Everywhere outside of the structures set up by the Million Sword Vault was more or less equivalent in terms of terrain. While there were gradual rises and falls in the dunes, none of them would make much difference for a Life Transformation cultivator.

Thus, the actual locations made little difference. Even Anton securing a position atop a rise would only make a slight difference- but he still made the choice because it would allow him to demonstrate a larger portion of his strength.

Elder Wardah, meanwhile, walked to a position exactly five kilometers away. Anton didn’t see any tactical value of that exact position, but the ring around him that formed the other options were all quite similar. Between them, Chikere stood and waited for their signals. Once they both indicated they were ready she amplified her voice to shout, “Begin!”

As the voice reached Anton’s ears, he knew Elder Wardah would be moving at the same time. However, he always had to redirect his arrows in flight. Most opponents were just slower. His first arrows were tests, aimed straight at Elder Wardah’s core. As he planned, he was using his ‘normal’ bow. The other wanted to form blades with his energy, and fighting against that would not help his situation.

Wardah appeared to only have a single sword in hand, though Anton knew that wasn’t something that limited a swordmaster. It was simply a matter of style, but he could still try to take advantage of it. His first shot was cleanly chopped in two by a one-handed chop. The next pair came from opposite directions at slightly offset times, but a single sweep dealt with both of them.

Anton had already begun to form his energy bows, a handful of them solidifying in the air around him. Anton found that he could sustain his maximum output of energy on several at once along with his main weapon. Attempting to condense denser energy resulted in instability that ultimately had little increase in power. Thus, the extra bows were good not just for purposes of distraction but to match his power. An exception was calling upon ascension energy, which had its own natural density that it was comfortable at.

Over a dozen volleys of arrows were launched at Elder Wardah before he got close to Anton. Anton had arrows fly in simultaneously on opposite sides and at oblique angles, attempting to take advantage of the man’s single weapon. It wasn’t necessary for him to directly slice apart the attacks, but that was all he had done so far. Anton would consider it a win of sorts if he could at least force the man to dodge, though in such a case his arrows could be turned around to attack the man again with minimal loss in power. His barrage seemed about to work when Wardah swept his other hand towards the ground, forming a sword of sand that he used to fend off a trio of arrows he couldn’t with just one hand.

For a brief moment Anton wondered why the man didn’t simply carry a second sword, but then the sword was tossed at him, spinning and slicing through the air. He dodged out of the way, his energy bows spreading further apart so they would not be simultaneously destroyed. The sword left a visible trail in the dust in the air and the sand beneath, one that did not collapse for more than a second.

After confirming that the temporary sword had turned once more into sand with no link of energy connecting it to Wardah, he focused his efforts back to attacking. At the closer range his arrows reached Wardah more quickly, but while he had less time to react Anton also had less time to set up complicated volleys. Taking careful stock of where the man held his arm and how he would have to reach down to the sands below to form a secondary weapon, Anton implemented a new plan of attack to compensate for it.

It almost worked, until Wardah formed a blade simply from the dust in the air. Abundant as the mirror sands were, only a small amount of mass was close to his hand in an instant. The blade was extremely thin, but was held together by natural energy while serving as a structure for it becoming a cutting edge at the same time. Freestanding energy like Anton’s bows had some disadvantages that the ability could overcome. Anton found the idea intriguing, but he needed attributes that were more than just ‘thin’ to have a good bow, so the wrong materials would disadvantage him.

As the blade spun by him, spinning to cover the widest area it could, he knew that swords simply had different requirements but he had no doubt Elder Wardah would be effective in more than just the Scorching Mirror Sands.

The distance between the two cultivators was narrowing to the point that they would soon be in melee, which was effectively the point at which Anton would lose. Even the flung blades were a threat, and he had a few clean cuts that he hadn’t been able to fully avoid.

But he still had a few tricks. He gathered ascension energy to his bow, as well as to another formed just to his right side. The rest of them simply formed arrows with standard natural energy, except one that subtly made use of the third energy from beyond death. All of his arrows launched together, focusing inward on a single target.

Elder Wardah’s eyes flashed, and Anton could see he was finally taking the attacks seriously. His main blade struck down both attacks with ascension energy empowering them. That wasn’t strange, since Anton was in late Essence Collection while the man was in late Life Transformation. Anton likely couldn’t win this battle even if Elder Wardah didn’t attack a single time. Though there were a few caveats. He might still be able to land a damaging blow, which was the intent with this particular volley.

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Between two swords, his arrows were all swept away, though the two most powerful seemed to require serious effort to cleanly destroy. That allowed Anton’s least threatening arrow to impact the back of Wardah’s left hand, actually piercing through the defensive energy and into the flesh. Unfortunately, Anton wasn’t quite ready for Wardah’s suddenly accelerated movement carrying him forward into range to slice at him. He dodged to the best of his ability, while simultaneously continuing his own attacks.

A sharp pain in Anton’s wrist let him know he’d failed to avoid the attack completely. It wasn’t just a small nick either. He hoped that the medical expertise of the Million Sword Vault was as great as they claimed, or he couldn’t predict how long it would take to recover from his wound- just that it would not be easy.

His own attack on Wardah had not been quite as effective, having missed the tendons in the back of the man’s hand and currently only contributing a small amount of bleeding. On the other side, Anton could barely make use of his primary bow. In fact, a moment later he gave up on holding it in his hands entirely. The loss of muscle power was unfortunate, but at least he wouldn’t have to replicate its properties with purely energy. It continued to fire arrows towards Elder Wardah, but despite Anton’s best efforts it was already too late.

“I surrender,” Anton said, even as he received a cut along his ribs from an attack he was unable to dodge. No, he had to amend that to through his ribs. And closer and he could have been chopped to ribbons.

He only had a single small wound to show for his efforts. That was certainly something, but he wondered if he should have made use of ascension energy sooner. On the other hand, that would have simply made Elder Wardah prepared to handle it at an earlier point. It wasn’t holding back in the sense that he hadn’t given his all, but he simply thought he was making the best timing. But there was no way to know if he was wrong without traveling back in time, which was impossible. Hopefully.

Elder Wardah lowered his blade while letting the transitory one fade away into dust. “Let’s return to the infirmary.”

Anton nodded, though even that movement very slightly twinged the muscles in his chest that were sliced apart. His current efforts were focused on keeping the sand out of his wounds.

Soon enough he found himself inside with one of the elders very skillfully stitching him up. Anton had to appreciate how smooth the cuts were, since that seemed to make the process easier. He didn’t appreciate thinking about how close his hand had been to being severed, but the Million Sword Vault didn’t like to hold back in any sort of battle, even for training. The only exception was deathblows, and short of that they simply learned how best to treat the wounds.

With all that said, it wasn’t as if Anton was miraculously better after he was stitched up. His left hand would be unusable for more than a week, and his chest reminded him how many movements involved the muscles on his torso. In a way those were miraculous results, since a normal person couldn’t have recovered from the damage to his wrist at all. Even with his experience recovering from wounds and encouraging healing in a proper manner, it was the sort of thing that would take many months to recover without special medicines.

Elder Wardah’s wounds took little more than a few stitches and a bandage. Even so, he looked down at it and nodded. “Not bad. I wasn’t ready for that at all.”

“But you would be now,” Anton pointed out.

“So? I previously saw your archery… and in a real battle, the first encounter with a specific opponent is often your last. Anything that only works once still worked once.” Elder Wardah nodded. “And your target was good. If you had aimed for my neck I would have caught on, but aiming for my hand as it moved to deflect the other attacks was good. It was only a little bit short of causing serious damage. Likewise, your ability to avoid my attacks was also sufficient. As long as you are cautious, you should be able to survive even in the most harrowing remnants of the ancient sects.”

Anton had almost forgotten that goal in the combat, but not quite. It also made him wish he could bring along someone trained in healing arts. His own efforts were sufficient to hold his body together, but he couldn’t get anywhere close to the precision displayed by the healers here. Not that he even had the tiny needles. Now that he thought about it, was that diamondsilk thread stitching him together? Something quite similar, at least. How opulent.

“I’m glad to hear it. Where do you suggest I start?”

“That depends on what you want,” Wardah explained, “If you’re looking for potential equipment, most have been pretty thoroughly cleared out, though there are a few that may still have useful gear that we were less interested in obtaining.”

In short, things that weren’t swords. Though they clearly would take anything if there was not too much danger involved. “I’m more interested in information. Which sects seem to have done the best in the previous invasion?”

“That’s a tough question,” Wardah admitted. “In a way, those that are destroyed more thoroughly might have been more successful and received retaliatory judgment. But there was one…” Wardah nodded. “Yes. They were uncovered at the base of a volcano, the entire sect almost frozen in time. Many died there, and not just their own people. It was postulated that nobody survived the battle on either side. The armory was what we found first, but the rest was slowly uncovered from there. I think that might be what you want.”

“I am interested in that,” Anton agreed. “I suppose most records would be gone, but any information on the invaders, even just ancient corpses, that is also potentially useful.”

“Very well. I shall arrange for passage to the area. Let’s hope it’s not eruption season, hmm?” Elder Wardah grinned, which made Anton wonder how often ‘eruption season’ was. But chances were, he would see what it meant unless the place was so uninteresting that he didn’t stay long.