Elite Mages' Academy

“That’s the Eye of Wind.” Bai Ning and Yu Mei conversed in a low voice by the side. To them, being able to grasp the talents of those monitors would help them with the arrangements for the team events. However, they knew that it was not convenient to ask them about it straight up, so they could only gain a deeper understanding by watching the battles.

Yu Mei’s voice was low as well when she said in thought, “It should more or less be that. Otherwise, with Han Manman’s perception, she would not have been able to catch Xiao Lin. That brat is dual cultivating, so his Intelligence attribute isn’t that low.”

Bai Ning said, with either regret or pity, “Eye of Wind can allow you to use your perception to lock onto someone without regard to the difference in Intelligence. The talent might not be ranked highly, but it’s very practical. It’s a pity though; she shouldn’t be specializing in offensive spells. The talent is a lot less useful when using it with offensive spells.”

“Even if she went the path of a support, would we use her in the team battles? Don’t forget about the insane existence that is Gu Xiaoyue.” Yu Mei smiled, not denying anything as she added, “The five-man team battles will only need one support at the most.”

The two of them had unwittingly crossed Gu Xiaoyue out as they talked because in terms of their victory, they definitely needed the three points from the team battles. Yu Mei did not tell the others, but the fighting and sparring over the past few days had been to choose the members of the team battles.

Xiao Lin immediately understood that his speed was useless in front of his opponent’s talent. Even though he could use Ruin again, he did not want to use his weakness against his opponent’s advantage before ascertaining if Han Manman’s talent had any other uses.

Xiao Lin just decided to stand in place. He gathered all his attributes onto Strength with Miracle before waving his training sword, frantically shooting out waves of sword aura.

Against an unmoving target, the accuracy of spells would definitely be at their highest, but that also meant that Han Manman’s talent would lose its meaning. After that, even though Han Manman used all her power, her level of spells could not survive that onslaught of pressure. On top of that, her spell casting speed could not compare to the rate Xiao Lin released his sword aura.

That difference became even larger after a few minutes. In the end, Han Manman fell at the strength of Xiao Lin’s unending sword aura. What frustrated her was the fact that Xiao Lin did not even use his elemental sword aura, and merely used his sword aura that had been strengthened under Miracle to gain such an oppressive advantage.

Looking at the woman who was full of wounds being dragged away to be healed, Xiao Lin felt a bit of regret. Of course, it was not because he had beaten her so badly, but rather because he had wasted too much time.

Xiao Lin had been keeping count, and this time, he had used about four and a half minutes to beat Han Manman. Of course, if Han Manman knew that he could still distract himself by keeping track of the time when they fought, she probably would spit out blood. However, two days ago, Xiao Lin had defeated Han Manman in less than a minute. The only difference was that Han Manman had not used her talent then, and she did now.

“No wonder talents make up the core of every academy’s strength!” Xiao Lin remarked in his heart before looking at the others with a challenging expression. “Where’s the next one? Come, let’s continue. Don’t worry, I won’t go all out.”

Han Manman had caused Xiao Lin to understand even more how much their talents affected battles. During the tournaments, the participants that the other academies sent out would also be talent holders, so accumulating more battle experience against talents holders now was very important.

“I’ll give it a shot! Don’t hold back. There’s no meaning if you don’t use your full strength.” The second one who stepped up was Class Twelve’s monitor Chen Dao. The battle determination in his eyes was not lower than Xiao Lin’s at all.

“I guessed that you would step up. It seems you’re not happy with your loss two days ago.”

“Hey, today’s different, and don’t use your swordsmanship. It would be meaningless. Come at me with your magic!”

“As you wish. Come, you’re definitely better than Han Manman.”

Xiao Lin would not look down on Chen Dao. As the one whose Intelligence attribute was only lower than Gu Xiaoyue’s, the man’s spells were very powerful, and was at least a level higher than Han Manman’s, so those words were not meant to mock him.

Chen Dao was usually very open, but he kept his mouth shut regarding his talent. Really, other than Cheng Ming, the others had never exposed anything about their talents in a public setting, so Xiao Lin was very curious about Chen Dao’s talent.

The second sparring match was starting, and it was Xiao Lin against Chen Dao!

Even though he did not know what Chen Dao’s talent was, Xiao Lin was no stranger to his spells. The man mainly used fire spells, so Xiao Lin first summoned up a water shield as defense.

Chen Dao seemingly launched his first attack at the same time — Pyroblast!

The gigantic ball of fire made the water shield in front of Xiao Lin feel useless. Since he promised not to use sword aura, Xiao Lin deliberately decided not to block it with sword aura. He shifted all his attributes to Intelligence under Miracle, and he did not dodge, even though it was not that hard with his speed.

Pyroblast was a spell that hit a low radius, but caused a lot of damage. Xiao Lin had yet to master such a high-level spell, but after the second semester had started, Xiao Lin had actually learned a lot of low-level spells during his free time. What he expanded on was the principles that he had learned from mastering elemental sword aura, which was compression and condensation.

Even though Xiao Lin did not spend that much time on mastering his spells, thanks to his passive talent’s immensely strong ability to enhance his understanding and learning, it meant that he had a very easy time mastering the low-level spells that did not require that many chants.

Most importantly, Xiao Lin’s compression technique only had a high success rate on those simple spells that did not have complicated compositions. Higher level spells had a more complicated alignment and composition of the elements, so compression was many times harder.

Flame Ball!

Facing Chen Dao’s fierce Pyroblast, Xiao Lin only shot out a Flame Ball, which was a Black Iron-rank spell that was a whole level lower. When the deep red-colored Flame Ball shot out of Xiao Lin’s hand, Chen Dao had a heavy expression on his face. He quickly erected a cloak of flame around himself for protection.

After a few seconds, the Pyroblast was shattered by the Flame Ball, and balls of fire that had been compressed into the size of a finger shot forward. That modified spell did not use the compression technique, and even though it fired quickly, the power was not great.

Chen Dao’s flame cloak proved very useful, and blocked those balls of fire.