“Alisa, why can't my beams penetrate your skin?”
As Alisa dodged another attack, Lan Qingyou shouted from a distance.
“...”
Alisa didn't answer. She simply commanded the Chimera to close the distance and attack Lan Qingyou.
She had originally thought that by summoning the Chimera—her strongest synthesis beast at this stage, capable of flight and possessing high magic and speed—she would be able to defeat her opponent in a single blow.
Instead, the battle had turned into a war of attrition.
She had realized that she and Lan Qingyou were evenly matched in terms of philosophy, research, and combat ability.
One could even say that neither of them could do anything to the other.
Under different circumstances, Alisa might have had the patience to play around with Lan Qingyou.
But now that the other woman had brought up this question, Alisa found herself losing her patience. It wasn't just annoyance; she simply felt like going back to her laboratory to continue her experiments.
So, with a grand wave of her hand, Alisa released two more Chimeras to encircle and kill Lan Qingyou.
This time, although Alisa performed her standard grand gesture, her haste allowed Lan Qingyou to see the process clearly.
It turned out that both the Children of Danu below and the Chimeras were stored inside glass spheres.
When she threw them, the glass spheres would expand and shatter, and the contents would emerge with a loud ‘pop.’
Lan Qingyou was surprisingly familiar with the name of this particular item.
——A Shackle Orb.
It was only one word off from a Shackle Chest.
Lan Qingyou guessed that this thing was either developed by Alisa herself or by someone from The Masquerade.
Of course, she had no evidence; it was just a pure intuition.
“Whoa!”
Lan Qingyou dodged the frantic attacks and quickly pulled up to gain altitude.
After reaching a certain height, she performed a sharp turn, zipped past the two pursuing Chimeras, and charged straight toward Alisa, who was at the rear.
To prevent the two Chimeras behind her from turning around to attack, Lan Qingyou even commanded two floating cannons to keep them busy.
“Haha! Are you that anxious just because I asked a question, Alisa? It seems I’ve finally hit on a core issue!”
Lan Qingyou laughed loudly as she raised her hand and fired two non-attribute magic bullets at her opponent.
The two then traded blows again in a second round of combat.
“Let me think about why you're so worried.”
“The power of my beams is enough to break the defense of a B-grade monster, yet they can't break yours. Either you belong to the Demon race, or you have some powerful close-fitting defensive magic or items.”
“But based on your previous performance, none of those fit. So, if we eliminate those answers, there's only one left, even if it is a bit horrifying.”
At this point, a smile curled at the corners of Lan Qingyou’s mouth.
After blocking an air projectile from Alisa and a fireball from a Chimera with her shield, she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Cells? Biology? No, no, no. Alisa, in my opinion, you must have...”
“I surrender.”
With a grim face, Alisa directly raised her hand.
Lan Qingyou hadn't even finished her sentence before she was interrupted by this shocking move.
Shocking?
It was indeed shocking.
However, it was the onlookers outside who were truly shocked.
“Why did she just surrender?”
“It makes no sense. From where I'm standing, the Workshop Witch seemed to have the upper hand!”
“No, I think the battle between them had entered a stalemate, where neither side could break the other's defense.”
“It seemed like the Witch of the Tower was about to say something, and then the Workshop Witch just quit?”
“What a pity. I thought we were about to hear something as explosive as the weakness of the Demon race.”
“Don't worry, it was definitely going to be explosive. It's just a shame she didn't get to say it.”
“Tell me about it.”
Most of the people who had been watching the match with rapt attention until now were stakeholders of some kind.
Upon hearing Lan Qingyou’s shout, they couldn't help but sit up straight, hoping to hear some new revelation.
Some had even called over their subordinates, prepared to transcribe the entire statement.
No one expected Alisa to raise her hand in surrender so decisively, making all their preparations useless.
For Lan Qingyou, however, this was entirely within her expectations.
No... it would be more accurate to say that this was exactly what she had planned.
Just as Alisa knew that a fight between them would never yield a winner, Lan Qingyou had realized the same thing.
And so...
When everything else was equal, the only thing left to exploit was the information gap.
Although her Analytic Magic Eye couldn't see the specific details of her opponent, she had reached a conclusion by synthesizing information from Alisa's clothing, the items she used, her combat style, and her research.
That conclusion was that the other woman was probably even less willing than she was to see her trump card exposed.
Since that was the case, there was a breakthrough point.
She didn't know if her guess was correct, but that didn't stop her from saying it out loud.
As long as the opponent had even the slightest bit of concern, she could press the advantage and secure the final victory.
In fact, reality had unfolded exactly as she had imagined.
After she had yelled a few times at the top of her lungs, the other woman really did surrender.
There was no helping it; Lan Qingyou had a ‘prior record.’
The members of the Demon race now hated Lan Qingyou with a passion for exposing the weakness of their entire race.
If she allowed the other woman to continue blathering on the live stream, she might really spill something critical.
As for whether the other woman's guess was correct... Alisa could only say that she didn't dare to gamble.
“You're ruthless. I didn't think you'd go to such lengths just to win,” Alisa said with considerable resentment, lowering her hand after the surrender was announced.
“No, no, no. Compared to you, this is nothing,” Lan Qingyou replied with a smile and a wave of her hand.
Although it sounded like a normal exchange of pleasantries, the sentence actually confirmed Lan Qingyou’s suspicions about Alisa.
Alisa’s eyes narrowed slightly.
It seemed she really had guessed it.
Even with her Magic Eye restricted, she could still figure out the gist of it?
That ability to synthesize and analyze information alone was impressive. She truly was a troublesome opponent.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
【Congratulations to the Witch of the High Tower, Lan Qingyou, for becoming the final winner of this Racial Competition!】
While Lan Qingyou and Alisa stared at each other, both complaining inwardly, colorful fireworks exploded in the sky.
The surrounding gray scenery transformed back into the previous arena.
However, because the pile of homunculus corpses and golem fragments on the ground took up so much space, the arena did not shrink back to its original size despite the change.
But since it was all over anyway, whether it shrunk or not didn't seem to matter much.
Rate on N.U.
