“WTF!”

Lina immediately rolled out of the way, dodging the blast’s aftershock.

“This is way beyond the level of a simple assessment match, isn’t it?”

He Qin watched the two people on the field with some concern.

“That’s true. With Jiang Cha’s level, she’s definitely passed, but as members of the Battle Club, we still need to assess her potential carefully. That’ll affect how resources are allocated later, and I think... she’ll definitely need them, won’t she?”

Jiang Cha’s equipment couldn’t even be called shabby. She simply had none.

Lina hadn’t activated the enchantments on her own gear either, but her robe was enchanted with [Solidification], [Empowered Casting], [Cleanse], [Double Casting], and [Mana Conservation].

Even the little black shoes on her feet were enchanted with [Lightness], [Agility Enhancement], and [Arrow Ward].

Even the black stockings hidden beneath her skirt had [Steel Guard], [Elemental Shield], and [Might Spell] enchanted on them.

They were all low-tier spells, but in a witch’s duel, having even one extra low-tier spell’s worth of casting time over your opponent was already a huge advantage.

For example, if Lina decided to play dirty right now, she could trigger [Empowered Casting] to instantly launch a huge fireball Jiang Cha couldn’t dodge, then trigger [Lightness], [Agility Enhancement], [Steel Guard], [Low-Tier Elemental Shield], and [Might Spell], charge straight through the Lightning Bolt, and kick the girl in half.

—Without magic to enhance them, witches’ bodies were only so tough. Tough enough, but not by much.

“Then I’m not holding back either, okay!?”

So what if Jiang Cha had [Empowered Casting] and could cast spells instantly? Lina might not be able to do it as effortlessly as Jiang Cha, but she was a genius Witch too!

Who didn’t know a few tricks, huh!?

The match had started out as a bit of back-and-forth, with fireballs and Lightning Bolts flying around. Now, the two attacks crashing into each other were a gigantic five-meter-long Lightning Bolt and a fireball more than three meters across.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to use tactics or anything. It was just that Lina couldn’t spare a hand to cast a shield right now. If she stopped to cast, Jiang Cha’s Lightning Bolt would fry her in half the very next instant! There was no room for tactics at all.

And Jiang Cha?

She didn’t know how to cast a shield at all.

She hadn’t learned that yet!

‘Analysis: the chance of winning in a stalemate is 4.23%.’

‘As expected, I can’t win.’

She wasn’t all that discouraged, though.

Lina was a Witch born with mana reserves at Grand Witch Tier. She’d started school a month earlier, had plenty of dueling experience, and had learned quite a few spells before enrolling.

For a rookie like her, just holding her own this long was already pretty impressive.

And that was with Lina holding back from the start, without going all out. In a normal match, Lina could’ve put up a shield at the beginning and blown her to ashes with an empowered Chain Fireball.

The little she’d learned just wasn’t enough.

Until a witch’s duel reaches a truly high level, it’s always a contest of knowledge and tactics. The more spells you know, the better your odds; when your skill levels are equal, the one with better tactics wins. It’s that simple.

“Lina, if you still don’t go all out, you can have a match with me afterward.”

But just as the girl was getting ready to surrender, Casey suddenly spoke from the stands.

“Huh!?”

In the blink of an eye, Lina stumbled at the sudden remark. The fireball in her hand flared, then fizzled out.

And then the Lightning Bolt came straight at her face.

“Lina!”

He Qin cried out in alarm.

At the same time, the golden-haired little girl gave a light wave of her slender hand, as if instinctively defending herself in the face of mortal danger.

And then?

Then she smacked the thick Lightning Bolt out of existence with her little pale hand.

The crackling electricity across her palm was the only proof that the Lightning Bolt had been more than just for show.

“?”

The girl tilted her head, looking utterly confused.

Even He Qin, who’d been worried, couldn’t help freezing for a moment.

“This little one’s a dragon-type Witch. A Lightning Bolt that weak isn’t even enough to give her a decent massage.”

Casey rolled her eyes and grumbled.

It wasn’t as if she were some great villain. She wasn’t about to deliberately distract Lina and send her junior off to be revived, was she?

Jiang Cha: “.....”

Dragon-type Witches aren’t mixed-blood Witches. Witches don’t have mixed-blood children with other species, either.

Once Witches reach Grand Witch Tier, they can develop a [Trait] of their own. And among transformation magic, there’s a whole series of spells called [Dragon Transformation].

So some Grand Witches who were skilled in transformation magic tried imitating Dragon Transformation and building [Dragon] into their own Trait.

And a Witch’s Trait can be inherited at random.

And so...

Thanks to a Witch’s incredible eyesight, Jiang Cha could clearly see the tiny scales on Lina’s arm, appearing and disappearing as they drew in mana from the air.

This was one of the dragon Traits: [Dragon Skin]. It was one of the highest-tier spells for strengthening the skin, a seventh-tier spell when cast. Its effect was simple and direct: boosting both defenses.

But Lina clearly had more than just one Trait.

Breathing in and out huge amounts of mana.

A sharply increased weight and strength.

Vertical pupils.

Her Trait was probably the most complete and powerful dragon Trait: [Dragon Physique]. Jiang Cha still didn’t know exactly what kind of dragon it was, but whatever the species, she stood almost no chance against this little dragon girl.

“This Trait’s kind of unfair in a fight, so I hardly ever use it.”

The golden-haired little girl rubbed the back of her head and gave an awkward smile as she explained.

But she wasn’t holding back at all. The fireball in her hand suddenly changed from bright red to deep blue, and doubled in diameter.

‘Confirmed: Red Dragon Transformation, which boosts the power of fire spells.’

‘If I remember right, Lina’s innate magic is the fourth-tier spell [Chain Fireball]...’

A fourth-tier spell wasn’t especially powerful as an innate spell, but paired with that Red Dragon physique...

The girl sighed silently.

‘As expected, Witches are a race with cheat codes.’

The girl watched the enormous fireball racing toward her. She was helpless, but she didn’t give up resisting.

There was no way she could win now, but at least she didn’t want to lose too badly. And that was before even considering the assessment of her potential and the allocation of resources...

‘Getting hit by that would really hurt, wouldn’t it?’

The girl didn’t want to find out what being revived felt like.

She wasn’t a fan of ashes mixed into her rice.

[Information Gathering: Full Power]

In Jiang Cha’s eyes, the enormous blue fireball’s flight slowed to one-thousandth of its speed.

Her brain had been boosted seven times in a row and was running at full tilt. A single millisecond felt as long as a whole minute.

In that drawn-out stretch of time, the girl took a moment to gather mana information from the dueling field and reverse-engineer the spell model.

She combined every technique she knew and gathered mana at maximum output.

And so—

A thick, deep-blue Magic Shield enveloped her.

Well, what else could she do~

The mana information on the dueling field was incomplete. Reverse-engineering low-tier spells wasn’t difficult with her processing power, but her lack of knowledge was a hurdle she couldn’t get around right now.

So if she wanted to withstand this attack, she could only work from the spell models she could find on the field.

The last spell the girl knew was [Empowered Casting]. Simply put, it strengthened the next spell she cast.

As for where she got the spell model for this [Magic Shield]...

Well, because of all the explosions and flying flames, the hem of Lina’s robe had been almost completely burned away, revealing her slender, youthful legs and the stockings wrapped tightly around them, glowing with a pale blue light.

They looked pretty nice.

Really.

......

In the end, the girl still lost the match.

She wasn’t hurt.

Compared with high-tier shields, the Magic Shield was less efficient and didn’t have as many flashy effects. But this low-tier spell had one advantage: the more mana you poured into it, the thicker the shield became.

With both an Enhancement Spell and Empowered Casting boosting her, Jiang Cha drew on more than five thousand units of mana to build a Magic Shield that shrugged off Lina’s fireball with ease.

After all, this was only a fourth-tier [Chain Fireball], not the forbidden spell [Blazing Suns].

But trading a Magic Shield that cost five thousand mana for Lina’s huge fireball, which only cost her five hundred, was such an outrageously bad exchange that Jiang Cha could never win this match.

She didn’t have any regrets about that.

Lina’s cheat-like inherited Trait wasn’t unbeatable. If Jiang Cha learned enough spells and made more magic equipment, she could achieve the same thing.

High-tier Witch battle robes could even be enchanted with forbidden spells. A ninth-tier [Red Dragon Transformation] was no big deal. Besides, Lina’s inherited Trait wasn’t even ninth-tier yet—at most, it was a fifth-tier [Young Dragon Transformation].

“What exactly is your innate magic?”

Casey felt that something was off. The reason she’d told Lina to go all out was that she wanted to see what Jiang Cha’s innate magic was. Even a secretive little one like her should’ve revealed it when facing her first life-or-death crisis—but it wasn’t some secret she needed to guard so fiercely.

Even friends who were only somewhat close, or just ordinary coworkers, would learn this about each other. Especially on the front lines—if you didn’t tell people your specialty, were you trying to screw over your teammates in battle?

But Casey really couldn’t figure out what Jiang Cha’s innate magic was. She could only tell that Jiang Cha had definitely used it.

“First-tier Mysticism spell: [Information Gathering].”

“Information Gathering!?”

The moment the girl finished speaking, Lina threw her arms around Jiang Cha’s waist.

A whole series of equations appeared in the golden-haired little girl’s head: Information Gathering = last-minute cramming; so the innate-magic version of Information Gathering = genius student = someone worth clinging to!

“Take me under your wing, genius! Let me copy your homework from now on!”

“Sure, sure. That’s fine.”

“Lina, you should do your own homework.”

He Qin added a mild reminder, though without expecting much.

The golden-haired little girl waved a hand, looking delighted and already lost in her daydreams. “Heeey~~ I’ll definitely do it whenever I can~”

“Sigh...”