Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest-Chapter 966 - 223.2 - Mage and Archer

And that was what unsettled her.

'She's not adapting to me. She's moving ahead of me!

Lilia exhaled slowly through her nose, the faintest furrow lining her brow.

She had fought her share of mages, and she had designed her techniques with that in mind. She understood how elemental control worked. She knew how long it took for a fire glyph to prime, how mana density impacted combustion delay. Her arrows weren't just about power-they were tools, tuned for pressure, for rhythm disruption, for overwhelming control.

But none of it was working.

Irina was weaving around her like she'd read the entire playbook already.

No, not weaving-conducting.

Lilia's fingers brushed across the fletching of a new arrow, one she hadn't used yet in this fight.

'She's changed!

That realization settled heavier than she expected. Irina's reputation had always been that of a prodigy mage-aggressive, powerful, yes, but not this. Not this kind of precision.

And now?

Lilia could feel it.

Her next three shots were already plotted, but she hesitated before firing them. That hesitation was new.

And Irina saw it.

From across the arena, Irina's eyes locked onto her, and for a moment, Lilia recognized that glint. It wasn't arrogance.

It was confidence born of understanding.

The same kind Lilia carried when she fought others.

'She knows what I'm doing before I do it. How?"

It didn't make sense. Mana recognition? Predictive movement? Mana-sensory overlap?

No.

It was deeper than that.

Irina wasn't reacting to movement-she was responding to intent.

As if she were feeling the shape of Lilia's mana before it even left her body.

And Lilia knew exactly what kind of person could do that.

Only someone who had fought in true rhythm-based warfare.

'Someone like Astron...'

She felt it. The fingerprints of his influence. Not in magic, not in technique-but in philosophy.

Irina wasn't acting like a mage. She was acting like a duelist.

.....So he changed her, is that what I am supposed to infer?"

Lilia's eyes narrowed as she traced the lines of Irina's stance. There was no aggression in it-no posturing, no wasted mana-but it radiated intent. Clean, precise, unreadable. And more than anything else... familiar.

'So he really did change you!

The thought circled once, like a calm ripple on still water. She knew Astron's influence when she felt it. That weightless pressure, that seamless flow between offense and defense-not chasing the opponent's rhythm, but reshaping it entirely. She had felt that only once before, during the one time she'd observed Astron fight not from across the field, but from above, perched in silence, watching the way he disassembled someone without lifting his voice, without raising his pulse.

And now Irina carried traces of that.

'He showed you quite a lot of things it seems...'

For a moment, Lilia didn't move. Her thoughts were quiet, not heavy. She wasn't

frustrated.

In fact, she smiled.

A small, quiet thing.

'Well... let's see what you'll do!

Her fingers closed on the arrow she had selected-narrow, silver-fletched, with a head designed not to pierce, but to resonate. Its core was layered with a dual-frequency mana lacing, one that vibrated in opposing currents the moment it passed through any ambient construct.

It was a disruptor, but unlike the field collapse shots she'd used earlier, this one wasn't meant to disable formations.

It was meant to cancel spells mid-cast.

She drew it in one smooth motion. Her body moved like a note in a song-silent, deliberate, deadly. Mana pulsed down the string of her bow, syncing perfectly with the

arrow's frequency.

Fwip-!

The arrow shot forward, cutting through the lingering warmth of Irina's last spell. It passed through residual flame like mist, untethering the mana filaments in the air. A

precision kill.

And Irina felt it.

She moved.

Another arrow followed. Then a third.

A trinity of motion-angled to converge at her chest, her shoulder, and her face. Not to injure. Not yet. But to force a reaction. Even Irina couldn't remain composed with that kind of pressure coming all at once.

Lilia's eyes remained fixed on the trajectory. They were perfect. Her arrows weren't

just fast. They were inevitable.

'Let's see how you move now-

Then something shifted.

A shimmer in the air.

No-not around Irina.

Around the arrows.

Lilia's focus snapped sharper. The mana around her projectiles had begun to bend, not

like it was being resisted-but like it was being redirected. Not repelled. Not dispelled.

Just... moved.

As if space itself slid out of their way.

And then-

Phhhft.

All three arrows vanished. Not shattered. Not incinerated.

Gone.

Lilia's eyes widened a fraction.

She didn't miss. Not from that range, not from that position.

And yet-

'Where did they-?'

Then, a soft whoomph echoed behind her.

Her head turned just enough to glimpse it-her own arrows, embedded in the far wall

of the arena behind her.

As if they had been folded around Irina... and sent backward.

Lilia's breath caught-not in fear, but in awe. For just a second.

...That wasn't teleportation. That was... redirection!

The sigils.

The ones she had seen before Irina made her move.

They weren't just [Telekinesis].

They were vector seals. Constructed patterns of spatial logic bound not to a target,

but to a movement instruction. Something that anticipated direction and folded

around it.

Lilia's eyes widened, her breath catching in the base of her throat as she stared at the

distant wall-at the three arrows she had loosed just seconds ago, now embedded

neatly in the stone far behind Irina.

Her arrows hadn't missed. They had been redirected.

"That wasn't a shield. That wasn't elemental interference... That was spatial folding!

Her gaze snapped back to Irina, the flickering sigils still lingering faintly in the air like

ghost impressions of what had just occurred. That kind of manipulation wasn't just advanced-it was absurd.

To weave [Telekinesis] like that—to fold trajectory in real time, bend spatial pressure

around the curvature of incoming mana-

"The control... the precision...' Her heart pulsed once, heavy.

Lilia had seen Irina use [Telekinesis] before, sure. She always assumed it was a utility

spell a convenience. Something to nudge her environment, catch a falling flask, move a book across a desk. Even in combat, she'd seen Irina flick her blade or shift debris

with it, but it was always an afterthought.

'She had this side?"

Really?

The sudden weight of that realization pressed against Lilia's ribs-not in panic, but in

something colder, Something heavier.

She'd been wrong.

Badly.

And Irina wasn't done.

The flames at Irina's feet surged without warning, bursting forward in a crescent arc.

Lilia responded instantly-two fingers snapped against the bowstring, mana coiling down an arrow that had already been half-prepared. Her counter-technique flared to life, tuned to collapse the spell structure before it could propagate.

But-

The wave didn't collapse.

Lilia's eyes flicked across the stream, searching for the faultlines-the harmonics, the

reverse sequence patterns that would normally allow her to invert the mana and break the wave before contact.

There were none.

Or rather-

'It's layered!

Two pulses. No, three. The flame wasn't constructed on a single structure-it was

stacked, shifting frequencies just before impact, making it impossible to predict the cancelation point in time.

'She changed her flamecasting!

Lilia had no choice.

She moved.

Pivoted high, vaulting into the air as the flames roared beneath her-close enough to

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singe, to burn, but not strike. Her cloak whipped behind her as she twisted mid-flight,

already preparing her next shot to retaliate.

Then she saw it.

A gleam.