Flillian, I want to live.

"is it?"

Zanze tilted his head and blinked innocently.

"At least fifteen years ago, you still had some talent that I could recognize. But now? These magicians are becoming increasingly lazy. The more you kill them, the more you feel resentful towards them."

Ster spun the dagger in his hand and inserted it into the scabbard at his waist in a cool manner. Then he stretched out his hand and made a grasping motion, and a black wand that looked very exquisite appeared in his hand.

"You've finally finished talking nonsense."

Zanze rolled her eyes, then she stretched out her hand from under her shawl and summoned the white wand she had used in the first-level magician exam.

"What's your name?"

Before the duel began, Ster looked at Guter for the last time and asked his name abnormally.

"Gutel."

Guter answered honestly.

"Gutel? Hmm, not bad." Ster repeated Gutel's name as if he was pondering something. "Although your magic power is not strong, it is very pure, far exceeding that of ordinary garbage magicians."

"Oh, I didn't even notice..."

Gutel couldn't help but be surprised. The man in front of him seemed to be quite capable.

"Over the years, in order to avenge the elf who trampled on my dignity, I have been hunting down the first-level magicians who were her disciples. I have killed two, and today I will kill the third one. However, even this alone feels a little bit insufficient."

Ster closed his eyes and recalled the day when Celie personally rejected his qualification to become a first-level magician and kicked him out of the Magicians Association.

The magic and dignity that he had been proud of since he was a child were ruthlessly trampled upon by that old immortal elf. He knew very well that if he escaped back home in disgrace, he would never be able to hold his head up for the rest of his life.

The shame of that time must be washed away.

Ster reached out and slowly stroked his face which was wrapped in dirty bandages.

"Become my disciple, Guter."

Sterling suddenly said to Gutel.

"Eh?"

Gutel obviously did not expect that Ster's thoughts would jump so much.

"I will train you to be even more outstanding than Seria's disciple. I will prove that her vision is completely wrong. The Magicians Association, which has abandoned the glory of its historical heritage, is unworthy of being the leader of the continent's magic. I will prove this."

Ster said to Gutel in a somewhat crazy tone.

"Um, but I..."

"If you don't agree, I will kill you."

Ster's attitude towards accepting disciples is obviously quite tough.

"Ah, what else can I say?"

Guter nodded helplessly, agreeing to Ster's request.

"Then please bear witness here."

Ster turned to face Zanze who had been waiting for a long time.

"Witness the elegant fighting style of a magician, used in a thousand-year-old tradition."

Sturt took a step forward and pointed his wand at Xanze.

"Hellfire magic."

Along with Ster's happy smile, a ball of blazing black flame spread out from the staff and attacked Zanze in the distance like a monster that could devour everything.

"Earth-repelling magic."

Facing the blazing black flames, Zanze did not panic. She twisted her wrist and lightly tapped the ground with her staff. The next moment, the soil rose from the ground under the impetus of magic, forming a huge earth wall, blocking all the black flames that were rushing towards her behind the wall.

"Tree growth magic."

Facing the high wall rising from Zanze, Ster smiled slightly, pointed his staff at the ground, and the dead roots originally hidden underground immediately broke out and used their torsos to drag Ster to the top of the earth wall.

"Wind magic."

Looking at Ster who was standing on the branch and looking down at him, Zanze swung his staff forward, and a gust of wind swept towards Ster, who thought he had the advantage, and blew the man away like a kite.

"Water control magic."

When Ste, who was blown away by the wind, was about to fall to the ground, a stream of water rising from the embankment formed a soft bubble in the air, which caught the falling Ste steadily like a sponge pad.

Chapter 49: Just like you have just passed the novice tutorial and entered the difficult level

"Oh……"

After seeing the fight between Ster and Zanze, Gutel, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground watching, couldn't help but sigh.

"See? Unlike the stupid, monotonous magic of modern times, the battles of the magicians of the mythological era were so elegant. The various spells coordinated with each other, like an intoxicating symphony."

Ster, who landed slowly under the cover of bubbles, heard Guter's voice and turned around to speak to Guter in a boastful tone.

"Hmm... fighting? Tell me, can those circus performances just now be called fighting?"

Gutel blinked, then looked at Ster with some confusion.

"Huh?" Sturt, thinking he might have misheard something, scratched his ear with his little finger. "What did you say?"

"You said you were going to fight in the style of the magicians of a thousand years ago. I had a little hope for that."

Guter patted his butt and stood up from the ground, answering with a yawn.

"What do you want to say? Guter, although I admire your potential, if you dare to speak so rudely again..."

Ster's face gradually became gloomy. He looked at Gutel and his words were full of murderous intent.

"You seem to admire the magicians of the mythological era thousands of years ago. Indeed, great magicians like Volame appeared in that era. There's nothing wrong with you wanting to emulate their fighting style," Guter said, holding out her hands. She had originally thought they might have something in common, but the result was disappointing. "But your clumsy imitation is truly an insult to them."

"Don't act like you've seen how magicians fought thousands of years ago!"

Ster stared at Guter in front of him. This was not the first time he heard someone say such words to him.

"Would you like me to teach you how real magicians fought thousands of years ago?"

Gutel stretched out a finger and hooked it at Ster with a smile.

That was what happened when Sturt killed a first-level magician in a duel for the first time.

Looking at his opponent lying in a pool of blood, Ster bent down and wanted to take off the first-level magician medal on his opponent's chest as his trophy.

The moment he touched the badge, Ster felt a huge fluctuation in the magic power around him, and then a smiling blond elf appeared beside him.

Not only was he unable to cast shadow magic to escape, but under the gaze of the short elf's golden eyes, Ster couldn't even move a finger.

Although such things may be counterintuitive, Sturt is not surprised.

"Have you thought about how you want to die?"

Because the one who appeared beside him was the magician who was closest to God in this world, the elf, Celie, who had survived from a distant past that even the demons had forgotten.

"This is unfair. You didn't want to acknowledge me, but I killed the magician you acknowledged."

There was no trace of regret on Ster's face. Instead, he expressed his dissatisfaction with Celie.

"He's a fool. To maintain my so-called dignity, he gave up his magic proficiency and played that boring duel with you."

Celia glanced at the disciple lying on the ground, breathless, and said coldly.

"That's a thousand years..."

"Hey, hey, hey, here we go again. Well, since you're not convinced, let me teach you how magicians fought a thousand years ago."

At that time, Celie looked up at the sky and said this to Ster.

Guter's expression at this moment was exactly the same as Celie's back then.

How could such a coincidence happen?

Ster, feeling a little dazed for some reason, shook his head.

"Honestly, it's been a long time since anyone has upset me this much."

Ster looked at Guter who was dancing in his own minefield. After the other party said almost the same lines as Celie, he had already decided to kill Guter.

"Shouldn't you reflect on why you are always unpopular?"

Guter replied with a smile.

"enough."

Ster waved the wand in his hand towards where Gutel was standing. Losing his patience, he summoned the scorching black flames again, burning Gutel beside him.

"Hellfire magic."

Looking at Ster who was releasing flames towards him, Gutel slowly raised his hand. The next moment, a black flame that burned even more vigorously swallowed up Ster's flames. Under Ster's incredulous gaze, he was wrapped in the scorching flames.

"Don't you look down on defensive magic?"

When the flames dissipated, Gutel looked at Ster, who subconsciously wrapped himself in a circular defensive magic, and the corners of his mouth rose with a hint of sarcasm.

"You...Gutel, who are you?"

Ster's eyes widened. From his perspective, Gutel, who was originally as inconspicuous as an apprentice, now burst out with an immense amount of magic power. That was a magic power that a human magician would find difficult to accumulate in his entire life. Ster had only seen it in a few people before.

"Thousands of years ago, magicians didn't have such convenient means as defensive magic. All they knew were primitive magic like water, fire, wind, and earth, which could be easily realized through imagination."

Gutel walked calmly towards Ster who was standing there in a daze.

"It's impossible to defeat the demons with magic that's incomprehensible to humans with just magic like this. That's why they combine these primitive magics to create a chance to defeat the demons."

Gutel recalled the human magicians who had attempted to defeat him. Every time, they would come up with a combination of skills that Gutel could not imagine, such as combining wind magic and fire magic, using the power of wind to extend the attack range of the flames, and so on. It must be said that they put a lot of thought into defeating the demons.

However, relying solely on this method is still difficult to eliminate a large demon like Gutel.

Guter watched Ster disappear in front of him.

Faced with an unknown enemy, Ster decisively chose to give up his pursuit of the so-called fighting methods of magicians from a thousand years ago, and used shadow magic that did not exist at all at that time.

"It's really tricky..."

For modern magicians who have extremely fast attack magic and can resist most defensive magic, Ster's shadow magic is difficult to deal with.

The magicians a thousand years ago, when facing the demons, were no less powerful than Gutel today, who only used those primitive magics to fight against Ster who lurked in the shadows.

It seems like an impossible task.

Chapter 50: Are you interested in passing on the fire?

Gutel felt the faint fluctuation of magic power behind her. Even without looking back, Gutel could guess that Ster, who had hidden in the shadows, appeared behind her.

Perhaps for a monster like Frelian who possesses enormous magic power, he can use the compressed magic power to resist Ster's close-range attack, but in fact, whether it is a thousand years ago or a thousand years later, humans are often the ones with less magic power in the confrontation with demons.

For today's magicians, Ster's methods are almost unsolvable and can only be avoided by flying. But for the magicians a thousand years ago, the current situation seems to have become a dead end.

However, magic is a miracle that turns the impossible into the possible.

Gutel watched the dagger in Ste's hand slashing towards his neck.

At a time like this, what would a magician from a thousand years ago who didn't even have the ability to master defensive magic do?

"Hellfire magic."

Even without a medium like a magic wand, Guter used himself as firewood to ignite the magic power released from his body.

As Ster's dagger cut Guter's throat, the black flames that shot up into the sky also spread out in all directions with Guter as the center, burning Ster and the shadow where he was hiding to ashes.

The answer, of course, is mutual destruction.

"Uhhhhhhhh-"

Swallowed by flames, Ster roared in pain. Under the scorching black flames, the bandage on his face was burned and peeled off, revealing the old wounds underneath that had been burned by the flames.

"Thousands of years ago, the battles of magicians were neither elegant nor noble. Like rodents in the sewers, they conducted forbidden research in shadowy places, relying on the primitive magic of immature children to fight against the demons who were born with powerful magic."

More than ten years ago, when Ster attempted to challenge Celia, the other party also used magic to ignite his own magic power.

"For magicians back then, challenging demons often resulted in a death rate exceeding 90%. Without defensive magic and the ability to fly, it was unimaginable for them to engage in aerial combat with demons using offensive magic as easily as magicians do today."

Perhaps out of reluctance or perhaps because she admired Ster's ambition, Celie did not burn him to death directly, but spared his life.

"So, a thousand years ago, if a magician wanted to kill a demon, the only way was to ambush them, create an opportunity to get close, and then use a suicidal large-scale attack to destroy them together with the demon."