Alder had been dozens of feet away from me less than a second ago, and no official start to our match had been called. Therefore, I was caught completely off guard when he abruptly appeared before me, his sword slashing past my face toward my midsection in a crippling blow aimed to shatter my ribs and instantly end the fight.

I wasn’t able to do anything except take the blow, [Ion Shield] locking the charged particles in the air around me into a solid, translucent aegis to block the incoming force. And it worked… after a fashion. I didn’t feel the pain of the strike, but I was still knocked flying backward from the force of the blow, landing on my side and rolling to a dazed stop near the edge of the stone ring of the arena. I was scraped and bleeding from my roll across the stone, but at least my ribs weren’t shattered…

That was the first time I had used my powers to block such a significant amount of force, and I felt something off about my [Ion Shield]… unsurprisingly, it was damaged. There was no way to tell exactly what had occurred without meditating to access my astral form, but I didn’t want to risk having Frog-face come to the conclusion that I had been lying about The Merrik. Even though going 'unconscious' might have been the safest move, I didn't even consider it an option.

"No!! You killed him!" shrieked a high-pitched voice.

Wait... was the servant girl worried about me? That was kind of nice. And I supposed that a blow like that might have actually been fatal on a normal kid, especially if their shattered ribs punctured any organs! Was it something I said? Oh, right... yeah, it was probably something I said. But still, what kind of beast-brained fool strikes a six-year-old like that over a perceived insult?!

I focused my attention back on my [Ion Shield] and could faintly sense a slight drain on my stamina as it repaired itself, but it was a relatively slow process (and not one I had been able to practice in the past).

Lord Runax and Alder were staring at each other when I raised my head to look around. The noble had angry-looking wisps of flame forming in the air around him, while the soldier was looking back at him defiantly without saying anything. His hand was clenching and loosening rhythmically around the charred hilt of the practice sword, and I thought he looked like an employee desperately trying to think up an excuse to cover up a major blunder. Taking a moment to recover-

A high-pitched gasp broke the silence, "He... he's alive!"

Dammit... so much for taking a breather...

They both looked at me with incredulous expressions, as if they couldn't believe their eyes. Lord Runax began laughing (either in relief, or in shock; I couldn't tell), but Alder didn't join him. He probably expected me to be half dead, but all I had was a few scrapes and bruises.

Then his expression darkened, his brows lowering as his wooden sword was once again covered in a sheath of fire. I panicked, my thoughts scrambling. My first instinct was to jump to my feet and try and use the Jujitsu I had learned in my old life on Earth – but as I stood up I realized that was simply impossible: The size and strength difference between us was just too much, not to mention his speed.

Lightning. I have lightning! The idea came to me, and before I could even think about it I started envisioning an ionized path between myself and the most threatening thing in my field of vision, the flaming wooden sword. The air was suddenly filled with the smell of ozone and the sound of electricity zapping from my outstretched hand.

Alder cried out in surprise, jumping to the side as he shook his hand in pain, his angry glower replaced with an expression of disbelief. I almost missed my target with the next [Lightning Bolt], but my habitual practice of focusing on the target allowed me to shift the path of the attack quicker than he could move.

I struck out at his sword again and again, building up a contained voltage and releasing it over and over. There was a strange resistance after the third bolt, however, almost as though some outside force was disrupting the path of ionized air before it could reach Alder's sword.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to regain my equilibrium as I attempted to figure out what was going on. He had begun trying to strike my bolts out of the air, somehow predicting my attacks and swinging his sword just as the lightning fired. He was fighting lightning with fire, bursts of flame exploding around the burning wooden blade as he tried to close the distance with me. Yet there was also a small amount of smoke rising from his body, and each [Lightning Bolt] caused him to stagger and slow down enough that I could back away and keep him at a distance.

I soon realized that he was using the timing of my attacks against me, but how had he figured it out so fast?! I considered varying the frequency of my blows, since I was simply zapping him as quickly as I could, but slowing my rate of attack would probably just let him close the distance between us even easier.

A loud yelling finally made its way through the chaos of my adrenaline-charged mind, and I looked over to see Lord Runax rushing onto the arena floor, shouting for us to cease fighting while waving his arms wildly. I stopped my frantic attacks just long enough to see Alder vanish in a burst of flame and appear right beside me, howling with rage as he brought his blade down. His skin and hair were badly singed, and his eyes were red and swollen. I raised my arms to defend myself, and just before he made contact I wondered if repeated lightning strikes could cause hearing loss.

*BOOM*

The light of an arc flash radiated from the spot where Alder struck me, accompanied by a deafening explosion. A painful impact struck my arms as the force and heat of the blast overwhelmed my damaged [Ion Shield]. My secondary defense activated instantly as [Reactive Aurashield] solidified where it detected Alder's foreign energy attempting to pass through my aura (likely saving my arms from being broken, or worse), but it was unable to stop the raw concussive force which smashed my battered limbs into my face and sent me flipping head-over-heels away from the point of impact.

Laying on the ground felt like heaven, and it was easy to ignore the part of my brain warning me that the 'comfort' I was feeling was actually shock, and shock was bad. I had no desire to open my eyes, or even find out if Alder was still planning to attack me, but slowly a pressure started to build in my chest, and I felt a mounting need for air. Wait, why had I stopped breathing? The explosion!! It must have knocked the air out of me and I needed to breathe so badly that I never wanted anything more in my life-

My eyes shot open as my chest heaved off the ground and, with a desperate gasp, my lungs clawed for air as I took in breath after breath of the sweetest only-slightly-bacon-flavored air that I had ever tasted. I leaned back down on the cool stone floor of the arena, suddenly so exhausted I could barely move, as I saw the frantic face of Lord Runax appear above me. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but he didn’t appear to be angry, which was nice. It occurred to me then that maybe he wasn't that ugly after all. Even frogs could look kinda cute, once you got used to them.

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I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths as I tried to process what had just happened. I had been in several fights back on Earth, though I would certainly not consider myself a ‘fighter’. More of a lover, really. Yet there was one strange thing that had always happened whenever I was truly threatened, or even violently attacked – I got angry. Not that wacky don’t-give-a-crap-about-anything reality-tv outrage that you hear in the news, however, and I certainly didn't go berserk.

To be fair, I hardly ever lost my temper... but when I did, any shyness, embarrassment, or social anxiety would vanish, and I would begin to take aggressive steps to subdue, whether verbally or physically, whatever had earned my rage. Alder had made me pretty mad with his 'my social class is better than yours' crap, and his subsequent unreasonably heavy-handed attacks. It was probably the angriest I had been since the terrorists on the airplane, in my previous life. Lying there on the ground, I decided that Alder would pay.

I opened my eyes sometime after the droning voice of Lord Runax had moved away. I sat up with a wince, my arms sore enough that I didn't want to use them to help to my feet, and looked over at the Hunter I had been ‘sparring’ with a few minutes ago. He wasn't that far from me, laying unmoving on the hard arena floor. There was smoke in the air around him, and I suddenly realized where the faint scent of fried pork was coming from.

His wooden sword was nowhere in sight, and his weapon arm was burnt a crispy blackened color. It looked... wrong, and my eyes widened as I realized it was far too short. I looked around, not able to see any traces of his missing hand. There were blackened bones sticking out of the stub of his arm, and my stomach dropped as I realized what must have happened. I laid back down on the stone, closing my eyes.

He hadn't caused the explosion. It had been his sword, or maybe his body itself, coming into contact with me after having been excessively charged by my [Lightning Bolt]... just like the brick I had used for target practice years ago.

I had devised a relatively simple method to fix this issue, of course, but it took focus and a certain amount of time to perform. The solution was to use my mastery over {Electricity Control} to connect both myself and my target to a common source (usually just the ground itself) using a wish, a dream... and concentric links of ionized air molecules held in place by their respective polarity.

Anyway, regardless of how it worked, the result allowed any excess charge to drain rapidly. Either way, the excess electricity itself wasn't all that dangerous to me (as long as the target didn't explode, blasting me with shrapnel... again...) since I habitually designed all my powers such that I couldn't be readily injured by the energy contained in my own attacks. (I hadn't had a chance to test if I was protected from other people's lightning, however).

My anger had completely dissipated after seeing the state my erstwhile sparring partner was in. I didn't exactly feel bad for him, since it had been his reckless actions that had led to this result, but a shiver passed through me as a grim intrusive thought popped into my head:

Alder was no longer the only living veteran of the shadow wolf attack with both arms intact...