The dark red vortex crashed down with a scorching sense of oppression. The moment it made contact with Erich, the containment field shattered.
The principle of the Wine Explosion was simple: the Wayne family's technique compressed a large amount of mana within a containment field, continuously pouring it in until it approached critical density. The moment the containment field broke, the liquid mana, suppressed to its limit, underwent adiabatic expansion in an instant, vaporizing into a violent steam cloud of high temperature and pressure. On a macro level, this manifested as a violent impact and steam burns, with temperatures high enough to burn through iron armor.
Given the amount of mana Alicia had poured into it, taking this strike head-on would at least render Erich incapacitated.
She had calculated it. She didn't want his life; she just wanted to win. The Wayne family's medical team, fully equipped and on standby outside, could rush in to save him at any moment.
The steam cloud completely swallowed Erich. Alicia gripped her staff tightly, her chest heaving violently as she stared at the churning crimson mist. I won! Finally, I—
But then, she saw firelight.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, the steam cloud began to burn.
Alicia froze for a moment, then sneered. Erich had to be completely drunk. If an open flame appeared in such a high concentration of wine mist, it would trigger a violent explosion. He actually dared to light a fire inside? Was he suicidal?
The moment this thought surfaced, a wave of panic suddenly washed over her.
He wouldn't actually die, would he?
She hadn't wanted to kill him. She only wanted to win, to prove herself before everyone, and to let him taste what it was like to be trampled underfoot. She had never wanted things to go that far.
“Is he crazy?” someone in the spectator stands stood up and shouted.
“Lighting a fire in that kind of mist? How is that any different from suicide?!”
“No wonder he was kicked out of his family. What is inside his head?”
The chatter grew louder. Up in the stands, Balin and the others broke into a cold sweat, their faces turning pale. In the highest VIP box, the young princess was already contacting the royal medical mages.
But to everyone's shock, the violent, terrifying steam cloud did not explode.
Flames lit up from the outside, wrapping around the entire crimson mist. Then, within the firelight, the steam cloud began to shrink.
There was no earth-shattering explosion. The high-temperature steam, which was powerful enough to severely burn a person, shrank smaller and smaller under the wrapper of flames, as if being swallowed mouthful by mouthful. In the end, it only produced a dull, minor pop before completely dispersing into the air.
As the red smoke cleared, Erich stood in place.
Most of his flowing silver hair had been burned away, the charred tips curling against the side of his face. His school uniform was scorched to tatters, revealing the burned skin beneath. He looked incredibly disheveled.
Yet, his ice-blue eyes shone with startling brilliance through the dust and smoke.
Deep within the ice-blue, a flame-red light flickered, as if fire itself had condensed into the color of his pupils.
A dead silence fell over the stands, followed by a deafening roar of astonishment. The young princess stopped her attempt to summon the medical mages, her mouth slightly agape. Lorraine and Irene exchanged a glance, both seeing absolute disbelief in each other's eyes.
In a VIP box, a middle-aged man stood up and walked to the French window.
He watched for a long time before murmuring, “Alicia is still too inexperienced. But how did that boy see through it?”
The steam cloud of the Wine Explosion Alicia unleashed was not entirely unbreakable. After the containment field shattered, the core portion had just been released, and its concentration far exceeded the upper flammability limit. As it diffused outward from the core, the mana gradually mixed with the air. Its concentration decreased from far above the upper flammability limit toward the edges until it fell into the flammable range at the outermost layer of the steam cloud.
Erich had ignited this flammable outer layer. Once the open flame appeared, the flame front propagated toward the interior of the steam cloud at the speed of the gas mixture, extinguishing itself automatically once the air was depleted. During this process, the flame front pushed away the high-temperature steam rushing toward him, carving out a very narrow, safe angle around his body.
Though the violent steam cloud would be burned away bit by bit, Erich still had to endure a portion of the heat, but it was already within an acceptable range.
In theory, a solution existed. But in actual combat, when faced with a massive, terrifying cloud of steam enveloping oneself, who could execute it with such precision?
Yet, Erich had done it.
On the field, Alicia leaned her entire weight on her staff. That Wine Explosion had drained most of her mana, leaving her barely able to maintain a weak protective membrane around herself.
She watched Erich walk toward her, every step trampling on her frayed nerves.
Alicia opened her mouth, trying to chant once more.
Erich casually threw out an ice spike, precisely interrupting her. Alicia barely managed to raise her hand to block it. The ice spike shattered into dust against her membrane, but the force of the impact left her body numb. Losing her balance, she stumbled and fell to the ground.
Erich stopped about ten meters in front of her, looking down at her from above.
“Do you yield?”
Shouts erupted from the spectator stands. A crisp voice pierced through the din: “Keep going, Alicia! Don't lose to that guy!”
It was Julian Lombard, the youngest daughter of the Lombard family and one of Alicia's good friends in Class A.
Immediately after, a figure stood up from the crowd. It was Margaret. Her voice carried over: “You have already done well enough, young mistress! No matter the outcome, I will support you forever!”
More and more people stood up. The students who had been won over by Alicia's hard work and strength over the past two weeks were now shouting her name at the top of their lungs. Their cheers gathered into a wave, completely drowning out the shouts of "Erich" from Balin and his friends.
Leaning on her staff, Alicia's knees trembled, but she forced herself up bit by bit.
Give up?
What a joke. Her heart was screaming passionately. She had waited for this day for far, far too long. Ever since that humiliation at the ball, ever since being called a "pretty face," what she had waited for was to win this duel fair and square. Even if the air was heavy and breathing was difficult, even if her mana was so depleted that her fingers trembled, so what?!
She bared her teeth in a bloody smile and began to chant.
She was forcibly squeezing out the last trace of mana from the depths of her body. If she handled this poorly, it could leave permanent damage. She didn't care.
Erich watched her, nodded slightly, and raised his staff.
“O spirits of ice, queen of the frozen earth, show your authority here,”
An ice-blue light gathered at the tip of his staff. The surrounding temperature plummeted, and fine ice crystals condensed in the air.
“Bloom ice flowers in the depths of the wound,”
Alicia's chanting continued. Her voice was broken and halting, but a faint, dark red light was still gathering on her staff. She refused to give up, even though she knew she couldn't win, even though her body had reached its limit.
She still wanted to unleash this strike.
“【Ice Spike】.”
Erich's voice fell.
A rapidly spinning ice spike formed at the tip of his staff, its cold light sharp and menacing, pointing directly at Alicia.
This was the final strike.
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