Mob Sorcery 5 - Ch10

“You’ll need twenty-five seconds to summon your dragon,” Daji reminded him.

Twenty, Vince figured. He’d gotten in practice in the past month that shaved a few seconds off his old thirty second cast time. With Daji’s help and focus, that could take more time off.

Sure, he could summon the dragon nearly instantly if he drew on her soul egg, but that was stupid. If Houou recognized the dragon with fox features or the black flames, every clan guardian in the city would be on his ass. He needed to assume this fight was being actively watched and recorded.

“If you won’t make the first move, I will,” Goro declared.

The fox stepped forward and his tails shimmered with aqua light. Bubbles of water began to appear around Vince.

Unwilling to find out what weird effect Goro had up his sleeve, Vince spat, “Excandesco.”

Fire exploded from Vince’s body, consuming the water appearing around him. He’d yet to practice enough to learn the spell without an incantation.

Goro’s tails turned amber and the ground shifted around Vince’s feet. Ignoring it, Vince raised his cane.

A fire cage snapped around the fox. Blinking, he lost his concentration and slammed a fist into the flaming bars. His barrier protected him but the fire snarled and repelled him. Goro bared his teeth.

“You cannot hold me with a flimsy prison like this. With my elementalism—” Goro began to say.

Vince’s cane glowed again and the bars doubled. Goro vanished from view, hidden behind a dense prison of fire.

Magic surged within, proving that Vince hadn’t even bought himself a second. Not yet, anyway. So he added more magic.

Fire erupted from the ground beneath Goro, churning through the double-layered fire cage and surging into the air. Goro let out a yell. His spell dissipated.

With his precious seconds bought, Vince took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and began to cast his fire dragon.

He needed twenty seconds at minimum. Against an opponent like Goro, each second counted. Vince’s barrier might buy him ten seconds once the fox broke free and began pelting him with raw power, based on the strength the last five-tail assassin had flung around.

Barely a second after Vince started casting, the fire pillar ended and Goro roared. Once again, the fox began trying to tear apart the fire cages.

The bars warped and bent. Within a moment, Goro pulled the cage open with his arms. His body glowed with an ominous red light while his tails stuck together like a flaming bouquet.

“I said you cannot hold me,” Goro said, voice deeper than before. “Allow me to show you just how flimsy your power truly is, Vincent.” He paused. “Vince!”

How nice. He remembered. Daji giggled.

Goro’s power screamed against Vince’s senses, even as he focused on his dragon spell. It took him a second to realize the fox wasn’t trying to disrupt his meister-tier spell.

No, Goro was trying to seize control of Vince’s fire cage magic. A far harder trick than taking control of initiate-tier magic like fireballs or raw flames. Vince’s fire cage was a wizard-tier spell and therefore constructed with intent and control. Numerous threads connected his mind to the spell, enabling him to control the various aspects of the spell, even after he’d cast it.

Sure, Vince couldn’t change the fire cage after casting it, but those threads were what enabled him to mold the spell in the first place. The more complex a spell, the harder it was to disrupt, and even harder for another mage to seize control of it.

Until now, he’d never dealt with another mage seriously trying to control his more complex spells. When he’d been younger, demons might have messed with his initiate-tier fire spells. But controlling wizard-tier spells was a pure flex.

Goro grimaced as he flexed those magic muscles of his. Plus his actual muscles, and Vince had to admit the fox had them. He was an annoyingly attractive and toned bastard, as befit his background.

But growing up with a silver spoon didn’t make it any easier to overcome Vince. Raw power crashed against Vince’s fire cage spells. At first, Goro tried to wheedle against the threads, as if disrupting them, but gave up. Now an ocean of power slowly strangled Vince.

Or, really, strangled his control of the fire cages. A much more pointless endeavor given he was casting a much more important spell.

Seconds passed as Goro grunted. He raised his arms, slowly crushing the bars into a dense ball of fire that almost dripped magma. Vince’s control slipped as the fox’s raw power overwhelmed him and he focused his concentration on his dragon.

A good five or six seconds had passed. Not as much as Vince hoped, but far more than he should have expected.

“Now taste your own flames!” Goro roared.

The fox struck a pose with one leg in front of the other, and his arm stretched behind him with the bizarre fireball nearly dripping from his hand. Vince stared.

That same fireball hurtled toward him an instant later. It burst against his barrier, blasting apart into flames and the almost-molten magma Vince formed the bars from. Concrete bubbled and holes opened up around him.

His barrier barely rippled. The fire cages lacked even a fraction of the offensive power Vince poured into his fireballs. They were reasonably complex wizard-tier spells, but the tiers of spells didn’t always align with raw power.

Goro blinked several times in confusion as he understood that. Vince continued to cast his dragon. He was a good eleven seconds in now. Not quite halfway, unless he took a huge risk and rushed it.

“You should, uh, understand my mastery of elementalism,” the fox said lamely. He bit his lip.

Then his eyes nearly popped as he saw the prismatic flames rippling around Vince. The rapid intake of breath indicated Goro had caught on to why Vince merely stood there, instead of fighting back.

“Damn! I saw you cast this on the footage of the assassins,” Goro gasped.

He pressed his palms together and his tails lit up in different colors. Blue, green, amber, red, and the fifth one oscillated between each of them like the rainbow. Some sort of powerful elementalism spell? Possibly one that drew from all four elements, based on the multiple colors. Vince sure as hell didn’t want to find out what it might involve.

An explosion rose up from the garden and a small tree smashed into the window of an apartment. Vince winced. These buildings definitely had protective barriers, but nobody had activated them yet.

One of the bodyguard foxes skidded across the walkway, his suit in tatters and blood streaming across his body. Nina grappled with another.

But Cora withdrew, fixated on her ward. “Sir!” Her eyes widened as she saw Vince.

Damn. This had been exactly what he’d hoped wouldn’t happen. His entire plan relied on the bodyguards focusing on Nina. If Cora helped Goro, he’d have to abandon his dragon to defend himself.

Telekinetic magic shimmered around her five tails and she glowered at him. Could he survive the force blast? Nina growled as she spotted Cora. A scream of pain rose from the fox she brawled with as she slammed forward and snapped his arm like a twig. Earth spikes exploded against his barriers like artillery shells.

“No!” Goro shouted. His eyes tracked Vince’s and he spotted Cora. “This is a duel, Cora. Do not interfere.”

“But Sir—” Cora said.

“This is for the honor of the Miura clan, and all Houou. It is meaningless if I cannot defeat him alone.”

Vince frowned. What sort of world did Goro come from? Because it sure as hell wasn’t the same world Aulfair dwelled in. This poor bastard was going to get ganked by Immanuel one day, assuming he survived today.

Cora hesitated. That was enough for Nina to send the other bodyguard sprawling. The lioness turned half the concrete into a moving walkway that pulled Cora toward her, knocking the fox off her feet.

Whatever happened between Nina and the bodyguards wasn’t Vince’s problem. His girlfriend could take care of herself. He needed to finish his spell.

“You can’t finish your spell in time, sir!” Cora called out, even as she and Nina blew apart a huge chunk of the walkway.

Goro’s eyes widened. Vince had nearly reached twenty seconds by now.

Releasing a deep sigh, Goro separated his palms. Soft blue light surrounded his tails. Terror filled Vince as he recognized the color from his nightmares.

“No,” Daji muttered, frustration lacing her voice. “He doesn’t just bear the name. He’s of the main family!”

“I hate using this magic in an honorable duel. It’s intended only for monsters,” Goro said. “But needs must.”

Then he blurred across the strip mall, covering the distance between the two of them before Vince could even blink. The fox’s fists burned with a familiar blue fire.

Goro’s first punch tore right through Vince’s barrier, disintegrating it with magic-consuming foxfire.  The fox’s martial arts demonstrated the gap in their skills, as he cleanly prepared a second strike directly at the hole he’d created.

Only for Vince’s contingency barrier to activate and block the second blow. The foxfire tore it open, too, but that was a hell of a lot better than a half-dozen broken ribs.

Vince stepped backward, desperately trying to gain space. Goro remained on top of him. Even with only seconds remaining, Vince struggled to remain his focus. Only Daji’s help prevented him from dropping his dragon spell entirely.

But he wasn’t done. Far from it.

Goro spun and launched another strike. A powerful blow slammed into the fox’s arm and cracked his barrier, while stopping him dead. Vince’s glove glowed, and he tried to grab Goro. The fox deftly avoided the grapple. His eyes narrowed.

“I see the skill that ended Teru,” Goro said. “Yet I shall end this myself.”

His arms rose like claws, rippling with foxfire. Five bronze fox tails shined with amber light and dense shields of stone appeared from thin air.

Even if Vince was ready to cast his dragon—and he practically was—it couldn’t save him here. His main barrier was cracked open, his contingency barrier spent, and Nina was too busy tearing three other foxes apart to save him.

Goro’s arms descended, bringing death.

Except they punctured only air thirty feet away. The stone shields burst harmlessly against Vince’s barrier, but the foxfire burned nothing.

Goro stood thirty feet away, utter confusion written on his face. He looked down, then up. He spotted Vince. His brow furrowed.

A small jadeite ring glittered on Vince’s finger. It had been crafted for him by Ally and Kiho, and allowed him to teleport a foe thirty feet away no matter what protections they might have.

When he’d fought Teru, using the ring had nearly killed him. Kiho had warned him that foxes might recognize the magic and treat him as a foe that needed to die. Teru had lived up to that warning and unleashed a level of hell that had severed Nina’s arm, killed a Lionetti enforcer, and nearly ended him.

Goro showed no such awareness. He flailed about for a few seconds.

More than enough time for Vince to finish the spell he’d been building up to all this time.

A flood of fire blasted across the strip mall, crashing against walls and over the tables and various decorations. The few remaining onlookers screamed in panic, and even those behind security shutters threw themselves behind sturdy objects. In the distance, REAT officers vanished behind walls.

Nothing burned, however. The flames were a show of force. A sprawling Chinese-style dragon stretched out around Vince, dripping with magma and glittering with scales formed from flickering fire.

Goro stood amid them, surrounded by a bubble of wind. His tails shimmered with green light as he grimaced.

Despite his expression, he readied himself to continue the fight. The foxfire remained around his fists. Perhaps he thought his wind bubble and barrier would hold up. Who knew what his magic tools could manage.

“The videos and images don’t do your spell justice, Vince,” Goro said, his voice oddly respectful. “I’ve seen many meister-tier spells over the years. Developed my own. Even witnessed virtuoso spells in combat against truly dangerous beasts in controlled hunts. I can only compare this to them. No matter how this duel ends, I know why Teru met her end, and that she must be satisfied as a warrior.”

Vince frowned. “I don’t think anybody’s happy to die.”

“We all die. Better to die as a warrior than a fool or traitor.”

Unsure what to do or say in response, Vince summoned his magic. His dragon snapped its tail and sent fireballs surging toward Goro.

The fox blasted them apart with a series of wind blasts and rushed at Vince. A dense series of flame lasers glowed within the maw of the dragon. Goro gripped his emerald necklace, and power filled Vince’s senses.

“Don’t let him use that!” Daji screamed. “That’s a charged meister-tier spell! Kill him now!”

Swearing, Vince unleashed every spell he could from his dragon while trying to backpedal. He gripped his cane and recast his barrier to cover the gaps Goro had created.

The flame lasers exploded against a massive, almost invisible shield that appeared between Vince and Goro. A grunt escaped the other fox, before his bronze tails slammed against the ground.

More than a dozen white tails appeared in Vince’s vision. His dragon whirled, attempting to deal with the closest.

But the tails stopped moving.

Two twin seven-tail foxes stood there, one in front of Vince and another kneeling atop Goro. They wore black suits with the same obsidian badge that Goro bore. And like Goro, they were damn handsome. In this case, absurdly so. Vince had heard of this pair before. Girls in school had gone crazy over them.

The Miura clan guardians. The other twin clan guardians in Houou.

Vince abruptly realized why he’d recognized Goro’s surname. He wasn’t merely some sheltered rich boy and clan heir, but the heir to one of the biggest clans in Houou, nearly as important as the Inaba or Fujiwara clans.

“This fight is over,” the closest clan guardian said, holding one hand out toward Vince and an open palm at his dragon.

Vince hesitated.

Before he had the chance to make a foolish decision, a clap rang out.

“By Amaterasu, what a mess you’ve made, Goro,” a tired voice said. An old fox with silvered hair, seven tails, and wearing a Japanese robe strode toward Vince. “I’d make excuses, but I don’t have the patience. If you’ll spare the time while we clean this up and deal with the authorities, I wouldn’t mind a chat.”

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Commentary: Maybe I should just post all battle chapters together in the future. it doesn't help that the interesting part is in the second half, I guess.