The Challenger's Return: Rebirth of the Rainbow Mage

"When did you figure it out?"

Otto smirked at him and continued to send spell after spell flying in Jackal's direction.

His aim was uncanny.

Otto's spells seemed to twist in direction just when they were right about to miss his body, and ended up hitting the man dead on.

These spells were extraordinarily quick to cast.

But that didn't mean they were light on damage.

Within a few seconds, Jackal found himself groaning in pain as they managed to hit him.

But he himself was no pushover, either. Otto was merely lucky that he had received so much damage from the explosion.

If his enemy was still attacking him, Jackal couldn't possibly just stop and let Otto kill him without retaliating, right?

A sword finally appeared in his hands and Jackal took the opportunity to grab it and let out a swing.

Jackal was actually a pure physical fighter. He used energy rather than mana.

His energy was dense and sharp.

He swung his sword horizontally and a beam of thick silvery energy shot at Otto's midsection, aiming to bisect his body in two.

The energy was just as fast as Otto's own spells.

Otto spoke as he quickly jumped up into the sky, standing on a platform made only of air.

His feet evaded the beam of energy by a millisecond.

It passed harmlessly under him and dissipated into the air.

Otto started to speak as the two of them fought.

His tone was rather casual.

It was as if he was talking about the weather as he listed his thought processes one by one.

Actually, it didn't matter if Otto revealed a few things now, as long as it wasn't related to his own secrets.

Regardless, it wouldn't change the outcome.

"I had my suspicions from the very beginning."

"A human suddenly appears before me on my route and works to gain my sympathy."

"Already suspicious."

"I was traveling too fast for any normal person to calculate my direction of travel. It was clear that this was planned."

Otto cast a [Lesser Fireball] as he spoke, followed by a [Wind Blade] to accelerate the fire's speed.

It was a little trick he'd picked up when experimenting back in Area 1.

Jackal almost evaded the fireball, but it twisted around and hit him in the side at the next second, causing him to stifle a cry of pain as the wind blade also dug into his muscles.

But they stopped there.

Jackal took little real damage from the spells; his body was simply too strong.

In fact, at the rate he was regenerating, Otto hadn't been doing even enough to fully dampen his recovery!

"Within mere hours of meeting, you took an arrow for me after you figured out that I was testing you."

"Trust isn't built that quickly. I came to the conclusion….that you had an ulterior motive."

"Actually, initially, I admit I assumed that it was the person behind you using you to learn more about me."

"I hadn't considered that you were actually the traitor all along."

"But when we were escaping from the poison, I knocked you unconscious."

Jackal's brows rose as he came to a realization while continually, and largely unsuccessfully, dodging Otto's spells.

"You shouldn't have had time to react to my speed at all, but I saw your instinctive flinch as I knocked you out. You were more trained than you let on."

"When you fell unconscious, the poison permeated your body. But you didn't look any different. It was as if you weren't injured at all."

"At first, I thought it was a unique effect of the poison itself, that it didn't work as quickly, or wasn't as effective when one was unconscious."

"But that theory was debunked very quickly when I tested it on an unconscious Throskart I specifically left alive after being ambushed when we arrived to the safe zone."

"No, it turned out that whatever disguise you were using lost some of its efficacy as soon as you weren't conscious to properly moderate it."

Otto stroked his chin and continued waxing eloquent on his suspicions. Thinking back, there were truly quite a lot of them.

"When someone tried to ambush my stone house, I initially thought it was due to the presence of watchers around you that discovered its location."

"But at some point, you slipped up….and didn't remember to toggle the watchers' effect back on as you returned home."

"In other words, you leaked the information of my stone house deliberately to test its defenses. If they'd been weak, this ambush probably would have happened there, right?"

"It was then that I grew increasingly confident of my suspicions, and began to pay more attention to your movements."

Otto smirked again as Jackal couldn't fully stifle his pain when he was hit by Otto's [Poison Whip].

[Poison Whip: Unlimited]

Water Element

Level 10

Conjures a whip that deals (150 + 5% magic power) damage and inflicts a moderate poisoned status upon contact.

Mana Cost: 80

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

With all of Jackal's still-open wounds, getting hit with poison would undoubtedly not be a painless experience.

Better, Jackal hadn't recovered enough in his legs to regain his full speed.

He hadn't yet hit Otto even once throughout this fight.

"I never told you about the titles I received from moving up in the ranks, but you casually revealed such information.

It was possible that your 'helper' had told you, admittedly, but then how would you have known the coin's exact location?"

"You tried to get me to use my title effect to find the 100,000 point coin. Meaning you 'shouldn't' have known where it was."

"Even so, you led me right to it."

Jackal pulled off a particularly ingenious maneuver, and Otto had to contort his body almost into a backwards ball to avoid the resulting energy beam.

But his expression remained leisurely, at ease with the fight.

"After the battle for the 100,000 point coin, my suspicions deepened."

"A magic tool used to hide a contestant's life signature appeared? How odd."

"Moreover, it didn't exist in the game's shop."

"I quickly discovered that the entire stage for that battle was meant to test me. Namely, my [Sense Life] spell. I assume you also wanted to test my [Force Field], but were thrown for a curveball when I never needed to use it in favor of this."

Otto stroked his poison golem as he calmly laid out his process.

Of course, he hadn't been idle this entire time.

Other than peppering Jackal with spells one after another, Otto had actually been continually charging mana into a different spell.

It was actually the first time he'd added so much mana to an attack spell, and he had specifically increased both its power and its area of effect.

He wanted to rip through the thousands of Throskarts surrounding the two of them in one go.

Otto drank two bottles of left over mana potion from his spatial storage ring, and chugged both of them down to accelerate his mana recovery and continue recharging.

It was a pity that Jackal wasn't as sensitive to mana waves, else he would have immediately been alarmed at the amount of mana Otto was gathering....

"My conjectures were also validated when I approached the million point coin. My [Sense Life] didn't pick up a single life signature, though I felt the presence of thousands of people underground.

Fortunately, I also noticed a few off color shimmers in the air, which alluded to the presence of contestants, and not just a few, either."

"They were all fully equipped to hide them from vision, smell, hearing, and a spell that could detect their life signatures."

"It was also the second time you wanted to lure me into an ambush. And so obviously, too."

Otto sneered, then laughed derisively.

"If I couldn't put the puzzle pieces together by then, I'd really be a fucking moron."

"I figured you were so confident because the million point coin did indeed exist."

"Since you found it and had it moved here in order to perfect and complete your ambush."

Otto clicked his tongue.

"Really, so much effort you put in just to kill me. Should I be flattered?"

"And from so early on, too. When you found me, I hadn't even killed that many of you…"

This was indeed something Otto was still curious about.

How did they know he would be such a big threat?

It couldn't have been standard procedure to place the current number one contestant by a human to gather information.

A few meters away, Jackal's face was slightly pale as he reeled at the revelations of his many mistakes.

Otto had also completely stopped casting spells at him.

But Jackal struggled to retain his composure.

Was he the actor, or was Otto?

Otto hadn't let on at all! He hadn't even been aware that Otto was suspicious of him!

But Jackal wasn't finished with his questions.

"Then why didn't you kill me sooner?"

This time, Otto didn't answer.

He merely shot an enigmatic smile at Jackal.

Because he was finally done preparing his spell.

"I will say one thing, though. Perhaps your greatest failing throughout the entire scheme."

Jackal pursed his lips, reluctant to respond.

Otto paid him no heed.

"All of you…have underestimated my battle power."

As he spoke, a maniacal grin crossed his face. Otto cast the spell he'd been preparing throughout the entire conversation.

He also added an additional spell for good measure.

[Lesser Vortex: Unlimited]

Wind Element

Level 16

Conjures a vortex of air radius 20m that deals (110 +16% magic power) damage to surrounding enemies.

Mana Cost: 380

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

[Cone of Fire]

Fire Element

Level 10

A cone of fire erupts from your body. Direction adjustable up to 180 degrees. Deals (200 + 20% magic power) damage to surrounding enemies.

Mana Cost: 450

Cast Time: Instant

No Cooldown

Suddenly, the surrounding Throskarts, who had been told to stand down while the two guys were battling it out, felt their hearts skip a beat.

A wave of mana so thick it was almost tangible pressed on their bodies.

They hesitantly looked towards its source.

Otto was standing in the middle of the wave.

His hair blew wildly behind him as his mana thrummed through him and into his spells.

He had his eyes closed, and his expression was serene.

The vortex was released.

A few Throskarts screamed in alarm.

A massive tornado, well over a kilometer wide, descended onto the area.

Initially, the effect was rather lackluster; the explosion had already essentially blown this area of the forest to bits.

But the dozens of thousands of Throskarts captured within its radius couldn't possibly think so.

For a significant minority of contestants were almost instantly ripped apart by the powerful, tearing winds it conjured.

Mostly, it was because the protections they had used for the explosion had already expired.

Otto took a glance at the tornado that surrounded him and Jackal from all directions, and added four casts of [Cone of Fire].

This spell wasn't unlimited, so he could only charge it up to 10x power.

But even that was nothing to sneeze at.

The fire effortlessly integrated itself with the wind as Otto continued to feed it with mana.

Otto also added a few casts of [Blaze] into the magical fire to allow it to spread even further.

The vortex had borne a firestorm of epic proportions.

Jackal's face was deathly pale as he witnessed the spectacle in front of him.

This was supposed to be his operation!

It was obvious who would be blamed for its failure.

Jackal wouldn't die here.

The option to revive was still well within his means, even after spending so many points on the defensive tool he'd used to survive the explosion.

However, he might just be killed later at the hands of his superiors….

Otto watched the firestorm rage for a few minutes before he turned to Jackal.

Points continued to fill his body with unbelievable strength.

Jackal decided to ask him one final question,

"How did you predict the ambush?"

Otto didn't respond immediately.

Actually, this question wasn't hard to answer.

Otto had predicted the ambush based on a combination of factors.

The [Tower's] mission was of such a high difficulty, and his sense for danger had been ringing resounding alarms at him as soon as he neared the big coin.

Moreover, while he couldn't sense a thing after searching the area with [Sense Life], there were a few telltale signs that gave the hiding Throskarts away.

A few barely discernible shimmers in the air inconsistent with the atmosphere immediately neighboring them.

Hints of movements detected when he used his [Tunnel] to scan under the ground at each fall of his feet.

The complete absence of those things as soon as he entered within 8 kilometers of the million point coin.

So Otto prepared immediately after sensing the danger he was in.

Quite frankly, an explosion of this size would have been hard to survive, from, even for him.

Jackal himself had used a last-ditch consumable defensive magic tool to protect him from the majority of the blast's effects.

The tool itself was the single most expensive tool in the game's shop, too, costing just over 800,000 points.

Fortunately the higher-ups had equipped him with this as a last-ditch measure in case Otto was too strong, which would allow him to survive a few hits.

But Otto had prepared a cast of [Force Field].

He became even more certain that something was wrong when preparing the spell took over twenty full seconds.

He understood, then, that Jackal had truly gone all out in preparation this time.

But wasn't he still alive?

Otto faced Jackal with his full attention, and narrowed his eyes.