Calculations quickly happened inside Khan's mind. His first instinct was to dodge Ilman's attacks until a professor arrived. The Niqols was fast, but Khan was faster, and his stamina was incredible. His mana capacity seemed even above that, so that approach was theoretically doable.
Yet, that tactic could only work if the professors decided to rule in his favor. Moreover, Khan would still need to dodge attacks for a bit more than an hour. He could probably do that with his speed and battle experience, but he wouldn't be able to avoid ending up in poor condition.
The Lightning-demon style gave Khan exceptional speed, but it was also an aggressive martial art. It expressed its true potential only when attacking. Relying on it only to dodge and run away would force him to ignore more than half of his techniques.
Ilman wasn't even weak either. The Niqols was a student in the second year driven by a burning passion that ruled most aspects of his life. Khan could guess that his opponent had trained with mana since an early age, and his unique position also gave him an annoying advantage.
The Niqols' martial arts were relatively simple and focused on the manipulation of the mana's nature rather than on actual moves. However, Ilman's tribe handled the development of new applications of mana, and most of them came from their study of human methods.
Khan didn't need to think too much about that topic to realize how Ilman's speed didn't come from the iconic martial arts of his species. His forms and stances felt familiar. His tribe probably had developed them by fusing the Niqols' traditional methods to the human styles.
Ilman's speed and deadly attacks put Khan in a tough position. His confidence in his abilities was high, but that situation could be too challenging even for him. Also, he didn't like the idea of suffering injuries during such an important part of his training. He would hate to stop attending the lessons because of eventual wounds.
'Do I really have to fight him?' Khan wondered as Ilman turned toward him, raised his palms, and bent his legs forward.
Khan's expertise with pretenses and lies was almost useless when his opponent was crazy. He wasn't even guilty of anything as far as Ilman knew. The Niqols had simply snapped due to his own paranoia.
Worries connected to the mission and Nitis' political situation surged in his mind as he saw Ilman charging ahead with both his arms stretched forward. It felt easier to follow his movements when staring directly at him, but that didn't ease the conflicting thoughts fighting inside Khan.
Part of Khan believed that he didn't have to touch Ilman at all. Hurting such a promising, wealthy, and famous Niqols could turn to ashes everything that he had obtained in the past weeks. The Global Army might even send him back to Ylaco if his presence on Nitis became a problem for the relationship between the two species.
On the other hand, the Niqols would probably justify Khan if he defeated Ilman without hurting him deeply. Those aliens didn't mind ranks and statuses too much. They might even compensate him for the issues connected to their unstable emotions.
Khan slipped under the double palm strike that was about to land on his chest. Mana exploded above his head as he slid under Ilman and grabbed his right ankle.
The world in Ilman's vision turned upside-down as Khan stood up and pulled his ankle. The Niqols slammed his face on the ground and tensed his body to prepare for a blow, but nothing arrived.
Khan's martial art focused on his legs, so he instinctively knew how to counter similar moves. Ilman's weakness was in his heavy reliance on palm strikes, which often left him defenseless after releasing the accumulated mana.
It was enough to aim at Ilman's legs to put him on the ground and gain the upper hand in the battle. Khan had only needed to see his attacks three times to understand that fatal weakness. Part of that came from his battle experience, but he couldn't deny that the Niqols' moves had flaws. Khan could imagine an eventual fusion with those fast moves and the palm strikes, but Ilman appeared unable to mix the two styles correctly.
Ilman's style felt like a high-risk, high-reward martial art similar to the Divine Reaper. A single attack could take out or kill an opponent since the speed gained with the sprints enhanced the palm strikes. However, it also left the Niqols exposed if the move failed to hit the target.
"Can we talk about this?" Khan almost begged Ilman while letting go of his ankle. "I know we have different values when it comes to this stuff, but fighting isn't the solution."
"This isn't about us!" Ilman shouted while rotating on his back to stand up and shoot toward Khan.
The Niqols was trying to attack Khan without establishing a proper foothold. The latter only had to sweep his legs to interrupt the move and make him fall on his back.
Khan wanted to say something else, but Ilman didn't remain still for even a second. The Niqols curled toward him and tried to grab his legs, but Khan promptly jumped backward.
Ilman didn't try to stand up at that time, so his range was far from great. Retreating by mere thirty centimeters put Khan outside of his reach and the area his mana could cover. Yet, Ilman managed to surprise him.
Khan had used the previous attacks to evaluate what Ilman's palm strikes could do. Still, it turned out that he had underestimated the Niqols' ability in the manipulation field.
The mana that shot out of Ilman's palms when he stretched his arms and sat on the ground didn't take the shape of violent clouds. Instead, it transformed into two beam-like attacks that took Khan by surprise and hit both his shins.
Khan almost fell on his knees. His legs felt weak even if no injuries appeared on his skin. The beams of mana had torn his robe, but the outsides of his shins seemed to be intact. Still, the sense of weakness that filled those spots almost cut his connection with his ankles and warned him that something inside had broken.
Khan promptly jumped backward again before forcefully slamming his feet on the ground. He performed a technique that made mana flow downward and created a deep hole among the short dark grass during the impact.
Pain arrived at that point. The mana that flowed through his legs and came out of his soles described his injuries' nature. His shinbones were fine, but his muscles weren't as reactive as he wished. They also felt sore and weak.
It seemed that Ilman's last attack had lost a lot of destructiveness to obtain its ranged properties. The azure beams had been enough to hurt Khan, but they didn't inflict much damage. He felt able to express most of his power even after that blow, but he firmly believed that fighting before suppressing the internal injuries would only worsen his condition.
It became evident that Khan couldn't continue dodging. It turned out that he didn't know enough about Ilman's power to make that approach doable, but he still hesitated to fight back properly. Luckily for him, he had finally started to gain an idea of how the Niqols' crazy mind worked.
"Is your idea of Miss Liiza so poor?" Khan asked in a chilling voice as he wore a disappointed expression.
Ilman was using those seconds to get back on his feet, but the sudden comment made him stop his tracks. His beliefs had always been firm due to the intense love that backed them. However, something in Khan's statement made him hesitate.
"Don't you dare to offend her!" Ilman eventually shouted as anger filled his mind.
The Niqols charged forward again, but the world in his vision began to rotate before he could reach his target. Ilman couldn't understand what had happened, but he found himself staring at the dark sky when his eyes managed to focus.
A faint pressure appeared on his chest. Ilman suddenly saw that Khan had disappeared from the spot on his initial path and had reappeared next to him. Khan was pressing the Niqols on the ground with his foot, but he didn't apply too much strength. He preferred to talk now.
"You are offending her," Khan continued in his chilling voice. "I don't know Miss Liiza at all, but yesterday's matters have proven that she isn't weak. You are the only one who thinks that she needs protection."
Lies fused with truths during Khan's statements, but Ilman's found his tone heavier to endure than his words. The Niqols generally were quite sensitive to feelings, and Ilman could almost see past the masks that Khan was wearing to hide his real intentions.
Khan was choosing his words carefully, but he wasn't using only lies. His disappointment was fake, but the coldness in his voice was real. He pretended not to know Liiza, but everything he said about her was true.
"I'm doing this for her!" Ilman complained while lifting his palms to attack the leg pressed on his chest.
Khan's leg disappeared before the arrival of the palm strikes, and a force suddenly landed on Ilman's side. The Niqols slid over the ground and rotated in on himself until he managed to stop his body. He even tried to stand up to attack, but Khan's sharp words arrived before he could muster his strength.
"Did she ask for it?" Khan asked. "I thought Niqols strived for freedom, but your feelings try to remove it. Is that your idea of love?"
Ilman's eyes widened, and the mana that he had accumulated in his hands dispersed as his concentration crumbled. His idea of love was immature, but he had always believed that such intense feelings couldn't be wrong, especially since his peers seemed to admire them.
Khan showed him a different perspective, a point of view that the Niqols around Ilman wouldn't describe even if they could consider it. Ilman's social network it impossible for him to doubt his beliefs, but Khan took care of the matter that day.
"How can you know how Niqols feel?" Ilman responded, but his question only made Khan's voice grow colder.
"I've learnt a bit about Miss Liiza's situation during my stay here," Khan revealed. "I've also learnt a bit about you. Did you think that you could win her over through perseverance? Also, how can you think that the Niqols' methods would work on her after what she went through?"
Ilman was mostly trying to reject Khan's words, but the last comment ended up making a lot of sense. Even a foreigner could understand Liiza's detachment from the Niqols' species. It was only normal for her to hate potentially toxic behaviors connected to the iconic intense emotions.
"My peers appreciate them!" Ilman shouted in a desperate attempt to remain on the right side of the argument. "I embody what a Niqols should be!"
"But you don't want the others, right?" Khan asked as his voice gained some warmth. "I understand that Niqols and humans are different, but we have limits to how insistent we can be, especially after clear refusals. Maybe you should work a bit on yourself or give up on Miss Liiza."
"Do humans give up so easily?" Ilman asked while wearing a stupefied expression.
"I wouldn't say easily," Khan pretended to think about the topic for a bit before continuing. "I guess we respect boundaries better than Niqols. Your feelings seem incredible when everything goes well, but they can turn into something pretty awful when it doesn't."
Khan decided to inflict the deadly blow at that point. He cleared his throat while removing all the coldness from his voice and trying to appear as if he wanted to teach something to the Niqols. "Look at where your love led you. You have decided to attack someone who has only done his best to ease Miss Liiza's grief. You didn't only break the academy's rules and made things incredibly difficult for me. You have actually tried to reduce the potential happiness of your loved one."
Ilman felt as if his world was falling apart. Everything Khan had said was correct. He only had to look at the matter from outside his delusions to understand that.
The Niqols turned toward George, and the latter nodded when he saw Khan glaring at him in the distance. Ilman didn't know what to think anymore after that last confirmation. He felt as if he had wasted the last years of his life.
"Look, I understand jealousy," Khan eventually said in a relaxed tone, "But I was only talking to her after spending an entire morning fighting leeches under the surface. Isn't that normal? Also, did you plan to lock Miss Liiza up in a cave if she ever accepted dating you? You can't just avoid others from interacting with her."
The destruction of Ilman's beliefs only quickened as Khan continued to throw words at him. The Niqols often considered humans cynical, but they could make reasonable points during a conversation, and Ilman tasted that first-hand. Still, that new perspective gave him something that he had slowly started to recover during the last years. It showed him that hope existed.
"Thank you, Khan," Ilman said after standing up and performing a bow. "I thought I had hit a wall with Liiza, but you showed me that I could do much more. Your friends aren't wrong about you. You are really good with women."
Khan suppressed the desire to glare at George. The whole problem was his fault, and the boy seemed to understand that since he diverted his gaze and pretended to be ignorant about the situation.
"I don't know exactly how it works here," Khan responded after performing a bow, "But we can forget about this matter if you want. I don't want problems with the professors, and being the reason behind messes can ruin my position on Nitis. Let's pretend that nothing has happened, okay?"
"Nonsense!" Ilman shouted, leaving both Khan and George speechless. "We must follow the rules! I'll see the professors immediately and report everything!"
Khan wanted to say something, but Ilman quickly turned and shot toward the forest. His speed had increased now that anger didn't cloud his mind anymore. He seemed able to express his real power with his newfound calm.
Khan saw that he would struggle to catch up with him. Nevertheless, he tried to shoot after Ilman anyway, but a sharp wave of pain spread from his shins when he bent his legs. The Niqols had disappeared among the trees by the time Khan managed to focus on his surroundings again.
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Author's notes: 2-3 hours for the second chapter.