Chapter 156 - Esna Joins The Academy

Esna's arrival on Kreiz and acceptance into the Royal Academy went without a hitch. Normally no one would have paid any mind to a transfer student who suddenly showed up at the beginning of the school year, however when that student was placed in Class A without taking any exams; combat or academic, there were bound to be rumors.

The second year class A students who were mostly children of the Devildom's nobles and lesser royalty felt that a girl from a random backwater planet being placed in the same class as them, reduced the prestige of the class and filed a petition to the school to have her removed.

Many of the Class A student also agreed with this, until she challenged the Rank 1 publicly and defeated him without breaking a sweat, that is.

The rank one in the second year was an intermediate stage master however, he was easily defeated by the inferior stage Esna.

Her words after defeating him incited the anger of many other students.

"How did this trash get to the intermediate stage?"

Naturally, the other students could not accept this result and challenged Esna one after the other only to be defeated easily.

The challengers were mostly those who were in the bottom half of the top 1000 as such it was easy to defeat them all quickly.

"Why do they keep coming even though they know they're gonna loose?"

Esna asked herself this as she stared at the former Rank 1, now Rank 2 who had come for a rematch. She looked at the large audience in the second year arena and sighed internally.

'This is Arthur's fault; he spread the rumors that I didn't take any exams. That's why these idiots keep bugging me!'

"Begin!"

The moment the instructor called for the start of the duel, the Rank 2; the last born of one of the Devildom's Counts, Juan, charged towards her with sword in hand.

'Engaging a mage in close combat to defeat them is the basic of basics but isn't it obvious that mages would develop countermeasures for that strategy.

Like learning close combat fighting methods!'

Those were Esna's thoughts as she utilized body strengthening magic on herself and crossed her arms to block his sword.

Juan was surprised at this, as Esna had always defeated her opponents by maintaining her distance and firing magic at them.

This caused him to be slightly stunned for a moment, however he quickly regained his focus and attempted to retract his sword.

However, that short moment was enough for Esna to release her block and grab his sword with her hand. To prevent the blade from cutting her palm, she coated her entire arm with magic.

She attempted to pull him alongside the sword, however Juan let go of the blade immediately jumped backwards with his palm facing Esna while shouting out loud.

"Flame Lance!"

From his outstretched hand, emerged a spear of condensed flames that targeted Esna's head. 

Seeing this, she did not panic and used the sword in her hand to slash at the flame lance. She was holding it by the blade, this meant that it was the hilt of the sword that crashed with the flame lance but it was enough to cause it to lose its form and explode.

**BOOOM!!!

A small explosion of flames occurred however Esna backed away unscathed. Looking closely, one could see that her entire body was coated with magic power.

It was a basic strengthening technique called 'Mana Skin' where the user created a coating of magic power around their body to protect them from damage.

It came with a high-energy cost as the user had to be constantly charging mana into the coating but for Esna who had high magic power, it was a walk in the park.

Looking at the large distance between them, she instantly decided on what spell to use and slammed her palms together causing a two-ringed magic circle to appear within. Multiple other two-ringed magic circles appeared at various points around the arena and small spikes of ice emerged from them.

All of these were pointed towards Juan who clicked his tongue and used a sword generation Artifact to create a sword of flames.

"Go."

Esna muttered under her breath and the ice spikes all launched towards Juan simultaneously. 

He stabbed his sword of flames into the ground and took a stance with his legs straight and feet shoulder wide apart. His arms were straight and held stiffly at his both sides.

"Flame Column."

As he spoke out, magic poured out of his body and generated a pillar of spiraling flames around him. The pillar rose from his feet to a height nearly twice his, reducing the possibility of the ice spikes hitting him from above.

Seeing this, Esna rose an eyebrow while thinking about why he did not use this spell in their last duel but she did not voice out those thoughts and instead focused on casting another spell.

"Get up, Earth Golem."

She placed both hands on the ground and poured magic power into them, causing the earth to rumble.

Next, the ground cracked open to reveal a highly muscular golem with a simple design solely consisting of earth from underfoot. It was as tall as a three-storey building and it shook the ground with each step.

It looked strong enough to crush an average sized humanoid with its mere hands causing the spectators to wonder if that was what she intended to use it for.

However, she instead commanded it to punch towards Juan's barrier of flames, with the intention of breaking it.

Sensing the increase in earth attributed mana in front of him and feeling the rumbling earth, Juan judged that Esna had most likely summoned an earth attributed construct and picked up his sword of flames that was stuck in the ground.

The flames from his barrier were then sucked into the sword in his hand, causing the sword to increase in size until he could no longer carry it with one hand.

He took a stance meant solely for thrusting with the great sword of flames while pouring more magic power into it.

"Hap!"

With a shout, he thrusted the sword forward in the direction of the charging golem and released the accumulated flames in it.

A spiraling torrent of flames emerged from the sword in a tornado shape, into the air towards the chest of the giant golem.

"That one's done for..."

Esna's small mutter was drowned out by the sound of the explosion that occurred when the spiral of flames collided with the defenseless chest of the golem.

***KAAAABOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!

The deafening roar of the explosion made many of the spectators to cover their ears with their hands. Esna on the other hand, kicked of the ground with enough force to cause a crater and jumped towards the collapsing golem that had melted from the heat of Juan's flames.

She then used the golem as a foothold and shot towards Juan who had still not regained his balance after launching such a large-scale spell.

"Water Magic: Cascade."

Hearing Esna's voice from such a close range snapped Juan back to his senses. He looked up top see three orbs of water hovering about three meters above his head.

"Shit!"

The moment he cursed, the orbs of water released pressurized streams of water towards him causing him to roll on the ground to avoid them.

However, as the ground had cracked due to the emergence of the golem, rolling on the uneven ground actually did more harm than good as he ended up having a sharp piece of rock pierce his side.

"Argh!"

The streams of water hit him, increasing the pain he felt, despite this he grit his teeth and roused his magic power to protect his torso.

The reason for this was because Esna who had arrived in front of him right after the pressurized streams of water hit him, released a kick towards his torso, launching him about a dozen meters in the air.

**BOOOM!!!

Esna pointed a finger at the fallen Juan and spoke.

"Sol."

A small cluster of flames grew a few centimeters away from her hand. She kept on condensing flames in it until Juan who had barely managed to stand up could feel the heat. 

It should be noted that he was about a dozen meters away from her and had not come any closer. In fact, he wanted to get even further and wait for his regeneration to kick in.

Unfortunately, Esna decided to fire her spell at that moment.

She spread her palm wide open, causing the cluster of flames to split into five orbs and then each one fired a beam of red light towards Juan.

Juan ignored the pain he felt and dodged to the side, this time taking care to avoid any sharp rocks sticking out of the ground, however Esna's spell seemed to have a homing feature as the beams of light followed him even though he moved out of their original path.

He hurriedly created another sword with his sword creation artifact and rose it to block the beams of light.

"Oh no you don't."