I walked back into the waiting area just as the second match began. Arg started by surrounded himself with rows and rows of tall spikes rising up from the ground, as Misen simply stood still, watching with an amusing look on his face.
"Where'd you run off to in such a hurry? Were you worried about your girlfriend?" Teased Vi, walking up next to me.
"I...just went to the bathroom. And I don't have a girlfriend, so I'm not sure what you mean," I replied nonchalantly, feigning ignorance.
I wasn't about to let my next opponent get under my skin minutes before our fight.
Back to the current fight, Arg was raising spikes from the crowd towards Misen, who effortlessly dodged them with Lightning Boost. He definitely wasn't using his full speed, but he was still avoiding the spikes with ease. He then jumped back a few paces, out of Arg's range, and began forming and compressing lightning between his hands.
He was a lot faster at gathering and charging up a lightning blast than I was. That looked like it was as powerful as the Lightning Incineration Canon I'd used down in the Goblin maze, but he had charged it up much, much quicker than I'd been able to.
And yeah, from now on, I'm going to use the names I come up with for my lightning attacks, at least in my head. It was easier to refer to them like that anyway, so screw it.
Anyway, he fired the blast in Arg's direction, disintegrating a path through the rows of spikes, and blasted through the center, as Arg was teleported out of the barrier.
"The winner is...third year student, Misen Ragiu!"
Alright, then. My turn.
"I'll race you to the arena!" Challenged Vi, dashing out before I could respond.
"...no thanks, you go on ahead," I mumbled, walking after her at my own pace.
Misen walked past me, heading back to the waiting area as he had qualified for the semi-final round. He didn't say anything, but had a smirk on his face as he passed me.
I'll wipe that smirk off after I win this match and make it to the next round. Well, that was going to be easier said than done though. I stepped into the arena and headed for the middle, as the barrier activated around me.
"Hehe, I'm feeling all giddy and pumped up! You ready to do this?" She greeted me, while stretching enthusiastically.
"Tone it down a bit, you're awfully pumped up about a match that you're going to lose," I replied smugly.
"Heh...we'll see about that."
"Ready...FIGHT!"
I immediately activated Lightning Boost at full power and drew my sword, streaming lightning through it, as she bent her knees and leaned forward. She then jumped at full force towards me, unfurling that lethal kick right from the get-go yet again.
Man, even with my eyes enhanced by Lightning Boost and everything else looking to be moving in slow motion, she looked like she was flying at me at a rapid pace. I ducked backwards to avoid the kick, as she shot past me and landed her kick against the barrier wall. Using the same opening move for three matches in a row wasn't going to work with me as her opponent.
Still, when she shot past me, I could feel the intense momentum of her attack, it wouldn't have been pretty if that had connected.
Alright, my move.
I raced towards her at x2 speed, as she stomped down on the ground as hard as she could, the ground erupting out from the impact point, the flying debris slowing down my advance. She didn't want to get into a close range combat fight with me.
In terms of speed, only Propulsion can match Lightning Boost, though there were two other techniques that could narrow the speed gap, the Earth Magic technique known as Slide, which Tuck Lehosa had displayed during the mock tournament, and the Water Magic technique known as Skate, a subset skill of Ice Magic, which Fuo Wesroh had used during this tournament.
Fire Magic was the only one that didn't have any speed boosting techniques.
The main difference between Lightning Boost and the other three speed enhancing techniques was that Lightning Boost speeds you up internally, meaning that it wasn't just your speed, your senses were equally increased.
But the other techniques were different, they sped up their users externally, meaning that only their raw speed was increasing, their reaction time and general attack speed would stay the same.
Persia could fight against me in close combat because her natural reaction time and agility were practically superhuman thanks to her panther Anima, and she used Propulsion not just to boost her movement speed, but also her attack speed, for example she often speeds up her punches by blasting wind from her elbow to drive her fist forward faster.
But the Earth and Water Magic speed boost techniques were different, they could certainly help you move around faster and you could use them to build momentum, but if you get locked in a close range fight, they were pretty much useless unless you're trying to run away.
As I jumped back to avoid the debris flying out from Vi's ground stomp, she bounded across, and with just a few leaps, reached the other end of the arena.
Okay, so she was clearly trying to avoid a close range fight.
Her legs were pretty incredible, she could jump across about five meters with a single normal leap, it's no wonder her full force kicks generated so much power.
Could she not use Slide? Or maybe her natural leaps were actually faster than using Slide?
Come to think of it, she was yet to use any of her Elemental Magic in this tournament. For now, I'll keep trying to get in close. I dashed towards her and flung a few throwing knives and poison needles at her right, and then charged towards her left with my sword raised. She stomped the ground and knocked up a large chunk of earth, before kicking it towards my knives and needles, knocking them away.
As I neared and slashed at her, she quickly bent her knees and jumped up, my blade grazing her just above her ankle. As she reached the peak of her jump, she raised her foot as high as she could, her muscles straining. I jumped backwards as she dropped back down and brought down her foot as hard as she could, the ground breaking apart upon contact.
I shot forward again, evading the flying debris and flinging a handful of knives at her. Some of the rising debris around her stopped and gathered in front of her, forming a small earth shield that my knives ricocheted off.
She then sprung backwards before I could reach her. Okay, those long jumps across and crazy destructive kicks were starting to get annoying.
Ever time I got close, she either jumped a good ten plus meters away or kicked the ground so hard that it broke apart and scattered everywhere, forcing me to dodge and slow down.
And I had dodged her full power kick without a problem, so this fight would soon reach a standstill if neither of us did something different. And she'd finally used some Earth Magic, but...that couldn't be all that she was capable of, right?
"You look a bit confused. If you're expecting me to use some super advanced level of Earth Magic, then I hate to disappoint you, but the only form of earth magic I can use is Earth Levitation, and I can only levitate a couple of pounds of earth in one go," She explained sheepishly.
She...didn't seem to be lying.
"Heh...so you're considered the fifth strongest person in the Academy based almost solely on your raw, physical strength? Incredible. Well then...show me what you got!"
Alright, I had enhanced myself physically, now it was time to enhance myself mentally.
...Bloodlust Mode.
I charged towards her as my psyche was immersed in cold, calculating calmness. She kicked a couple of chunks of earth towards me and jumped away again, extending the distance between us further.
I dodged past the flying rocks and continued following her, flinging needles and throwing knives at her, as she continued to jump away while kicking pieces of the broken ground at me. This was turning into an annoying battle of attrition, and my throwing weapons would run out soon at this rate.
Let's change things up, shall we?
An idea hit me as I watched her effortlessly pull off another long leap across the arena. I had never tried this before, but right now...I felt like I could pull it off.
I bent my knees and strained my muscles as hard as I could, and then just for an instant, stopped using Lightning Boost on my entire body and focused it only into my legs and eyes. I felt like my legs were about to explode, I had shifted all the lightning running through my torso and arms into my legs, for a boost of x4. I couldn't control something like this for long, but if it was just for an instant, for one simple movement...I can do this.
Focus...keep the flow consistent.
Now!
I jumped towards her as hard as I could, before re-streaming the lightning in my legs through my whole body again, and wrapped my sword in lightning, extending it by a few inches.
In the blink of an eye, I was just a few inches in front of her, a look of shock beginning to appear on her face. That had been a lot more effective than I'd imagined, though I had definitely damaged a lot of the muscles in my legs.
Now, then.
She began to pivot on her left foot to evade the downward swing of my lightning enhanced sword, however couldn't avoid getting slashed across her collarbone to her chest. I drew a couple of poison needles with my free hand and began to drive them towards her neck, but that's when I saw her right leg coming up towards me rapidly.
Damn it...she hadn't just pivoted to dodge, but also to charge up a kick. Before my needles could reach her, her kick slammed into my midsection, sending me straight up, as I crashed into the ceiling of the barrier, causing a few cracks to spread out from the impact point.
My spine was shattered and my stomach was smashed in.
If I fell back down now, I wouldn't have enough time to heal this much damage or be able defend myself.
Wait, that's it...
I stuck my sword into one of the cracks in the barrier ceiling and angled it so that it wouldn't slip out.
Alright, now I need to hold on up here and heal myself as fast as possible.
I'll repair my spine and legs first, and then focus on my stomach and the other abdominal organs that had gotten damaged. I focused my Healing Factor as hard as I could, pouring Mana and stamina into it to speed it up as much as possible. I simultaneously began charging up a lightning blast in my left hand.
As I rapidly healed my injuries, I looked down to see how my opponent was reacting to this. She looked uncertain, not sure what to do. Good, that probably means that she wasn't capable of jumping high enough to reach me on the ceiling of this barrier.
She also looked a bit distressed and guilty.
Well, considering that a single kick was usually enough to teleport her opponents out of the barrier, she probably wasn't used to causing this much damage to a person.
Alright, my legs were healed and my spine was almost done too. I began to heal my smashed-in abdomen, when I heard my sword creaking. I looked up to see the barrier trying to forcibly repair itself, with my sword acting as an obstacle.
Okay, this was bad.
The blade then cracked, before snapping in half. No matter, I had healed enough.
As I began to fall back down, I poured more and more Mana into the lightning I was charging in my left hand, compressing it into the middle of my palm. Vi began to spring away when I neared the ground, as I unleashed all the compressed lightning built up in my palm towards her.
The blast drilled into the ground as she narrowly evaded getting fully caught up in it, unable to avoid her left foot getting seared. A deep hole had appeared in the ground where my blast had struck. I had slightly broken one of my legs again when I dropped back down, and my midsection was still pretty badly damaged, but I ignored the pain and shot towards her.
Now's my chance.
I neared her and slashed at her throat with my broken blade, as she used her Earth Levitation to bring up some rocks to ricochet my strike away. She wasn't jumping away, not with that scorched foot. In fact, she wasn't even putting much weight on it.
I drew out a throwing knife and flung it at her heart, she blocked it with the back of her hand, her expression twisting with pain, before she gave in and stomped her electrified foot down, forcing me to defend myself from the flying debris, and then she jumped away from me, wincing in pain as her injured left leg shuddered, and she pulled out the knife wedged in her hand.
As I dashed towards her, she kicked the broken ground chunks at me and jumped away, repeating it as I kept evading her attacks and charging at her. This might have worked before, but how long could she keep it up with that injured foot?
Her jumps had definitely weakened a bit.
As she kicked an especially large chunk of earth towards me, I dodged around it and was about to continue heading towards her, when she suddenly appeared in front of me.
Damn it, she had blinded me for an instant with that large piece of earth and then shot forward to reach me as soon as I slipped past it and catch me off guard. She then threw a punch towards my face, I shifted away from it, but still got clipped across the side of my head, briefly disorienting me. Guess she could do more than just kick.
I began to swing my broken sword at her, but before I could do so, I saw her foot coming barreling up towards my chest. I moved away to the left as much as I could, but not enough, as her kick slammed into my right arm along the middle of my bicep. The next thing I knew, my right arm had been blown off from just below my shoulder, along with my sword clenched in my fist.
And then, just for an instant, she looked taken aback by the stream of blood pouring out from my stump, and dropped her guard for a fraction of a second as she stumbled in shock.
That was all I needed.
I drew out a couple of needles from my waist belt and drove them towards her neck, as she re-oriented herself and began driving up a kick with her burnt foot towards the right side of my head.
This time, my attack will reach first.
The tips of my poison needles touched her skin just as I felt the momentum of her kick approaching my head. A split second later, she vanished from in front of me before the needles could pierce her, re-appearing outside the barrier.
Right before she got teleported, her foot had begun to touch my face. The result of that miniscule impact was that my skull had slightly cracked on the right side, my ear was smashed in, and my eardrum had exploded.
Had my needles reached her even a microsecond later, I would have lost.
"The, uh, winner is...first year student, Kuro Black!"
As the crowd began cheering, I felt a wave of dizziness spread through the right side of my head, as my Bloodlust Mode dissipated. My Mana was near empty, and I was running low on stamina too.
Healing myself right now wasn't going to be easy.
I walked over to my severed arm and picked it up. The part of my arm that her kick had directly connected against had been blown to pieces, but my elbow and everything below it were intact. Not ideal, but it beats having to grow back the entire arm.
I finally closed up my stomach wound, and grew out part of my arm, before re-attaching the rest of it. Injuries above my neck are slower to heal, and I did not have the energy to do so anyway. I should head to the infirmary. I felt myself begin to stumble as I took a few steps forward, my vision blurring.
Crap, I was totally out of stamina.
Before I could hit the ground, I landed against something soft. Wait, not something...was that a someone?
"Need a hand? Looking at you, it's hard to tell which of us won this match."
"Not that I don't appreciate you catching me before I face-planted into the ground, but can you really support someone else's weight with that fried foot of yours?" I inquired, as she began walking towards the infirmary with me leaning on her shoulder.
"First of all, don't word it so that it sounds like my foot is edible. And second of all, I can handle this much, you're not that heavy," She replied, waving away the instructors as we left the arena.
"Eh, whatever. I'm too tired to argue."
I noticed the Headmaster throwing a intrigued glance at my way, but I couldn't bring myself to care right now.
"You know, I have to say, I've never fought an opponent like you before. Your fighting skills, reaction speed, instincts and Elemental Magic control were impressive on their own, but you also think unconventionally and outside the box really well. Literally. I mean when you poked your sword outside the box to give yourself more time to heal, that was so creative."
"Yeah well, I haven't ever fought an opponent like you either. Your jumps and kicks were pretty annoying, both your attacks and evasive maneuvers were tough to keep up with. What stands out the most is that despite the fact that you gave me one of the worst beatings I've ever had, I don't really feel any animosity towards you. Heh, probably because I won in the end," I smirked weakly.
"Yeah, you won fair and square, though you have to admit it was pretty close. I never thought anyone could actually survive taking the full force of my kicks, and I've never landed kicks like that on another person before. In duels I've had with other students, a barrier like this one is generally used, and if they aren't, I make sure to stop short before my kicks connect."
Huh, wow...she was the total opposite of a sore loser.
"Yeah, I could tell that you weren't used to it. Each time you landed a solid blow, you looked like you felt bad. When you kicked my arm off, you even dropped your guard for a sec. If it wasn't for that opening, I probably would have lost, both my Mana and stamina were all but gone at that point."
"You know, my kicks may have not been powerful enough to teleport you out of the barrier, but they still did a lot of damage. And yet, no matter how much damage you received, you never showed any signs of pain. Especially after that move where you increased your speed and jumped towards me in an instant. For the rest of the fight, you had a calm yet emotionless expression on your face, it gave me chills when you kept coming at me despite your injuries. Are you like, immune to pain or something?"
So, she had noticed the change in my demeanor when I entered Bloodlust Mode...I don't think she can sense it like Gela can though.
"No, I feel pain as much as anyone else. I'm just used to it, I guess."
"That's...oh, we're here! Sorry to talk your ear off on the way here."
"Not at all. Besides, my ear is already 'off' after that last kick, I've only been hearing you with my left ear during this conversation," I remarked.
"I, uh...I'm sorry! We may have both been fighting to win, but I still really damaged you a lot, and I know you can regenerate, but I'm still-!"
"Hey, chill out. I wasn't trying to make you feel bad or anything. And besides, it's not like we were fighting each other out of hate or because we're enemies or something, we just happened to be matched up against each other. So, no hard feelings or whatever," I interrupted, as she opened the door to the infirmary and helped me in.
Persia was still inside, now fast asleep. An instructor was sitting by the medicine shelves, she stood up and pulled out a few Spell Scrolls as she glanced at our injuries. I think she was the assistant instructor in charge of the Earth Magic during our Elemental Magic classes, I think her name was...Tear Tones. She was a tall woman who looked to be in about her mid-forties, with graying hair, square-shaped glasses, and a mole under her left eye.
She explained to us how to use the Spell Scrolls, and then left the room to go and get more, as she had given us the last few scrolls left in the infirmary. She'd handed three different types to us.
Let's see, I just need to run a bit of Mana into the scroll. As I did, I felt something flowing into me from the scroll, as my injuries began healing. It felt different to my Healing Factor, but it was pretty effective. My physical was restored, but it felt like my stamina had taken a small hit.
I then picked up the second and third types of healing Spell Scroll we'd been given. The first one temporarily sped up your Mana recovery time drastically, while the second would put me to sleep for about forty-five minutes and boost my stamina recovery drastically.
Apparently using these two scrolls too frequently would shorten your lifespan, so they were recommended to be used only occasionally and only when absolutely necessary. I activated the Mana recovery boost scroll and sat on one of the empty beds, as I felt my Mana circuits strain and expand.
"You know, besides your toasted foot, gashed hand and that cut on your chest...you're pretty much unscathed elsewhere," I commented, looking her up and down.
"They're still more or less the worst injuries I've gotten in a fight though. Hehe, the way you're scanning me from top to bottom...you checking me out? Like what you see?" She inquired jokingly, striking a teasing pose.
The spot where I'd slashed her chest was wide open, giving me a glimpse of her boobs. If I wasn't so exhausted, I would have probably given her a stuttering response.
"You do realize that when I slashed your chest during our fight, your top got cut too, and with the way you're posing right now, I can almost see everything. You should really equip yourself with more than just a slightly reinforced tank top," I replied dryly, with a slight smirk that shifted into a yawn as I activated the stamina recovery boost scroll.
"H-huh, wh-wha...!?"
As I watched her get flustered, I felt an immense drowsiness engulf my body and mind, before I unconsciously flopped down backwards onto the bed, my head hitting the pillow with a thud.
Wow, that scroll sure doesn't mess around.
My mind began to drift off as my eyelids drooped shut. This fight had certainly been a pretty intense one, a little rest was most welcome. While the teleportation safety net still left me feeling pretty blueballed, I couldn't deny the fact that...this victory had felt pretty sweet.
With that triumphant thought, I succumbed to the drowsiness that I was immersed in, falling deep asleep...
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