Chapter 289
Chapter 289: This Time I'm Not Giving Up Gwen—Gwen Is Mine!
A violent burst of smoke and dust exploded through the Arcane Hall.
The fierce tremors reverberated like a great drum being struck repeatedly, and the air that rushed forward came in wave after wave.
From within the billowing smoke and dust, 2 figures—one golden-haired, one silver-haired—leapt out with nimble agility.
It was Erika and Auréliane.
Erika's hands were busily gathering Magic, and the alien-colored Magic Power flowed out of her body like a stream, coiling around her on all sides.
【2nd-Tier Magic: Chaos Barrier】
The alien-colored Magic Power was now completely entwined with itself, gradually slipping beyond Erika's control.
Several threads of Magic Power spiraled continuously through the air, forming a chaotic, alien-colored barrier in front of Erika.
A silver figure suddenly stepped out from within the smoke and dust. Gwen held a silver longsword in her hand, its edge flickering with cold light.
A crack of splitting air erupted beneath her feet, propelling Gwen as she leapt high toward the front.
She raised the longsword in her hand and swung it down hard toward Erika.
Bang!
Under the sword's crushing force, the barrier shattered instantly, and fine, chaotic fragments scattered in all directions, accompanied by several threads of alien-colored energy.
Watching the barrier she had created be shattered by Gwen in a single blow, Erika couldn't help but feel a flash of bewilderment.
She sensed the oppressive pressure of the shards and airflow flying toward her face, and her mind sharpened to absolute clarity in an instant, as though lightning had coursed down her spine.
Auréliane likewise drew her longsword from her hip and thrust it in front of Erika.
The heavy sword blade Gwen brought down collided with Auréliane's silver sword—yet they only held for a few seconds.
The energy in the surrounding space kept being shaken into rolling waves by the clash between the two.
Under the force of the impact, both sides pulled apart.
Erika and Auréliane retreated several steps together.
Gwen, by contrast, stood exactly where the two had been standing a moment before, her expression like frost.
She had not been affected in the slightest by either of their counter-attacks.
Sweat of fatigue appeared on Auréliane's forehead. She turned her head and asked Erika:
"What on earth did you do?! Why is Master Gwen so angry?!"
How could this be—she'd launched into a fight without a single word.
Erika was gasping for breath at this point, looking somewhat worn out.
This was far more exhausting than her usual training back in the Northern Frontier.
Erika was also a little bewildered. She had said those things purely to rile up Auréliane.
The result was something she never could have imagined—that those words would be overheard by Grand Knight Gwen.
But even if Gwen had heard them, it shouldn't have come to this...
In Erika's impression, although Gwen was not particularly good with words, spending a bit of time with her would reveal that Gwen was actually quite gentle.
And yet right now, the glacial look in Gwen's eyes made her seem like an entirely different person.
Erika couldn't help but think of Heni from earlier today.
How had both of them changed like this, one after another?
At that moment, something occurred to Erika, and she looked back at Auréliane.
That's not right—fine, she got beaten for running her mouth, but why is she getting beaten too?
Auréliane understood what Erika meant, and for a moment, the same confusion surfaced in her mind.
Why had she also been caught up in this undeserved disaster?
At this point, Gwen seemed to be waiting for the two of them to recover. She stood quietly in place and made no move to act.
Her expression remained ice-cold, and her eyes seemed to shoot two arrows filled with biting chill—enough to pierce through both of them to the marrow.
She slowly raised the longsword in her hand, pointing it at the two of them:
"Continue."
"Let me keep testing whether you have the qualifications."
Qualifications?
Both Auréliane and Erika froze for a moment, but the very next second, they no longer had time to think.
Gwen planted her feet and pushed off forcefully from the ground. The air all around seemed to frost over, becoming extremely dense.
A figure like a streak of flying snow tore a vacuum fissure through the air and surged forward, trailing brilliant afterimages.
Warning bells rang out in Erika's and Auréliane's hearts, and they hurriedly threw up their defenses.
Erika clenched her fists and felt her Magic Power surging through her hands. A complex Formation rapidly took shape in the air under her control.
Auréliane staked everything on a single strike, sword-tip aimed forward. Magic Power swiftly climbed the blade, while her other hand began tracing the runes of a Magic Formation through the air.
At the same time, countless students pressed together at the entrance of the Arcane Hall and poured outside, watching the three of them locked in continuous combat.
They gazed from a distance at Gwen, their faces all bearing expressions of mild astonishment:
"I heard that's Professor Viktor's fiancée—Grand Knight Gwen."
"Simply elegant and powerful... both her swordsmanship and her appearance."
Their eyes were filled with admiration as Gwen became the center of every gaze.
Delicate features graced that cool and stern face, and her aloof air was like a banner snapping in a cold wind, lending an inexplicable sense of authority to everyone watching.
Even in her coldness, she carried a certain ineffable charm.
Even the female students were captivated.
At that moment, someone among the students spoke up:
"Is Erika and Her Highness the Princess starting to struggle to hold on? Hiss—there won't be any danger, will there?"
The others turned to look at the speaker as if they were looking at a fool.
How could there be?
To begin with, Erika and Auréliane—one was the daughter of a Duke, and the other was an even heavier-weight figure.
She was the Princess—the Emperor's own daughter!
How could the two of them possibly be in danger? Was Gwen going to actually go for the kill?
Although they were also a little puzzled as to why Grand Knight Gwen had thrown herself at the two of them without a word.
But thinking about it again—Auréliane addressed Gwen as her teacher.
Suddenly everything made perfect sense.
Professor Viktor was the Princess's magic instructor, and Grand Knight Gwen was the Princess's swordsmanship instructor.
So one glance told you everything—Grand Knight Gwen had obviously come to train both of them.
The students crowding outside the door jostled against each other, trying to catch a glimpse of Gwen's "training" of the two inside the Arcane Hall, afraid of missing any detail.
After all, they were all Mages and rarely got to see Knights in combat.
This was far more thrilling than their usual classes.
And the thing that put them most at ease was not actually the identities of Auréliane and Erika.
Because there was someone even more powerful keeping watch.
Standing before the students was a muscular white-haired old man.
He stood with his arms folded, watching the 3 of them in continuous combat not far away.
Although Erika and Auréliane were indeed being steadily driven back by Gwen,
Vladimir felt genuine admiration.
The strength of both children was without question outstanding.
Erika had trained with the Mage-soldiers for a period of time, but she leaned more toward using elemental magic.
Auréliane was more versatile—perhaps because she had studied swordsmanship under Gwen, she spent more of her time fighting with a longsword.
She resembled a Mage-soldier, yet was not quite a Mage-soldier.
Because Mage-soldiers themselves relied on both magical tools and their physical bodies simultaneously to deal with enemies.
So the amount of Magic Power a Mage-soldier carried was actually not very great.
But Auréliane was different. Not only had her Magic Power reached the level of a standard Mage, but her close-quarters combat was also exceptional.
What's more, she was the only one in the Academy who fought in this particular style—a fusion of swordsmanship and magic.
He had no idea how she'd been taught to fight like this.
Vladimir watched the battle between the three with visible relish.
When his gaze fell on Gwen, he felt a surge of admiration as well.
Compared to her time in the Northern Frontier, Gwen seemed to have grown even stronger.
In her battle against Erika and Auréliane, she employed no complex techniques whatsoever—relying solely on skill and overwhelming power, she had already pressed both of them considerably.
Her techniques opened and closed with fluid precision, like cold water in the dead of winter—both flowing and razor-sharp.
This was also why Vladimir had not stepped in to stop things when he saw Gwen appear and throw herself into a fight with Auréliane and Erika.
Because there was no need.
Vladimir was a veteran of countless battlefields. Whether someone carried killing intent in combat—he could tell at a glance.
Gwen's exchanges with the two of them carried more of a guiding quality.
As if she were trying to teach them something.
Measured and controlled.
And Vladimir shifted his gaze to the other sword at Gwen's waist.
That great sword was as though completely swallowed by flame—radiating an extraordinarily violent energy from within its scabbard, like a fierce fire hidden within ice, not yet unleashed.
Even from a distance, Vladimir could sense that this sword was far from ordinary.
If Gwen fought at full power, the two young girls would certainly be unable to hold on.
So Vladimir did not intervene.
The Magic Power in Erika's hands surged once more. Several beams of blazing starlight transformed into straight white arrows and shot forth from her hands, aimed directly at Gwen.
Mid-flight, these arrows dissolved their visible form, leaving only faintly drifting razor-sharp Magic Power continuing forward.
【2nd-Tier Magic: Starlight Arrow】
Faced with the dense barrage of invisible arrows, Gwen was completely unruffled.
She settled her mind and sensed that the arrows all around had seemingly merged entirely with the flow of the air.
But under Gwen's gaze, it was as though the cold had become a blade cutting through the air before her—those white arrows still revealed their shapes in her eyes.
Gwen slightly lowered her body and wove through the rain of sword-arrows without pause, gripping her blade as she appeared directly before Erika.
Auréliane charged in front of Erika with sword in one hand, and the magic-infused blade swept toward Gwen.
Gwen turned her body slightly to the side, raised her elbow, and gave a light nudge—the blade glowing with Magic Power didn't even have the chance to clash with the sword in Gwen's hand before it was already knocked free from Auréliane's grip.
【2nd-Tier Magic: Hazy Fire Rope】
Auréliane turned her hand and unleashed a magic spell, and a crimson spinning rope swung forcefully from the Formation in her hand, looping around Gwen's body and binding her tight.
Gwen's expression remained unchanged. Her body gave a slight shudder, and a surge of pressure erupted instantly from within her—she ripped the crimson rope free, pinned it beneath her foot, twisted it firmly, and it gradually dissipated.
She nudged her body gently forward, and before either Auréliane or Erika had time to react, both were sent stumbling back dozens of meters.
The stamina of both had by now begun to give out.
But Gwen was still well within her means.
Gwen straightened her body, withdrew her hand, and looked at Auréliane and Erika in front of her:
"It seems your qualifications are still not quite there."
"Let me give you a small lesson."
With that, she raised the blade over her head again, a cold gleam flashing in her eyes:
"Foolish..."
"Thieving cats."
Dense killing intent erupted in all directions, and a scorching, flame-like scent kept pouring into Vladimir's nostrils.
He sensed something was wrong, and his eyes snapped wide open.
But Gwen had already raised her blade and shattered the ground beneath her feet.
Accompanied by the spray of cracking stone slabs, she turned into a blurred phantom in an instant and charged before the two of them.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, a scatter of black feathers inexplicably spilled from the air, raining down through the space above—
Like pitch-black night-snow, they fell over Viktor's silhouette.
He stood steadily before Gwen, a wooden vine coiled in his palm and taking shape as a wood sword etched with grain-patterns.
Bang!
A dull collision mixed with the trembling ring of metal. The hands gripping their weapons—Gwen's and Viktor's—shook and resonated from the violent impact.
But neither of their arms moved even a fraction.
Watching this, every student crammed at the entrance was struck dumb.
Vladimir's eyes widened too, and he leaned forward for a better look.
He hadn't even had time to be surprised before he found he couldn't look away.
To be honest, he had never seen Viktor fight in person before.
And watching him grip a sword and block Gwen's attack without the slightest hesitation—
He felt he suddenly understood who had taught the Princess her current style of combat.
Gwen's voice was like an icicle in deep winter—utterly cold:
"You've finally come."
Viktor looked at Gwen with an equally expressionless face:
"Time to stop, Gwen."
In this moment, the Gwen before him gave him a deep, pervasive sense of familiarity.
Like the absolute ice buried miles beneath the extreme north—intensely, utterly frigid.
Just through her gaze alone, one could feel the abnormal cold radiating ceaselessly from her body, piercing straight through every meridian.
As though back when he had been a Player, the Gwen he had always faced was exactly like this.
Just as she was now. Devoid of feeling.
Gwen in this state—once she set her mind on something, the single thought within her heart would not shift in the slightest.
She would not listen to any persuasion.
Gwen remained cold and indifferent. She raised her blade and stepped back one pace.
Her body gradually lowered, the longsword gripped tight against her chest, aimed at Viktor—and she charged at him with full force.
The air all around seemed to rupture completely, leaving nothing but a roaring howl.
Like a lion fighting for its life.
Viktor knew that if he tried to resist by force at this moment, Gwen would be hurt.
So he had already set up a Magic spell in advance.
If an attack came, it would automatically deflect the force away.
But just then, Gwen gripped her blade and was already right in front of Viktor.
At this point, Viktor's Magic should have triggered and immediately deflected Gwen away.
And yet...
Viktor froze.
The Magic had failed to activate?
Or was it that Gwen had no intention of...
In this moment, only a resounding clang was heard—that silver-white longsword fell to the ground.
It bounced a few times, then stilled.
Countless eyes were drawn to that falling sword. A moment's blink later, those gazes found Gwen.
No one knew when it had happened—she had already slipped into Viktor's arms.
Both her arms reached up and hooked around Viktor's neck.
And she leaned in, and kissed him.
In this instant, countless eyes snapped wide open.
Erika and Auréliane stood gasping for breath—whether from exhaustion or from the scene before them, they could not tell—their own eyes blown wide in shock.
The world seemed to fall silent for a moment.
A long time passed before the two pairs of lips pressed so tightly together gradually parted.
Gwen looked at Viktor—whose expression had visibly changed—and yet her own expression remained cold as ever.
Like frost. The cold gleam, sharp and brilliant.
She cupped Viktor's face in both her hands, her eyes carrying a frosty edge as they bore straight into Viktor's.
A clear, cool voice gradually rang out through the entire Academy:
"You are mine."
"I will not give you up to anyone."