Rising of the Weakest Mage

Vol 7/Ch 67 - A Friendly Rivalry Emerges

Allen once again woke to the familiar white ceiling he had been accustomed to since the beginning of his academy year.

"Not here again...," Allen mumbled, as he was still trying to wake up.

The last thing Allen remembered was defeating Charles Rivertide in his preliminary duel against him. Things had started to become intense as Charles decided to use everything against him, so Allen had countered him with a move that was still not fully accustomed to - "magical release".

Over the course of their duel, Allen's sword had "cut through" each of Charles' spells, while in actuality the sword was absorbing his magic and storing it, which then Allen proceeded to use against him successfully.

Allen is still not completely sure how his sword does it, but he at least figured it out with help from August. Now it was a matter of improving his new skill that he has acquired.

However, he had more pressing matters he had to deal with at the moment.

"Rose is going to kill me," Allen said out loud, as he sat up in his bed. He rubbed his eyes.

"And now why would I do that?," Rose's voice came from the right of him.

Allen's eyes went from confusion to fear as he suddenly noticed Rose to the right of him, sitting in the chair she had sat in last time, after Allen's duel against Nathaniel Rivertide.

"Uh, Rose... hi...," Allen managed to say, although very awkwardly. He had no idea if he had five seconds or one minute left to live now.

"I'm not going to hurt you dummy," Rose giggled. "I'm just honestly glad you're okay"
"I-," Allen started to say, but realized that would be futile. His best course of action would be to leave it alone, and change the subject.

"Although what you did was very interesting, it was also very stupid," Rose gave him a look, as if she hadn't forgotten.

"Oh crap," Allen immediately looked away.

After Rose gave him quite the lecture, they finally started to talk a bit about the duel itself.

"So, I knew of course you were working on something, but I had no idea it was anything like you did," Rose brought up. "Just how did you do that? I'm assuming you used his own magic against him, unless you're not telling me you have three elements instead of two"

Allen immediately remembered that Rose was one of the only few people that knew of his other magic - his fire magic.

"No, I promise I have nothing like that," Allen assured her. "It actually has to do with my sword"

"Makes sense," Rose nodded her head. "I figured it had to come from that out of anything else. But just how does it work? Even my own rapier cannot do that, it's just a regular sword"
Allen proceeded to explain to her what he knew about it, which wasn't much.

"I see. So it's almost as if it absorbs magic... very interesting," Rose spoke as she tried to pin the dots together.

"Yeah, so this whole time my sword hasn't been actually cutting through or disabling magic. Instead, it has been absorbing it. I was just only using half of the ability it processed, as I misinterpreted it"
"That definitely makes a lot more sense. This whole time, I have been wondering how your sword was capable of such a feat," Rose sighed. "But now we know this, it just raises even more questions"

"Even more questions?," Allen asked, wanting her to elaborate.

"Well, now we have to figure out how it absorbs the magic," Rose pointed out. Is it actually absorbing the magic itself? Or is it perhaps absorbing the magic, turning it into mana, and then releasing it back as magic?"