NOVEL NEXT Chapter Three Hundred Seventy Two
Finding a seat at the arena the next day was harder than expected. I don't know why I hadn't assumed it would be packed, maybe because it had been so sparsely populated all the other matches. People had watched from home or just ignored most of the lead up fights, since there were so many happening. Even last round, the top twenty, hadn't really been a concern for most.
This one was different though. This match was one of the ten semi-finals, and everyone wanted to be here. I don't think it even mattered to them who was fighting, one of the matches being as good as the next, they just wanted to be part of the spectacle. Which made finding a seat annoying and difficult.
Luckily, Rime was with us, which made it at least possible, as after thirty minutes of looking she finally approached a group of locals she knew and just literally kicked them out of their seats. They whined about it a bit, but she was annoyed at the wait, and once they knew she was being serious they lost most of their momentum, just quietly vacating, to join the throng of searchers.
Zeke had come along directly, and brought Cass with him. She wanted to see her new teacher fight, and Zeke was the only person she really felt safe with in a place like this. I wasn't sure the little girl KNEW how scary her 'Uncle Zeke' was, but some part of her recognized that he was at least competent. Along with them was Callie and I, of course, Cark, Jessie, Benny, and Mel.
To my surprise, we all seemed to be in good moods, almost as excited for this fight as Abel himself was. Mel was sitting closest to the aisle between the seats, just so she could reach the pit fastest if she needed to. I'd never seen anything close to uncertainty from her towards Abel before, so it was a bit jarring, but even she looked anticipatory. Still, I decided to at least say something. "Hey, you ok?"
She jumped slightly, looking up at me. "Yeah, sorry. Just out of it. It's been years since I've seen him in a really big fight." She coughed lightly. "Uh, no offense. But this just reminds me of how things used to be. When we were younger he would challenge anyone except freaks he had no chance of beating. I just- shit, there he is, time to watch."
Sure enough, Abel was walking out onto the sand, looking so excited he was about to vibrate through the ground. On the other side Lament emerged, hefting her spear over her shoulder and staring intently at my mentor. They spoke for a minute, not that we could hear them, and then the two of them started to circle.
Lament lashed out with a spear thrust, and Abel clapped his hands together, massive manifestations halting the thrust of the colossal spear head before it could reach him. He slapped the blade aside, driving forward with a flurry of punches, fist manifestations appearing and vanishing as he struck from a new angle with each blow.
It didn't faze Lament, who started to spin her spear, the haft manifesting in the air over her head, creating a whirling defensive manifestation that blocked all the blows. Shoving the haft forward, the whirling defense drove at Abel, and my mentor stepped lightly aside, carried on a thin stream of lubricated space out of the path of the attack, raising his arms. I saw him use that space warping effect to manifest six afterimages of arms around him, then condense them and hurl out a barrage of punches with three times the power.
Using her spear as a pole vault, Lament shoved herself aside, dodging back and forth to avoid the punches. She called out for her power, manifesting lightning to her blade, and flashed forward in a driving charge faster than my eyes could track, a manifestation of the lightning charged blade heading right for Abel.
My mentor tossed his jacket to the side, arms clenching as space seemed to shimmer and warp around them. Manifestations appeared above him, but these were somehow denser and more intimidating. Raising his arms, he brought them down, leaving a trail of afterimages, each one following behind the arms to stack on top of them a dozen times, space behind them lubricated and creating a sort of dimensional overlap.
There was a clap of thunder even the wards couldn't keep in as his phantom hands smashed into the spear, one at the head, and one halfway down the haft just over where the hand would be. The manifestation snapped, and with it the actual spear Lament was holding basically exploded in her hands, the spearwoman dodging back as quickly as possible, but not fast enough to avoid the shrapnel completely.
Abel shook out his arms, giving her an easy grin, and I saw the two of them start to argue. Or rather, Lament was arguing, seeming to get more and more agitated until...something changed. Literally, the weight of the spear user on my consciousness was altered as she..."Is she fucking breaking through?"
My question was answered a moment later as I felt her stabilize at F-rank. Mel whistled. "Wow, she does NOT want to lose. They'll disqualify her for this, but I somehow don't think she cares. Looks like they'll continue the fight though. Probably waiting for Abel to call it." She was trying to sound casual, but there was an undercurrent of worry in her tone.
Lament raised a hand into the air, and another manifestation appeared above her. I stared at it in shock, how the hell was she doing that without a spear? As I gaped, lightning condensed on the spear image, coating it completely, and then she clenched her fist and the manifestation began to CONTRACT. The huge spear image started shrinking, becoming more solid and more dense as it did, until a literal lightning spear was sitting in her hand, visibly physical and deadly.
"What the actual fuck?" I asked Mel, who was staring at the spear in horror. "How did she do that? Some kind of power synergy?"
She shook her head mutely. "No. That's a physically manifest Skill. Manifestations are physical, but only for a second or two during attacks. That's an actual solid object. Different people manifest things differently, but...I'm pretty sure she just ranked that Skill up to Expert."
I snapped back to watching the fight, terrified for my teacher, but to my shock he looked elated. Reaching up, he pulled off his mask and slipped it into a pocket, cracking his neck.
At the motion, Mel seemed to deflate, the pressure of her worry fading. "Ok, he's going to start taking things seriously."
I blinked at her. "Ok...but how much can he be holding back really? I've seen him fight, and he's scary as he'll, but if she's an F-ranker and an expert now..."
To my surprise, Mel seemed to actually calm down at the words, starting to chuckle to herself. At my strange look, she chucked her chin down at the arena. "Let me ask you a question. We've talked about Ragam plenty right? Told you it's a striking art that allows you to condense force with pinpoint accuracy?"
I nodded, and her chuckle gained a wicked edge as she pointed to the arena. "Well, at any point during those explanations did we mention that Ragam only used PUNCHING techniques?"
My head snapped up, eyes widening as I saw a colossal phantom leg appear and sweep towards Lament from the side, seeing it, she spun her lightning spear, turning to intercept. As she did, Abel stepped into the manifestation, which extended from where he was standing to where she was blocking. The limb had been coated in his spatial lubrication before manifesting, and Abel basically vanished at one end, appearing in front of his enemy.
Lament's eyes widened and she lashed out at Abel, who rolled in midair, leaving behind a warped space in the shape of his body that seemed to condense as a manifestation, even as he slipped around behind her, spinning off his back leg to scythe a kick at her head from behind as the manifestation of himself launched a flurry of attacks and faded into nothingness as it was struck by the spear.
She yanked the spear out, rolling it up over her arm to place it between her and Abel. As his foot landed, he pulled back, shedding another blurry manifestation of himself cobbled together from warped space. He spun on his toe, whirling around her in a complete circle, leaving copies behind, and then changed direction as she attacked the spot he'd just been in.
As he moved back through the warped copies of himself he absorbed them, seeming to become denser and more powerful, not quite hitting the next point of Impact, but coming close. After absorbing ten clones he dashed forward, and engaged her in a direct head to head fight.
Her spear lashed out like a glowing blue rainstorm, striking the air and creating explosions of thunder as it tore through the sound barrier, but Abel was always a step ahead, twisting and contorting his body in a strange movement style that was both fluid and ragged, always just an inch from being hit as his blows smashed into his opponent with brutal and punishing force.
Blow to the short ribs, downward elbow to the collar bone, uppercut to the jaw, stomp the knee. Lament was getting frustrated, moving faster, attacking harder, and she even landed a few hits. Despite that, Abel didn't stop or slow. I'd see him get stabbed and think he was dead, only to realize it had been a glancing blow, or landed somewhere less vulnerable than intended.
Even with the new holes being poked in him, Abel was clearly in a frenzy of joy. Lament attacked again, driving the spear into his thigh, and I saw his smile turn feral as he used the second it was stuck in his leg to slam his head forward into her nose. Her eyes went hazy, head falling back as her nose fountained blood, and Abel's hand came up to grab her hair, holding her hair back as he drove the other into her throat, knuckles first, in a brutal knife hand.
She doubled over as he backed up slightly, tearing his ragged and bloody shirt off to tie it around his thigh in a make shift tourniquet, then stepped in and grabbed her head, smashing his other, uninjured leg into her bloody face, again, and again, and again. It took ten blows before she slumped over, unconscious, and Abel threw a fist up in the air as the crowd erupted in cheers.
I stared, dumbstruck. Not because he won, but because of what he'd done to get there. The pain, the blood, the injuries he just shrugged off. I could see what Abel had wanted us to see. That fights weren't clean and orderly like the ones we'd been in so far. Even the bouts with assassins had been neat, tame. We tried not to get hurt and to take down the bad guys. That was what heroic cultivators did.
This wasn't that. This was brutal, bloody, and unfiltered. If we wanted to take down people stronger than us, we'd need to fight like this when it mattered. I made a mental note to take all of this to heart as I stood up, following Mel down the steps to the edge of the pit as I saw Abel keel over, probably from blood loss.
With both fighters out they dropped the shield and Mel and I jumped down, bolting for Abel to heal him up. A heal burst and scan heal just to be safe, later, had him on the mend, and two more heal bursts sped things up a bit. Then we healed up Lament and carried them both out. Our team was in the finals for real. Time to celebrate.