Leo glanced at the unconscious opponent and regretfully sighed. Of course, he was the one to blame, but it did happen on accident. Well, be as it may, now he had to find Jack and escape afterwards – there was no way he intended to become a part of the war anyway.
“Where do you think you’re going?” When Leo turned to leave, elder Cross’s angry voice stopped him.
“I …” He actually didn’t know how to explain, but the old man never expected an excuse.
He said, “You can only leave when the junior sect master allows you to!”
Meanwhile co-sect master Goran called another Seven peaks disciple over, “Runi!”
A thin and tall, at least a head taller opponent, a guy well in his twenties with a spear in his hand came to the front and calmly looked at Leo. He didn’t say anything, but began to do few warm-up exercises – the earlier fight clearly showed the opponent was devious and was walking on the thin line between rules of the civilized world and the corrupt path. Thus Runi didn’t intend to take him lightly and similar to how the guy crippled Atila, he was going to cripple him.
Initially he was meant to be a hidden weapon on the battlefield because his spear skills were comparable to weapons of mass destruction, on a small scale, of course. But it was clear why sect master Goran called for him – he was to make the hateful guy suffer the death of a thousand cuts!
“I’m sorry, Leo.” Lady Etessa said, trying to maintain an indifferent expression, “This one is also yours.”
“Oh? Can I?” Leo was actually pleasantly surprised.
Initially he though everyone would get only one fight and because he felt tired it seemed like an unfair punishment. Now though, with the adrenaline still pumping in his veins he felt invigorated and refreshed. In addition, he was given another sparring partner for free!
The elders of the Sacred Order speechlessly watched how Leo jogged back towards his new opponent and curiously observed him warming up. Then, as of remembering something, he took out a small jar and began to apply the contents on his wounds. The one across the chest looked particularly nasty, but if the crowd knew what Leo’s thoughts where who knows what their reaction would be.
‘I wonder whether Izel would like this one. It might turn out rather impressive!’
Turns out that the youth’s fantasies were currently in a completely different mortal realm!
The next fight began completely differently from what Leo expected. Apparently the opponent had read his thoughts and tried to help out by delivering as many wounds as possible – even shallow ones that might not leave any scarring at all. At first Leo ignored the fact and kept dodging while waiting for the opportunity to strike, but at some point when he involuntarily tried to button up his loose shirt, he realized there were only cloth strips left from it.
Immediately Leo felt like punching himself. With his experience he surely shouldn’t have made such a rookie mistake! Even in the Dryad mountain city he was fighting easterners who preferred hand to hand combat and westerners who used weapons. Why did he assume he could fight everyone equally here?
After this thought the course of the fight completely changed. Instead of looking for opportunities, Leo fought the Runi guy like the opponent was a westerner, an incredibly skilled westerner with a deadly weapon. After a couple of failures that resulted in deep wounds on his hands, Leo managed to strike Runi’s spear with the Lightning palm that broke the iron tip off the shaft and with the next two strikes he broke most of the shaft as well. It did leave Runi wide open with a piece of wood in each hand, but instead of striking, Leo quickly stepped back and began to bandage his hands using the strips from his torn shirt.
Sensing the opponents gaze, Leo quickly glanced back at him and said, “What are you waiting for? You did bring spare weapons along, right?”
This was the biggest humiliation Runi had suffered in his life. The youth who was close to ten years younger than him casually granted him the second chance as if showing mercy to a junior.
But it was fine, after all, he was fighting for the sect! With this thought, under the loud booing from the Sacred Order’s army’s side, Runi borrowed another spear and returned to the spot Leo was giving himself the first aid at.
Of course, Leo’s actions didn’t make sense to anyone present except for him, but currently he was too busy trying to stop the bleeding. He realized he was running out of Old Hebe’s ointment and if he wanted to continue the practice, he had to be much more careful and not take too much damage, even if it was going to leave nice scars afterwards.
Fortunately the spear Runi borrowed turned out to be a crappy one and after a couple of Lighting palms got broken. This gave Leo a bit of extra time to bandage himself while the tall opponent jogged back to his army to get another weapon.
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After getting the weapon Runi turned back, but involuntarily stopped in his tracks while holding his breath, similar to the other Core formation stage cultivators and above who could clearly observe Leo’s appearance from the distance.
The youth had torn off his shirt completely and had crude bandages here and there, but underneath the dirty blood that covered his torso all over, one could discern tens if not hundreds of scars. Some of them looked like marks of large rows of teeth and if it really was so – what in the world had he gone through?
Everyone, even the two old men from the Mercenary guild were shocked. And for the first time lady Etessa felt guilty for putting Leo in this position that initially was supposed to be hers. He had saved her mother and who knows what he went through in order to do that, but disregarding everything she was ready to sacrifice for some ‘greater good’ or ‘in the interests of the sect’. This was not what the righteous path was about!
“Alright! I guess it’s enough!” Lady Etessa clenched her teeth, ignoring elder Cross’s attempt to hold her back.
“I’m sorry, junior sect master!” Kai Thomas stopped her, “The combatant has not been defeated yet. You can appoint the next one afterwards.”
“Leo, it’s fine, you can give up!” She said to the youth, but the weirdo grinned back, showing two rows of bloodied teeth and said, “Now you’ll have to wait for your turn!”
There was no way Leo was giving up on this once in the lifetime opportunity to have a good practice against the opponents of similar strength! Well, they were stronger in some areas while he had his Lightning techniques to rely on. And since the first Lightning punch was an accident, it didn’t count, thus up until now he was practicing only the Lightning palm. But there were many others left including the Lightning kick, Lightning touch, Lighting steps and Lightning dash! Of course, he was not found of practicing the Lightning touch against a guy, but if he was presented a female opponent, there was no harm in trying!
‘Right!’ Suddenly Leo realized he has been slacking in one important aspect – since he was physically fitter than his opponents and because of the lack of actual ground below his feet, he never used any movement techniques in the Dryad mountain city. But movement techniques were basics of any combat!
From then on the fighting with Runi began to resemble simple bullying. Yes, Leo got an occasional cut, but mostly he was dashing around his opponent and breaking his spears. When Runi was forced to run after another weapon, Leo, under the greedy eyes of the two co-sect masters, quickly grabbed a drink from his amulet and ate a bit of snake-headed beast meat.
In the end poor Runi’s couldn’t take the abuse. After breaking over ten spears, he charged at Leo with a loud roar and the youth had no other choice but to land a Lightning palm on the opponents chest.
As the result the spear wielder collapsed with a burn in a form of a hand print, to what Milos, after checking his sect’s disciple said, “Great! The bastard is running out of strength and began to use the elemental techniques! We need a wind affinity expert to wear him out completely!”
The ‘wind expert’ turned out to be a lady of a short stature, but ample bosom, probably in her late thirties or maybe even early forties. She respectfully introduced herself as Danica and to everyone, except for her opponent, it was clear she was most likely an elder of the Seven peaks sect.
While the law of the Immortal Alliance stated the duels had to be fought by disciples, no one could actually prove her status. In fact, even if she was an elder before, she could be formally demoted to a disciple for any reason at any time, thus neither Emile Landry nor Kai Thomas said anything.
Danica turned out to be quite the opponent. Right of the bat she didn’t hold back the least and dashed around Leo who almost got dizzy trying to follow her. Fortunately her appearance gave him an opportunity to practice the Lightning touch.
There was one serious downside to this part of the training – Danica’s long dagger was incredibly sharp and somehow left bloody wounds even without actually touching Leo’s skin. Seeing him suffer, the Sacred Order’s disciples shouted for him to finally use his weapon since the reach would clearly give Leo an advantage, but unfortunately he was the only one who knew it would only worsen his chances.
The duel went on for quite a while and at some point Goran even accused Leo of trying to artificially delay the outcome since he wasn’t using his weapon, but when the youth explained to the two experts from the Mercenary guild that the weapon was actually only a training tool given personally by master Shaw, they realized the destiny of the Sacred Order was not set in stone yet.
The feeling became more distinct when Goran thought of another accusation and claimed that since the youth had the weapon given by an immortal, he had to be considered the citizen of the Golden city. To what Leo explained that both master Shaw and master Zaraki deemed him to be talentless and for him to become a disciple of an immortal was a fool’s dream. If someone didn’t believe him, they could go and ask either of the two immortals – according to what people say they have an eidetic memory after all.
Fortunately before Goran pissed off the two observers, former elder Willis managed to calm him down and explain that what Leo said was actually verified by the Sacred Order years ago and the duel could continue. Luckily for Leo the discussion took quite a while and he managed to eat and drink to his fullest without holding back.
At this point everyone present, including all the disciples of both armies knew he had a spacial treasure, but while ones at the side of the Seven peaks were envious, everyone from the Sacred Order felt proud as if it was their own achievement.
Regarding that Leo’s thoughts were simple – one way or another after this was over he was departing to the Golden city and even if the amulet was taken away, he would work hard and earn another spacial item. In addition, the moment he realized that the two elderly gentlemen in dark robes were from the Golden city themselves, for some reason he felt like he finally was among his own people and didn’t have to hide anymore.
Be as it may, when the duel resumed, Leo felt refreshed once again and slowly began to gain ground on Danica. They both dashed around at enviable speed and most onlookers below the Core formation stage couldn’t even follow what went on, until the pair suddenly froze. It did look slightly awkward seeing how Leo was grabbing Danica’s left tit, but her eyes were already rolled up and mouth was foaming, indicating she was unconscious.
When she fell on the ground, everyone could discern the burning imprint on her intimate part that would definitely leave an ugly scar in the future, but one had to agree that the wounds she delivered to her opponent were much more dangerous. Currently both Leo’s hand’s were dripping with blood and the best he could do was to tear off few scraps from his dirty trousers to crudely bandage them in a hurry, because there was already a guy who charged from the crowd with a loud roar.
Fortunately co-sect master Milos managed to introduce the next ‘dueler’ before they clashed, otherwise one might punish the Seven peaks for breaking the law and sneak attacking. Of course, no one could blame Eugen for charging out to look for revenge – if such humiliating act was performed to anyone’s wife, most likely the husband would’ve acted the same way.