[Attention, mock battle will soon begin.]
[Explorers, prepare yourselves!]
At the call of the arena’s speakers the four students allowed their core energy to stir. Ikki, Itsuki, Stella, and Amanda all gave off a unique aura around themselves. Their aura’s were like wisps and slivers of light that trailed off their bodies. Giving them all a large amount of presence to the audience.
“Hear my call! Ignaria!” Stella’s shout filled the air as she produced her manifested weapon in a flourish of flame as she held it to her side with both hands clasping its black and gold smooth marble like hilt.
Her wide stance was powerful and seemed as if she could mow down buildings like a scythe to wheat. The sheer reach of her weapon made it seem so, as its length seemed taller than her.
The weapon she materialized out of nowhere was a common ability of explorers. It was a conjured item that mystics would call upon as a weapon that reflects themselves.
The fiery princess’s weapon was a switch axe, with one side with a blade of an axe and the other a long straight cutting edge. This dual sided implement could fold through a series of mechanical movements, clicking into place to form a much deadlier weapon of greater destructive reach.
As spectacular as her weapon was, the audience drew more attention to her as she was suddenly bathed in a column of flame. Some gasped in horror, believing the girl was turned ash.
The flames subsided, yet there was no ash.
Instead Stella’s attire was changed as dancing circles of flame engulfed her once form fitting uniform. Replaced with a somewhat war princess-like and red colored set of imperial regalia in the Crimsonia style.
Plated in red and black metal with a gold trim that matched the color of her weapon’s long flame like hilt, Stella now truly stood poised to fight. This was armor manifestation, and it was a high-level ability that only a few mystics had.
“Here Me!”
Amanda followed suit, crying out as she raised her right palm up to the sky.
“Obey! And Answer to your Queen!”
A bursting white snowflake formed in her palm. As the delicate white snow particles flew, they froze over her hand and moved to spread across her body from the top down. When she was fully covered in glittering ice. She was like a smooth statue of beautiful frozen elegance.
No one would think she could move but Amanda waved her raised arm. Sweeping downward with her motion, it broke the static ice around her into a cascading pattern. As her outer shell crumbled it revealed the radiant goddess hidden beneath.
Her right hand now held and flourished a chilling blue, white blade that had a wispy aura trickling from the sheen of its long and thin two-sided edge. The mist of broken and cracked ice that had come flying off her delicate body, parted it obscuring glimmers, revealing to all a shining set of white and gold trim armor, like that of a European shield maiden of war.
The crowd went wild, their loud cheering filling the arena that it could seemingly overflow. Seeing two high ranking mystics who had custom armor and weapons was a sight truly rare and an awe-inspiring sight.
At the other end, it was Ikki’s turn. He held out his hands and particles of white and black formed condensed balls of luminescence in each of his palms. He put his arms in a cross over his chest and then slashed his two clenched fists to his sides in a cross pattern.
“FORM! KURAKEN! SHIRAKEN!”
Now held in his right was a black katana, named Kuraken, while in his left was a white tachi, named Shiraken. Inspired and influenced by the Japanese blood in his veins, Ikki’s manifested weapon were two blades, one long and one short, imitating the two-sword style of the famous swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi.
While Ikki had no armor manifestation due to his lack of core affinity and classification as a mystic, he was content on keeping his agile form in his student’s attire.
Itsuki on the other hand was different and wore a military like attire with a brown camo pattern. He looked like any other soldier, albeit short, but most strange of all was how Itsuki didn’t form a weapon into his hands. Instead, his core energy circulated around him like a calm current of transparent wind.
“Aren’t you going to manifest your weapons?” Amanda asked mockingly while pointing the tip of her deadly sword at him. “It won’t be a fair fight if you don’t!”
“I don’t need to use one. You all and your flashy weapons, hah.” Itsuki sighed. “There are other ways to fight, it's time I showed you.”
Amanda sharpened her eyes and looked closely at Itsuki’s equipment. He had two sub machine guns attached to his belt, she scoffed.
“You can’t beat explorers with guns kid. We’re stronger than bullets. Have you forgotten? Or? Have you forgotten your place as a grunt? Maybe you were lying about being a real explorer.”
“We’ll see.” Itsuki said plainly, his trigger fingers itching for the fight.
At that final statement, Itsuki touched his wrist device so that he was readied up and the arena’s speakers came to life.
[Field set to simulation mode. Weapons set to simulation mode. Explorers, prepare for battle.]
The four students tensed, getting into their natural fighting postures and their eyes going so sharp that it felt like they could pierce the veil of a stormy fog.
[3, 2, 1, Let’s go ahead!]
Immediately, Stella gathered core energy behind herself to create an explosive reaction to propel her forward in a blast of speed. Amanda was about to do something similar as well but found that a streaking dot was closing in on them.
She looked at it in the few milliseconds she needed to confirm what it was and her eyes widened in surprise
“STELLA! LOOK OUT!”
A heavy explosion erupted on the girl’s side of the ring and the spectators all clamored in a panic. It was as if both Stella and Amanda had gotten blown up by an unseen attack but when they looked to Ikki and Itsuki they got their answer as to who had struck first.
On the large display on the arena’s walls, it showed Itsuki shouldering a large black box-like device. It had three ports lined up vertically and one of them was smoking as if he had fired something from it.
“Do you think you got them?” Ikki asked.
“Nope.” Itsuki readjusted his grip on the black device he was holding. His curt reply told Ikki that he meant it. “I only used a regular rocket and this is simulation mode. They should’ve been able to block that. Oh look, they're alive.”
Appearing from the dispersing smoke, a wall of ice that was cracking and falling apart came into view. Behind it revealed Amanda and Stella. Crouching themselves low, they weren’t hurt but the kicked-up dirt had marred their pretty faces as they coughed the explosion’s resulting dust caught in their mouths.
“Jesus! Just what the heck is with that guy!” Amanda rubbed her shoulder, it ached from the sudden shockwave she took. “Who brings this kind of fire—”
“Amanda! Watch out!”
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Her complaint stopped short by Stella’s shout, another two streaking lights came at them.
“Not this time!” Amanda glared intently at the approaching rockets and brandished her sword. Quickly reacting she cut both of the streaking rockets with ease. Her sword froze the electronic detonators held within their metal chassis preventing them from exploding as they fell helplessly to the ground.
In simulation mode, items and weapons would recreate the intended effect from pre-calculated and sensed core energies from battling participants. This meant that physical objects like guns and manifested weapons were in a form that didn’t do real damage but instead drained stamina and core energy.
“GOOD JOB!” Itsuki shouted tauntingly. “Now are you going to attack! OR! NOT!”
“GRRRRRRRR!” Stella dashed with explosive speed behind her and raised her large switch axe. With anger fueling her, in a second she was upon her opponents. Ikki moved forward to parry her strike. Just as he was about to raise his black katana, he maneuvered away and Itsuki did the same, picking up on the sweat already on his brow.
The ground imploded at Stella’s strike, the smell of burning earth filled the boys’ noses and Ikki noticed the ground beneath her weapon had been heated to the pitch color of red.
“Good choice! My abilities let me produce flames at a couple thousand degrees Celsius! If you tried to block, you’d be done for! And since I have a high core affinity, I can keep this speed and power up for hours while still having energy to spare.”
“I see, impressive.”
Ikki already knew that which was why he backed away, but he hadn’t expected her destructive power to be so high, it was his first time seeing it and it made him smile in anticipation of how strong of an opponent Stella would be.
If Ikki were to put it into realistic standards, Stella had the power of a rapid-fire ballistic missile silo that had no need to reload or cool down in between shots. She could easily swing her weapon around and cause explosions at will.
“Good to know!”
Immediately following up as Itsuki landed his jump away, the line of the metal bands on Itsuki’s arms glowed silver for a moment and instantly another 3-port rocket launcher materialized into his hands.
Recognizing the metal bands, Stella charged at him, closing the distance he created in but an instant.
“So, you use storage rings, they won’t help you against me!”
Getting so close, Itsuki couldn’t evade or fire his weapon safely so Stella knew her strike would be uninterrupted.
“One down!” Stella grinned as she swung her blazing switch axe.
But before she could make the small twerp submit, Itsuki expressionlessly pulled all three triggers on his rocket launcher.
“Huh? Are you insane!”
Quickly enveloping herself in a red defensive aura of flame, Stella's face morphed into horror as she weathered Itsuki’s explosive kamikaze attack. Even though he was her opponent, she looked on in concern in Itsuki’s direction.
She didn’t expect him to be willing to get a shot at her by sacrificing himself in the resulting blast of his attack. So Stella looked for his unconscious body to ensure he was truly alright. While weapons used and attacks made in simulation mode sapped a person’s stamina and core energy, explosions were another concern.
Concussions and internal damage from shockwaves, even simulated ones, could be deadly for a weak grunt type like him. But instead of finding Itsuki defeated, Stella saw him on his feet. While he was panting for breath and looked a bit drained, he didn’t seem all that worse for wear.
In fact, he was pointing another set of three rockets at Stella. She froze, unsure if she should attack since she risked taking heavy damage and was startled by his resilience. As high as her defensive power was, a point-blank shot of 3 rockets to her chest would sap her core energy by a large amount.
“Stella! Behind you!”
“Wait? What!”
A flurry of slashes came at her from her blind spot at her 6 o’clock. Stella was able to dash away thanks to Amanda’s warning and got out of the sudden pincer attack she found herself in.
Chasing her down, Ikki had used the moments Stella was inattentive to swing his Kuraken while following it up with deft slashes with his much lighter Shiraken.
Each strike and slash were masterful. To Stella, it showed his years of training in pursuit of perfecting the art of the sword, but she was no push over. Using her native style of swordsmanship and axe style of fighting she manipulated her weapon into blade form as she flipped and dodged away from Ikki’s assault.
A single metallic click rang from her as she flipped back. Stella charged with the distance she had opened up and let loose a downward slash with her now elongated blade of unparalleled power. Her weapon’s crimson reach had extended and the force of the single sided blade was now focused onto one cutting edge.
The strength and dense core energy radiating from it made Ikki backstep as hastily as he could. Itsuki fired his set of rockets, hoping to buy his ally some time to get some distance since they picked up on how Stella had changed her style of attack.
With the device’s rockets fired and its weight much lighter. Itsuki threw down the smoking launcher. From his waist belt he equipped his two submachine guns. Sniffing the air, Itsuki noticed an increased amount of moisture.
The area around him and Ikki had gotten somewhat misty and he didn’t miss that detail. Without even looking he pointed one of his guns to the side towards the surrounding fog and the other at Stella who was a few meters ahead of him.
Pulling the triggers he fired and adjusted his aim as needed. The kick back was intense, buckling his stance for a second but his shooting posture remained controlled and steady.
“You gotta be kidding me!”
A sudden blue covering appeared from the foggy white mist. Amanda had to put up this small shield of ice to block his shots. Stella cut them down or blocked them with her large blade.
This mist had been created by Amanda who hid in it as Stella fought to keep their attention. Hoping that Stella would keep it up, Amanda would sneak attack one of them and turn the fight into a 2v1.
It seemed like a perfect plan and while this was an underhanded attack, Amanda disagreed since firing a rocket launcher at the start of the match was just as underhanded as well, so she believed Itsuki would be getting his comeuppance.
But now, she needed to rethink that. Bullets that seemed to know where she was in the mist hailed her to no end. They had an accuracy that seemed to focus on her vitals such as her head and heart.
Impressive as Itsuki’s aim was, Amanda trusted that her conjured ice would be enough to fend off his attack. She had formed it on a molecular structure that was harder than diamonds and a thickness as deep as tank armor.
Pushing forward with her shield, Amanda attempted to close the distance with the impenetrable cover she had made but the sound of ice cracking made her eyes go wide. She found that his bullets were actually denting her barrier. Creating cracks in the edges that then shattered its hexagonal edges bit by bit.
This wasn’t normal, usually you’d need more than a normal bullet to break Amanda’s ice. Even with armor piercing ammunition that was rated to take real tank armor on, this result should have not been possible.
The reason for this abnormality was the sheer volume of fire Itsuki was pushing out.
Thanks to the extended magazines on his P9CR12 model submachine guns he had a capacity of 300 bullets per mag. Based on the Belgium P90, the weapon was retrofitted during the Starfall Calamity War, becoming an instant staple at the start of the conflict.
“What the heck!”
Before Amanda knew it, her hexagonal barriers were in pieces and she took a few hits that bounced off her armor, doing no real damage but harming her pride in her abilities.
“Just what the heck kind of weapons are you using?”
“You don’t know?” Itsuki said in expressionless surprise. His blank black eyes staring at her as if asking if she were uneducated.
Her mind raced and she finally came upon an explanation.
“Core weapons?”
Itsuki nodded to her answer.
“Exactly. Core weapons were the first breakthrough in human technological advancements to combat the monsters from the star depths. You should know this already.”
His lips curved into a small withdrawn scoff at Amanda’s lack of basic knowledge and she didn’t take that kindly.
She did know about the weapons. They used harvested materials from the slayed monsters to enhance modern equipment with attributes from the materials.
In Itsuki’s case, Amanda recognized that his submachine guns likely fired bullets with chitin tipped armoring from a creature that prided itself on having the toughest outer shell of all swarm type monsters. This upgrade was a major step up from the usual armor piercing black tipped rounds from modern military technology.
Currently, the chitin bullets were rated to even punch through inches of tank armor, so by that assumption, Itsuki could have taken down a tank with what he had. The same could be said from Amanda as well.
While the fight had changed momentum, it wasn’t much. Amanda shields were of somewhat less use than she initially thought now, but they didn’t take much energy to produce and were more disposable than Itsuki’s bullets.
Keeping a spray of bullets on both Stella and Amanda, Itsuki knew he was only delaying or slowing the two down. He looked over to Ikki as he fired and yelled over his bursts of bullets.
“Ikki! Can you handle the hot head over there!”
“Sure thing. Are you sure you don’t need my help?”
Itsuki’s guns suddenly clicked empty as a result of hundreds of rounds shot from his smoking guns’ barrels. He threw them to the ground as if they were trash. Another gun suddenly materialized into his hand in a brief glint of silver light.
Cocking the sudden bullpup shotgun in his small hands, Itsuki gave Ikki a serious grin. His black eyes became dulled with a haze of hidden excitement.
“Don’t worry, I still have ammo.”