“Haha. I’m finally set free from this damn curse!” (Daniel)

For a split second I felt resentment towards him. I don’t know if it was a real emotion of mine, or just a simple grudge, but what I knew was that I had an urge to kill that bastard.

“I hope you received something good, otherwise you won’t be able to last long against me.” (Daniel)

He pointed at the sword I received from Dad in his last moments. It seemed like the decoy fulfilled its purpose. He thought it was my final weapon against him.

“Come at me with all you got.” (Daniel)

Daniel seemed overly confident now with his full strength. He recovered that underestimating personality of his and started to mock me again.

With a wicked smile and lots of excitement, I began to face him head on. I rushed forwards, while he did the same. The fight started again with a fist fight. I knew my limits as well as my strengths and weaknesses all too well.

I had a great defence as well as a high level of endurance, which allowed me to solely focus on dealing heavy blows, while I completely ignored defending against attacks at close range.

Daniel threw a punch at my body. I didn’t even try to dodge, quite the opposite, I tried to land an even heavier attack on him. He noticed and backed out immediately.

I didn’t leave him enough room and followed his path, while my next attack was already on its way. He dodged it and tried to use my own attack against me with a counter. I shifted my body sideways and landed a kick on his body.

The ground shook lightly because of my heavy attack. The impact was strong enough to force him a few steps backwards. He knocked himself back to reality and spit out some blood from his mouth.

“Not bad.” (Daniel)

We went at each other again. This time I was the faster one and got the first strike. It got blocked by him catching my fist and with the elbow of his other arm he tried to break mine.

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With strength alone, I couldn’t get free, so I tried to get another heavy hit with my other arm. I was ready to trade one of my arms, which I could recover if I had some time against another dangerous blow.

I was ready to take that gamble. In my eyes I would come out ahead in both options. I probably seemed crazy in his eyes and in the last second, he backed out and I was only able to scratch him a bit.

It was close though. I could have almost lost my right arm for a while.

“Ho.” (Daniel)

We continued our fist fight for quite a while. I could fully analyse his fighting style. He had swift movements and wouldn’t take many risks. I on the other hand had reckless and irrational attacks as well as no regards for my own body.

After the fifth or sixth encounter, where he had to leave close combat range or take a blow, he realised that he wouldn’t win our fight that way. He changed the fight as soon as he saw the opportunity to do so.

“You’re truly impressive. You are young, but you already managed to surpass me in close combat. You had the advantage of some sparring partners though.” (Daniel)

Daniel was a talkative person. Whenever he made a mistake, he tried to find excuses for his failures. He would never give in and openly admit that he lost in something. In my opinion this was one of his many weaknesses.

Mid-range fight; a mixture of wide physical attacks as well as sneaky magic attacks mixed from a small distant. It was also the battle style most suited for the usage of weapons. This was the next battle we fought.

The problem was that this fighting style was probably the one I was most proficient with. Due to my large variety in magic, as well as my overbearing close combat skills, mid-range fights were my absolute strength.

Daniel didn’t know about that fact yet and dared to challenge me with it. I made sure he’d pay the price for it.

I already had my sword and he summoned one as well. His seemed a lot more powerful, but power didn’t matter, if the one who wields it is too weak, then the sword wouldn’t be of much help.

It didn’t take long and our swords clashed. Again, we fought at a very high speed and it was hard to even follow our movements with normal eyes. Magic attacks, such as fireballs flew at me occasionally.

This only showed me even more how little he knew about mid-range combat. It was important to simultaneously use smaller magic, so you’d get the advantage at some point.

I don’t know what he did in that time he had, but most of it probably went to waste. He missed a lot of basic fighting tactics and he fought like a novice in mid-range combat.

The only advantage he had over me was his reach as well as his strength. It didn’t matter even strong points could be made to disadvantages. I used one of my favourite magic attacks to do so.

I increased his gravity by a lot and his movements began to slow down and become sluggish. He could still almost move normally, but it was now impossible for him to keep up with my pace.

I landed one small cut after another. I didn’t need to try to finish him off, I could take my time and save my energy for later. The longer the fight continued, the more cuts Daniel received.

My advantage grew larger and larger. It was a fact which was known to both of us. I didn’t let it get to me much though. I continued to fight as save as possible and widen our gap even further.

Unfortunately, I made a small mistake and hesitated at one attack, because I wasn’t sure if one of his uncontrolled sword swings would hit me or not. This opened an opportunity for him to widen the distance between us by a lot and he also got out of my gravity field.

With it our short and one-sided mid-range fight ended as well. Daniel was panting heavily and had injuries all over his body. I was finally able to see an end to this whole battle.

“This sword of yours is truly powerful.” (Daniel)

In the meantime, he made another pointless statement. It also proved to me that he was incompetent. I don’t want to know how much time it took him to even get control over his part of the key.

“It is time to show you my full power.” (Daniel)

It came down to the last step of our battle, a single long range attack from each of us, which was going to decide the outcome of the battle.