Chapter 225 : Chapter 225
Chapter 225. The Duel Ends
After using his Breathing Method, the church knight immediately prayed to the Goddess of the Currents and used the divine art 【Power of the Currents】.
Something like the water element, yet not actually the water element, wrapped itself around the church knight’s body. Even his weapon became coated in a thin, transparent, flowing film.
He was still secretly shocked by Fran’s earlier attack. She was absolutely one of the most difficult opponents he had ever faced.
Her sheer strength alone had already made her hard for him to handle, forcing him to use a divine art bestowed upon him by his goddess.
“But why isn’t she using a spell? If she used even one offensive spell, I might be knocked down instantly.”
Even while shocked, he was deeply puzzled by Fran’s actions just now. To him, this did not quite look like the style of a true mage of the Sword Chant School.
He might not recognize the spell Fran had used to strengthen her body, but he had fought against several mages of the Sword Chant School before.
He knew that when those mages carried swords, it was not because they were all skilled in close combat, but because the sword itself was their spellcasting weapon.
Their swords had all undergone special treatment, allowing them to channel spells even in the midst of fierce battle.
He himself had once experienced it. Just when he had finally gained the upper hand in close combat, a ray of light had suddenly shot out from the mage’s longsword.
If he had not dodged in time, that beam would not merely have left a semicircular hole in his waist.
Fortunately, the goddess’s healing had pulled him back from death afterward, but even now, that experience still haunted him.
It was not only the church knight fighting Fran who noticed this. Even Bishop Gillian, watching from the high platform, noticed it as well.
“Perhaps what she used is a spell obtained from the Spirit Realm, or perhaps it is the Talent she gained when she advanced.”
Gillian guessed.
Her expression relaxed a little, because she also knew that a true mage of the Sword Chant School would never fight like this, let alone a battle mage famous for martial prowess.
She had encountered many battle mages before. Those mages often hurled an instant spell into your face from somewhere you could not even perceive.
And yet even now, Fran still had not used a single spell other than Sword Dance. That truly made one wonder whether Sword Dance was the only thing she knew.
Fran could not hear the thoughts of the others on the field. She focused on observing the church knight’s attack.
“The way this divine art is released is very similar to the divine arts I obtained from the Lord of Radiance, but there are some differences.”
What was similar was that she recognized the fluctuations of the divine art he was using. They were very much like the fluctuations of her own divine arts.
What was different was that when she sensed him using the technique, it felt as though there was no consumption whatsoever.
It was as if that consumption had been offset by something else.
Even in the Spirit Realm, after obtaining the statue from the Lord of Radiance, she had still been able to feel that using divine arts consumed her mental power.
And during her final days in Monsa, that consumption had become less and less, which led her to a bold guess.
She now strongly suspected that the faith of those believers offset the cost of these divine arts to a certain extent, allowing them to be used without consuming a single bit of the user’s own strength.
But she also suspected there was a limit to it. Whether it was per day or per month, the number of times they could release such divine arts was likely limited, because the number of believers was limited, and the energy produced by that faith naturally could not support limitless use.
Otherwise, back in the Spirit Realm, with the faith of an entire city behind her, if she could have cast divine arts without limit, she would have been able to fight that dragon head-on.
There would have been no need for the Lord of Radiance to personally grant her power.
Perhaps because he had used a divine art to strengthen himself, the church knight’s confidence surged, and he actually launched an attack straight at Fran.
It was as though surging waves were helping propel him forward, and his speed increased by several degrees.
Fran instinctively raised her longsword horizontally to block, but the next moment, she felt an unbelievable force, as though something were weakening her own strength.
In the end, Fran still blocked the strike firmly without retreating in the slightest. Only her knees bent slightly to shed part of the force.
Even so, Fran was inwardly astonished by this wondrous power. This divine art actually possessed such a miraculous effect.
If it were a spell, it would be very difficult to produce a similar effect at the First Tier, because the mechanism involved was simply too complex.
That made her grow curious about the Lord of Radiance. What exactly was the power of these gods? Could it be used in other ways?
At that moment, for the first time, Fran developed the thought of helping the Lord of Radiance find believers, then having the god bestow power so that she could study it herself.
She could feel that the energy released by these divine arts was different from any spell or Combat Technique. Perhaps it possessed many wondrous functions.
This battle placed no pressure on her at all, and only because of that was she able to think so much in the middle of combat.
The church knight also knew that if things continued like this, he would never be able to defeat Fran, so he used another divine art: 【Torrent Slash】.
Strictly speaking, this should have counted as a Combat Technique, but because the church knight’s use of this move was still subject to the goddess’s restrictions, within the Church, almost everyone referred to this technique as a divine art.
Fran’s attention was likewise drawn by another strange fluctuation. She knew that her longsword alone would likely be unable to block this divine art.
So she spent mental power and used a Shield Spell.
A thin shield appeared before Fran, manifesting just as the greatsword wrapped in the force of the waves arrived.
After all, a Shield Spell was still only an apprentice-level spell. Even when Fran cast it instantly, it could not block the slash of a First-Tier Professional.
That was determined by the spell structure of the Shield Spell itself. Its upper limit had long been fixed in place.
But the Shield Spell Fran used now employed a technique commonly used by battle mages of the Sword Chant School: 【Counter-Shield】.
That technique involved instantly injecting such a huge amount of mental power that the Shield Spell could barely sustain it, causing the mental power to erupt inside the shield.
When the enemy’s weapon broke the shield, the explosion of the shield and the powerful mental power would combine to produce a violent impact that would send the opponent flying.
Because this was simply a technique for using the Shield Spell, many mages of other schools also used it, so Fran had learned it by spending a few gold coins among the battle mage corps.
But Fran overlooked one point: her mental power far exceeded that of an ordinary First-Tier Mage, so the impact released when her shield exploded was far stronger than that of a normal 【Counter-Shield】.
In that instant, the church knight realized he had made a mistake. He should never have gotten this close.
And the sensation of that exploding shield felt extremely familiar to him. That familiarity convinced him that Fran was absolutely a battle mage of the Alliance.
A mage who had advanced through the Spirit Realm could not possibly use this sort of technique.
They only knew how to cast spells; they would never understand these finer tricks of spell use.