“Mouric Voknar! And his opponent, the seventh Blade: Daniella Low! The inevitability of ice clashes with the fury of steel and flame!” The announcer roared, riling up the crowd much as he had done during the previous day. Leif was buffeted by the cascade of noise that washed over him and the arena.

Much like the last time Leif had spectated the quadriad, his interests were mostly on the displays of power from high level individuals. When he compared himself to Hera or even her vanquished opponent, Kastro, he found himself coming up short. But the gap wasn’t as wide as it had once been.

During the battle over Far-Reach, Leif hadn’t been able to interact with, let alone participate with the higher levelled portion of the fight. The powers that had been in play were beyond his ability to contend with. Now, several levels, promotions and an evolution later, that would likely no longer be the case. Could he match someone like Hera in offensive power? Not at all. But defensively? Absolutely. Obviously he wouldn’t win any fights by not being able to attack, and that was a problem he would need to solve going forward, but there was a sense of security, of safety and comfort in knowing just how durable he was.

A laugh boomed across the arena sands, cutting short his train of thought. A massive man with an even bigger hammer jogged out from one of the entrances. Leif focused on him, and the perception altering effect of the stadium's shielding brought his features into perfect clarity. The man’s uniform shirt looked like it was unable to contain the wall of muscle that was Mouric’s torso. He waved a meaty hand at the cheering crowd, then let his hammer, the weapon longer than he was tall, crash head first into the sandy ground. Every grain in the arena jumped as the huge slab of dark metal impacted the floor with a devastating crash.

Leif had seen the blue haired man’s opponent the day before. Daniela Low, cousin of Kastro, shared much of his features. Grey hair and sharp features made her look like a statue that had been carved with slightly exaggerated proportions, leaving her scowl sharp, her expression deadly and pensive. Unlike Mouric, Daniela ignored the crowd, staring at the massive man with her arms crossed, seemingly unarmed. The sand around her began to blacken, charred by an invisible heat as she flexed her fingers.

The announcer began the countdown, the crowd joining in a moment later. Then both combatants, two humans over level one hundred burst forward, the ground cracking beneath their feet. With every step Mouric took, ice condensed behind him, growing into a towering, glacier-like slab before he had crossed even half the distance. The arena shook, and Daniela blurred forward. A wave of heat blasted from her fist as she bore down on the larger man, cinders swirled and the air screamed. Mouric brought up the head of his massive hammer to block, but an unseen force shoved it aside.

White flashed, and every spectator in the crowd lost sight of the battle. An instant later a shockwave of wind buffeted the barrier, followed a heartbeat later by a thousand shards of fractured ice. The students sitting in the row ahead of Leif stood along with almost everyone else in the stands, belatedly the scion did the same, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be able to see the arena. Several thousand people all collectively held their breath, then a jagged tower of ice burst up out of the cloud of dust, followed by three more. There was another white flash, then flames erupted outwards in a devastating column of destruction.

The fire swept clockwise around the arena, where it passed, sand blackened and bubbled, orange tongues leaping up to lick the barrier. There was a bellow, then finally the crowd caught sight of Mouric as the muscular man leapt up into one of the pillars of ice, his arms, legs and torso coated in a protective layer of glacial armour. The man gestured, and the ground rumbled, his conjured glacier picking up the pace as its cracked and half melted surface ploughed across the space towards the cloud.

His hammer was nowhere to be seen, that was until he held out a hand, causing the massive weapon to come spinning up towards him. There was another burst of heated air, and Daniela strode into sight. She looked unharmed, her uniform unrumpled and her grey hair still tied back as it had been at the start of the fight.

“Nicely done!” Mouric shouted down at her, waving with his hammer in a bizarrely friendly manner.

“Yield, brute. You are not my match.” She replied coldly.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Shall we find out?” He said with a grin.

In response to his words, Daniela raised a hand, and another eruption of orange flames flooded towards the hammer wielder. Mouric jumped to another piller just as the fire washed over where he had been standing, then a dozen large chunks of ice appeared over his head. They started falling immediately, with the man doing something with a skill to alter the speed and direction of their fall.

Daniela hopped back from the first, sidestepped the second, blasted a third from the air with a contemptuous wave of her hand, then cut the remainder in half with a world distorting shout of spellcraft and the sudden appearance of a sword in her hand.

Mouric laughed, then the large man kicked off the now falling pillar of ice, launching himself towards the seventh blade with the inexorable force of an avalanche. From there the duel fell into a rhythm. A sudden melee engagement and a resulting storm of fire, ice and sand making actually perceiving the battle a challenge. Then one, or both combatants would disengage, and the two would skirmish for a handful of seconds.

In the brief flashes of the close combat engagements Leif could make out, Mouric’s massive hammer seemed to play a key factor. Both Blades seemed to have one or more skills that allowed for at least partial control over the weapon. If Leif was to guess, Daniela had some control over metal, allowing her to manipulate the hammer’s head as it got close to her. The scion suspected that Mouric’s weapon was enchanted, which made the feat of being able to influence it at all with [Metal Manipulation] or some other skill an incredible display of power. For his part, the eighth Blade looked to be using a weapon mastery skill, likely a heavily fused comprehension skill that allowed for weight manipulation.

The hammer spun and twisted, never seeming to find a target, while also dominating every moment both combatants spent in melee range. Mouric had no problem flooding the battlefield with his ice powers, so he likely had a cultivation skill of some kind. Leif sat back down after the crowd settled, considering what he knew of both Blades. Assuming both had two classes, each around level fifty, what would they be?

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For Mouric it was fairly simple. He obviously had a class focusing on martial prowess, and another focusing on ice magic. It reminded Leif of Sieg, the now third year having a similar class that combined both aspects into one. But Sieg also had the scholar class, which Leif suspected Mouric did not possess. [Attuned: Ice] was an easy guess, but judging by how weighty the man’s elemental conjuration was, the class had almost certainly been promoted into something to do with glaciers.

As for Daniela, the seventh Blade was more of a mystery. She danced through the battlefield, occasionally blasting large gouts of flame, at other times summoning one or more swords. Despite her speed, she was far less mobile than her opponent, instead choosing to move only when necessary. It was a practical, efficient style. But what were her classes? Did her fire magic belong to a different class than her ability to control metal? Leif could easily imagine if that was the case, alternatively her powers could instead come from a single [Crafter] class that had evolved into [Smith] or some other tier two class.

There were three main types of classes humans could gain. Martial classes, thaumatic classes, and technical or artisan classes. While powerful combatants usually stuck to the first two options when gaining classes, the third was easily the most popular judging by the number of people who took them. If Leif was to guess, a majority of those in the arena had the [Scribe] class, or had evolved it into [Scholar] or something else. In Ahle-ho most non adventurers or soldiers had the [Labourer] class, which despite not being flashy at all, was highly customisable.

Most technical classes started fairly generic. They let someone work harder, smarter, have greater finesse or gain an attribute increase when doing repetitive tasks. If Daniela had started with [Crafter], something Leif was fairly confident about as he overheard a nearby pair of merchants discuss between themselves the woman’s renowned ability to forge weapons and armour to a standard beyond what most smiths in the capital could manage. Technical class or no, she was a fearsome force in combat, easily matching Mouric blow for blow.

Unlike the bout between Hera and Kastro, the eighth and seventh Blade’s fought for almost twenty minutes. Leif pitied the people who would need to clean the arena afterwards. Eventually Mouric’s sheer volume of ice pressed Daniela into a corner, his laugh boomed across the arena as he stood tall on a massive column of ice. Daniela said something, to which the man laughed again. Then he held up a hand and loudly forfeited the match.

The spectators stared in silence, not understanding why the person who looked to be in the winning position had surrendered. Then every metre of ice within the arena cracked at once, the sound deafening and resonant. Leif blinked in surprise, watching as over a hundred swords rose point first up from under the ice, circling overhead like a flock of birds, before zipping towards Daniela, only to vanish when they got within a metre of the woman.

Mouric slumped onto his now falling pillar of ice, the man still laughing. “Good fight! Good fight!” He boomed.

Daniela said something in reply, but her voice was drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

“Maybe! Our rematch will be between our students, yes?”

The woman shook her head and walked for the nearest exit that wasn’t blocked by a wall of cracked ice. Mouric laughed again, then looked around sheepishly at the people who had filtered into the arena to clean the place before the quadriad could continue.

===

“Ten minutes.” The official told Sieg. “They’re still clearing away the last of the ice.”

He nodded at the woman, then rolled his neck and shook out his arms. Being part of the act following a clash between two Blade’s of the Academy wasn’t exactly a nerves free experience. He and his team were standing in a large waiting room below the arena’s eastern entrance. Other teams milled about outside the room, but he put them out of his mind.

“I can’t believe how much the arena shook! Do you think they broke anything?” Linus asked, the young man hopping from foot to foot, his long light brown hair bobbing up and down.

“Obviously not.” Adriana said, rolling her eyes as she tapped her foot, a frown etched onto her sharp features.

“What do you mean, obviously not? This place is huge, maybe a light fixture fell off a wall or something?”

“That's not exactly significant damage that would make people worried about the structural integrity of the building.”

“Sure. Maybe lots of lights broke though? Either way, damage to the arena might be hard to see at first. This place is really old after all.”

“Most of the lights are new. And damaging enchanted and reinforced stone isn’t exactly easy.”

“How would you know, have you tried?”

“Have you?”

“Guys. Stop. Please.” Sieg sighed. “Could you please go five minute’s without you bickering?”

Adriana whistled in annoyance, the action rustling the clothing of everyone in the waiting room. Linus rubbed the back of his head. Their three other teammates gave each other worried looks, then they all waited in silence for several minutes.

“Yes, I have tried damaging enchanted stone.” Linus said with a shrug.

“Did you try using your head?” Adriana snorted.

Sieg groaned. “Hells you two, if you need to blow off steam go into a side room and have at it. I’m losing my damn mind listening to this while we wait.”

The two second years scowled, pouted and flushed, both shuffling uncomfortably under his icy glare.

“You’ll be going out in three minutes.” The official said, looking worried. “Please do not leave.”

“Bet Linus only needs a minute.” Adriana muttered.

“Piss off-”

“We are about to fight a six man team from Braslim. They’re mostly third years, and we need to take this seriously.” Sieg interrupted. “I am asking you, right now, as this team’s leader: Please. Shut the fuck up, I’m begging you. I’ll get on my hands and knees if I have to.”

“Sorry” Adriana said, kicking at the floor. “I know how important this is. I’ll behave.”

“Thank you.” Sieg said, turning to look at Linus.

“Yeah. You got it man. I know you don’t want to disappoint the big guy.”

“Right.” The northerner said, ushering everyone in closer. “We’ll crush those smug bastards. But one last time, this is the plan…”