Haru was sitting comfortably in his comfy floating chair, watching Zero fight against Moria, but oddly, he felt he was forgetting something. He shrugged his shoulders, leaning back in his chair and ignoring the thought because how could he have forgotten something?

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The fight had been going on for nearly 30 minutes now, and he was still struggling to use the abilities he had gained. "That jackass forgot to tell me how to use my new abilities?!" Zero shouted as he used Blast Step to narrowly dodge Moria's devastating axe kick, which made a crater in the spot he was previously in. He quickly retaliated by dashing straight forward and firing a hook punch. She easily dodged it, but he kicked the air, causing himself to twirl and unleash a powerful spinning kick that decked her in the face, knocking her a few meters back and allowing him to get back on his feet.

Moria still stood tall and clapped her hands. "I'm so proud that such a young Dragonoid can manage to keep up with my 20%. So, let's bump this up to 40% now. Get ready!" she exclaimed, clenching her fists as an emerald aura soon surrounded her body. Sweat dripped down Zero's face as he could sense that she was even stronger than him as of right now. 'I was already having some trouble before, and now she's twice as strong. Alright, I'm gonna need to test something!'

Zero imagined creating a force field around his body, similar to how he created the dragon-scaled gauntlets and leggings before, and it worked. His body was covered in a red barrier, which he then activated Harden and covered his arms and legs in dragon-scaled gauntlets, which surprised Moria. 'Dragon scale manipulation? Even among the rare breeds, it's rare, but for him to have learned how to do it on his level at such a young age, this kid has a lot of potential!' she thought as she watched him.

He then covered his entire body with a massive cloak of crimson lightning, except it had small flares of red flames combined. "Sorry, I took so long; some of these abilities are still new to me!" Zero apologized as he fell into a fighting stance.

"Bah! Don't worry about it; I just hope you can keep up!" she exclaimed, launching herself at Zero with her arm reeled back. Zero dashed forward as well, meeting with her in the middle, causing a massive shockwave to erupt from their clash of fists.

Zero felt his arm nearly break as he was easily overpowered and knocked back. He tried to catch his footing but was quickly hit with a devastating uppercut from Moria, which knocked him 50 feet into the air, disorienting him due to the sheer force of the uppercut. Moria then appeared right next to him, hitting him with a roundhouse kick against his chest, knocking him away.

He kicked the air to catch himself before creating a barrage of lightning blasts and firing them at Moria, but she slapped them away. Zero quickly used a bigger blast of lightning to knock her away and then let himself fall to the ground. He began overflowing his lightning cloak with tons of mana, which caused it to grow in size. Moria swiftly caught herself in the air and floated as she looked down to see Zero's transformation. She didn't want to interrupt it, as she wanted a good fight today and none of her students were even strong enough to get past 10%, she was glad she picked such a gem.

She wanted to see how strong he was, as despite him being a new sight to her, she was interested. She could also tell he probably wasn't experienced in hand-to-hand, maybe by a little, but nowhere near as much as her, but it was above average at least.

Zero clenched his fists tightly as his aura grew in size until suddenly, his aura shrunk, and his eyes glowed a bright red. His aura thickened as it crackled with lightning, with crimson flames that flickered and danced in the wind. He let out a long breath as the transformation finished. Moria flew down, landing a few meters away from him with her arms crossed.

"You done?" Moria asked, unfolding her arms and falling into a stance. Zero nodded, falling into a similar fighting stance to hers. 'He's copying my stance? Let's see what he has in store!' she thought, flaring her emerald aura, and both kicked the ground, rushing toward each other. They met in the middle of the arena, and their fists clashed, causing a loud booming sound as a massive shockwave erupted.

Once again Zero lost the clash, but he managed to recover in time to jump up as Moria's axe kick smashed into the spot he was previously in. She immediately leaped at him, but he quickly twisted his body to dodge and grab her arm, throwing her away. He aimed his hands at her and sent a volley of lightning blasts. She expelled her mana like a shockwave, deflecting the blasts, but realized they didn't detonate.

He transformed into a beam of lightning as he rocketed towards her, smashing his fist into her gut. She let out a small cough from the hit, but still smashed her fist into his face, but he pushed through it and struck her back. They let out loud battle cries as they unleashed hundreds of consecutive punches crashing against each other's bodies. It became a battle of endurance as their fists smashed against each other, both gaining more and more injuries as it went on.

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"Holy shit, they're really going at it!" one of the male Dragonoids shouted excitedly.

"I'm glad it's not me up there; I don't think I'd even last 10 minutes against her, even 5 would be impressive," said another male Dragonoid, clearly lacking a lot of self-esteem.

One of the female Dragonoids stood up. "Do you guys think he might win?" she questioned. Pretty much all of them said no, which made her slump down. Until the male Dragonoid who had sounded extremely hyped about the fight before suddenly appeared beside her with his hands on his hips, smiling brightly.

"I also believe this new guy could probably edge out a win; if not, he might even push our sensei to use more than 40 or 50%!" he said. She raised her head and thanked him for trusting her intuition. He offered her a seat, and she accepted it, sitting down next to him so they could continue watching the fight. Their eyes immediately widened as an explosion happened in the air, but that wasn't what shocked them. It was the sight of the new guy covered in blood and bruises.

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As Zero and Moria continued to trade blows, it would appear that they were evenly matched, if not for the fact that Moria only had light bruises, while Zero had many, along with blood covering parts of his body with blood coming out of his every pore.

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Zero ducked to dodge her quick spinning kick and fired a dozen blasts at her, missing all but one that crashed into her, blocking her vision. He then threw a punch at her head, but she dodged and caught his arm by locking it with her legs. "Gotcha!" she muttered, twisting her body to throw him down into the arena, creating a massive dust cloud.

"Now it's time," Zero whispered as he raised his hands to his size like he was holding a big ball. She couldn't see what was happening inside the cloud, but she turned to see hundreds of blasts; she quickly flew higher to escape, but quickly noticed they were flying into the dust cloud. "So what's this supposed to be?" she asked coolly.

"Just trying something new! What are you scared you're gonna lose without going all out!" Zero said from within the cloud, which hid the attack he was charging. "Hmph! Scared? Of course, I'm not! I relish the challenge!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together and slowly opening them as a sphere made of blood formed. She poured more of her mana into it, raising it above her head as it grew to 5 meters in size, but it didn't stop and kept growing.

The cloud that was obscuring Zero's location suddenly dispersed. Everyone could see him holding a dark red orb of lightning flames that was nearly 10 meters in size. Except unlike Moria's, his looked like it was being forcefully compressed, as it appeared like the orb was trying to explode.

Moria's sphere of blood had grown to 25 meters in size. It looked like a red sun made out of blood; he could feel the burning heat from it, and even the students in the stands could feel the heat. They were going to end this spar in one big final attack.

The orb he held kept getting smaller until it was only 1 meter in diameter. As they both charged their attacks, the air around them got hotter, causing the students in the stands to cough and wheeze due to the extreme heat emitted from their techniques.

"I hope you can handle this, Zero, 'cause it's gonna get even hotter!!" Moria shouted with a manic grin as she prepared to throw the massive sphere of blood magic. Zero grit his teeth as he struggles to even hold the orb as it was vibrating, looking like it was going to explode at any moment.

"Scorching Ichor Star!!" Moria roared as she hurled the colossal sphere of burning blood toward Zero. He stared as it approached him, but before it could get even a foot closer, he widened his stance, raising both arms in front of him side by side as the orb became even smaller in between both hands. The ground around him instantly cratered as he finally unleashed his attack with a mighty roar, "BURNING FLAAAAAAAASSSSHH!!" As he roared, an enormous beam erupted from his palms.

As Zero's Burning Flash collided with the Scorching Ichor Star, shockwaves rippled through the air and shook the entire arena. The students all struggled to breathe, but they still stayed to watch the clash. The girl and boy from before were extremely worried, praying that no one accidentally died.

Returning to the clash, Moria's Scorching Ichor Star was slowly pushing down Zero's beam. The crater around him continued to widen as he struggled to push back her attack, but despite his efforts, it continued its descent.

Zero began overloading his attack with all the mana he had left, causing it to increase in size instantly. The beam began pushing back Moria's attack. Realizing she was being pushed back, Moria began pushing it back down, but didn't raise her percentage past 40%. They both kept pushing their attacks against each other, trying to overcome the other, but made no progress in doing so.

They were at a stalemate, with neither being able to overcome the other if they didn't use more of their power. Moria did not want to lose in front of her students, so she pushed it from 40% to 60%, which caused her to instantly begin overwhelming Zero. Her Blood sphere began to power right through his beam. Zero kept pushing with everything he had but was starting to lose. 'Damnit, am I going to lose?!' He roared in his thoughts as he watched his beam being quickly overwhelmed.

Suddenly, it felt as if time had slowed down as a voice spoke to him. "Is this.. really all that my counterpart can do?" He turned to see what appeared to be a man who looked similar to him, wearing a suit of full-body golden armor with a crown that had a ruby gem embedded into its middle. "You already have the power! You've used it before when you failed to defeat that blasted black dragon! So just use it! Or you're going to lose once again!" He spoke with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Zero was confused. 'Black dragon? I've never fought one before; what is this guy talking about and why does he look like me?' he thought about what he told him, but he couldn't do it. He didn't even understand what power he was supposed to use! "What do you mean I already have the power? What are you talking about! Do you mean the weird gauntlet?". The man looked at him in disappointment and sighed as he unfolded his arms. "No, you fool! I mean the Accursed Mark, not the armament! Bah, I'll just lend you a hand this time! Even though you are an inferior version of myself, I'd rather not see myself lose to some random female warrior!" The man spat out as he placed his hand on Zero's back.

Before Zero could utter a word, he felt his skin burning as dark red marks came out from his back and started covering his entire body, stretching out from his back to his arms. Zero noticed the marks on his arms and turned to ask the man what he just did to him, realizing the man was fading away, but not before he heard his voice. "This will be all I help you with for now. If you learn how to use the mark without my help, then I will offer you a shred of guidance. Until then, you are on your own!" He finished as he completely faded away, not once losing the frown on his face.

Time unfroze, and he was slowly being pushed back; right now, he felt even stronger than he was before, except he could feel his mana being drained quickly in his new state, so he had to put everything he had or he was going to lose. Wasting no time, he began using all of his power, which wrapped his entire body in a sphere of lightning and flames. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" He bellowed as he used all of his remaining power and pushed it into the beam, causing it to expand massively and completely engulfing Moria's scorching ball and pushing it back at her. Forcing her to use her bare hands to push the ball back.

She instantly used her 100%, but as she did, Zero's beam completely overpowered her attack, blasting right through it and enveloping her and the entire arena in a massive blast. A group of newcomers came to witness the fight, but as they arrived, the explosion had covered the entire arena and blinded everyone present.

As the beam faded, they could see a crater where the arena used to be, but it also revealed a heavily injured Zero lying motionlessly. The group that arrived spotted him but looked up to see someone falling, but as they were going to move to catch them, a blue-haired woman had already leaped up to grab the individual and landed on the ground next to them. Still holding the body of Moria, she walked over to the crater, quickly leaping down. Landing next to Zero's body, she placed Moria next to him and used her magic, wrapping both of them in a blanket of water magic. She lifted both of them with it and then started to walk away to take them to the healing chambers, but was stopped by one of the guys from the group that had arrived before her.

"Mrs. Maria, you can't just leave with them abruptly; none of us recognize that boy, and he injured Miss Moria to such a degree; we need to take him in and question him!" He said, moving his hand to grab Zero's unconscious body, but his hand was instantly grabbed by Maria, who glared at him.

"I'm the only reason the boy even met Moria; if you want to question him, do it after he's recovered! Now I'm going to take both of them to the healing chambers, and if you try to stop, I will break an arm or leg!" She growled, her sharp teeth showing along with a deep blue aura emitting off her body, which caused the man along with the group to back off, allowing her to pass through.

"Damnit, I leave this kid for not even a full hour, and he's already injured again! I just wanted to sleep, but now I have to deal with this again when you wake up. I'm going to make you pay me back for all this damn trouble!" She groaned, quickening her pace so she could return to her home and sleep this off. She wasn't in the mood to deal with any of this.

To be continued...