Chapter 30 Shifting into Higher Gear

Enji didn't wait. Close combat was out of the question now that Shota could trap them. He planted his feet, focusing his fury into a volley of concentrated blue fireballs that screamed across the arena. Mirai followed suit, her mana condensing into a barrage of steel drills, each the size of a car, firing alongside the inferno.

Shota didn't cower in a bubble. Instead, he thrust his hands forward, and a massive barrier wall erupted before him. But this was different. As the fire and steel impacted, the wall didn't just absorb the force—it bent inward like a giant trampoline, stretching to its limit before snapping back with elastic force.

The attacks were rebounded, sending their own power back at them. Mirai deflected a returning drill with one hand, swatting it away. Enji took the hit of his own flames, neutralizing it as if it was a cool breeze.

But the ricochet was just a distraction. Using the opening, Shota's barrier flickered across the arena. Dozens of small, square-shaped barriers materialized at different heights and angles, creating an obstacle course. He jumped onto the first one. It flexed under his weight like a springboard, propelling him through the air. He bounced from one barrier to the next, a blur of motion zigzagging towards them, closing the distance in a series of impossible, acrobatic leaps.

Enji's grin spread across his face. He was no coward.

"HA! If Ultra Extra wants to brawl, he gets one!"

  Blue flames erupted from his feet and back, functioning like jet engines. He launched himself into the air like a missile, his arm extended for a hit that could decapitate a kaiju.

"DIE, TRASH! ATOMIC JETOOOO LARIATOOOO!"

He connected.

The impact was like an explosion. One moment Shota was there, the next he was a cannonball blasted across the arena. The entire farthest wall cracked then exploded in a cloud of dust and rubble from the collision.

Enji landed, skidding back a few feet.

 "Hah! This damn Ultra Extra picked up some fancy tricks! He guarded against my lariat with barrier armor! But it wasn't enough!" 

But then his triumph faltered. He felt a strange tug at his ankle. He looked down.

A glowing, blue rope, woven from pure barrier energy, was wrapped tightly around his boot.

"WHAT THE HELL?! This damn extra... when did he...?!"

The rope went taut. With irresistible force, it yanked Enji off his feet, hurling him through the air towards the very wall Shota had just been smashed into.

From the smoking crater, a single, massive barrier wall materialized horizontally, like a flyswatter sent by the gods.

Enji had no time to react. He slammed into the barrier face-first, the impact echoing through the entire arena. The barrier held for a second, displaying his flattened form, before dissolving and letting him drop like a stone to the ground below.

Before the dust from Enji's impact could even settle, a high-pitched shriek tore through the air. Mirai beamed from the side. Her right arm was transformed into a massive steel drill, revving so fast that the very air around it ionized, sheathing it in a white-hot plasma.

"Don't think you can ignore me, Sho-kun! Enji-kun is not the only one who can lose his cool and go for the kill!" 

Shota, still breathing heavily from the lariat impact, didn't flinch. He pivoted, one hand rising. A barrier wall materialized between them. As the plasma-tipped point made contact, the barrier deformed, stretching like rubber. It wrapped around the spinning drill head, the barrier constricted, slowing the rotation until, with a final, choked whine, the drill ground to a complete halt, trapped in a cocoon of hardened light.

Mirai tried to yank her arm back, but it was stuck.

Shota didn't wait. His mind was already three steps ahead. He knew he couldn't trap them inside a barrier—they'd just break out. 

 He erected walls. Five unbreakable plates of force snapped into existence around the stunned Mirai and Enji, who was just pushing himself up from the floor.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

In less than a second, the two of them were completely enclosed. But they weren't inside a single barrier. They were standing in the small space, now surrounded by five barrier walls that formed a perfect, inescapable box. They were caged not by being contained within a barrier, but by being barricaded on all sides by them.

"Hey! Looks like I win! Now you can't break the barrier. How were my moves today, pretty good right?"

Enji slammed a burning fist against the barrier wall in front of him.

"God damn it, Ultra Extra! When did you get this good!? What the hell happened?!"

But Mirai didn't look frustrated. Instead, she began to clap. Her head tilted, and a wide, unnerving smile stretched across her face with adoration.

"Sho-kun! You're so great! When did you become so good?! The way you use your barrier, it's amazing! The way you make it elastic to absorb the impact... you even use it as body armor and to move around! You've become so good... so, so strong..."

Her expression then shifted, the adoration twisting into something more possessive. A manic giggle escaped her lips. 

"... but... hehe... not good enough."

The moment the words left her mouth, the ground beneath Shota's feet cracked. Before he could even process the sound, a hand shot out from the hole in the concrete floor, grabbing his ankle.

He tripped with a sharp gasp, his concentration shattered. The barrier walls vanished into motes of light.

From the hole in the ground, the real Mirai burst forth. Before he could even think to summon a barrier, she was on him. She wrapped her arms and legs around him in a lover's embrace that was also a perfect, inescapable restraint. The cool, sharp point of a small drill pressed gently against the pulse point in his neck.

"You did so, so well, Sho-kun," she whispered directly into his ear, "I'm so proud of you. You're learning so fast... it makes my heart pound. But I still won this round~."

"I give up, Mirai-chan. You win. I did not expect you to ambush me like that. I still got a lot to learn." 

The Mirai clone smiled one last time and dissolved into a pile of loose earth. She had never been the real one at all. The entire fight, the real Mirai had been lying in wait underground, patient, letting him believe he was in control until the perfect moment to reclaim him.

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The next few weeks were a brutal cycle of dawn-to-dusk dueling. The training room became a second home. Every session followed a similar, grueling pattern: Shota, pushed by Lycoris's whispered guidance and the very real threat of Mirai's drills and Enji's fire, was forced to innovate constantly. He learned to form barrier platforms beneath his allies' feet, create angled shields to deflect attacks, and even layer his barriers for brief moments to withstand truly overwhelming force.

Mirai and Enji, in turn, were forced to adapt. They learned to anticipate his new tactics, to break his formations with coordinated assaults, and to exploit the split-second openings when his concentration wavered. They fought until their mana reserves were dry and their bodies screamed in pain, collapsing on the scorched and pitted floor, only to do it all again the next day. 

One such morning, the three of them stood in the training arena, still aching from the previous day's session. 

But before anyone could throw the first punch, the doors hissed open. Instructor Arata strode in. 

"Everyone, listen up! Drop your warm-ups. There will be no training today. The Pro Wizard Association has handed down your first official field mission. A real one. Intelligence suggests our 'friend' in the raincoat is still hunting for the remaining artifact piece. The one he failed to acquire is currently held in a high-security facility, but its location is no longer considered safe. Therefore, the government and the Pro Wizard Association have decided to move it."

He crossed his arms.

"There will be a series of decoy transports departing from different locations, all heading to a new, classified secure sites. The academy will be operating one of these decoys. It's a simple escort mission: protect your assigned transport vehicle and ensure it reaches its destination without incident.

This way, the enemy is forced to split his resources or guess. Hitting all the decoys would be time-consuming and problematic, buying us the window we need to get the real artifact through. You're one piece of the shell game.

This isn't a training exercise. The threat is real. Everyone, gear up and get ready. Dismissed. We deploy in two hours!"