Mahon didn’t show any mercy for the instructors, and he dominated every single assault they attempted on him individually. Even when they weren’t holding back, Mahon was too fast and too experienced to give them any chance.

Jorik’s strategy had been to focus on defense because he couldn’t mount an effective counterattack before the instructor retreated away from the circle area. Mahon wasn’t of the same mind. The moment an instructor stepped inside his area, it was he who was feeling in danger. As if the instructor was the one being tested and not Mahon.

Before they could even launch their attack, Mahon was already forcing them on the defensive, nullifying their assault before it could even begin. At first, the instructor didn’t pay it any mind since they weren’t going all out, but as Mahon continued to deny them every opportunity to seize the initiative even when they were holding nothing back, they started to understand Mahon was nothing like Jorik.

If Jorik had been a monster, a genius even them had only seen once or twice in their lifetime, then Mahon was simply a legend. They couldn’t fathom that even they, seven-star instructors with decades of experience, were getting trampled on by someone who was essentially forced to hold his ground.

They had a certain advantage as Mahon was restrained into a thin area, and yet they stood absolutely no chance against him. They could understand that Mahon could reach a level similar to them or even slightly higher, and that he could crush one of them if the instructor’s fighting style was particularly weak against Mahon’s own fighting style.

But that wasn’t what was happening. Each instructor had their own style, which they had mastered over the years and were incredibly proficient in. And yet, Mahon wasn’t showing any sign of hesitation when they approached.

Actually, he didn’t even seem to go all out when he fought them back. But without failure, the next instructor was defeated as easily as the previous one in a single exchange.

Mahon’s fighting style suppressed them before they could even display all their power. A perfected parrying angle. A slight twist in his posture. An unknown method of counterattacking. Mahon’s range of options was close to infinite, and with just the help of a shallow Flow, he was able to choose the best option instantly to turn a ferocious opponent into his prey.

The instructors spend more time than necessary trying to probe Mahon individually, just because they couldn’t pin him down. They failed to assess what he was truly capable of as Mahon deflected their attempts one after the other before they got enough time to get a feel for Mahon’s true strength.

At the same time, they had never been so dominated in a sword fight not involving magic, and fighting Mahon one on one was an eye-opening opportunity to catch the flaws in their own techniques.

Even Ailluin fell guilty of such a behavior for a few rounds before he remembered they were the instructors supposed to test Mahon, and not the other way around. He quickly reminded the other instructors with a simple gesture, and they finally started the second phase of the exercise and attacked Mahon in pairs.

Mahon didn’t even need to dive deeper into the Flow. Going against one or two of the instructors didn’t make a big difference to him as he could dispatch them quickly enough that if they weren’t perfectly coordinated in their assault, it was very akin to two very fast one-on-one fights.

The instructors weren’t nobodies, however, and their coordination was really top-notch. To an even greater expert like Mahon, though, there were always minute flaws to leverage. And when there weren’t, Mahon only needed to create one.

Three instructors quickly started attacking at the same time. And then four. At that time, even though Mahon would have a pretty easy time kitting them to their death one after the other in normal conditions, he was limited to a short encircled area for the exercise. It forced a situation where he was surrounded from all sides by the instructors, and Mahon had to adapt his strategy.

Diving deeper into the Flow, he was aware of everything in his surroundings and had no blind spot. But even with such an asset, Jorik had failed to keep up with four instructors assaulting him at the same time.

Mahon, however, had fought Amentiae all his life. He had honed his skills against thousands of insects while he was under heavy physical restriction. He had challenged stronger and stronger opponents one after the other, putting his life on the line each time. But each time he had come out victorious.

His fighting style had evolved alongside his legendary feats. There was absolutely no trace of excess movements in any of his motions. A lot of experts were capable of using their body to its limits, but very few were capable of doing so while avoiding any waste. Reaching such a stage was the epitome of fighting proficiency.

Nightmare had been the perfect place to attain that perfection, and Mahon had long practiced that art until he could do it unconsciously. And then he had grown past it.

Fighting wasn’t only about oneself. It also had to do with one’s opponents. The Flow was an amazing asset in this aspect because it gave a perfect report on the slightest motions of anyone in the vicinity. Bypassing the usual senses, the information seemed to appear directly in one’s mind, and the world of rhythms was a long-time ally in Mahon’s fights.

With both the Flow and a perfect fighting proficiency, one could already stand at the very top of the best fighting experts. Alas, even that wasn’t enough to guarantee a win against someone with the same abilities but multiple times stronger or faster. Yet, Mahon had fought against an Amentiae’s general twice, and twice he had achieved victory.

It was because Mahon was already in the next realm of fighting. That next realm not only included a perfect control of one’s body, and a very acute understanding of one’s opponent’s actions, but it also demanded the ability to force that opponent into difficult situations.

Mahon’s fighting style plainly exploited that fact. His numerous fights in Nightmare had helped him understand that fighting proficiency was only as hard as the moves performed. The simpler they were, the easier it was to reach a perfect efficiency. But the opposite was also true.

Control’s fighting style aimed to force one’s opponent to complexify his motions until he would fail to reach his best performance. It was all about controlling the pace of the fight to hinder one’s opponents.

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Against four opponents close to a perfect proficiency and forced into a thin area, Mahon had no other choice but to lean on his amazing control of the fight to limit his opponent’s efficiency and nullify their number advantage.

Although his available space wasn’t large, it was enough for Mahon’s purpose. He deflected an attack coming at his back in such a way that it would impede another instructor in his own attack. Mahon moved to the side at the same time to force the two remaining instructors to gang on him from a single spot, and Mahon parried their joint attack with ease.

In two single moves, he had completely deconstructed the four men attack and rendered it harmless.

The instructors exited the circle and came back at him with another strategy. Now that they had seen what Mahon could do, they had a better idea of what they should expect and knew how to prevent it.

But contrary to their expectations, as soon as they started moving, Mahon rushed to the very edge of the circle and immediately defeated the instructor responsible for this side. Turning back, the three other instructors weren’t yet ready to attack him and at three versus one they didn’t manage to force Mahon in a difficult position.

Defeat after defeat, the instructors tried all their range of attacks before they could only admit they weren’t a threat to Mahon. Not even close.

Mahon led them around by the nose until they realized too late they had been pushed into a difficult position. The instructors didn’t feel forced or coerced into that unfavorable situation, instead it only appeared very natural. One action flew into another spontaneously, and somehow, each time it led to their demise because they ended up all mispositioned and hindering each other.

After multiple tries, they could only admit it was Mahon’s doing, and they were unable to win against him. And so they finally pulled up their last card, attacking Mahon as five.

There was no trying to gauge or test their opponent anymore in the instructors’ minds. Now they only wanted to win just once against the demon standing in their arena.

The only times they had needed to fight as five beforehand had been against the sorcerers of their order when they went all out with their magic, but now Mahon, without a single trace of the dangerous fire, managed to push them off to such a corner.

Mahon didn’t dare to go easy anymore on the instructors. Diving at his serious Flow’s level, he eyed the five instructors slowly turning around him.

In this exercise, relying only on his Flow and perfect proficiency, he could hold against two of them without too much problem.

Three instructors only demanded a bit of fight control, but it was still close to the warm-up zone for Mahon. He only needed to hinder one of them, to go back to an easy situation.

Moving from three to four, he had to hold back two people at the seven-star level with fighting control, and that wasn’t easy anymore. But still, the fact that the instructors had never fought against such a style at that level helped Mahon seize opportunities. When there were four of them, he still could find some slack.

Adding one more person in the mix changed everything, though. Mahon had to get rid of two people before he would back in his safe zone. But that was easier said than done given the instructors’ speed. It meant he would have to control three people’s attacks while attempting to get read of two, and the longer he took the harder it would be.

The only advantage one more person added for him was that he had theoretically more opportunities to seize at hindering the instructors. Adding one more person at a lower rank than the instructor would actually help him a lot, as the rookie would have many more flaws Mahon could exploit, and it would bleed onto the whole group’s abilities.

But the instructors were all approximately of the same level, and they all had a very good grasp of the others’ talents.

Their assault started without any warning, but Mahon’s Flow could take notice of the slightest details. From a single muscle contraction to a delayed blink, the Flow fed Mahon all the needed information, and before he could even take notice, his brain had already analyzed them and drawn the conclusion.

The instant the first instructor thought about attacking, Mahon was already on the move. For a time, all that people could see was Mahon madly rushing and pacing through the circle while the other instructors seemed to stay still.

To the ignorant eyes, it looked like Mahon had gone crazy, moving randomly when the instructors had not even started their attack. But the instructors paled, when they realized what was happening. In that cat-and-mouse game, Mahon was predicting their every move.

Before their attack could be fully started, he was forcing them to cancel it or initiate the fight in a disadvantageous posture. At that level of fighting, and given what Mahon had previously shown, it was enough to determine the winner.

Unfortunately, the constant motions were heavily taxing on both Mahon’s physics and mental capacity. His brain analyzed every clue at full speed while his body had to be instantly on the move to react to the slightest something.

After thirty seconds of such a pace, the instructors tried their luck, but Mahon was still perfectly in control. The fight started badly, with one instructor a bit behind the other. Mahon immediately increased the slight disturbance into a bigger gap by pushing back one instructor with a quick attack followed by a kick, sending the man into the way of the previously late instructor.

With now a full second of delay before the two could join back the fight, Mahon dispatched one instructor with a complicated attack pattern in a three versus one. The fight was now split into two pairs attacking Mahon.

Not giving the instructors enough respite to split again and circle him from all sides, Mahon went into the offensive again. He managed to fight off one pair after the other for a few seconds, before he again enlarged a slight misstep into another elimination. At three versus one, it was only a matter of time before Mahon won the fight, and so the remaining instructors retreated out of reach.

The weird dance between the almost immobile instructors and the always rushing Mahon started again. From time to time, they launched their attack, probing Mahon’s stamina, but each time they abandoned once Mahon defeated two of them in the first ten seconds of the fight.

After their fifth attempt, they gave up attacking and only tried to trick Mahon into moving. When it was clear that they planned to wait for Mahon to get really tired before attacking again, Mahon also switched his strategy. He waited longer before starting moving, forcing the instructors to commit into a full attack or reveal their feint.

With the help of his Flow, he managed to find the equilibrium between not moving at all and risking starting a fight without any advantage and moving too much and getting tired quickly.

In the end, the stalemate continued longer and became even weirder. The six people were now almost at a standstill, barely reacting to the other party’s moves. They didn’t fight, properly speaking, but they were exchanging imperceptible motions, trying to trick the other into a disadvantageous position at which point they would go all out.

But these exchanges lasted longer and longer as Mahon kept having the upper hand, and the instructors didn’t dare rush in carelessly.

“By the Fada, what is happening here? I said send them back home, not do a dance battle!”

The instructors seemed to snap out of their torpor in an instant as they turned to the woman who had just entered the arena.

“Vice master!”