“Aaand we have a winner! Representative Ferlicia Ernand makes it to the second round after a spectacular victory against representative Askin Nodt! Onto our next fight. We have Representative Mia Marnt and her Echo Blast tyle representing ther Fellen branch. On the other hand, we have Representative Ana Mariane of the Hyulflum branch and her Belial Claw Style!”
The crowd cheered loudly as the two women walked into the arena, facing each other.
“Take your stances.” The referee instructed.
Mia took a balanced stance, however her hands were positioned oddly close to her face. Rui wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that.
He did, of course, recall some the bare basic information Fae had told him about her.
She wielded sound.
Rui wasn’t sure what to make of that. But he had grown used to that feeling now. He had already long accepted that basically anything and everything could become a Martial Art in this world, that’s just how things were.
Her opponent on the other hand was equally interesting. Fae and Kane didn’t know much about her, but they said her Martial Art had something to do with wind.
That’s right, wind. Rui had already given up on trying to understand.
Ana took a bizarre stance. She placed one foot ahead of the other and then placed her arms to her side with her palms facing the ground.
Rui shook his head. He genuinely had no idea what the fuck she was doing, but he assumed she did. He looked forward to seeing how both sides fought.
“Begin!” The supervisor commenced the fight.
Mia inhaled deeply, bring her hands to her mouth.
What came out of her mouth was not a shout.
But a roar.
Rui couldn’t see the attack, sound was invisible. But Primordial Instinct detected a small yet strong mass of kinetic energy.
His eyes flew wide open in shock!
She was shouting sound attacks!
Ana Mariane avoided the attack not by moving to the side or ducking.
No.
She leapt to the air, reaching a good height to avoid the attack.
Rui frowned. Being midair made escaping impossible, Mia would simply target her midair. She had blundered in his view.
And exactly that happened. Mia didn’t let go of the opportunity and sent more sound projectiles at her.
WHOOSH
Rui felt a flash of shock for the second time in ten seconds as Ana Mariane avoid the attack midair!
“Is she… stepping on air?!” Rui was flabbergasted as he saw her gaining altitude continuously as she continued her stepping motion.
Even Squire Kyrie frowned. “This shouldn’t be possible at the Apprentice Realm.”
“At the Apprentice Realm?” Rui turned, facing her in surprise. “What does that mean.”
“The technique she’s using is known as Sky Walking. It works by kicking air down hard enough to stay hovering. Essentially an air version of swimming, in a way. Martial Apprentices are too weak to do this however, only Martial Squires and above can use it. Which is why it’s impressive she’s able to.” Squire Dylon pitched in.
Rui’s eyes flew wide open. He glanced back at the incredible scene.
He was starting to get tired of being surprised over and over again in such a short timeframe. But the scene unfolding before his eyes was truly incredible.
Mia launched invisible sound bullets and Ana moved out of her aim ever so slightly before the attacks were launched.
It did not look like a battle between Martial Artists!
He focused on Mia first. From what he could tell, she was building an enormous amount of air and pressure and using that generate extremely intense sound waves focused in an incredibly small area. He figured she likely conditioned to a large degree to be able to convert the energy of her body to sound in that manner.
However, he recognized the potency of her offense. She was able to spam reasonably powerful attacks from quite range, giving her a huge range advantage over most Martial Apprentices.
Secondly, her attacks were invisible, it made countering them much harder than if they could be seen. This contributed to the formidability of her offense immensely.
Thirdly, her attacks were incredibly fast, they moved at the speed of sound!
After all, she was literally attacking with sound. This meant her offensive speed surpassed all martial Apprentices. Martial Apprentices could not break the sound barrier unless is specific exceptional circumstances.
Rui shook his head, with an impressed expression. Yet again, he was convinced that the representatives were truly worthy of their positions.
The same could be said for Ana Mariane. She danced around the air, avoiding the sound bullets incredibly well.
His curiosity was in full throttle and his sharp senses had already begun uncovering the secret of her ability.
“She’s using a breathing technique.” Rui murmured, as he glanced at her breathing motions.
The two Squires glanced at him.
“She’s using a breathing technique to momentarily create high-pressure and high-density air pockets and then steps on them.” He explained.
Breathing rapidly pushed air from one location to another and back and forth, this momentarily created high density/pressure zones of air. At extremely high density of air, it behaved more like liquid or a solid.
Rui strongly suspected that she was using her breathing and her dance-like motions to momentarily create high density air regions and then stepped on those high-density air regions like they were solid.
In this way, she was literally creating momentary steps of semi-solid air to move around in the sky.
And that wasn’t all!
WHOOSH
She kicked the air and a heavy blast of air flew down towards Mia
BANG!
It collided with the ground as Mia avoided it, launching her own attacks. Rui narrowed his eyes at that sight. She was using the same principle that she was Sky Walking with to launch attacks! She created high-pressure and high-density projectiles and batted them against her opponent.
What an incredibly novel way of fighting!
In the sky, she was extremely secure, after all, how would prople even hurt her if they could not touch her?