Legend Of The Gunslinger Mage - Chapter 63 Versus part 2

Ruined Hamlet #35 was a square map, measuring 40 meters on each side.

It consisted of a few dozen houses that had been torn apart, leaving behind smoldering piles of burning wood and sections of broken wall.

At the center of the map was the remains of a spellcaster’s tower. Once an awe-inspiring sight, the tall building had been wrenched up from the ground and twisted beyond recognition, the disastrous result of an experiment gone wrong.

It was early morning. There was a slight drizzle, rainwater water mixing with dirt into mud.

Manco and BoneCrusha were spawned in opposite corners. Each was given two minutes to change their equipment and spell loadout.

Fighting duels was one of the occasions where there was no limitation to spell-swapping. Of course, after the fights were done, a caster’s spell selection would revert back to what he had before.

From what Manco’d seen before, BoneCrusha had a crude and direct fighting style, typical for new barbarian players. He preferred to close in on the opponent and unleash attacks as quickly as possible, without bothering to defend himself, hoping to overwhelm and destroy his target in one go.

For this kind of opponent, normally Manco would disrupt their pace by hitting them with status effects, utilizing the terrain, or a combination of the two. After that it was either chipping down their health or just pelting them with spells from a distance.

For his plan to work, he would have to hold back quite a bit. It wouldn’t do to beat his opponent too quickly or easily.

In a few moments, Manco finalized his list of spells.

Tier-0: (5/5) 「Fire Bolt」, 「Ice Shard」, 「Mana Bolt」, 「Obscuring Fog」, 「Freezing Touch」

Tier-1: (3/3) 「Hardened Skin」, 「Weakening Touch」, 「Minor Heal」

Tier-2: (2/2) 「Vampiric Touch」, 「Spatial Displacement I」

From his corner, Manco slowly made his way to the center of the map, his hands gripping the crossbow loaded with Armor Piercing Bolts.

Movements at the corner of his eyes drew his attention to his left. The barbarian was trying to sneak up on him. The big guy was weaving between ruined houses and half-broken walls to hide his advance and limit the opponent’s usage of long-ranged attacks.

This, of course, was entirely within Manco’s expectations. If he’d picked a barren map, it would give him a too obvious advantage. Therefore, he deliberately picked a map with a decent amount of cover to let BoneCrusha think it was fair.

*Crash!*

The wall on his left tipped over as a giant figure holding a tower shield dashed toward him like a bullet. It was BoneCrusha using the movement technique [Charge]!

[Power Shot!] [Power Shot!]…

-0

-4

…

Manco fired two consecutive shots with the crossbow. The first bolt embedded itself on the barbarian’s heavy shield, while the second bounced off his shoulder guard, doing minimal damage.

“Hah!”

As he reached melee range, BoneCrusha let out a roar. Moving his shield aside, he swung his sword in a horizontal slash. The longsword glowed a pale yellow-green light, a visual shorthand for a mana-infused technique, probably [Power Slash] or something similar.

“If I jump back, he would charge forward. If I duck, he’d probably use a Shield Bash…”

As the calculations flashed through his mind, Manco ducked, narrowly avoiding the strike. Putting away the crossbow, he fired off his most basic of spells.

[Mana Bolt]!

-19!

BoneCrusha growled in anger. Borrowing the missed swing’s momentum, the barbarian spun on his feet. His left arm fully extended, angling the shield in a trajectory that ended at Manco’s center of mass.

[Shield Bash].

‘Too obvious!’ Manco commented silently. At that moment, a dozen thoughts crossed his mind.

He could slip within the barbarian’s guard and unsheathed his dagger while casting [Freezing Touch]. Then stab it at his armpit, which was only protected by a chainmail instead of the plate armor covering haside, he swung his sword in a horizontal slash. The longsword glowed a pale yellow-green light, a visual shorthand for a mana-infused technique, probably [Power Slash] or something similar.

“If I jump back, he would charge forward. If I duck, he’d probably use a Shield Bash…”

As the calculations flashed through his mind, Manco ducked, narrowly avoiding the strike. Putting away the crossbow, he fired off his most basic of spells.

[Mana Bolt]!

-19!

BoneCrusha growled in anger. Borrowing the missed swing’s momentum, the barbarian spun on his feet. His left arm fully extended, angling the shield in a trajectory that ended at Manco’s center of mass.

[Shield Bash].

‘Too obvious!’ Manco commented silently. At that moment, a dozen thoughts crossed his mind.

He could slip within the barbarian’s guard and unsheathed his dagger while casting [Freezing Touch]. Then stab it at his armpit, which was only protected by a chainmail instead of the plate armor covering his torso, shoulders and arms. This would slow him down considerably, leaving him wide open for a few good hits.

An alternate option would be [Weakening Touch], which would achieve the same thing.

‘Remember, hold back!’ He had to remind himself to stop acting on instinct. He wanted to keep his close combat expertise a secret for as long as possible.

「Hardened Skin」

After boosting his physical defense, Manco took a step back, just enough for the shield to scrape his shoulder. As it wasn’t a full hit, he was only stunned for a split second.

“Ugh!” Letting out a fake groan, he dove onto the ground and rolled away in an exaggerated manner.

“Heh, gotcha!”

Laughing, BoneCrusha chased after his target. He jumped up and brought down his right foot. A glow on his boot signaled the charging of another technique.

‘Probably [Earth Stomp] for additional stun,’ Manco guessed.

In the split second before the barbarian’s stomp connected, Manco pushed himself off the ground with both his hands and feet.

BoneCrusha crashed down with a thunderous “Bang!” The ground trembled as dirt, mud and water splashed all around.

Manco fell down in a crouch. While [Earth Stomp] had a relatively wide area of effect and decent stun duration, it had a pretty serious drawback: it only affected targets that were touching the ground. Which meant one could dodge both the damage and the ‘Stun’ status effect by simply jumping up. Of course, in practice, it wasn’t easy to figure out the exact moment to jump. In addition, even if a player could avoid the stun, being forced to jump would interrupt their rhythm.

“What? How?” Shouting in disbelief, BoneCrusha got up from his three-point landing. Grunting, he dashed toward Manco.

[Freezing touch]

Without answering, Mando touched the ground. The spell froze the wet ground in front of him, covering it with a layer of ice.

“Shit!” BoneCrusha cursed as he slipped and fell sideways.

“Chill, dude!” Chuckling, Manco as he threw a few spells at the big guy’s prone form while backing away.

“You slippery fucker! Get back here!” Incensed, BoneCrusha struggle to get to his feet and press his assault.

This went on for ten minutes. BoneCrusha would close in, and might even get a few good hits in. However, Manco either dodged or softened the blows using Hardened Skin on himself or Weakening Touch on his opponent. Slipping away was easy enough as he could use the terrain, his traps and his spells (except teleport).

After that, with Minor Heals and Vampiric Touch, he kept his health at a stable level without even using potions.

All the while, he slowly and steadily wore down his opponent’s health.

‘This is like beating up a kid!’ Manco mused, shaking his head.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

BoneCrusha was, quite understandably, very unhappy.

“Graaah!”

Growling, he dashed toward Manco. Droping the shield, he drew a short sword. Using both weapons in tandem, he stabbed, slashed, and hacked, desperate to draw blood.

His target, however, always managed to avoid the worst of the attacks, and only suffered a few minor hits. He, on the other hand, had lost count of how many spells he was hit with. Each of them were like a mosquito’s bite, but together they had chipped down almost three quarters of his health bar despite his regen.

But he had a plan.

“There it is!” With a grim smile, he watched as his prey stumbled into his trap.

In the last 10 minutes he wasn’t just blindly chasing. Using his various techniques, he had knocked around fallen walls, burning wooden beams and other debris. Using two relatively intact walls as a starting point, he had built an improvised U-shaped enclosure that was about 3 meters high.

And now, his prey was trapped inside.

‘Let see where you can run now!’ Having learned the drawbacks of gloating, he silently activated his most powerful technique.

[Blade tornado]!

He began spinning like a giant blender, the two blades on his arm multiplied and cut into the air. He had completely covered the enclosure’s opening. There’s no way his target could escape without losing a big chunk of health! If he was lucky, he might be able to kill his prey using just this!

As he spun faster, he smirked as he closed in on his target, which was boxed in from all sides by broken walls and piles of debris.

Turning to face him, the thin mage took out a wand with a skull-shaped head.

“Why doesn’t he try to run?”

Lifting the wand, Manco chanted something that was lost in the raging air around BoneCrusha.

Then the ground beneath his feet turned to mush and he sunk down like a rock.

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

“Just stop,” Manco snorted, “you’re just digging yourself deeper!”

As BoneCrusha was spinning quickly, he had drilled himself into the softened ground within seconds.

“Pretty clever trap,” he grinned, “if you’re trying to fool a three year old.”

Then, without another word, he unleashed his arsenal of spells onto the barbarian, who was stuck to his chest in the muddy ground.

Eventually BoneCrusha managed to dig himself out, but he had taken too much damage. It didn’t take much longer for him to fall.

[Duel won!]

[Item received: Gauntlet of the Juggernaut]