A new year at Nine Petal Academy means a new crop of students, including a boy who can't control his magic, a thief, an angel, and even a suit of armor? Adela, Lei, and their friends are tasked with welcoming the new class of first years and helping...
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I laughed as Orion tried to goad me.
"Huh?" Orion asked, stepping back.
I smirked. That was smart of him to do. I raised a hand into the air, forming another light-green sphere. Launched it into the barrier above. Streams of glowing string rained down the battlefield.
Orion formed a water shield. He gritted his teeth as the spinning barrier drew all of the webbings toward him, blurring his view of the outside. If he lowered his defenses, he would be mine.
I pushed myself up from the mud and called back my lingering bees and spiders. The best insect I had for the task of shattering his barrier was none other than the same one I had used at the end of my tournament run last year.
Hopefully, things wouldn't go the same way. No, I knew that they wouldn't. Orion wasn't as adept as Xue.
"Come on forth, queen of the bees!" I yelled, clapping my hands together several times. "Come before me, my strongest!"
Orion gasped. Even if he couldn't see, he had to have known what this entailed. After all, he had helped me find her when we were kids.
A light green sphere formed from hexagons manifested above me. A ten-foot-tall bee with giant wings emerged from the beehive of energy. Several normal-sized bees buzzed around her.
"Here you go, girl," I said as I gave her my prana. "Now, if you desire more, defeat that boy!"
A gale from the flap of the bee queen's wings tore through Orion's barrier, blowing away the water making up Orion's barrier, and tearing through the webbing around it.
My eyes widened as I found myself buried in the ground. My bee was pinned on the floor. Water lances had pierced her wings and kept her firmly in place.
I looked over my shoulder and saw Orion standing behind me with his hands against the ground.
"You used your time magic after all, huh?" I asked with an anguished smile.
Orion fell to one knee and held his hands forward. "Aqua Tigris!"
Water in the shape of a tiger rushed at me. I screamed as all of the liquid making up the tiger barreled into me. It felt as if I were deep underwater, thanks to all of the pressure exuded on me in that small instance.
I huffed as chills ran up my body. My eyes widened as the tiger remained, and it turned around.
Suddenly, water lances struck the ring's barrier, but they didn't come from Orion.
Orion gritted his teeth and glared at my queen bee as she swooped in. Water went in all directions as my bee's stinger punctured the tiger.
"Damn it, should've formed better binds," Orion said.
The bee buzzed angrily toward him.
I laughed. "You went ahead and made her mad. Didn't you learn never to make a woman angry from your father?"
