Chapter 7

It was the worst case scenario. Lord Meneesh had snatched the eye, examining it. August was on everyone's gossip, and many of them decided he'd be the villian for the day. They wanted retribution.

Lord Meneesh wore an all-black suit. He wore a mask full of colors and a smile permanently plastered onto it.

"Intervening in a match is a serious offense," Lord Meneesh said calmly. August had never seen the Lord speak without some flair, that it spooked him. "This is a test, after all."

"He stole 40,000 credits from me too," Einrich said.

August stayed silent. He didn't really want to say anything wrong, but it felt like evidence was stacked against him. He didn't think he was cheating, but looking back at it now, he might have been.

"But this isn't grounds for cheating, Rank 11," Lord Meneesh said. "This eye belonged to the automaton. Rank 2 merely happens to be holding it."

"She can see with that eye!"

"And that is within her abilities to do so." Lord Meneesh gave back the eye to August. "What a cute little, modified eye."

August did his best to smile. Lord Meneesh knew that he fixed the eye. He'd been examining it. He must've known that Seven's eye had been broken in the first trial.

Einrich glared at him.

August looked away.

"Now!" Lord Meneesh clapped his hands. "This is perfect. I'll move the match so it'll be you two." To everyone, he said, "Place your bets. Rank 2 August--who you call the Cheater--is facing off against Rank 11 Einrich. The boy who've been tricked into losing 60,000 credits, and have had his precious 10th Spot stolen by an automaton. A real underdog boldly facing off the Boy Who Ran Blind!"

August hated this man. He was riling things up.

While he stepped away from the crowd and the staff made him wear the helmet, Seven kept him updated. She chose to watch him, but she also caught a lot of negative attention.

She was unfazed, as usual. She looked really cool watching him surrounded by enemies. Apparently, they were all rooting for his loss. They thought the bets were unreasonable and that he should've given it back out of principle. He decided to ignore them.

{ August: do you know anything about how Einrich fights? }

{ Seven: all I learned is that he's a close-combat mage with a normal staff and shield arms. Mages are notoriously difficult to deal with. People do not like fighting a mage for the first time. There are many variables and abilities that goes onto a single mage, so they are very unpredictable especially within the first minute of a fight. }

As August put on the helmet, the strap initiated several locks by itself. He inspected it with his arcane. It was an interesting contraption. It required specific and precise points of arcane to unlock.

August climbed the dome. The spotlights blinded his eyes. And on the other side, Einrich stepped in with fury.

Everything had been created with arcane. The spotlights, the helmet, Seven, the machines used by the medical staff. It fascinated him how arcane could be used to power everything.

Next to Einrich was a floating shield and a staff. The shield seemed to come apart to smaller pieces and re-attach again. The staff spun, producing a vibration he could hear.

"You've never seen a real mage, have you?" Einrich said. "Not when you've been living in that forest all alone."

The bell rang. None of them moved.

"This a staff and shield," Einrich explained. "It's a staple for a lot of mages. We infuse it with our arcane and control it however we wish. Surrender, August. You don't have any offensive capabilites. I'll just whittle you down.

That was his weakness. He didn't have a bow or a sword he brought with him, which might have been a mistake looking back at it now. He could clearly bring weapons. He made them believe that he had ran and defended himself from everything he'd been up against.

Einrich split the shield into four pieces and had it surround him like a barrier. "Close your eyes," he said. "Or you'll miss it."

The staff shot forward. August put up a half-spherical arcane barrier around him. And when the attack hit, he felt something strange happen. In a split second, the entire barrier vibrated. It felt like the bowl he'd been holding with his hand was suddenly coated in oil. He couldn't control it, and his control slipped.

The barrier shattered. August retreated a step back. The staff hit the floor with a bang. Suddenly, it spun, aiming to hit his knee. August put up a small barrier. His arcane vibrated and his control loosened, but it was a thicker, small shield and it held for a second until it shattered.

So that was the trick. The staff disrupts the flow of arcane, making it lose its cohesiveness. Another attack came. And then another. Every time, Einrich had been so close to hitting him. He needed a solution quick.

And then the staff split in two. He defended the other half. But the other bent and hit him against his face. He reeled back. A second later, he tasted blood. His eyes saw two Einrichs, and he stumbled against the wall, feeling dizzy. When he tried to control his arcane and put up more shields, he couldn't control them as effectively as before. He realized the limits of his foundation.

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"This is how mages fight!" Einrich said. He seemed to relish this moment. "You can handle a single staff. What about four?"

The staff split a second time.

August changed his defensive approach. Instead of a thick, flat plane, he created small defensive points around his body. They were as small as pebbles. But since they were close to him, he could expand and wrap them around parts of his body like armor.

He didn't need to defend against every attack's force. He just had to disperse it. But he didn't know how, so he was left with relying on his reflexes and arcane threads to figure out where the staff would be in.

He was hit once in the leg, then another in his arm. Every time he had gotten hit, he had to put more effort into controlling his arcane. Attacks barraged him from different directions. August wiped his nose.

"Do you know why we use shields instead of arcane to defend ourselves?" Einrich asked. He was enjoying this. But August wouldn't reject information if it could help him now.

"Why?"

"Because arcane alone isn't sufficient. It's not flexible. It's brittle and it exhausts the user's arcane, which is why weapons were created with circuits. Once arcane flows into the circuits, you use the weapon's physical force as the weight of your attacks."

The staff's barrage didn't stop. And Einrich seemed content with this. He wouldn't lose arcane, and he predicted that August's exhaustive use of it would drain him eventually. It was a battle of attrition. More likely, he'd be beaten to death before he exhaust himself.

August thought of a way to block more attacks effectively. But was that the right way? He extended his hand and, as he looked for the right opportunity, grabbed a part of the staff and held onto it.

Invade the weapon. Control it. Make it his own. Fry the arcane and overpower it. But nothing happened. It seemed to pulse with life. It was as if he had peeked into a hole and found a spring of plants and fresh river water.

The staff was pulled back. Einrich seemed confused. "I expected you to try to steal it," he said. "But you're this weak that you can't even control an anima?"

Anima?

August remembered Orlan's words: This is only an elementary test to measure how well you can interact with living things. Plants, animals, insects, people. We call that anima. To be quite frank, August--you don't have what it takes to be a mage.

Seven had been different. They treated her differently too. Like an equipment--something to be used and thrown away. "What's an anima?" he asked.

"It's a living weapon," he said. "These are items created to be exclusively used by mages. They eat, sleep, fight, and have a mind of their own. Though they can be pretty stupid. But they're alive unlike your friend over there who merely mimicked a life."

He attacked again. August leaned against the cage to prevent his back from being struck. But would that accomplish anything? He glanced up at the upper floors. The climbers and these audiences were watching the match intently.

Regardless of the their intentions, he wanted to defeat Einrich. He'd steal the helmet.

"Sorry," August said. He decided to attack. He charged forward. "But I'm going up."

The staffs tried to pester him with the attacks, but they didn't carry that much force with them while he ran. Einrich shot his floating shields and struck August on his knee and arms. Whenever he tried to move, they would counteract his balance so he couldn't exert much force to run forward.

"You can't touch me," Einrich said.

August took off his shirt. That seemed to surprise Einrich, but he didn't give the mage the time to think. This shirt was able to shrink on its own, but that was because it had been infused by arcane.

It wasn't a living weapon. He could control it.

He willed the shirt to split into several pieces. Then he used it to wrap the all the shields around and kept them there. Einrich figured out what he intended to do--take out the defenses.

The mage tried to move the shields but, August had possessed more force in pulling it away from him, creating space. The staff diverted its attacks to the cloths, then back to him. August simply created more barriers to protect it. He allowed some attacks to hit him, but it wouldn't break his focus, not when adrenaline surged him to attack.

And then he passed through. Einrich panicked. He turned and ran and spouted curses. The staffs attacked him again, focusing on his feet and tripping him as if it didn't know what to do.

The predator became the prey.

It reminded August of when he would catch animals. He would always use arcane to make them trip. The first several hundred times were difficult. Anything longer than five meters were too imprecise for it to be effective. But that was then. And Einrich was well within five meters from him.

August precisely controlled his arcane to create thin flat plane underneath where Einrich planned to step on. Then, when the mage set his foot on the ground, he willed the flat plane to pull back. Einrich slipped. He tried to use his hands to balance himself but that failed too when he touched arcane and he just looked clumsy collapsing on the floor.

August walked over and grabbed the strap. Einrich grasped his arm. "You can't!" he said. "You'll have to kill me. I've inspected this strap before. It's difficult to remove. It's like an arcane lock. You have to--"

The strap clicked. August took off Einrich's helmet and sighed. He threw it to the ground and heard it bang against the arena

He looked up around him. People didn't cheer like they did with the previous competitors. They just stared. Lord Meneesh seemed study him even more.

"Um," the female announcer said. "Well. Um. Rank 2 August defeated Rank 11 Einrich and passed the 2nd Trial."

He heard a collection of quiet, polite claps from the 3rd floor. They had never clapped in the previous matches. What made this one different?

He found Seven away from the crowd and messaged her.

{ August: can you do me a favor? }

{ Seven: it depends. If it goes against my mission, I'm afraid I don't have the authority to disobey a command. }

{ August: That's for the future for us to figure out. Can you find out what they're saying about me? }

{ Seven: yes. Why? }

He told her the truth. He wanted to know what opinions they have of him, whether or not he did well. He didn't have a proper gauge of his own strengths and weaknesses. He didn't want to get ahead of himself. Was Einrich weak for an 11th Ranker? Or was he strong? He wanted to know the truth early on.

He returned to the other climbers but kept his distance with Seven. He couldn't hear them, but she informed him that she could. She said some of them begrudgingly acknowledged his skill with the arcane. But that didn't change the fact that they weren't impressed with the match.

They cheered for Einrich. And when he lost, he didn't lose with scars or wounds or even a sweat. To them, he slipped awkwardly. They thought August humiliated him. That he wouldn't attack and only steal the helmet out of pity.

One of them glanced venomously at him. August stuck out his tongue. It didn't help his reputation.

"Don't mind them," he told her. But he must've been telling that himself, because he did mind what other people thought of him.

"I do not," Seven said. "I have no feelings."

"Hm." He sat down against the wall. A staff approached him and gave him a new shirt. When they left, another man approached.

He didn't look much older than August. But he was smiling, and the moment August saw him, he recognized the person right away. He had stood right next to Seven. The Rank 4--Nilvar.

"Wonderful control of the fundamentals. You rarely see that at your age. But keep this up and you'll lose the third trial," Nilvar said. "In fact, you might have lost already."