After Aer tossed out something cryptic, Ling answered the way steel answers thunder—she unleashed the Magic Cannon she knew best, a green comet cutting the air.
“Extreme Magic Cannon, one hundred percent output.” Her voice rang like a bell over a battlefield of wind.
You don’t joke with someone stronger than a god-king; this isn’t dealing with crawling vermin, she thought, a chill like winter water running down her spine.
Aer hopped off the dragon’s skull like a swan leaving a midnight lake, wings unfurling like night sails as she floated and leveled both hands to catch the blast.
The Magic Cannon sat obedient in Aer’s palms, a raging pillar collapsing into a jade-green sphere, like lightning tamed into a firefly.
“Hey, Ling, let me teach you,” Aer said, voice light as drifting snow. “Real mages don’t drown enemy spells in their own tide of mana. They use a stream to assimilate it, make it their river. For someone like you, near-infinite and ocean-deep, it’s nothing, but your little discovery back then helped me a lot.”
Then the sphere roared free like a released sun, the shot not weaker but stronger, power swelling like floodwater, green turning to sunrise gold.
A hundred percent went out; a hundred and twenty came back. Even the color changed like autumn leaves catching fire.
Ling’s heart jolted like a struck drum. The trick didn’t just catch her full-force Cannon, and Aer claimed Ling taught it—was this some moonlit joke?
Shock or not, you don’t ignore a falling mountain. Ling gathered mana to her hand, green light pooling like spring in a cupped palm, right fist clenched and swung.
Her punch slammed into the incoming Cannon, and the golden pillar split from the center like a felled tree, power shearing outward like torn clouds.
The corner of Aer’s mouth twitched twice, a ripple on still water.
“Still the same smash-through-it style,” she said, words like thorns under silk. “You do look a lot like Ling. For a fake, you’re passing.”
The sarcasm slid under Ling’s skin like ice, and her irritation swelled like a storm building over black seas.
“I told you—don’t talk to me!” The snarl broke out like a spark in dry grass.
Mana flared and her foot hammered the earth, a bowstring snapping; Ling flashed forward like a rocket, little pink fist driving into Aer’s chest like a piledriver.
Aer pinwheeled back like a leaf in a gale, hit a distant tree; the trunk cracked like dry bamboo; dust rose like a sandstorm.
By the old law of smoke-without-injury, Aer’s voice drifted from the haze, light as a sigh. “Ara, ara, good grief, you hit hard.”
She walked out of the dust as if out of mist, unmarked but for gray powder, a statue of calm rain-washed stone.
Ling wasn’t surprised she hadn’t hurt her; some instinct chimed like a temple bell—such a small strike couldn’t even scuff that skin.
“Since you won’t come, it’s my turn.” Aer pointed ahead, fingertip brightening like a rainbow dew-drop under dawn.
“Fivefold Limit Arcanum—Five Elements.” Her voice rang like a spell-carved chime.
Five colored orbs streaked in like meteors, and Ling, flustered as a startled deer, threw up a Magic Cannon shield like a jade lotus screen.
This time the screen didn’t drink the blows; it met the orbs with a clash like iron on iron, twisted like wet paper, and trembled on the brink.
Crack. The sound ran like ice breaking on a winter pond.
As she feared, the shield shattered in an instant, and five lights slammed into her like hailstones from a thunderhead.
Pain bloomed like knives of frost; flesh-twisting pain, the kind that wrings a cry from any throat, and Ling screamed into the wind.
“Ah!” The cry tore out like a torn banner in a storm.
Her once unbreakable skin opened into bloody holes, red plum blossoms blooming on white snow, and she coughed a mouthful of dark petals.
If it were just blood, fine; but her blood surged restless like a river in spate, then something pressed it flat like a millstone.
“Damn it, what is this?” Her words spilled like sparks from a forge.
“Ara, didn’t someone say, ‘no reason, someone’s just stronger’?” Aer’s tone was a cat’s paw. “It fits nicely now too.”
Having your own words turned back stung like salt in a cut, but Ling had no time; she planted both palms to the ground like roots.
“Perfect Restoration!” The name rang out like a bell, clear and green.
A magic circle flared underfoot, green light rising like spring grass, and with her body’s own tide, the wounds knit like closing leaves.
Aer didn’t interrupt; she only watched with pity in her eyes, soft as rain on old stone.
Ling caught that look, and anger boiled up like oil on fire. “Damn it, why look at me like that!”
Aer shook her head, sympathy steady as a candle in still air. “Nothing. I just remembered the old you never needed that spell. Now you have to use it to keep going. It must be hard.”
Ling had to admit it—those words fed her fire like wind to a blaze. Today felt wrong; anger rose without cause, thoughts drifted like fog.
It felt like someone plucked strings above the clouds; you didn’t want to move, but the body danced like a puppet on moon-silver threads.
Since crossing worlds, she’d never felt this grit-in-the-teeth disgust, the old, hated taste from her last life—the mechanical feeling of being controlled.
“Ara, ara, what’s wrong, little puppet? Are you going to get mad?” Aer’s tease fell like cherry petals hiding thorns.
She didn’t know how Aer read her heart, but she wouldn’t wear that stupid name; her fury now was her own, a wildfire from past and present.
“Shut up. Do—not—call—me—that.” Each word a hammer, each pause a drumbeat.
She dropped low, feet igniting like rockets, and shot out like an arrow loosed from a tiger-backed bow.
Speed became absolute force, right fist sheathed in mana like steel in flame; it slammed into Aer’s belly, and her hand erupted a Magic Cannon like a point-blank sun.
Aer was blasted hundreds of meters, a star kicked across night, and Ling halted, breath like bellows, eyes like stormglass.
“Not bad,” Aer’s voice breathed behind her like a breeze behind the ear. “Looks like you’ve recovered a bit. Keep going.”
