The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive

Chapter 106: Drawing the Sword

The speed and pressure Kyle displayed at this moment were several times greater than the pure magical suppression he had shown earlier.

“Watch out!” Rex could not help shouting.

Having already been beaten down once, he knew very well how terrifying this style of combat was. Among students of the same level who practiced both magic and martial skill, very few could withstand a frontal assault like this when it was empowered by flame.

Even Lillian held her breath, and there was unmistakable tension in her ice-blue eyes.

Facing that ferocious charge, a sharp glint flashed through Ryan’s eyes, as if this very moment was exactly what he had been waiting for.

Kyle arrived in an instant. His burning right fist tore through the air, carrying scorching pressure as it smashed straight toward Ryan’s face. If that punch landed cleanly, it would be enough to shatter an ordinary person’s skull.

The instant before the flaming fist reached him, Ryan moved.

His movement did not even look fast. If anything, it looked almost casual.

His body tilted back slightly, his center of gravity shifting. His left hand had risen at some unknown moment, his palm glowing with a faint earth-yellow light. It was not the hard shell of Stone Armor, but the shadow of a flexible, heavy Earthflow Wall, barely interposed before the fist’s path.

Boom!

The flaming punch slammed into the Earthflow Wall with a heavy blast.

The wall shattered on impact, but it had already dispersed most of the force. Ryan borrowed that force to slide half a step backward, while his right hand shot out like lightning, fingers curved like talons, locking precisely toward the joint of Kyle’s right wrist, momentarily exposed because of the punch. A faint gleam flickered at his fingertips as well—that was a highly compressed Shockwave Enchantment.

Kyle’s heart tightened. He had not expected his opponent to respond so cleverly, not only dissolving the force of his straight punch but instantly counterattacking at a joint.

He had rich combat experience and changed tactics immediately. His left fist swept sideways to force Ryan to withdraw his grab, while the muscles in his right arm swelled and fire Mana surged violently, attempting to shake Ryan’s hold loose.

However, Ryan’s grappling technique was unusually vicious and seasoned. It touched and vanished, never clashing head-on.

At the very moment Kyle’s left fist swept across, Ryan’s right hand, which had been reaching for the wrist, had already withdrawn. His body slipped sideways like a fish, circling cleverly to Kyle’s flank.

At the same time, his left knee rose soundlessly and slammed into Kyle’s comparatively vulnerable waist and ribs.

That entire sequence of responses flowed like water, embodying the essence of close-quarters entanglement. There was not the slightest trace of a stationary artillery mage in it.

Kyle was caught off guard. His waist and ribs took the hit solidly. Even with Mana protecting him, he still let out a muffled grunt and staggered to the side.

Shock and anger surged together in his heart. He had finally realized that the third-year student before him was absolutely not some simple opponent who only knew long-range magic.

His close-combat technique was, in fact, even finer and more precise than Kyle’s own, despite Kyle being the one who specialized in magic–martial combat.

“Bastard!”

Kyle roared, and the flames around him flared with a BOOM, forming a ring of blazing fire around his body. The intense heat instantly scorched the ground and withered the grass.

He stopped holding back. His fists became a storm, leaving behind streak after streak of flaming afterimages as he launched an unrelenting barrage at Ryan.

Fists, elbows, knees, legs—every strike carried explosive fire Mana. The movements were wide and violent, packed with terrifying force. It was obvious that Kyle was truly enraged now and intended to crush Ryan through the sheer superiority of his magical reserves and explosive strength.

Ryan was forced onto the defensive at once. His body was agile and his footwork exquisite, always managing to evade or deflect most of the attacks at the last possible instant. From time to time, he harassed Kyle with Ice Spikes, wind blades, or vicious joint-targeting counters.

But Kyle’s fire Mana was simply too abundant, and the area covered by his attacks was too wide. The blazing heat constantly eroded Ryan’s protective Mana and scorched his clothing. After several direct collisions, burns had appeared on Ryan’s arms and shoulders as well, and his movements began to show the slightest hint of sluggishness.

On the surface, Kyle seemed to hold an absolute advantage. Flames roared all around, pressing Ryan back step by step into mounting danger.

“He… he’s not going to hold out much longer!” Lillian clutched her slender sword tightly, her voice full of anxiety.

Rex was even more frantic and looked ready to rush in to help, but Lillian held him back with all her strength. If they went in now, they would only make things worse.

A cruel glint flashed through Kyle’s eyes. Failing to break through after such a prolonged assault was beginning to irritate him. The instant he spotted a small gap—after Ryan had blocked one strike and his center of gravity adjusted ever so slightly—he suddenly roared:

“Flamefiend’s Embrace!”

This was one of his trump cards, a reinforcement-type mid-tier spell.

In that instant, the flames around his body abruptly contracted inward, their color darkening from orange-red to deep crimson like flowing magma, rapidly covering his entire body.

His build seemed to swell by a full degree. Muscles bulged high, his skin turned a strange dark red, and patterns like molten lava surfaced across it. Even his eyes were lit with what seemed like two solid masses of fire.

Terrifying heat burst outward from him as the center. Even the gravel on the ground was beginning to redden and soften.

At that moment, Kyle looked as though he had transformed into a miniature flamefiend, his aura exploding upward and filling him with a sense of destructive power.

“It’s over, brat!”

Even Kyle’s voice now carried the crackling echo of erupting fire. He stepped forward once, leaving behind a scorched footprint, and the gigantic fist wrapped in dark crimson flame smashed toward Ryan’s chest with unstoppable force, Ryan appearing momentarily slowed under the pressure of heat and sheer presence.

The force of that punch far exceeded any of his previous attacks. Wherever the fist passed, the air itself ignited completely, releasing a shrill scream.

Lillian and Rex could not help shutting their eyes, unable to bear watching what came next.

And at that moment—

SCHING—!

A clear sword cry, bright as a dragon’s roar, suddenly rang through the forest.

It was not the sound of metal scraping against metal. It was more like the chant of ice cracking open in an abyss of eternal cold, or the faint murmur of some ancient existence stirring from sleep.

A deep blue radiance, so dark it seemed capable of swallowing light itself, struck later but arrived first, crossing with perfect precision before that destructive flaming fist.

A sword.

The cloth-wrapped longsword that had remained silent on Ryan’s back all this time had already left its sheath at some unknown moment and was now in his hand.

The blade was long and narrow, flowing throughout with a deep blue luster that seemed neither metal nor jade. It was profound, cold, and silent, as though a piece of a frozen abyss in endless night had been condensed into physical form.

The edge itself bore no dazzling gleam, yet merely looking at it sent a chill into the heart. The moment the blade appeared, the scorching, distorted air around it plummeted in temperature, and tiny frost crystals even began drifting down.

Ryan’s grip on the sword was natural and fluid, without the slightest trace of unfamiliarity, as if the weapon were nothing less than an extension of his own arm.

The blade trembled faintly, releasing a low hum almost like pleasure, resonating with the Mana within his body in a strange and harmonious way.

CLANG—!!!

The burning dark-red fist slammed savagely into the deep blue spine of the sword.

There was no sword snapping, no wielder dying as expected.

At the moment of impact, time itself seemed to freeze for an instant. Then a visible ring of energy, woven from blue and red, exploded outward. Freezing frost and scorching fire collided and annihilated one another madly, producing a terrifying hiss.

Kyle’s blow, the one he had been certain would end everything, had actually been blocked solidly by that seemingly slender deep-blue sword. The blade did not move an inch. It did not even tremble once.

On the contrary, the violent dark-red flames around Kyle’s fist let out a shrill hiss the instant they touched the blade, as though meeting their natural bane. They were suppressed, frozen, and extinguished inch by inch.

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