomalous. If they continued this shootout, she couldn't guarantee she would outlast him.
She wanted to escalate further, deploying larger, catastrophic spells to break his defenses. But she hesitated. They were only a few kilometers away from her city. If she escalated the scale of her magic any further, the collateral damage would inevitably wipe out the civilian population she was sworn to protect.
Since massive AoE spells were off the table, Irene shifted her strategy. She would crush him in close-quarters combat.
She despised her draconic biology, but she wasn't foolish enough to ignore the terrifying physical advantages it provided. No human could match the physical strength of a dragon.
Having made her decision, Irene tightened her grip on her staff. She abruptly ceased her laser barrage and fired a single, colossal, hyper-compressed shockwave of pure magic directly at Noah.
Noah, who had fallen into the rhythm of intercepting the smaller lasers, was momentarily caught off guard by the sudden shift in tempo. He quickly raised his hand, deploying a golden array and firing a massive beam to meet the shockwave.
KABOOOOOM!
The two massive attacks collided, generating a blinding explosion that completely obscured the sky.
SWISH!
Before the fire even dissipated, Irene violently tore through the smoke screen. Using the explosion as cover, she closed the distance instantly, swinging her massive wooden staff in a devastating downward arc aimed directly at Noah's head.
Caught slightly off guard by her blistering speed, Noah hastily crossed his arms to block the strike.
The sheer kinetic force of the blow slammed into his forearms, violently launching him downward.
CRASH!
Noah slammed feet-first into the earth, his boots cratering the ground to absorb the terrifying impact.
Irene didn't give him a second to breathe. She plummeted from the sky like a meteor, swinging her staff horizontally to crush his ribs.
This time, Noah was ready. He planted his feet, channeled his strength, and threw a heavy right hook directly into the descending staff.
BANG!
Fist met wood with a deafening crack. The ground beneath Noah completely shattered, ripping a massive crater into the earth. The kinetic shockwave blasted the surrounding debris away in a violent hurricane.
Irene, using the recoil of the clash, smoothly flipped backward and landed gracefully on the edge of the crater.
Without missing a beat, she thrust her left hand forward. The sharp, claw-like tips of her gloves aimed directly for Noah's throat.
Noah instantly reacted, snapping his right hand out to swat her wrist aside before throwing a vicious left hook at her jaw. Irene smoothly raised her staff, effortlessly blocking the punch.
The two mages engaged in a blistering, high-speed martial arts brawl.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The air echoed with the thunderous sound of their impacts. The earth around them was continuously pulverized, massive craters forming beneath their boots as they exchanged devastating blows.
But as the brawl continued, a deep, unsettling shock began to creep into Irene's mind.
Initially, she hadn't paid much attention to Noah's physical strength when they first traded blows. But now, she was fighting seriously. She wasn't holding back her physical power.
A normal human mage—even one of the Spriggan 12—would have their bones shattered if they tried to block her draconic strength without relying on heavy magical reinforcement.
Yet Noah was parrying her strikes, blocking her staff, and trading blows without using a single defensive enchantment. He was matching her raw, draconic physical power using nothing but his own un-enhanced body.
Refusing to believe it, Irene gritted her teeth and pushed her muscles to their absolute limit, unleashing a relentless, furious flurry of strikes.
Noah's expression didn't even flicker. He flawlessly parried, blocked, and countered every single blow.
"Your physical strength is utterly absurd. How did a brat like you acquire this level of power?" Irene demanded, genuinely baffled as she blocked another heavy punch.
"I just grew up normally. I ate my vegetables, did my pushups, and studied a lot of magic," Noah replied casually, weaving under a horizontal swing.
"Tch. Arrogant brat!" Irene sneered, deeply annoyed by his flippant answer.
If he had actually achieved this level of power naturally, his innate talent was terrifying. She knew for a fact that he couldn't be older than his early twenties. To possess this level of magical mastery and physical strength at his age defied all logic. Within the entire Alvarez Empire, no one—not even the Spriggan 12—could match his overall combat prowess at that age.
He was undeniably the third strongest mage in the Empire, sitting right below August and herself.
While she was shocked by his talent, his casual attitude infuriated her. Did he come here just to mock her? To show off his genius?
Despite fighting for several minutes, she still hadn't managed to land a decisive blow. Even factoring in the reality that both of them were actively holding back to avoid destroying the nearby city, a four-hundred-year-old Dragon Queen should not be stalemated by a human twenty-something in a physical brawl.
It was utterly humiliating.
Since they were both restricted by the proximity of the city, she couldn't unleash her apocalyptic AoE magic. But she could still crush him in a brawl. She just needed an edge.
Irene's eyes flashed with a cold, predatory light.
A terrifying surge of magic instantly flooded her body. She cast a high-tier physical enhancement on herself, exponentially amplifying her strength and speed.
She lunged forward, her staff moving in a blinding blur. The sudden, massive increase in speed and power caught Noah off guard, forcing him backward under the sheer weight of her assault.
Realizing she had resorted to self-enchantment, Noah immediately followed suit.
"Enchantment: Omnidirectional Parameter Boost!"
A golden aura flared around Noah, instantly amplifying all his physical parameters to match her newly enhanced state.
He stomped the ground, halting his retreat, and charged directly back at her.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The brawl resumed, the intensity skyrocketing. The thunderous roar of their magically enhanced physical clashes echoed for miles, clearly audible to the terrified citizens huddled in the city.
~~~
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