A few fights later, it was Gust’s turn to ascend to the arena stage.

The stadium announcer gave the usual introductions, then handed off control to the referee present in Arena 1.

Standing between the two combatants, the referee first looked towards Gust, who had changed into his fighting gear, complete with his two kukris and his leather armor.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Then, the referee looked toward Gust’s opponent, a young, but experienced spear user by the name of Kay.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

“Fight!”

Before the referee’s shout even ended, Gust dashed forward, trying to close the distance between himself and the opponent. Similar to the situation he’d seen earlier, he would be at a disadvantage in the medium to long range.

Unfortunately, just as Gust was about to come within striking range, Kay adjusted her grip on her spear so that she was gripping it at the halfway point, then rested the lower half of the spear against her back, and swept the spear across her front, while stepping to the right at the same time.

To dodge the spear, Gust was forced to dodge to the right, which increased the distance between him and his opponent.

At this distance, and no way to flank the opponent, Gust waited for Kay to make her move, keeping his eyes on her spear in order to react at the earliest moment possible. However, after a few seconds, his eyes drifted from the tip of her spear, to her eyes.

As their eyes met, a tremor ran through Gust’s body, and he almost unconsciously lowered his kukris.

As soon as Kay saw this, she stabbed forward with her spear, hoping to secure a quick win by taking advantage of Gust’s momentary lapse.

Luckily, Gust’s instincts saved him from injury - jolting out of his momentary trance, he hurriedly intercepted the spear with his kukris, using the curves of the blades to trap the spear below the kukris.

“Ha!” Gust pushed downward with his kukris, forcing the spearhead toward the ground.

Instead of trying to withdraw her spear, as Gust had expected, Kay instead rushed forward, causing the head of the spear to hit the arena floor. Then, she raised the back of the spear, causing the spear to bend.

At this point, if Gust were to keep holding the spear down, she would be able to make use of the built up force from the spear bending to push herself backwards, again resetting the fight. However, if he were to stop pressing down on the spear, the spearhead would “spring” upwards with great force, which would cause the spearhead to slice open the front half of his body.

“Do you really think I haven’t seen this trick before?” Gust smirked as he kept the pressure on the front end of the spear, but lifted his right leg and kicked the shaft of the spear, forcing it sideways.

At the same time, he lifted his right arm and pushed rightward with his left kukri, forcing the spearhead to escape to the right.

This combination of forces, along with Kay’s initial momentum, caused her to lose her balance and teeter toward her right. Furthermore, because she had been rushing forward to increase the pressure on the spearhead, she was now within Gust’s striking range.

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In an instant, he’d rushed up to her, and placed his right kukri against her neck.

Kay stared at Gust, still unsure of how exactly she’d lost. Despite that, however, the results were clear.

“I yield.”

The referee nodded, and signalled Gust’s victory.

With this, Gust lowered his kukri from Kay’s neck, and stepped back.

“Good fight.”

“...” Kay wasn’t exactly happy with her loss. “Did you just pretend to be distracted to get me to attack?”

It took a few seconds, but Gust was quickly back to his usual form; “Psh, do I look like that kind of idiot? I’ll have you know, I’m never distracted. What you perceived as me being distracted was simply me achieving a higher level of concentration, the likes of which have only been replicated by the former King Le-”

Kay covered her face with her palm. How exactly did she lose to this idiot?

Smiling, Gust waved at her as he descended the arena stage. However, as soon as he made it back to where Wesley had been sitting, he collapsed next to his only friend, and let out a large, long sigh.

“Hey Wesley.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re friends, right?”

“Hmph.”

“Oi, kid. In what world am I not a friend of yours, you ungrateful brat?”

“You stole my breakfast this morning.”

“Your breakfast was dry and disgusting, I did you a favor by eating it!”

“I wanted to eat it, the inn worker said it was a present for how cute I was…”

“That in itself was suspicious. Hell, you should be thanking me for checking your food for poisoning. ”

After joking around with Wesley for a bit, Gust thought back to that moment on the arena stage, when he’d made eye contact with Kay.

Gust sighed. ‘I wonder how strong a fighter she would have been…’

After a few moments of contemplation, Gust shrugged, then shook his head a few moments to clear it of extraneous thoughts.

“Hey Gust, can we head over to Arena 3 now? We need to see the caliber of the mages here.”

“Yes, esteemed young master. As you wish.”

“...”

Wesley and Gust sat in front of the Arena 3 stage, on which two Rank 4 Elementary Mages were competing.

It was quite an unusual sight, as the first mage did not seem to specialize in any form of magic, and looked to just be haphazardly casting as many spells as he could before his mana pool ran dry in an effort to win the battle through sheer force, while the other seemed to specialize in reinforcement magic.

Part of the arena stage floor, which was made completely out of stone, had been ripped up to form a barrier around the second mage, and was currently bearing the brunt of the spells cast by the first mage.

Reinforced by magic, the stone barrier tens of times more resilient than it would have been. Despite that, the storm of spells cast by the first mage continuously wore down the stone barrier. Every time the stone barrier was about to fall apart, or had holes blasted in it, the second mage wrote a spell to repair the barrier, before again writing spells to further reinforce it.

Although Wesley couldn’t see the fight, judging from the energies he detected, he could tell that compared to the duel he’d previously fought in, this fight was on a far larger scale, in both terms of mana consumption, as well as the complexity of the spells being cast.

Then, just as Wesley was about to begin meditating to prepare for his upcoming duel, he felt a surge of energy coming from the arena stage that seemed almost “familiar” to him. However, this feeling quickly passed.

“Hey Gust, what kind of spell was just cast?”

“Uh, one of the mages just cast a spell that shot a bunch of icicles toward the other.”

Wesley waited for another minute or so, before he felt the “familiar” energy again.

“What did they cast this time?”

“Uh, one of the mages froze the stone wall… don’t know what good it did him though, it’s still there…why’re you asking?”

“I think I’ve figured something out, but I’m not sure how I can test my theory…”