God of Money: Reincarnated as the Weakest SSS Rank

Unedited chapter. It will be edited soon.

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Before he could react, a shadow closed in on him and several spells emerged from the other side.

"I'm sorry, Young Lord Habsburg. But you must fall," Drake declared, finally getting serious.

What he didn't expect was Louis's astonishingly quick reaction when faced with unknown adversity and another who could exploit him.

He raised his hand and immediately fired a physical bullet, his most powerful bullet, right at the spot where Drake was standing. The shadow moving toward him seemed to be covering the entire arena, while the magic covered the entire area of the sky that the shadow did not cover.

Jumping was not an option, so he made the decision to shoot.

With his first bullet fired, he changed the cylinder of the revolver again and fired numerous magic bullets at the magic coming from above.

The magic bullets dispersed the spells, but not completely. He witnessed how part of the magical damage caused by those explosions was absorbed by the shadow, and suddenly he found himself facing a series of brutal attacks... but not directed at him.

They were directed at his shadow.

"What the hell?" Louis quickly jumped to the side, but unable to calculate the size of his shadow and the speed of the attack, he ended up getting hit in the shoulder... of his shadow.

And that affected him and sent him crashing to the ground.

He immediately got up and jumped to the side, which luckily caused his shadow to dodge another of the attacks.

"I see." Louis finally understood what was happening.

Although it had been explained to him before, he didn't understand because he only had one example of an attack. Basically, if a wizard capable of operating that strange shadow attacked him, the attack would not go to him, but to his shadow.

If he managed to hit his shadow, he would be hurt. If not, he would be unharmed.

The question is, how does he avoid it?

Well, simple, by working with his shadow instead of his body. Obviously, this would involve moving his body, because he had to move around and avoid the light hitting him in certain ways in order to dodge it, but what he had to be looking at was his shadow, not his actual body.

Now, the problem was that the lighting here made his shadow multiple in some angles of the arena. It was very difficult to move!

And the other problem was that this guy wasn't just fighting with that, but also with normal attacks, so he couldn't just focus on his shadow.

It was really difficult to come up with a plan now.

And as for what the shadow did to attack...

'It feeds on the magical power I throw at it and uses it to attack me, with a certain percentage of that same attack. Right?'

His eyes lit up when he realized this, and he lowered his gaze to look at the other side.

His first bullet hadn't been magical. Well, it had magical characteristics because Louis had never seen a bullet with so much power on earth and so mysterious, but it had no weaving, so it wasn't a magic bullet.

It was a bullet with physical characteristics, therefore...

"It must hit," he thought.

There was a hole in part of the shadow, and on the other side, Drake was lying on the ground, trying to get up. His previously injured arm was worse and had a hole in it.

Louis smiled broadly. Not only had the attack not been serious, so he would not be disqualified, but he was able to confirm that his suspicions about physical and magical attacks were real.

This shadow couldn't launch attacks independently. He didn't know if it was a restriction of the magic or simply Drake's lack of skill in using that magic, but having discovered that, he knew the right way to attack.

Drake was injured, and although he was able to stand up to launch a round of attacks and advance his shadow, Louis was ready to counterattack.

And this time, in a better way.

Louis ran toward the shadow, but he didn't holster his revolver. The first things to reach him were several fire spells, and he waited until they were close enough for him to feel their heat before reacting and destroying them with a shot.

Even so, the magical power's reaction still occurred, and the shadow was able to absorb some of the power that was nearby, so it didn't seem to have gone well.

That was just what Louis was hoping for.

He lunged at the shadow with melee attacks, using all his physical power to strike.

His attack managed to split the shadow, but since it was too big, it was practically as if he had done nothing. In fact, he felt his hand pass through the shadow as if it were nothing.

Physical attacks don't affect it directly, but...

The attacks on his shadow went nowhere, because Louis' position meant that the shadow practically blocked all the lights coming from all sides, and so the attacks simply hit the ground, while he passed to the other side.

He found himself face to face with Drake and several fire spells.

"I've got you." Louis smiled, even though he wasn't in a good position to say so.

But he quickly fired three shots at the spells and then a fourth at Drake, who had to dodge, because it was one of those shots that didn't seem to have any magic, the strongest ones.

But the fourth was fired solely to camouflage the fifth shot.

It was the first time he had fired five shots so quickly, and this shot aimed right at the ground near where Drake fell.

Along with a burst of fire and the previous wind explosions, Drake was blown backward until he hit one of the walls, finally out of the arena.

"Agh." He fell to the ground, badly injured and struggling to get up, staring ahead.

He seemed to have a smile on his face.

He hadn't expected to encounter such a tough opponent.

He even forced him to use his trump card, which he had planned to use against Mark to secure first place, but he still lost.

"Heh... you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve," Drake said.

"You would have beaten Mark," Louis assured him. "Your magic is the perfect counter to mages, after all."

Drake laughed again. "Never give up on Mark Neville, Young Lord Habsburg. He's a magician, but not just any magician."

He brought a hand to his shoulder and stopped lifting his head; it hurt too much.

But his words left Louis pensive.

"Louis von Habsburg wins the fight!" shouted the referee.

Louis finally relaxed and looked at his system, which was announcing a few things to him.

[The Skill Revolver Enhanced Shot has leveled up.]

[The Skill Revolver Enhanced Shot has leveled up.]

[You have advanced the Sequence Rank.

Rank D > Rank C.]

[Increased firepower.]

[Increased range.]

[Reach the Top 4 of the Ascended Tournament: Completed.]

[You are one step closer to completing the mission.]

Louis smiled.

'A juicy mission I created when I made a bet with that man Priestley... That reward is truly incredible,' Louis thought and stepped down from the arena.

Laura was nowhere to be seen, so he simply went to sit down and rest, under the stunned gaze of everyone present.

"I see. Now I understand," Robert Priestley said suddenly. That made everyone turn to look at him. "At first, I didn't understand why he was getting so close to Jones, but it's normal. That magic was attacking his shadow using his own magical power. He couldn't keep casting spells because he would lose, or it would be a futile effort," he said.

Robert Neville turned to look at him. "Oh, I see! So he got closer to break through the shadow, knowing that the shadow didn't project backward, which meant it had no power on that side and he could attack its bearer directly."

"Yes, exactly."

"Wow, I didn't expect you to figure it out so quickly in combat. Even I didn't know it was possible to do that."

"Hahaha, I don't think anyone here has ever faced a dark wizard, so it's understandable. But this guy may have previous experience... Or his mind works very fast."

Hardrial nodded, agreeing with what they were saying.

"Yes, this boy's mind works very quickly," he thought.

He hadn't taught him practically anything about those dark wizards, mainly because even to him they were a mystery.

And he didn't think he had ever faced one of them before, because when he met him, he was a beginner in magic. Besides, there weren't that many of those magicians around.

In fact, he had only encountered two in his life. One of them was Drake Jones' teacher, the only one he had ever fought. The other was unknown, as he had only had a brief encounter with him many years ago.

So it was very difficult to imagine that he had ever faced one, unless it had been recently, but then he should have noticed something.

So he was almost certain that this boy was simply a genius from another world.

He had plenty of evidence and zero doubts.

"What do you think, Professor Hardrial?" Rebecca was the one who took the trouble to ask him. Being Louis's teacher, he surely had something to say.

"I'll just say that he hasn't shown his full strength yet. We'll have to keep watching him fight," he replied, excusing himself from giving an answer on the matter.