The noise sharply resonated with the surroundings.
Luon who was now dual wielding swords stood gallantly before Zythos. He was at a disadvantage in regards to time, power, and defensive strength. If nothing were to change than he was bound to lose this bout.
Unlike Luon who was struggling due to his circumstances, nothing was stopping Zythos from attacking Luon, yet he merely stood aside, carefully watching Luon’s moves.
‘What is he up to?’ thought Zythos who became wary. His opponent had surprised many people in each of his matches. To build a puzzling dungeon against Team Pride, easily decimating Team Diva, and outmaneuvering Team Delta C Plus.
Since Zythos was his classmate, he had seen all of their teams matches. And this move was yet another one of those moments causing the hairs of Zythos’ skin to stand.
From the crowds perspective the twirling of the blades looked like a shield, if the motion were several times faster, they would have thought of it as so.
Only with each revolution, there was a ringing sound caused by the very meager clash of the two blades. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were swords Luon’s actions reminded the crowd of two metal bats is hitting each other creating an irritating noise. How was it possible for Luon to make such a noise with the small impact of two blades touching and grazing each other?
As time progressed on the noise got louder, and an aura wrapped itself around Luon’s sword. If one were to look carefully, the swords had begun to show vibrations.
As the centrifugal force begun to build up an intimidating wave of pressure covered Zythos’ body. He instinctively felt fear of Luon as of this moment.
As Zythos’ body shook, his fear had enlightened him momentarily. He thought, ‘Afraid? Me? My armor is invincible! How could I possibly be afraid? And why should I watch and let him do as he pleases? His moves are all just gibberish! I’ve never seen anything like that before; this must be something he’s doing to delay the progression of the match by toying with me mentally. So that must mean he must be relying on his buddy Bendan to finish off my teammate. If that’s the case, then I have to end him now!’
Zythos manages to muster up a war cry as bellowed arrogantly, “Luon, let’s see if your pathetic resistance can even amuse me! Here I come!”.
Zythos dashed towards Luon while using his NG-Arms to fuel his momentum. Within moments he was within arms reach of Luon who had turned sideways with one of the blades cleaving towards him from below.
Zythos scoffed at the move and merely used his hand which is coated in armor to repel it. How much strength could there be from a hand twirl from someone who looked like he was doing jump rope exercise?
The attack had a minor amount of force behind it and was quickly repelled by his palm, however, for some odd reason a new mysterious force was transferred over causing Zythos to stagger. Zythos felt a searing pain from the palm of his hand as a dark red liquid flew alongside the blade he had just repelled.
Zythos was bleeding, the weak blade had caused him to suffer a blow somehow. That wasn’t all since the sword was rebounding Luon had used the force to twirl his body in the same direction he was pushed in, like a merry go round Luon and his blades cartwheeled towards Zythos.
Although one of the blades had lost most of the vibrating force, the other came to his face faster than he could expect it.
Two slashes subsequently hit Zythos shoulder. When the blade made contact with Zythos’ armor, he was relieved to find that nothing happened. However, not even a second had passed when that relief turned into despair.
After the armor and blade made contact, a ringing sound was made, and the proud armor was cut as if it was a soft piece of steak that didn’t need any effort to open it up.
The blades vibrated reducing the defensive levels of Zythos’ armor. It was a combination of vibration and heat, generally, in a realistic setting this wouldn’t be possible, yet this unimaginable act is happening before Luon’s eyes.
‘How is this possible? This isn’t a novel series where there was some kind of unexplainable magical force helps the main character step over his peers. It would be hard for science to explain this phenomenon.’ Luon thought while looking at the aftermath of the attack.
Zythos backed away as fast as he could, traces of fear still showed on his face. He was feeling unjustified resentment as he questioned himself why was this happening? Why did the armor fail him? Full of discontent he glared at Luon with a frustrated look only to receiving a bell-like ringing noise once again.
The noise then enlightened Zythos, it was as if the devil was tempting him forward. He thought, ‘If I don’t give him a chance to use that weird stance of his would I have a better chance of winning? I have to strike now!’
Zythos dashed forward once more while being careful not to get hit. Because of this action the two exchange over 50 blows until Luon thought of something, ‘Zythos had gotten used to my attack, he must have noticed my flaw.’
Since Zythos had kept attacking Luon, it was hardly noticeable, but Luon hadn’t taken a single step out after making his little attack. The footsteps that the man in his dream made were far too complicated for Luon to imitate, which is why he couldn’t perfect the move in the first place.
If Luon could move adequately, then it would have been possible to end Zythos in one blow.
‘Could I use my Steps of Starlight skill to help me out?’ Luon thought. Since the coolant replicate the move, why should he follow the guideline? Since it wasn’t his in the first place, Luon decided to try it out.
Repelling Zythos once more Luon’s twisted his body from the momentum of their clash, a flashy silverish light coated him, and he suddenly vanished on the spot.
Zythos looked shocked as he looked around for his enemy only to find his ally looking shocked at him. Zythos asked, “What’s wrong? Did you see where did he vanish to?”
The man pointed above Zythos which turned to see a pair of blades effectively hitting his previously wounded spot as it tore away at his flesh. From this move, Zythos had lost an arm and began to bleed to death.
Luon who had just attacked him from above swaggered towards Zythos and said, “Sorry, bud. Looks like I win this time as well. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s painless for you.”
With a quick wave of his hand, Zythos was eliminated. The last thing he saw before his death, was the devilish grin Luon gave him. If possible, he never wanted to experience a moment like this again.
Fortunately for Zythos, he wasn’t the only one with this thought. His injured teammate had it worse as he was still unable to move. Slowly Luon appeared before him with that same grin and ended his life. That expression never left his dreams ever since this day.
And at this moment, there was only one soldier left.
…
Bendan continued to rain punches against his opponent, the two of them had traded over half a thousand blows.
If Bendan could end the life of the simulated dummy in 30 blows why would it take this long to eliminate his opponent? That’s mainly because of this blindingly bright light that covered his opponent once more.
“Darn it that’s cowardly!” cried Bendan who had said a similar line several times already.
As if not tired of hearing such a thing the tiger beastmen said, “Hahaha! Just give it up your completely surrounded! After All, this is a team match, it isn’t cowardly at all!”
From a distance, one could see a small group of people armed with rifles at their fight, their allegiance to no surprise belonged to Team Warbeast as they were summoned reinforcements.
Within this small pack of troops was a female human dressed in the traditional white clerical clothes with a hood used to shroud their face. It screamed to anyone who had seen it, “This is a white mage.”
Unable to escape the situation Bendan continued to fight the tiger beastmen over and over again. The battle could easily be over if only the tiger beastmen didn’t back away. However, his pride and arrogance got the better of him as he continued to lose causing him to try even harder.
‘With a healer behind your back who could possibly lose?’ Thought Bendan. He was hoping someone would save him from this predicament, but he didn’t expect Luon to be able to. He was relying on the completely silent Thomas in the commander seat to summon his own set of healers and range units.
‘What’s taking so long? I know the healer needed to be surrounded by reinforcements otherwise you end wasting time summoning a healer, but we’ve already fought for several minutes already!’ thought Bendan.
It was then a change occurred, Luon dashed into the group protecting the healer with his NG-Arms. The defenders tried to repel Luon off, but as he was holding a makeshift shield compose of the shards from his defeated foe’s armor, the bullets were instantly repelled.
Joy came to Bendan’s face, he was surprised to see Luon come to aid him as bellowed, “Hahaha! It looks like the tables have turned! Come, I’ll show you the meaning of defeat once more!”
Before Bendan could even launch an attack against him the tiger beastmen sunk several meters underground, and an ocean full of water washed over him, drowning him to death.
“Sorry for the wait, I thought that having an archmage was better than having a small army of units. Hope I wasn’t too late,” said Thomas.
Bendan who was all hyped for the battle lowered his battle stance as he said, “No… you had the perfect timing for your attack…”
“Hahaha, thank god you survived,” said Thomas.
“Yeah… okay there mate,” said Bendan disappointingly in a prone position.
“Enough foolish talk, let’s go win this,” said Luon who had walked over to where Bendan is, the latter had only replied with a nod.
Sure enough, since Chester set units to aid his teammates, he was partially defenseless under the archmage’s wrath.
The game ended uneventfully as Luon’s team advanced on.
…
The finals arrived before they knew it, the crew had spent the night reflecting on the previous battle while researching for their next which had some devastating results. They couldn’t find anything about their opponents.
Every single match they had was dominated by Arisa’s commander skill and their teammate’s overpowered weaponry. Belle, Kiri, and Keyral barely made an appearance in each of their matches. It made Luon wonder what they were doing on the team if Arisa and Shizuka did all the work.
This only meant that Arisa was a more troublesome opponent then they thought.
Standing upon a stage, an announcer called the two team leaders up for a formal greeting.
Standing on the podium, Luon greeted Arisa with some welcoming words and Arisa did the same.
Visually they looked like normal teenagers giving a slight handshake before the match. However, their eyes had a determined look on them. They both want to win this match, the glory of being the number one team at Nexus University and representing the Nexus solar system was an honor that wasn’t freely given away.
Although the top three teams secured a spot in their representation, being known as number one was something that urged the two on.
“I wish you the best,” said Luon.
“You as well, Luon,” Arisa said with a sly smile.
And on that note, their next match had started.
