‘Mata faka!’ ‘Mata faka!’ ‘Mata faka!’
The duel had already began, but most of the crowd kept pointing at the foreigner, admiring the ‘symbols of a realm manhood’. Meanwhile Leo was already struck several times, but the one whose expression was turning painful was unexpectedly the foreigner.
Fortunately this guy turned out to be much more tenacious and held out for at least triple the time his fellow easterner did last night, but in the end he still fell, mostly from exhaustion. Leo was inwardly kicking himself though. He clearly knew if it was Kevin Shaw in his stead, the genius from the Golden city would’ve figured out the trick to the eastern technique long ago – having no talent for martial arts sucked.
If at first the attitude of the foreigners was mostly condescending, then after the third easterner’s head hit the deck no one dared to underestimate this strange ‘local’. His last two opponents were rather strong even by the eastern standards and despite the local youth winning only one token per match, it was clear he was simply humiliating them. It was an elegant humiliation, executed by incredible patience without a change in expression. The guy never showed a hing of satisfaction or joy. On the contrary – every time he won it seemed he was cursing himself for the weak performance.
It was unclear from where he suddenly appeared just a couple days before the next stage of the competition. According to the previous investigation all the top locals were already out of the competition, but deep schemes and trickery was not a characteristic of either tribe, thus everyone had hard time figuring out the ‘truth’ behind Leo’s appearance.
In the morning westerners were still laughing at the predicament of the easterners to whom kicking Leo out of the competition has become the question of national pride. Unfortunately in the afternoon, when the representative of the eastern tribes met with the head of the western group, both sides were left in deep thoughts.
It was fine the strange youth had defeated over ten easterners and now had gathered enough tokens to get to the next stage, the problem was that he defeated all without taking a break. Clearly this was too much of a threat and the westerners had to agree – maybe they were more suited to fight him compared to the easterners.
Leo, of course, knew nothing about the ‘grand’ schemes the foreigners were trying to think of and spent the afternoon challenging one guy in grayish skin after another. He felt he was slowly getting an idea how the easterners fought and in the latest duels began to mimic them, albeit unsuccessfully, at least for now.
The next morning began with a surprise though. Before Leo found a ‘worthy’ easterner to challenge, a guy with a bluish skin came over and suggested a duel. The old hag, who as always was following Leo around, loudly cheered, but the youth felt that something was amiss.
It didn’t take long to find out what. The moment the duel began, the westerner took from his back two one yard long sticks and began to wave them around in a weird fashion. To onlookers it seemed he was creating a wall in front of him and no matter where Leo attacked, all his hits would get parried.
The youth, of course, didn’t care about the last part. He was annoyed to no end at the damned lightning that had mutated his original fire affinity. With dreamy eyes he looked at the opponent, imagining how cool and spectacular it would’ve been if he could wield two flaming swords – just like the guy did with the two sticks.
Since the overseeing dryad didn’t say anything, the weapons were clearly allowed, but Leo, of course, didn’t intend to take out his. He was troubled by a thought how both the easterners and the westerners were not dominating everyone else in the competition, just the locals – it meant they had a way to fight and win against each other. Of course, it was obvious how the ones with the weapons fought, but what Leo was more interested in was how the easterners could win against them.
When the westerner had showed off enough, he began to rain hits on Leo who actually tried to figure out a logical way to fight him with bare hands. Obviously he could simply punch the guy in the face misusing the handicap in cultivation, but much more interesting was to try and evade the hits, not allowing any or barely allowing some to touch him.
The first half of the day turned into a practice against armed opponents. Leo really tried to fight them ‘fairly’, but when a guy with a longer stick, or rather – a pole, for a weapon came to challenge him, he gave up. Maybe it was too difficult or he simply didn’t have any talent, just like master Zaraki said back in the day, but it turned out to be much easier to fight against someone with weapon with a brute force.
In the beginning this fight began the way all the previous duels against westerners went. The opponent began to hammer Leo in different ways with his stick while the youth was trying to evade or block. The hits stung a bit, but they were not painful – it just felt shameful since everyone saw how poorly he performed. Of course, the spectators were long stunned speechless witnessing the beating Leo was taking, but he was more concerned about his own embarrassment and didn’t think whether his actions could be considered ‘normal’.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
When suddenly the opponent managed to sneak in a direct hit in the middle of Leo’s forehead, the youth finally had enough and struck the pole, forgetting to hold back. It was something between the Lightning punch and the Lightning palm, but no matter how one would call it, the pole disintegrated in splinters with a loud boom.
At that moment Leo had a revelation – he didn’t need to fight like either – easterner or westerner. He could use his own curse and maybe turn it into something useful. In fact, this hit on the forehead became another turning point in his life.
From that moment on Leo began to work on his own – Lightning style. For now it was based on blowing up the weapons of his opponents while landing Lightning palms on their bodies, but the last part he couldn’t fully test yet, since it might turn out to be much too harmful to directly strike anyone with the full power of his cultivation.
The second part of the day became much more exciting for him, spectacular for the onlookers and painful in all the possible places for the foreigners. Leo actively sought out opponents, broke their weapons, exhausted their strength until people began to voluntarily give up.
News of him becoming nightmare of the foreigners quickly spread through the Dryad mountain and many rushed over to witness the ‘local’ legend, but unfortunately the amount of people the bridges and platforms could hold was rather limited and the absolute majority could only hear stories of Leo’s latest success.
When it was time for the next stage of the competition, the remaining contestants gathered on the largest platform of the Dryad mountain city. Besides the dryads themselves and their elite guards, were present only a bunch of lucky people who thought of spending the night on the platform in order to witness the historical event. The rest had to crowd on the bridges leading here or simply hang out somewhere nearby, but because of the mist only a couple hundred people could see what went on there.
Unfortunately even those who could consider themselves witnesses, were bound to be disappointed. Out of several hundred initial participants there were only nine left, or rather – there were only nine of those who had enough tokens or were willing to take part. It was one thing to loose in an honorable fashion, but at this moment every competitor who considered themselves the be strong enough to stand a chance had seen Leo fight and knew that going against him was futile. The harmless looking youth was clearly a sadist who played around with his opponents the whole day long and won when they fell over unconscious on their own or gave up.
Besides, he was the only ‘local’ one and the foreigners didn’t want to go against their own strongest knowing they would need every ounce of strength against the monster. Thus, even though quite a few men had ten or more tokens on their hands, they refused to take part and the pretty wooden tokens were destined to become mementos reminding of something special that happened long ago.
While most people were simply confused about the strange development of the competition, Leo was deeply disappointed and sad. He kind of hoped there were many more matches to look forward to, but from it looked like, he was about to get only eight at best. He already began to consider ways of enticing the foreigners to more fights, when dryads had a quick discussion and destroyed his dreams.
“Since there are less than ten participants left, the second part of the competition is hereby concluded and the nine of you advance to the last stage.” The oldest of the dryads spoke, “Tomorrow morning meet us at the bridge leading to the mountain. You’ll have the chance to see the high dryad there.”
Only now Leo remembered this whole event was organized so that the best of the best could witness the high dryad’s matrimonial ceremony. It was quite the letdown, but there was no way around it. After thinking a bit, he decided to take a look the next day and afterwards depart – he had spent enough time here and all the questions about the close combat styles would be answered in the Golden city where he intended to go after returning to the sect. He was not clear yet how to pull that off, but since he had a small pile of beast cores stored in the amulet, there was something to rely on and all that was left was to teleport to the immortal realm.
The next morning the old hag with teary eyes pulled Leo towards the mountain. The whole way she instructed him to ‘behave properly’ and ‘not let her down’ and kept checking if Leo’s new tree bark outfit was clean enough. Needless to say the clothing was fine and looked just like anyone elses, but the old lady was becoming so increasingly annoying Leo even considered throwing her off a bridge when no one was looking.
Unfortunately there were tons of people around – everyone was congratulating him, wishing good luck and making him promise he would tell them all about the dryad mountain after coming back. The best Leo could do was to smile and nod and got his sweet release only after they arrived at the last bridge at the very north of the city.
Of course, Leo was the last one to arrive. Apparently the rest of competitors spent the night directly at the bridge – all of them were foreigners and didn’t have their own home in the city anyway.
The elite guards were proudly guarding the place as always and when everyone had finally gathered, one of them rushed away to report and a short while later the delegation of dryads arrived. Leo guessed they were waiting on the other side since it was impossible to cover the distance from the top in such short amount of time, but the impression they left was celebratory enough.
While the crowd cheered, the competitors stepped forward with solemn expressions and when after a short speech given by the oldest dryad they were invited to proceed, the eight men gathered their belongings and slowly walked over.
At this moment Leo was not certain what to think. The whole procession looked like a part of a carnival or even a freak show. One of the guys was wearing a huge eagle’s head, another had long strings of teeth, probably from greenlander beasts, hanging around his neck, then there was one who wore something like a jacket made of bright feathers and a westerner of a small stature who had several pikes with impaled tiny, fist sized heads that very much looked like they once belonged to humans.
Strangely enough, even though Leo seemed to be the only ‘normal’ one around there, once again he was the target of snorts and condescending looks. Even dryads threw judging glances his way, but since he didn’t understand what was going on, he decided to not care. In fact, he was looking forward to get higher up the mountain to legally enjoy the beautiful view he saw more than a year ago.