Chapter 13: Do you like the blonde loli dragon girl?

Lina immediately rolled over to dodge the shockwave from the explosion.

“This isn’t at the level of a regular assessment anymore, is it?”

He Qin looked worriedly at the two people in the arena.

“Indeed. With Jiang Cha’s current ability, she’s definitely qualified to pass. But as a member of the Duel Club, we need to assess her potential more thoroughly—this relates to future resource allocation. I think… she’ll need that, right?”

The equipment on Jiang Cha couldn’t even be described as poor—it was basically non-existent.

Although Lina hadn’t activated the enhancements on her own gear either, her robe was enchanted with several effects: Solidification, Enhanced Spellcasting, Cleaning, Double Casting, and Mana Conservation.

Even the black leather shoes on her feet were enchanted with [Featherlight], [Agility Boost], and [Arrow Evasion Shield].

And even the black stockings hidden beneath her skirt carried enchantments like [Iron Guard], [Elemental Shield], and [Might].

Even though these were all low-level spells, in witch duels, having even one more low-level spell than your opponent could be a massive advantage.

Take now, for example—if Lina didn’t hold back and used [Enhanced Spellcasting], she could instantly fire off a massive fireball that Jiang Cha couldn’t dodge, then trigger [Featherlight], [Agility Boost], [Iron Guard], [Low-tier Elemental Shield], and [Might], charging through the lightning arrows and kicking the girl in half.

—Without magical enhancements, a witch’s physical toughness is just average—enough, but not impressive.

“Then I won’t hold back anymore, okay!?”

So what if it’s enhanced or instant casting? Even if she’s not as proficient as Jiang Cha, Lina is also a genius witch!

Who doesn’t know a few tricks, huh!?

And so, the duel that had originally been a casual exchange of fireballs and lightning arrows suddenly escalated into massive five-meter-long lightning bolts and three-meter-wide fireballs crashing into each other.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to use tactics or strategy—but under the current situation, Lina simply didn’t have the time to shield herself—if she took a moment to cast a defensive spell, Jiang Cha’s lightning arrow would fry her into charcoal in the very next instant! No room for tactics.

As for Jiang Cha?

She didn’t even know how to cast shields yet.

Hadn’t learned that part!

‘Analysis: Chance of winning in a deadlock is 4.23%.’

‘Knew it—I can’t win.’

But she wasn’t too discouraged.

Lina was a naturally powerful, high-mana witch, had entered the academy a month earlier, and had lots of duel experience—not to mention she had learned plenty of magic before even enrolling.

For a total rookie like herself to last this long was already impressive.

And this was only possible because Lina had been holding back the whole time—if this were a real fight, Lina could’ve opened with a shield and blasted her into ashes with a string of enhanced fireballs.

What she had learned so far simply wasn’t enough.

Witch duels, at least until the very high-level ones, were always battles of knowledge and tactics—the more magic you knew, the higher your win rate. Between equals, whoever had the better tactics would win. Simple as that.

“Little Lina, if you keep holding back, you’ll be sparring with me next.”

However, just as Jiang Cha was about to surrender, Casey—sitting in the spectator stands—suddenly spoke up.

“Huh!?”

In that split-second distraction, Lina stumbled at Casey’s unexpected comment, her fireball flaring up—then fading out.

And Jiang Cha’s lightning arrow hit her square in the face.

“Lina!”

He Qin called out worriedly.

At the same time, the little blonde loli’s delicate hand waved slightly, almost like an unconscious reflex in the face of danger.

And then?

Then the massive lightning arrow was smacked away by her pale little palm like it was nothing.

Only the flickering sparks on her hand proved that the lightning arrow had been real.

“?”

The girl tilted her head, looking confused.

Even the worried He Qin was stunned for a moment.

“This little one’s a dragon-type witch. A lightning arrow like that? Not even enough for a massage,” Casey rolled her eyes and complained sarcastically.

She wasn’t some kind of villain—no way she’d deliberately distract Lina just to get her junior resurrected.

Jiang Cha: “…”

Dragon-type witches aren’t hybrids. The witch race doesn’t crossbreed with other species.

But once a witch reaches the level of Grand Witch, they can construct their own trait, and transformation-type magic includes a dragon transformation branch.

So some Grand Witches who mastered transformation magic tried modeling their Trait after dragons.

And a witch’s Trait can be inherited at random.

So…

Using her enhanced witch eyesight, Jiang Cha could clearly see the faint shimmer of tiny dragon scales on Lina’s arm, breathing in the ambient mana.

That was one of the dragon-type traits—Dragon’s Skin, one of the most powerful defensive buffs, equivalent to a tier-7 spell that simply boosted both physical and magical resistance.

But Lina clearly wasn’t limited to just that one trait.

She was absorbing large amounts of mana with each breath.

Her body weight and strength were obviously increased.

And her pupils were slitted like a dragon’s.

Most likely, her Trait was the full, most powerful version: Dragon Physique.

They didn’t know which kind of dragon yet—but no matter what species, Jiang Cha had almost no chance of winning against this little dragon girl.

“This trait is way too OP in duels, so I rarely use it~” the blonde loli rubbed her head, smiling sheepishly.

But she didn’t hold back at all—raising a fireball in her hand that suddenly turned from red to deep blue, doubling in size.

‘Confirmed—it’s the Red Dragon transformation that enhances fire magic.’

‘If I remember right, Lina’s innate magic is the tier-4 spell Chain Fireball…’

Tier-4 magic isn’t that powerful, but with this Red Dragon physique…

The girl sighed quietly.

‘Witches really are a cheat-class.’

Facing the giant fireball flying toward her, she felt a bit helpless, but she wasn’t ready to give up.

Winning was off the table, but she didn’t want to lose too badly either—not just because of potential evaluations and resource allocations—

‘Getting hit would definitely hurt a lot.’

And she really didn’t want to experience what resurrection felt like.

She didn’t eat bone ash with rice, after all.

[Information Gathering: Full Power]

The giant blue fireball instantly slowed to a crawl in Jiang Cha’s eyes—as if moving a thousand times slower.

With her brain powered up sevenfold, a single millisecond felt like a whole minute.

And during that elongated moment, she used her full capacity to gather magical information from the battlefield and reverse-engineer a spell model.

Combining all her techniques and gathering her maximum mana—

A deep-blue magical shield formed around her.

She had no choice.

The spell data from the battlefield was incomplete. Reverse-engineering a low-tier spell wasn’t too difficult for her processing power, but lack of knowledge was still her biggest bottleneck.

So, to block this attack, she had to derive a spell model from what she could observe.

The last spell she had learned was Enhanced Casting, which boosts the power of the next spell.

As for the model for the Magic Shield…

Well, because of the fire explosions, the hem of Lina’s magic robe had been almost completely burned away, revealing her delicate little legs—and the softly glowing blue stockings tightly wrapped around them.

They were quite pretty.

Really.

…

In the end, the girl still lost the duel.

She wasn’t injured.

Even though her magic shield was less efficient than a high-tier one and lacked fancy effects, low-tier shields had one big advantage—the more mana you poured in, the thicker it got.

With both Enhanced Casting and casting techniques stacked, the 5,000+ units of mana Jiang Cha poured into her shield completely blocked Lina’s fireball.

After all, Lina’s spell was still just a tier-4 Chain Fireball, not a forbidden-level Blazing Suns.

But trading 5,000 mana to block a 500-mana fireball—such a terrible cost-efficiency ratio meant that Jiang Cha had no chance of winning.

She didn’t feel too bad about it, though.

Lina’s cheat-like inherited Trait wasn’t unbeatable—if she learned enough magic and crafted enough magic gear, she could replicate the same effects.

High-tier witch robes could even be enchanted with forbidden spells. A 9th-tier Red Dragon Transformation wasn’t that big of a deal—and Lina’s Trait wasn’t even a full adult dragon, more like a 5th-tier Young Dragon Transformation.

“What exactly is your innate magic?”

Casey felt something was off. She’d made Lina go all-out to see what Jiang Cha’s innate magic was. Even the most secretive people usually revealed it during life-and-death moments—it’s not something you’d just keep hidden.

Even casual friends or coworkers usually knew each other’s specialties, especially on the front lines. Not sharing your development path could easily get your teammates killed.

But she hadn’t seen a thing—though she was sure Jiang Cha had used it.

“Tier-1 magic from the Mystery branch: Information Gathering.”

“Information Gathering!?”

As soon as Jiang Cha said that, Lina hugged her around the waist.

The blonde loli’s brain instantly exploded with formulas: Information Gathering = Cram Session. So the innate magic version of that must = Genius = Carry Me!

“Smart girl, you’re my new idol! Let me copy your homework from now on!”

“Sure, sure. Go ahead.”

“Lina, you should do your homework yourself,” He Qin reminded her, though without much hope.

The blonde loli just waved her hand happily, completely lost in her fantasy:

“Aah~I’ll do it when I can~”

“Sigh…”