[Book 1 Completed] Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World [Kingdom Building LitRPG]
B2 | Chapter 44 – Purple Fire Unleashed

Theodore POV

Nothing… Nothing's working against her.

Why?

Naturally, Theodore knew the answer—that she was stronger than he was—but it irritated him nonetheless.

He wiped sweat from his forehead and looked at Freya across the training field, his chest heaving.

She stood half a dozen paces away, barely winded, arms loose at her sides, that infuriating smirk still plastered on her face.

How the hell was she this strong as a Rank 2? Or Rank 3, if she was using strength equivalent to that?

Actually, scratch that. Theodore knew he wasn't exactly your average Rank 2 either.

He had already killed several Rank 3s. It wasn't exactly common, but it happened when you had the right combination of skill, ruthlessness, and sometimes plain dumb luck. So yeah, he was strong for his Rank, stronger than most of his Rank even.

But Freya?

She was fighting him on equal footing. As a supposed Rank 2 going up against his Rank 2 strength. That was... impressive, honestly. Terrifying, but impressive.

So once more, he had to ask himself, how in the world was she able to be so strong as a Rank 2?

Freya circled him with all the casual threat of a creature playing with its prey, and his gaze followed her. There was nothing reckless about her motions, which were methodical and even lazy. It wasn't simply arrogance, either; he could tell that much. That assurance, that frustrating ease... She was not acting. She was aware of her superiority.

She was just playing here to see what he was capable of doing.

It was like facing a mirror that didn't quite reflect his own image, but it was something close enough that it unsettled him.

He had never thought of himself as a genius. The word had been thrown around by his mentor, enemies, and some frightened allies, but he had never internalized it.

He wasn't naïve, though. He was aware of who he was.

He was more powerful than most. More powerful than every Rank 2 he had encountered. He had already killed Rank 3s on multiple occasions, and not because of luck or tricks, but through sheer, brutal superiority.

He knew how far ahead he stood.

But Freya… Freya moved like someone unbothered by effort.

As if she were exempt from restrictions. And the most frustrating aspect was that she wasn't even close to fully exerting herself.

She hadn't yet used her full strength either. Behind those calculating eyes, he sensed a coiled storm that was just out of grasp.

Which meant only one thing: she was like him.

No, perhaps even worse.

That was fine. In fact, it was thrilling.

If she could match him even when he was tapping into Rank 3 level power… then how far could he push her? What would it take to make her use Rank 4 strength? To stop pretending?

He wanted to see it. He needed to.

Theodore stretched out his senses, feeling for the kinetic energy emanating from Freya's body. It was all energy he could manipulate, all energy he could steal.

The majority of the air in their immediate vicinity had already been drawn out by him. Whether she realized it or not, Freya was on a timer. Couldn't breathe forever. However, she didn't appear to be concerned by it yet, which was... worrisome. She was either not fully human or had extraordinary lung capacity.

Both options were possible, honestly.

Theodore reached out with his power, fingers of invisible force wrapping around the kinetic energy flowing through Freya's limbs. He began to drain it. Slowly at first, then faster. She began to move more slowly. Just a fraction, but he caught it.

Freya narrowed her eyes. Her leg moved as if she were stepping through thick muck when she attempted to step forward.

Theodore absorbed the kinetic energy even more violently and aggressively and grinned in spite of himself.

He was unable to use fire. Couldn't use thermal energy at all, actually. She absorbed it somehow and turned it back on him. Which left him with ice, water, air, and earth. Few choices, particularly since thermal energy was his strongest—or, more accurately, his most familiar—but he would make do with what he had.

Given that he didn't see her getting affected by the lack of air, he simply let go of trying to take the air out, and instead, he conjured air out of mana and flooded the place with it.

He didn't give her another moment to move. Action was better than thought. He stomped his foot, and the packed earth beneath Freya erupted.

Instead of a solitary spike, she was swallowed by a wave of rock and earth that rose like a tidal wave. Simultaneously, he thrust his palms forward, and the air itself warped, forming two razor-thin sickles of wind that screeched as they flew, aimed to cut her off if she leaped away.

It was a classic pincer movement, and sure enough, Freya didn't leap.

She took a single step back and her foot landed on the rising crest of the earthen wave as if it were solid stone.

The ground beneath her instantly stabilized, the churning chaos freezing in place to form a perfect pedestal. Her grin grew wider as she looked down on him from her newfound height.

The twin sickles of wind arrived a heartbeat later, and she simply raised a hand, catching them.

The shrieking blades of air spun harmlessly in her palm, their energy dissolving into nothing. She flexed her fingers, and they dissipated like smoke.

Pulling on his mana, he didn't just freeze the ground; he pulled every drop of moisture from the air and slammed the temperature down, creating a localized, violent hailstorm in a ten-foot radius around Freya.

She was unable to see the ice shards that had crystallized in the air due to her impaired vision, and they struck her with such force that they should be able to bludgeon and disorient her in addition to cutting her.

Simultaneously, he pressed his hands down, and the ground beneath her erupted in sharp spears of thick, blue-tinted ice, boxing her in and forcing her to navigate treacherous footing within the blinding storm.

For the first time, she looked genuinely inconvenienced.

The kinetic drain made her sluggish, and the combination of the blinding hail and the forest of ice spikes forced her into a defensive crouch. She raised her arms to shield her face, the ice shards audibly thwacking against her forearms, leaving angry red marks on her skin.

She clapped her hands together once with a slightly irritated expression.

It wasn't an explosion of power but a precise pulse of concentrated fire with… something peculiar about it. It was fire, yet it could cut, and sure enough, every shard of ice in the air, every lance protruding from the ground, was instantly cut and shattered.

She stood in a spotless circle of white powder as the artificial storm dissipated. Her arms already had fading red marks. She rolled her shoulders.

He blasted her with pressurized jets of water aimed at her center of mass. She should have been knocked off her feet by the force of the water, which hit her like a sledgehammer. This time, it worked, even though he had expected it to fail.

She staggered back three full steps when the jet of water struck her. A genuine grunt of effort was forced from her lips. She wasn't unmovable. She could just tank a ridiculous amount of damage.

She planted her feet, digging her heels into the stone to stop her retreat.

Theodore gave her no time to gather herself. Seeing the opportunity, he increased the force of the attack. The lone jet turned into a violent torrent.

He molded the flood into liquid battering rams that struck her repeatedly, causing her to take painful steps backward.

The sheer, unrelenting force was blasting the ground around her into a muddy crater.

The fact that this training field was practically designed for this type of magic attack was noteworthy. It couldn't withstand the pressurized water jets, yet she could just tank them.

This was getting ridiculous.

Theodore gathered the air in the atmosphere around them, compressing it into a dense sphere, then he threw a frankly dumb amount of mana into it and compressed it into oblivion. But he knew she'd be expecting a direct assault. He needed to set it up.

He blasted forward with air, using a jet to propel his own body at a terrifying speed.

As he moved, he slammed his palm towards the ground mid-dash. The packed earth beneath Freya's feet instantly turned to thick, grasping mud, sucking at her ankles to rob her of the mobility she'd just regained; meanwhile, he also sucked away all the kinetic energy he could to stop her from moving.

Three crackling bolts of raw lightning raced at her as he flexed the fingers of his other hand almost simultaneously. Although they weren't his strongest, they were quick, disorganized, and intended to divert her attention.

Freya was trapped. The mud clung to her, and the lightning was a direct, immediate threat.

To add to that, she had water all over her from the pressurized jet of water from earlier.

She glanced at the approaching bolts. She made a choice. She stomped fiercely, sending a surge of energy through the earth that not only solidified the mud but also briefly transformed the stone underneath it into glass-slick obsidian, only for her to shatter through it, enabling her to rip her feet free.

She simultaneously used her bare hands to knock the lightning bolts out of the air. It wasn't a clean defense; she let out a piercing hiss of pain as arcs of electricity danced across her arms and shoulders.

But her focus was split.

Theodore showed up during that little moment of diversion while she was addressing the lightning and the ground. His face was a mask of deadly resolve, and he was already upon her. His real attack, a clear, vibrating sphere of compressed air, was prepared and ready to strike.

The original ball of doom, yet a lot better than the initial version had ever been.

He targeted her solar plexus.

The compressed air slammed into her solar plexus, and Freya doubled over, gasping for breath. With a single, painful wheeze, all the air rushed out of her lungs, and she was knocked off the ground, but she turned and landed on her feet, glaring sourly at him.

What the actual hell was she?

He was positive that she was allowing him to attack her in any way he pleased in order to demonstrate her superiority. So he could give up on the notion of forcing her to stop holding back. However, he didn't want this to be the end, even though, to be honest, she was clearly superior in every way possible right now.

He'd never met someone who could match him like this.

Gritting his teeth, Theodore's mind went to that "switch" thermal energy offered him, where something lived inside waiting to be unleashed. Something he'd been afraid to use ever since he'd first acquired it. Something that whispered to him in quiet moments, promising power beyond measure if he'd just let it out.

He'd been on the fence about it for months. Terrified, if he was being honest. Because once he used it, once he opened that door, he wasn't sure he'd be able to close it again.

But Freya wasn't giving him a choice.

Theodore closed his eyes and flipped the switch.

Purple fire erupted from his fingertips.

***

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