As Luke went further and further in, the underbrush and tree density slowly increased. It was too slow to notice at first, a very minor increase in difficulty of getting further out. When he finally noticed, it had been over an hour of walking. When he needed to actively search for a way through the trees, rather than only needing to take care to not make too much noise escaping through the underbrush, he finally noticed the increased density. Looking up, he realized that the trees had ultra stubby limbs, forced together in a density that would never happen outside the arena.
As he was looking up and contemplating his next move, he was transported back to the neutral start. The fraxion he'd teleported across from initially had either commit suicide or died of blood loss.
Before Luke could react to having been teleported, a vine whipped out of the ground and used its spear-like tip to impale his left leg. A fresh fraxion, unburdened by any previous fights and with the knowledge that Luke had run before, immediately went on the offensive. Not wasting any time, as Luke was moving his head down to see his opponent, the fraxion threw a fireball in Luke's direction while directing the vine to turn and attempt to impale Luke's chest.
Luke grabbed the vine and used his other hand to chop it in half before pulling it all the way through the wound. As he healed the gaping hole in his leg, he flew up, away from the ground. Conjuring materials and objects had a lower cost when the conjuration originated from a surface, for whatever reason, so he looked to limit the fraxion's possible magic efficiency while he escaped.
The fireball flew past where Luke had been when fired and exploded in the tree line, knocking down the tree it directly hit and singing a large number of trees. They were too alive to catch fire from an impulse of flame like the one from the fireball, but much of the bark had been blackened and another hit in the same spot may lead to a runaway forest fire.
As the fraxion took aim with its hand to prepare another attack, Luke zoomed off above the trees, out into the woods once more. The fraxion lowered its arm and gave chase. With Luke desiring to conserve his magic capacity, even if it was massive, and the fraxion's ability to withstand higher G-forces than a human, the fraxion rapidly accelerated to faster than Luke and was gaining ground. With how fast they were moving, the fraxion figured Luke would not be able to react to an obstacle conjured directly in front of him and made a metal cube in Luke's path, only a few feet in front of him.
Luke created a pointed shield around himself and sped up, spearing his way through the solid metal and removing air resistance from himself. He gave the fraxion a good, hard, telekinetic smack on its horse-like back, sending it downward. Its legs caught the tree tops and sent it spinning as Luke sped off. By the time the fraxion got itself under control and returned to the air, Luke had disappeared below the tree tops.
The fraxion gave out a frustrated scream and began searching for the most elusive human any fraxion had fought.
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It had been 5 hours since Luke buried himself under the ground to avoid the fraxion's pursuit. He dropped a water bottle from his mouth and refilled it with conjured water before putting it back in his backpack. The occasional noise of the fraxion rampaging through the woods above hadn't happened in a long while, so he figured it was safe to come out of his tiny hidey hole.
While he could theoretically stay down there forever, the oxygen down here would not last forever and he needed to find food soon, or at least confirm none existed out in the arena. Plus, even Luke got bored time to time. Without the internet to browse or any studying to do, Luke was at the limit of how long he could sit around and do nothing. He could survive a while longer down here without food or oxygen holes, but the boredom and actual goals he could be working toward won over his desire to extend the fight through exclusively hiding.
When he returned to the surface, the nearly-solid woods around where he went underground had been fully chopped down for multiple hundred feet on each side of his hole. He was probably 120 feet closer to the edge of the devastation that was further from the starting clearing, and it seemed the fraxion was looking checking the woods in something of a donut shape, since he could not see the clearing and he could see the woods become a solid wall of bark and timber, confirming there was a wall to on-foot travel far enough away from the clearing.
As he fully dug himself out of his hole, he wondered how the fraxion could leave such devastation behind but not prevent him from fleeing the way he did. Its magic capacity must have been considerable to enact such destruction. It was then it perished from magic overdraw and Luke found himself back in the neutral position. He immediately put shields up before the new fraxion could do anything and considered his options.
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A fireball became a cloud of steam as the fraxion attempted Laura's spell combination that had been effective against one of its brethren, surrounding Luke's spherical shield as meteal pillars came out of the ground in a way that seemed to attempt to clamp his legs in place. Ultimately, it was wasted magic as Luke's shield held out.
He wasn't sure there was any food out in the woods and it seemed he could only hide for so long before his fraxion opponents willingly commit suicide to bring him back into the clearing. If he wished to survive any significant period of time, he would need to keep his fraxion opponents alive, as well, or escape long enough to regain any spent magic capacity he'd used to escape as he had with his previous opponent. Considering the fraxions would get information on all his escape and hiding tactics, he figured attempting to take long, drawn out fights between each escape attempt would be best.
He would reveal as little as possible about his creativity in hiding while still extending his time here as much as possible.
His stomach growled. As the steam cleared and the fraxion could see its spells had no effect on Luke, Luke telekinetically ripped a chunk of his left leg's muscle out, wincing at the pain, before conjuring wood and lighting it on fire. He held the piece of meat above the fire and began healing his leg as the fraxion charged the now un-shielded human in front of it.
Luke created a flat-topped, metal pillar angled to smash right between the fraxion's front legs to stop its charge. Something that wouldn't damage it to any significant degree, but would, hopefully, make it cautious of approaching. It slammed into it and stopped, not quite breaking any armor plate. The impact rippled through its body, though, causing all its armor plates to shift slightly before returning to their original position.
As Luke cooked his own leg meat over a fire, the fraxion was on guard. The human in front of it had chosen to flee against its previous two opponents, and now it had chosen to stay. It wasn't sure what it would do now that it wasn't trying to escape, but the fraxion wasn't certain it wanted to know. It conjured a puddle of acid behind Luke while sending a metal spike toward him from each forward flank, attempting to make the human back into the unseen puddle.
Predicting where the spike would hit, Luke decided that the magic that he would need to heal the bones and flesh was too much. So, he corroded the metal faster than it could be conjured, causing both spiked to wither away into rust flakes and fall to the ground before they reached him. He then snapped the fraxion's legs with a pulse of telekinetic force. He made sure to use enough force to break the bone and cause internal bleeding only to a degree that could heal, rather than enough to make the bone pierce through flesh and be potentially lethal by bleeding out.
He then took a seat beside the camp fire, face toward the fraxion, conjured a few mirrors around him so he could see behind him, and conjured a metal plate into the ground under him so no attacks could come from directly underneath him.
The fraxion fell to the ground, its four horse legs unable to support its weight now that they had been broken, and cried out in pain.
While this obviously unused to combat fraxion was too distracted by the pain of having its legs broken to attempt to fight back, Luke tended to his cooking leg meat. His stomach let out another growl as he watched it spin over the fire, making sure the fraxion and his array of mirrors were in view at all times so he could catch any movement.
It took almost a full minute for the fraxion to silence itself and get over the pain of having its legs broken. To Luke, it seemed like his opponent was the fraxion equivalent of a normal citizen. Someone who had never seen combat or even gotten into a large accident. It made him feel kinda bad, but not bad enough to give himself up or deviate from the plan. If anything, it made him more angry at the gods that had forced two civilizations to fight for their amusement.
The fraxion finally made a move, giving up on efficiency and conjuring acid directly on top of Luke. In the few fractions of a second it took him to blast the acid away, it had already burned his skin, ruined his eyes, and weakened his clothes. His backpack was fine, since it was warded against most damage. He yelped in pain and began repairing himself, skin visibly returning to normal and his eyes gaining vision just in time to see a flying fraxion body slam him.
Luke conjured water under where he would fall, lowering the effect of the impact, and conjured a shield just in time to block an attempt to impale his head with one of the fraxion's wrist spikes. As a metal spike attempted to impale Luke's head from behind, he flew up and out from under the fraxion, causing the spike to take his backpack off of him and leave a long scratch on his back.
He was reconsidering his plan to take drawn out fights, seeing how much magic capacity this one civilian had forced him to use - even it it wasn't actually much compared to his massive capacity - when the fraxion sent another fireball at Luke. He activated it early with a small bead of water, causing it to block the two combatants from viewing each other, while he stitched his back up. He would need to use one of his backup sets of clothes already.
The limited amount of sets of clothes he'd packed was what finally made him make his decision. Once his meat was cooked and he'd eaten, he would exclusively flee fights he could get away with fleeing from and focus on quick wins in those he couldn't.