Blade and Poetry

The spring and summer in Columbus are long, and the autumn and winter are short. Most of the trees in the college do not shed their leaves.Only in the part of the free world—the area where the art building, the literature building, and the arena are located—from the autumn of November to the winter of February, you can see the rustling leaves swirling when the wind blows, butter yellow, gray Green and coral red stretched across the ground.Before the top of the tree had time to become bald, the first snow fell again, thinly covering the fallen leaves with another layer.

My new love in third grade was an old berry tree with red fruit in Liberty.Since I discovered its benefits, I have determined to improve the magic of my paper bird, and regain the little tricks many years ago, but I hope it can spread its wings and support me safely on the tree crown.

Until one day I successfully rode a paper bird into the canopy for the first time, and took a nap on a thick and dry branch of a berry tree for a long time.The chill does not penetrate the cascading leaves, the sun is warm, and the sky is shaded by shadowy green, which is really very pleasant.

The old tree is very tall, and there is still some distance from the college building; if you poke your head out in one direction, you can see a window of the Literature Building, and occasionally a not-so-clear silhouette of Karajan appears inside.

I have a hunch that it will take longer this time to recommend this great view to little Odd, because he may refuse to climb the tree.

A butterfly-shaped magic silhouette took shape on my palm, and I wrote briefly on it:

"Speed ​​from Freeland (122, 355, 27) berry trees, good things are happening around here. You like it."

This is the butterfly book.After making the butterfly oath, anyone with magical powers, no matter the sword or magician, can control it to send text messages; after completing a short butterfly oath between friends, they can use their fingers to write in the palm of their hand. Write down the message, meditate on the appearance and name of the recipient to achieve remote communication, and the transmission distance depends on the amount of magic power consumed.

Everyone's butterfly is different, mine is white, translucent when flying in the air.Because Dieshu has no entity, it is even more inconspicuous among its kind.With a flick of my fingertips, the butterfly flew out of the canopy.

It took only half a minute for Odd's butterfly to fly there, and it slowly landed on my hand--round black wings with a little blue at the base of the wings; I once laughed that it looked like his son.

I made a movement of opening the wings, and Odd's handwriting emerged: "Your three-dimensional coordinates are not used very well. But I can still find the location, wait for me for 2 minutes."

I couldn't help but sneered, and poked a spot on the outer edge of the butterfly's wing with my middle finger, causing it to shatter into several rays and retreat.

Twenty minutes later, Odd and I were sitting disgraced on the trunk of an old tree—not the one I had been in in the first place.

The nearby arena is very lively, and the annual early winter competition has been going on for a while.Only students who are in the fifth grade, preparing to enter the inner courtyard or graduate are eligible to compete here. Regardless of whether they are swordsmen or magicians, they will be eliminated one-on-one at random until the top spot is determined.

Not to mention that there will be an extra addition on the resume, the top winner will also have the opportunity to directly enter the inner court, and has rich and ingenious rewards, and has never disappointed the winner; unfortunately, except for the fifth-grade fresh graduates, other low-level Grades can only sit around the seats in the arena as spectators.

Unfortunately, Odd and I were late, so we had to choose a nearby tree to sit and watch.

What's going on now is a protracted battle between two sorcerers.It seems that neither of them is a good defense breaker, and the victory or defeat basically depends on whose magic power is exhausted first--Ode and I do not plan to spend too much energy on this game.

"Believe me, your three-dimensional coordinates are wrong, and there is no problem with my calculation—really!" Odego frowned while drawing the range concealment spell on the branch; He hasn't noticed the raised corner of the hair yet.

"Very reasonable, as if I really believed it." I patted his collar with a playful smile.

He continued to reproduce the calculation process with a painful expression, and the speed of chanting was getting faster and faster, as if he was entangled and fascinated—he always believed that magic can be quantified, and there must be a fixed threshold for the circular balance of output and input, three-dimensional The coordinates are his attempt to improve on the original basis. At present, he has only tried it when we were playing around. The origin is the statue of the first principal in the center of the free world.

"Speaking of which," he seemed to be out of the struggling process, and suddenly turned to me and said, "What is the structure of the magic pattern of your paper bird now? It seems to be a little more stable when you let us go up this time."

"Do you like it? Check it out." I whistled lightly, took out the white paper in my pocket and distributed it to Odd, and then began to inject magic runes on my own.

Odgo has a great understanding of magic, just staring at my movements, the direction of the runes under his hand is almost the same.The outline of the paper bird gradually became three-dimensional, and it also took shape in his hands.

"So it's done?" He looked at the small thing in his hand in confusion, and his hands kept turning over.

"Of course not," I said, "not to mention the final stage of enlarging the 'wings' - you must know this - it is not active yet. It needs to infiltrate the net magic to transform it."

"What about the specific trajectory?"

I sketched roughly in his hand, and then said, "It depends more on feeling."

Sure enough, such abstract explanations somewhat violate the realm of rationality that Ordgo believes deeply in.

He closed his eyes, pinched the wings of the paper bird, and opened them—looking disappointed.He shook his head.

"So, wherever there is paper, such a paper bird can be made?" he asked.

"That's right, basically." I squeezed my chin and looked at the white paper we crumpled into two balls, "But strictly speaking, there is one most critical thing missing."

"What is it?" Odd's thirst for knowledge came up again.

"It's me." I added with a snicker.

Odd threatened that if I did this kind of "meaningless prank" again, he would forcibly evacuate the hidden formation that he has set up now out of my range.

"Don't, I'm still waiting for you to teach me this," I said. "Look at the magician in the arena to calculate the timing."

Sure enough, Ord was distracted for a second.

This matchup is very interesting.In the past, the judges would tend to reduce the confrontation between the swordsman and the magician, and always avoid confrontation between the two in the first few rounds, but this year they seem to be much more relaxed in this regard.For example, this one is in the middle of the struggle between the swordsman and the magician.

It didn't feel like a close match at all.

The swordsman's movement seems to be more than light, but under the pressing step by step of the magician, he still seems to be overwhelmed.He was holding a black long knife and charged at the magician with all his strength, but there was still half a field between them.The magician released light red rays of light one after another in the sky above his traveling route, gradually forming a half-foot-high light net.

Blood oozes from the swordsman's forehead and arms, and his black hunting jacket is also a little tattered, but he still clenched his teeth and kept rushing forward, passing through the narrow gap with difficulty through vertical jumps and dodges.

Although the sword of the swordsman is special and can truly compete with the magic released, the stabbing of the blade has little effect on these high-intensity magic lights. The swordsman was in trouble.

"Comet weave." Odd said with interest, "It's a spell that consumes a lot of magic power. The light only has mobile lethality every time it is fired, it all depends on the position and retention time of the magician. After the comet form is still, if you don't want to You can only choose to make it disappear, but you can't make it active again. The person on the field is well controlled, and the magic power does not look like it is about to be exhausted."

"But according to this rhythm, maybe the swordsman will support until the last few steps to break through the defense line. If the magician is hit by him, the chances of winning are not great." I counted the number of steps the swordsman took. "How many steps do you think he needs to take to get to the magician?"

"Eight steps," said Ord. "But it won't be that easy—look carefully at the magician's two paces."

"trap?"

"Yes. The trap woven by the magic circle." Odd said firmly. "It's not a perfect magic circle, but it's enough to deal with a physically and mentally exhausted and unprepared assaulter."

The arena was silent at this time, not only the auditorium, but the fight between the two was silent.

The web woven by the comet threads gradually became denser, and it could be seen that the use of magic power by the magician was quite concentrated at this time.He kept chanting silent spells, and his gestures changed violently, but those light red rays of light froze in mid-air, which were extremely soft and beautiful, like a lenient trial for the guilty.

I have heard about the "Comet Weave" for a long time, and now I can truly feel the power of this magic after seeing the difficult response of the swordsman.

"It's so close." Odd said, "The swordsman's energy has been consumed a lot, and he can't avoid that trap."

At this moment, there seemed to be an uproar in the auditorium, maybe they were sighing for the swordsman who had held on until now, but was still unable to escape the decline.

I suddenly felt that something was not quite right.

"No," I murmured while staring at the swordman's quick evasive action, "not quite right. Where's his sword soul?"

Ode was negligent for a while, but was also awakened at this time, his eyes moved away from the magician, and he followed the swordsman's hand in confusion.

"It didn't show up," he affirmed.

All swordsmen must have a sword soul.Just as not everyone has magical talent, when the sword master revealed his magic branch when he was ten years old, his sword was born in his palm.It is completely different from the forged knives practiced by ordinary people. The soul of the knife can make a knife truly "live", and it is a good arm in fighting.Everyone's sword soul has its own uniqueness.To release and support the soul of the sword, what is consumed is the magic power in the body of the swordsman.

The soul of some sword fighters even has the form of a living creature, and can become their fighting partner side by side.

The sword man was as fast as a falcon, but everyone saw him stepping into the trap that was set for him.

The magic circle was full of light, and he was half-knelt down by the strong suction force under his feet, and the density of the surrounding comet fabric soared, surrounding him in a crisscross pattern.The sorcerer succeeded, and when it was time to put all his eggs in one basket, if the swordsman didn't rush to admit defeat as soon as possible at this time, it would not be such a simple matter for those beams of light to surround him.

The swordman's black hair was stuck to his forehead with blood and sweat.I took a serious look at his sullen face at this rare moment of stillness, and suddenly felt a little familiar.

A blue light suddenly appeared in the formation, but it was not the light from the magic formation.A long knife held tightly by the swordsman's black long knife was deeply inserted into the ground, and a cold light flowed along the blade and filled the magic circle in an instant.It climbed up to the criss-crossing lights around him along the surface, causing the situation in the field to be reversed instantly.Those rays of light were wrapped in ice and shattered into flying powders——the magic circle was broken by the swordsman with the soul of the sword.

The magician was mesmerized by this seemingly excellent opportunity.After he exploded a large number of comet weaves in one go, the magic power in his body was exhausted.

Without any suspense, the swordsman won the round.He didn't care about the sweat dripping from his face, and walked down the field with a cold face, and walked into thunderous applause.

Odd's face was full of disbelief: "Such a tyrannical Soul of the Blade - can compete with the Comet Line! Isn't that really magic?"

I replied with a smile: "No. The talents of swordsmen and magicians are mutually exclusive. In your words, the magic power of swordsmen cannot be divergent outside the body... Besides, it is stored in their bodies for casting swords. The magic power of the soul is also far more limited than that of orthodox magicians, so it is difficult to see the soul of the sword accompanying them in battle for a long time. The ice of the swordsman should be limited in the distance and amount of casting, and it will burst out once when it is pressed to a certainty. "

"Even if there are many restrictions, being able to shatter the comet weave in an instant can still be called..." Odd didn't often praise things other than magic, and he was struggling to speak at this time.

"Genius," I added.

The swordsman passed through the crowd all the way, and people who had never met him were applauding and cheering for his wonderful moment just now.A group of people shouted a name: "Coleman! Coleman!"

"Coleman? I've seen that name before. That's right, it's him." Odd seemed to be thinking. His facial expression was calm, but the hand tightly grasping my arm revealed his inner excitement. "I'm I saw this name when I was looking through the third grade roster in the library. "

"You're the only one who will go through the roster to exercise your memory." I said without any surprise.I had a pretty boring game against him and even against him going through the memory roster.

"Wait, Coleman is a third grader? Didn't Dabi restrict fifth graders to sign up?"

Ord seems to be recalling the rules of the game.

"There are no such strict rules." He said, "But just in case everyone wants to experience it once, when the juniors sign up for the leapfrog challenge, they must first ensure that they win at least five games in the knockout rounds, otherwise this failure will be retained in the student status for life. ; and casualties during the competition are also conceited, so there are very few juniors participating in recent years."