“Speaking of training with Eryk, how has your relationship with that young man progressed? Have you managed to seduce him yet?” her dad suddenly asked a question that caused fire to burn her cheeks.
“T-that’s not something you should ask a girl!” Fay shouted at the man.
Her father laughed at her, which just caused her to feel even more embarrassed. Did this man have no tact?! She’d never felt this humiliated before in her entire life!
“Still, though…” Her dad settled down and glanced back at the arena and, more specifically, at the two figures standing several meters away from each other. “It’s odd.”
Having calmed down, Fay frowned at her dad in confusion. “What is odd?”
“That young man you are so fond of.” Her father’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not much of a Spiritualist these days, but I at least have the experience to recognize when someone else has seen combat. The eyes of that young man tell me that he has experienced a lot of battles and shed much blood in his life. I wonder just what sort of life he’s lived up to now?”
Fay glanced at the young man her heart yearned for, reached up, and slowly clutched her chest.
Down in the arena, Albert and Eryk continued their standoff.
* * *
I watched as the frown on Albert’s face grew increasingly dense, not letting a single emotion show on my face. It was hard. Part of me wanted to smile. I could already tell this man was losing confidence because he couldn’t see through me, couldn’t estimate my strength the way I could his.
This standoff was pointless.
“Are you not going to attack?” I asked softly.
“It would be foolish of me to attack you when I am not certain of my victory,” Albert said, clutching the sword in his hand—his hand that was shaking, I might add.
I spread my arms wide. “You would say that now, after having met me in this arena for the sake of incriminating me with the crime of harming two nobles? Were you not the one who challenged me? What use is there in challenging me to an Honor Duel if all you are going to do is stand around? Shall we remain standing like this in perpetuity?”
Albert frowned as his grip on the broadsword tightened. He knew he couldn’t afford to not fight me, yet he also couldn’t see through my strength. For a Spiritualist, not being able to see the strength of your opponent was a dangerous thing. It meant there was a good chance that your opponent was stronger than you.
I waited patiently as the man’s eyes finally hardened, showing a determined gleam that made me drop my hands. Albert shifted his feet, and then blasted off the ground, racing toward me at a quick trot. Given that he used no Spiritual Power, he actually moved quite fast.
It was still too slow.
Albert’s first attack was a downward hack. He raised his broadsword above his head and sliced it down as though to cut me in twain. I stepped to the side and turned my body, facing the sword as it fell through the place where I’d been standing. My eyes narrowed as I timed my next move. I pushed my finger against the blade’s flat side, merely touching it and applying pressure as I took another step back. My actions knocked Albert off balance and caused him to stumble.
I could have attacked him then, but I didn’t. I hung back and waited for him to recover.
Albert turned around and glared at me, his face marred with an intense frown and an embarrassed blush. It was hard to tell if he was displeased or frustrated. I finally allowed myself to smile and beckoned him over with my hand.
The next attack that came at me was a horizontal slice. If it hit, I didn’t doubt that a normal person’s stomach would have been split open, but I moved back a single step and kicked the flat of his blade with my boot. A loud clang rang out across the Colosseum as the sword was knocked high into the air. Albert managed to keep a hold of his sword, but it cost him dearly. His entire torso was completely exposed. If I wanted to, I could have shoved my fist through his chest.
I didn’t. Once more, I backed off and allowed the man to recover.
“You are toying with me.” Albert frowned at me.
I merely smiled. “How can you say that when you have yet to use a single Spiritual Technique? As a member of the Himmel Family and a former graduate of the Spiritualist Academy, I know you must have at least several.” The smile left my face as I narrowed my eyes. “I want you to show me those techniques of yours so I can break them. I will defeat everything you throw at me. That way no one will be able to claim I cheated.”
I could tell from the look in Albert’s eyes that he understood my intent, which made this all the more difficult for him. If he did use his Spiritual Techniques on me and I did break them, it would cause his family to lose a lot of face among the other nobles. Their reputation would plummet.
“Very well.” He let out a deep breath and shifted his stance. A bright red aura erupted from his body. “I’ll show you my Spiritual Techniques. However, do not blame me if you wind up getting seriously injured. You asked for this.”
“Don’t worry.” I gave him a smile brimming with confidence. “I won’t.”
Albert shuffled his feet along the ground, the smooth dirt shifting beneath him as he bent his knees. He adopted a stance where his dominant foot was placed in front. He held his broadsword near his face. The blade was pointed straight up as though to pierce the sky. With his gleaming armor reflecting the sun’s glare, he looked very much like a heroic knight doing battle against a Demon Beast.
The imagery made me snort.
Two seconds passed before Albert moved. He took two steps forward, spun around, and swung his blade. The swing started from his right shoulder and moved across his body until the sword was pointed toward the ground near his left hip. A powerful wave of fire burst out from the swing, shaped like a crescent wave as it flew toward me. However, he didn’t stop there. Spinning around once more, Albert thrust out his sword and released a strained yell. More fire exploded from the tip, taking the shape of an arrow as it slammed into the crescent wave, increasing both the speed it moved at and its power.
I could feel the heat from where I stood, feel the sweat that broke out on my skin, but I wasn’t bothered by it. Honestly speaking, the Endless Desert was much hotter than this.
Still wearing a calm smile, I raised my left hand above my head. I gently released just a tiny trickle of Spiritual Power into my hand. A thin blade of water formed along my raised hand, completely invisible to the naked eye. I doubted there was anyone present who could see it. As the giant crescent wave came closer, I took a single step forward and swung my arm down.
Albert’s attack was sliced in two.
* * *
“What was that?! What just happened?!” Geirolf shouted in shock as he stood up in his seat. Kari couldn’t really blame him. Even though she had expressed confidence in Eryk’s abilities, she could not help but feel shocked by what she had just witnessed.
Down below, the fire technique that had been blazing toward Eryk was flying off in two separate directions after having been split in two by Eryk’s hand. The two halves eventually sputtered out as they ran out of power. No massive explosion happened. They just disappeared into thin air like wisps of smoke, typical of a C-rank Spiritual Fire Technique after it ran out of Spiritual Power.
“He just… split Albert’s Spiritual Technique in half like it was nothing,” Mykkel murmured, his eyes wide as he stared at the arena floor.
“Ho… that was really something.” Rainer stroked his faint beard as he studied Eryk with keen eyes. “I am impressed. Even I cannot tell how he cut that Spiritual Fire Technique in two.” He glanced at Kari’s blood father. “What about you? Could you figure out what happened?”
Valence stared into the arena for a moment longer, his eyes hard, and then shook his head. “No. I also could not tell what just happened.”
“It was water.”
“Mother?” Kari glanced at her mother, who had locked her eyes onto the young man down below. Her face was impassive. Kari couldn’t fig
ure out what this woman was thinking.
“Water?” Valence, Rainer, Geirolf, Mykkel, and Earland all glanced at the empress as well.
“Are you saying he used a Spiritual Water Technique to cut the flame in half?” asked Valence. “Without using any forms or movement?”
“That I am not certain of.” Finally, a small crack appeared in her mother’s calm mask. Kari was shocked to see the uncertainty on her mother’s face. “He did not channel any Spiritual Power through the use of forms and movement like a Spiritualist would, so I cannot determine if he used an actual technique or not. However, I can say with certainty that when he raised his hand, a nearly invisible sword made of water appeared around it.”
“A water blade?” Rainer muttered in a soft voice as he looked from the empress to the arena. “So he has an affinity for the water element then?”
“It seems that way.” Her mother confirmed with a shrug. She then glanced at Kari. “This young man of yours is most interesting. I wonder what other secrets he has hidden up his sleeves?”
When Kari saw the smile on her mother’s face, she could not think of anything to say, so she focused back on the arena and tried to pretend her face didn’t feel like it had been struck by a fire technique when her mother called Eryk “her man.”
She honestly liked the sound of that.
* * *
I let my hand fall back to my side after cutting the Spiritual Fire Technique in two. My expression was carefully blank as I looked at my opponent. I was trying not to smile. Albert was staring at me with shock clear on his face, his eyes rapidly blinking as if he was trying to process what he’d just witnessed.
“Is that all you have?” I asked, modulating my voice to make it sound like I was disappointed.
Albert frowned, but then he took a step forward, retracted his sword until the pommel was near his torso, and thrust it out. Fire exploded from the tip and shot forward like an arrow. It wasn’t as hot as the previous attack, but it moved much faster.
I shuffled my feet against the ground and bent my knees. I raised my left hand as though to grab the technique. Meanwhile, I tucked my right hand into my torso and clenched it into a fist. I channeled a very small amount of water toward my fist, surrounding it with a thin layer that was almost completely invisible. As the fire arrow sped toward me, I took a deep breath…
“HA!”
… And then expelled the oxygen in my lungs, twisted my torso, and punched the arrow with my right fist. My fist slammed into the fire arrow, which exploded on contact. Steam hissed as some of the water on my hand evaporated. It wasn’t much, though. What’s more, the fire arrow was completely obliterated. Small wisps of fire scattered everywhere before disappearing.
“Hmm…”
I retracted my hand and stared at it. There was a small black mark where the fire arrow had struck, showing that my control over my Spiritual Power still wasn’t as good as it could be. I would have to rectify that.
Albert’s expression had finally turned ugly. He raced toward me. As he came close, he swung his sword in a move that would have cut me open from my left hip to my right shoulder had I not taken several steps back. Then he spun on the balls of his feet and attacked from the opposite direction. The blade caught fire as he did. Waves of flame spewed from the blade with every attack he sent my way, forcing me to move back even further.
As I backpedaled to gain some distance, Albert chased after me, constantly moving around and swinging his blade, which released numerous flames that sought to burn my flesh. I didn’t know what this Spiritual Technique of his was called. I could only tell that it was a C-rank technique like the last two. However, it seemed to rely on constantly moving the sword and his body to create flames and make them surround the sword, which increased his attack power and caused anyone fighting to become sluggish from the heat.
This must have been his ultimate technique. His trump card. His ace in the hole.
Learning Spiritual Techniques was difficult, requiring years of practice to truly master. It required constantly practicing the forms and movements needed to direct the flow of Spiritual Power. If even one wrong move was made, the Spiritual Power would reverse course and cause irreparable damage to the Spiritual Pathways. Because of the difficulty when it came to learning Spiritual Techniques, most people only learned two or three at the most, though some of the more talented Spiritualists learned as many as ten or twenty.
Of course, the really talented Spiritualists were those who had reached the Third State of Spiritualism, and Spiritual Techniques became useless by that point.
That Albert already knew three Spiritual Techniques was a testament to his talent. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he already knew enough techniques that the elders of his clan were probably green with envy. However, for all his talent, I still found him lacking.
At twenty years of age, Kari had already completely mastered four different Spiritual Techniques, while this man hadn’t even scratched the surface of the techniques he had learned.
Albert continued to attack me, swinging his sword, shuffling his feet. He used primarily wide arcs when swinging. A diagonal slash from above or below. A horizontal cutting attack toward my stomach. Each attack was wide and therefore easy to spot and avoid, though the heat from the flames would have made things difficult for any normal Spiritualist.
“Ha… ha...”
I stared at Albert as he glared at me through half-lidded eyes, chest and shoulders heaving, sweat drenching his clothes.
“Are you giving up?” I asked.
“I refuse,” Albert said. “Haaaaaaaaa!!!”
Albert exploded with Spiritual Power as a bright red flame encased his body. His Spiritual Aura contained a heat so intense that the air around him distorted, but he wasn’t finished. Another scream. This time, the Spiritual Aura he released was sucked back into his body. A vibrant red glow covered his skin like a second layer of flesh.
So he had reached the Second State of Spiritualism.
I wasn’t surprised.
With another shout, Albert raced toward me and attacked. This time when I channeled water into my hand, I made sure to properly control my Spiritual Power. I hardened the water coating my hand as I raised it above my head. Albert had swung his sword down in an overhead chop. The fire wafting from his sword was bright red mixed with yellow.
I caught his sword in my hand.
The flames hissed and sputtered out.
* * *
“Holy—he just caught Albert’s sword!” Geirolf exclaimed in shock.
“That he did.” Mykkel sounded much calmer than his younger brother, but his eyes had grown incredibly wide. Earland still hadn’t said anything, but his eyes were narrowed as he stared at the distant figure of Eryk.
“This boy is very strong,” Valence said in a grave voice. “Even I would not dare to actually catch a sword when it’s covered in flames like that.”
Rainer glanced at him. “Don’t you mean you couldn’t catch a sword period? I’m pretty sure if you tried to catch a sword, your hand would at least get cut, if not outright sliced off.” Rainer turned back toward the arena. “That said, I do wonder how he managed to catch the sword and not have it at least slice his palm open.”
Everyone in the viewing booth looked at the leader of their family, especially Kari, who could not help but express interest in what her mother had to say.
The empress stared down at the arena floor as Eryk held the blade in his hand like it was nothing. The fire had long since sputtered out. Now he was just keeping it from moving. Meanwhile, Albert’s expression had turned a combination of pale and red as he struggled to pry his sword free from Eryk’s grip.
“It was water again.” Kari’s mother narrowed her eyes in thought. “He encased his hand in a thin but durable layer of water that protected him from both the flames and the sword’s sharp edge.” Her eyes narrowed further. “No… it looks like his skin is also incredibly durable. I suspect a sword made fro
m steel might not be able to cut him even if he wasn’t using the water element.”
Kari looked at the shocked expressions of her family members after hearing the empress’s analysis. She kind of wanted to giggle when she saw the bemused looks they wore. At the same time, Kari was also experiencing that same disbelief. When she had suggested this Honor Duel, she never imagined it would turn out like this.
“What really makes me curious is that he’s still not using any Spiritual Techniques,” her mother continued speaking. “It is like he can directly manipulate the elements without having to rely on channeling his Spiritual Power through movements. I wonder if that means he has reached the Third State of Spiritualism.” While Geirolf made several choking noises and her two husbands stared at her in shock, the empress suddenly let a smile blossom on her face. “This young man is even more interesting than I could have imagined.”
* * *
I stared into Albert’s pale face as he struggled to remove his sword from my grip. Sweat poured down his face, neck, and shoulders. Using Spiritual Perception, I could sense that he’d used up almost all of his Spiritual Power with that last technique. The red layer of Spiritual Power, an indication that he had entered the Second State of Spiritualism, had vanished. He no longer had anything left to fight with.
That meant it was time to end this.
Clenching my hand, I shattered the blade in my grip. The broken pieces clattered to the ground. Albert’s already pale face became even worse as he looked at the remains of his sword. His eyes flickered from the shattered pieces of his blade, and then he glanced at the hilt before, finally, he turned his gaze on me.
I smiled at him.
Albert stumbled several steps back. His eyes widened with fear. Given what Kari had told me about this man, it was likely that he had never suffered such a humiliating defeat before now.
“This match is over,” I said in a cold voice. “Concede.”
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