Despite the ferocity of the first attack, the girl kept going, yanking her whips back in and flinging them out in a barrage of devastating attacks. Every crack made Nadrina flinch as the girl eviscerated the dummy from every angle. Cira finished her mad flurry of attacks by neatly decapitating the training dummy with her last strike, her water whips disintegrating as she released the spell. She turned back to look squarely at Codrin, a challenging smirk firmly on her lips. “Done.”

The entire field was silent after the violent display before Cira’s class broke it, cheering for her. Nadrina had to admit, her skill was superb. According to Lilianna, Water Whip was an advanced spell, one that required a lot of fine mana control to maintain. To do it so easily as a student, and two at once no less, was impressive indeed. It made Nadrina further feel like she shouldn’t be part of this contest today.

“Very good,” Headmaster Elmaris said finally. “Al—Professor Aldric, your conjuring representative is up next.”

“You heard him, Caffaret,” the professor said, still looking bored despite the performance.

Caffaret nodded mutely, staring intently at Cira, who continued to smile tauntingly at him as she rejoined her classmates. His face settled on a stern look of determination before he marched onto the field, ignoring the lonely clapping of Lilianna, Nadrina, and Alek. Staff members had already replaced the mutilated training dummy.

“Are you ready?” the headmaster asked Codrin.

“Yes, headmaster!” Codrin replied, readying his stance.

“Begin.”

Unlike his opponent, Codrin didn’t immediately do anything. In fact, he seemed to just stare intently at the training dummy while the crowd and professors simply watched in confused silence. Codrin’s focus was faceted to his target, a single bead of sweat dripping down his forehead as he continued to not move an inch. Nadrina was getting worried that he was having a stroke or something, right until Codrin shouted “Igni conflagus!”

Nadrina was suddenly and painfully blinded. A bright flash of searing light was followed by a wave of intense heat as the dummy violently combusted on the spot. Based on the cries of surprise and pain from the crowd, the pyrotechnics had caught them off guard as well. When Nadrina had finally stopped blinking away stars, she looked to the training dummy only to find the bottom half of it charred black and smoldering with blue fire. The top half was nowhere to be seen, and the ground all around it was singed and smoking in a five-meter radius.

Codrin was panting laboriously, though his exhausted state didn’t take away from his elated expression. He turned a winning smile towards the rest of his classmates, throwing them a confident thumbs up.