"You’re fast, lesser," Baldur barked, a booming, gravelly laugh echoing from his chest as he rolled his shoulders. "But speed means absolutely nothing when you’re fighting an island. Crawl all you want, you can’t scratch a mountain!"
Ryan completely ignored the loud, arrogant taunts. He didn’t let the noble’s words break his focus for a single fraction of a second. Instead, his eyes narrowed, and the whistling hum of his Gale Edge rose into a sharp, deafening shriek as he funneled his remaining mana straight into the iron training sword.
He lunged forward, the battle picking up a terrifying pace.
Utilizing his compressed wind to eliminate the friction beneath his boots, Ryan glided across the black sand like a ghost. He closed the twenty-meter gap in a heartbeat, his blade blurring into motion. Clang! Ching! Crack! Ryan unleashed a relentless, high-speed offensive onslaught, striking from the left, spinning to the right, and delivering precise, rapid-fire slashes aimed at Baldur’s exposed joints.
Arcs of pressurized wind flew off his blade, carving deep chunks out of the noble’s stone defenses. But Baldur was a fortress.
The Earth Mage stood perfectly anchored to the center of the arena block, his hands moving in tight, economic circles. He had channeled his Grade A talent to its absolute limits, drawing the dark mineral elements from the bedrock beneath the tower to create an entirely impenetrable armor around himself. The jagged granite shell didn’t just cover his arms anymore; it had crept up his torso, wrapped around his thighs, and formed a thick, smooth breastplate that shrugged off the wind blades like harmless rain.
Every single time Ryan’s sword managed to slice a deep groove into the stone, the muddy brown mana pulsing through Baldur’s core instantly repaired the damage. The granite literally stitched itself back together a millisecond after contact, swallowing the iron blade before it could ever touch flesh.
"Is that all?!" Baldur jeered, his voice muffled but dripping with supremacy behind his stone visor. He swung a massive, rock-encrusted fist outward, the sheer wind pressure of the punch forcing Ryan to leap backward to avoid having his ribs crushed.
Ryan skidded across the black sand, his chest heaving as sweat poured down his face. His arms were vibrating from the violent kinetic feedback of striking solid rock over and over again. He had thrown his absolute best offensive sequence, yet the noble standing before him remained entirely untouched, completely encased in an unyielding, unbreakable fortress of stone.
Ryan didn’t let the noble’s mockery slow him down. He steeled his jaw, resetting his stance in a fraction of a second before launching himself right back into the fray. He became a blur of silver steel and roaring wind, circling Baldur like a vicious localized storm.
Clang! Clang! CRACK!
Ryan drove his iron blade into the impenetrable granite shell over and over again, desperately trying to find a fracture point, striking the neck, the ribs, and the shoulders with everything he had.
Granite dust exploded into the air with every impact, completely obscuring the center of the arena in a heavy, grey cloud. But no matter how fast Ryan slashed, the muddy brown mana flowing through Baldur’s core instantly stitched the fortress back together. It was an exhausting, fruitless cycle. Ryan’s muscles were screaming from the sheer kinetic feedback, his hands growing numb as his blade rebounded off the unyielding stone over and over again.
Inside the cloud of dust, Baldur’s glowing brown eyes suddenly flared behind his rock visor. He was completely done playing games.
"I said, ENOUGH!" Baldur roared, his gravelly voice shaking the vaulted stone walls of the upper stadium.
He violently slammed his right foot down into the black sand.
BOOM!
The entire Crimson Arena didn’t just shake; it violently convulsed. The moment his heavy, rock-encrusted boot made contact with the floor, a hyper-dense, catastrophic burst of raw earth mana violently detonated outward from his position. It didn’t travel as a slow projectile it rolled off the ground in a massive, visible shockwave of compressed kinetic energy and jagged stone teeth, expanding in a perfect, lethal circle.
Ryan was mid-dash, caught completely off-balance by the sudden seismic upheaval beneath his feet. Before he could even attempt to channel a defensive wind barrier, the terrifying wall of muddy brown energy slammed directly into his chest.
The impact sounded like a battering ram striking a wooden gate. The sheer, overwhelming force of the mana burst completely neutralized Ryan’s Gale Edge, shattering the compressed wind around his sword into nothingness. The kinetic shockwave lifted the blonde youth clean off his feet, launching him backward across the arena like a broken doll.
He flew over thirty meters across Sector 1, his iron training blade slipping from his numb fingers and clattering uselessly into the sand. Ryan crashed heavily onto his back, rolling violently through the dirt until he finally skidded to a halt right below the Class 1-A benches, a trail of dark blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he lay entirely motionless.
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