"Then let's go to the practice arena on the second basement floor. It was pretty useful last time too, wasn't it?"
Yustia turned first and led the way.
Evan slowly followed behind her.
"Then shall the three of us have a nice, cozy sweat?"
The chilly air of the second basement floor.
Evan took a small mana condenser from his pocket and fiddled with it.
"Mr. Taesan. As I said earlier, could you use that method from last time again? The one where you strike empty air to create shock waves."
"If that's what you want... sure."
"But this time, even those shock waves won't reach me easily. Without a water-attribute field, I'm going to raise the density of the spirits to the limit and try to withstand it."
As soon as he finished speaking, a faint light began to circle Evan's body.
I lightly clenched and unclenched my fist, loosening the tension in my muscles.
"Whoo."
With a short breath, I lightly kicked off the floor and shot forward.
A heavy cracking sound burst from the end of my fist as I thrust it into empty air.
Thud—!
A shock wave that tore through the atmosphere swept over Evan.
Part of Evan's body, which had been given form by the power of spirits, scattered into the air as if ripped away in an instant.
But the scattered fragments of light soon swirled rapidly and returned to their original positions.
"Ugh..."
A short groan escaped Evan's mouth.
Even so, he gathered the disordered spirit power and forced himself to hold on.
"A field created with water-attribute spirits would weaken this shock wave, but that wouldn't be enough."
He muttered while breathing roughly.
"In the end, it's cohesion. I need to improve my durability."
Evan smoothed the pain from his furrowed brow and straightened his posture once more.
"First, I need to be able to remain undisturbed by shock waves like this, but what's even more important is..."
Before he could finish, I drove another heavy blow into empty air.
Kwaang—!
A shock wave far stronger than the first came crashing in.
This time, the spirit form wrapped around Evan's body scattered in every direction as if it were about to shatter completely.
It seemed to collapse, unable to endure.
But that lasted only a moment.
The scattered remnants of spirits instantly clung back to his body as if drawn by a magnet, restoring a solid form.
The speed at which he recovered from being disrupted had clearly increased.
"Rather than forcing myself to endure, I found it's better to let it burst once and increase the speed at which I recover afterward."
Evan wiped the sweat from his forehead and smiled faintly.
"It seems more effective than I expected."
"Amazing..."
An exclamation slipped from Yustia's lips as she watched from behind.
It was not simply a method of increasing durability, but one of maximizing the speed of restoration after destruction.
It was Evan's own way of surviving, breaking through his limits despite carrying a weakness.
"You're definitely much more troublesome than last time."
The tactic of forcibly severing the spirits' cohesion with shock waves was still effective, but if Evan had begun to use the moment of collapse itself as the starting point of recovery, that changed things.
"Then, shall we end the defense practice here?"
A sharp light glimmered in Evan's eyes.
"I don't intend to just keep getting hit, after all."
No sooner had he spoken than the faint light circling around Evan transformed into a fierce current.
Sharply condensed lights came rushing in.
Kaang—!
I crossed my arms to block, but a shock far heavier than expected slammed into my entire body.
A blow that had raised the density of the spirits to the extreme.
It carried a weight on an entirely different level from before.
The floor beneath my feet was deeply gouged as I was pushed back.
The collision of pure mana, stripped of physical force, dug in sharply enough to tear at my skin.
"I thought that since I had no mana at all, I would never be able to feel what mana was for the rest of my life... So this is what it feels like?"
A tingling pain spread heavily through both arms.
The pain digging into my skin was not the sharpness of being cut by a blade, but a strange pressure, as if the air itself had been honed to an edge.
The sensation of an invisible pressure burrowing down to my bones was different in nature from a physical blow.
"Mr. Taesan!"
At the same time as Yustia's urgent cry, a refreshing energy surged explosively up from my toes.
It was her haste magic.
The weight pressing down on my body evaporated in an instant, and I became as light as a feather.
"Let's go with speed!"
I immediately kicked off the floor and shot forward.
The footwork I had ingrained into my body during my mixed martial arts days to steal my opponent's timing.
I shook Evan's field of vision with consecutive cracking sounds that tore through the air.
But my fist, rushing in fiercely, struck a deep blue curtain formed right in front of Evan's nose and slid off in vain, leaving only a dull impact behind.
"I said I was increasing my durability, but that doesn't mean I plan to keep taking hits."
Beyond the surging curtain, a flashing sharpness lingered on his pale face.
He was enduring my brutish physical force and destructive footwork, and on top of that, his movements had even thoroughly calculated the timing for a counterattack.
Since his defeat in the arena last time, it was clear he had refined his own method of survival through bone-grinding effort.
"Impressive."
Admiration escaped me on its own.
But I had no time to be lost in it.
"Then I guess I'll get a little more serious too."
Focusing on the sensation of Yustia's haste magic enveloping my body, I kicked off the floor once again.
To break through Evan's barrier, I had to press him without giving him even a moment to recover.
Kwaang—! Kwaaang—!
A chain of shock waves struck Evan's spiritized body.
Parts of his body repeatedly scattered and gathered back together.
But Evan did not retreat.
Instead, he honed the scattering spirit fragments into sharp blades and persistently dug into the trajectory of my attacks, attempting to counter.
"Mr. Taesan, right side!"
At Yustia's urgent shout, I twisted my body reflexively.
The blade that barely grazed past left a deep mark in the floor.
It was a precarious exchange where, if I revealed an opening, I could suffer a fatal wound in an instant.
On this fierce battlefield, we continued to clash, testing our limits in our own ways.
"Haa..."
Evan let out a labored breath and finally collapsed onto the field, unable to hold out any longer.
The spirit power surrounding his body dispersed as if it had been a lie, fading into the air.
Cold sweat poured down his pale face like rain.
"As expected, it's a hard method to maintain for long. It requires overwhelming mana to accompany it."
He forced a smile and swallowed dryly.
Because he had squeezed out every bit of mana to maintain a restoration speed beyond his limits, he seemed to have no strength left to so much as move a fingertip.
Yustia hurriedly pulled the wheelchair and ran into the field.
While she carefully supported Evan's back and seated him in the wheelchair, I simply stood there indifferently, looking down at the two of them.
I kept my posture straight as usual, pretending nothing was wrong, but the situation inside was different.
From the aftermath of the brutish collisions, both my legs tingled unpleasantly, and the unfamiliar pressure transmitted through breaking Evan's spiritized power still seemed to ache deep in my bones.
Only when he leaned back into the wheelchair and let out a deep breath was I able to secretly release the tension in my stiffened muscles.
The sensation of clashing barehanded with the unknown power called mana left behind an alien fatigue unlike any blow I had received during my days as an athlete.
"It really shows how much you've studied..."
Yustia murmured, quietly looking down at Evan's pale face.
"You're gradually turning into an opponent who's hard to deal with."
Her voice carried both pure admiration and wariness toward a rival.
He had maximized the spiritization trait of nullifying physical strikes and built a bizarre defensive system that used destruction as the starting point of restoration.
"But you're still no match for Mr. Taesan, right?"
Yustia turned her head to look at me and asked lightly.
"That's true. You're amazing as expected, Mr. Taesan."
Even while gasping for breath, Evan showed a faint smile.
Because of the mana he had wrung out to the very limit, he looked so precarious that he might collapse at any moment, but his eyes shone with a much clearer, firmer light than before.
"Well, it was pretty heavy."
I shrugged, pretending to be calm.
The unpleasant numbness rising from my toes tightened around my calves like a stabbing grip, but there was no reason to show it.
Rather, as Yustia's haste magic left my body, the alien remnants of mana left in its place brought a pain like needles raking through my skin.
It was a fatigue qualitatively different from the muscle pain I had experienced countless times as a mixed martial artist.
I bit down hard on my lip, firmly braced my legs, and laughed it off as if nothing were wrong.
"I'm looking forward to next time. Next time, I'll get a little more serious too, so you'd better be ready."
"Of course. Next time, I'll make things rather troublesome for you as well, Mr. Taesan."
Leaning back in the wheelchair, Evan answered without backing down despite his ragged breaths.
"All right, then shall we end today's practice here? There's nothing good about overdoing it with the battle on Friday coming up."
Yustia lightly clapped her hands and brought the situation to a close.
Her gaze swept back and forth between Evan and me.
"Yeah. Let's go."