The house of Crimson was well known for being just barely within the law with many of its practices. For example they practice blood magic, which was just barely not considered a curse. He had even heard rumors that the eldest son was the foremost talent in that field. Given his luck he’d bet anything that the eldest son was the one standing in front of him now. “Anything else I might be able to bribe you with?” He really didn’t want to be in this fight, but better now then whenever Kaiser wanted. He didn’t even know what the prize for victory was. He doubted it would be worth the torment that deal would no doubt bring.
“A shame, but most things I want I get. Unfortunately for some reason no one ever seems to want to spar with me. That’s why I like this particular event so much. It’s the only time all year I get to play to my heart's content.” Fantastic, the dude was nuts. As if just being well above his weight class in terms of combat wasn’t enough. Part of him considered just surrendering, it would no doubt save him a lot of pain, but these events were meant to give experience that could help in the future, and in a real scenario surrender would mean death or torture anyway.
“Right, well in that case.” He dropped the white shard he had casually gotten from the case on the back of his belt. It exploded with a bright light, even with his eyelids blocking out most of the light it still left spots in his vision. He turned to run. He didn’t make it far. Before he had made it more than a couple steps a hand was on the back of his collar and next thing he knew he had barely had a fraction of a second to brace for impact when he slammed into one of the buildings he had been sneaking behind. Despite how heavily reinforced these buildings were, the force of his impact still left a crack in the wall.
Mocking laughter came from his opponent. “Quite the nasty trick you played there. My eyes really hurt now, but if you think I need to see you to hunt, then you’re sorely mistaken.” He quickly jumped to his feet. He didn’t have time to assess his injuries, because his opponent was already in front of him. He didn’t even have time to think before all the air was knocked from his lungs by the fist slamming into his stomach. He fell to his knees and barely resisted the urge to throw up. “Come on, surely you can do better than this. You don’t want to see what I get like when I’m bored.”
He fought desperately for breath, and just barely managed to wheeze out a response. “I can’t imagine it gets much worse.” The menacing smile that never left Kaiser’s face convinced him otherwise. The bloodshot eyes from his little lightshow made the 4th year look even more terrifying.
“Is that so, well trust me when I say you don’t want to find out. So you better start entertaining me.” The kick to his side sent him flying once again he made his 3 copies to charge the man even if only to distract Kaiser for an instant so he could recover. He flipped and managed to get his feet to the ground using his right hand into the ground to keep his balance and to slow him down faster. The surprise factor more than any real danger kept the 4th year distracted as he casually avoided all the attacks his copies were sending his way. He hadn’t given much mana to them. He’d need every bit he could spare. He used the time away from the fight to recover as much as he could. Surprise wouldn’t keep the 4th year from fighting back for long.
Sure enough not even a second later one of his copies slammed into the building next to him, and slowly got to his feet. “He knows where you are, if you run he’ll ditch us to go for you.” The copy ran back into the fray after having said his piece. He sighed he had guessed as much, but he really wasn’t happy to have it confirmed. Kaiser had already proven that finding him was no issue even when he was hiding his presence, and even with his enchantments on full blast outrunning the older student was a pipe dream.
His mind whirled desperately trying to find a solution, and for the first time in a long time he had come up completely blank. It was like fighting his father, except his father at least fought in a way that would help him get stronger. This wasn’t that, his opponent was toying with him. Kaiser hadn’t even used any magic aside from enhancement as far as he could tell. At least the older student wouldn’t risk killing him, or at least he hoped not.
Ok so he wasn’t going to be able to win or escape, but if he could just get a good hit in he’d consider it a personal win. He focused his mana and unleashed some of the mana stored in his enchantments. His body began to glow with the arcane symbols. Kaiser just tilted his head curiously as he kicked one of the now much stronger and faster copies in the sternum sending his mirror image flying. He hoped that between his 3 copies and himself all boosted with his enchantments, something would get through and knock the infuriating smile off of Kaiser’s face.
***
Azura’s copy was fairly confident he had bought more than enough time. The 2nd year had caught up to him again well before he made it back to the spot where his team had made all the tunnels, but after he blocked the first attack with his shield the boy had once again stopped to chat. “I hope you’re not just going to keep running away, sometimes there is no option left but to stand and fight.” Surprisingly the statement didn’t sound malicious or condescending, if anything it actually sounded like the older student was trying to teach him. Looking back at their previous conversation it made sense. He was being graded? Was that part of the event, or did this particular person just like to give advice to the younger students.
If it was part of the event should he say he was just a copy? Surely stalling while the original got away was a good tactic and would increase his score, then again giving away his skillset, and putting the original in danger by telling someone about him was stupid and might lower his score. “Sometimes, and sometimes the best option is to take up as much time as possible. I may not be able to escape, but every second you’re dealing with me is a second you aren’t chasing my friends.” Or the original, but he decided to keep that bit close to the chest.
The 2nd year laughed. “You guys should hold on to that. Loyalty is a valuable thing here, and rather rare to be honest. Classes incentivise you to work together, but the events almost always play everyone against each other. Tends to strike a careful balance. Most are willing to help each other out, but actual trust is pretty hard to come by.” That explained while most of the high years weren’t really working together despite having way more numbers than the first years. “Alright I think I’ve chatted your ear off enough, I think it’s about time for me to take you back to the starting zone.”
He laughed as they both took their combat stances again. He didn’t really have anything else to worry about now. The original was long gone, and since the intent would be to capture the odds of him taking enough damage to dispel were pretty low. He’d just have to do his best. “Oh before that, I’m Azura Silver. You’ve given me some good info, so I’d like to ask for your name.” The older student seemed like a nice guy, and he figured it would be a good idea to have some contacts in the higher years.
His opponent looked taken aback for a second before letting off a light chuckle. “I’m Auros. Nice to meet you.” He nodded back and the narrowing of both sets of eyes made it clear the time for conversation had ended. Auros shot an orb of water at him, and he shot a blast of wind to push the orb into the tunnel wall. He had learned his lesson on that. Ice and water attacks were a no go here. His opponent completely outclassed him with that particular branch of magic. He dashed forward swinging his sword at his opponent, but had to retreat and use his shield to block the ice shards that had come from behind him.
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He winced. Auros’ control of water magic was impressively good, and that made this battle extra disadvantageous for him. The longer the fight went on the more water would be around them, and the more directions his opponent could attack from. He’d have to try and keep the field as dry as he could. He carefully put mana through both a fire and a wind shard to create scalding hot air to blast towards his opponent. Steam emanated from the ice shield the 2nd year had called up to defend himself with.
The remains of the shield were quickly turned into 2 water serpents and they each shot towards him keeping as close to the wall as they could. It was an obvious trap, but an effective one nonetheless. He decided the best course of action was to spring the trap in this case, and as soon as the serpents began to converge on him he dashed forwards.he heard the serpents slam together behind him, and knew that the force of impact had no doubt spread out the mass of water giving Auros plenty of places to send attacks from.
Well he hadn’t really wanted to reveal any of his new tricks this early, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least give it his best effort. His new spirit contract had opened a lot of new possibilities for him, and he’d be lying if he said he had fully mastered them, but he was going to have to test himself at some point. Auros shot Water spears at him. He made a magic circle in front of him that enchanted the ground to stop him from losing momentum by negating friction and slid under the water spears. The magic circle quickly changed and shot him up into the air narrowly avoiding the ice spikes that had risen from the ground he had been sliding on.
He kicked off of the tunnel ceiling to launch himself at his foe, holding his shield in front of him, so the rest of him wouldn’t be visible to Auros. He sent mana to his shield to divert the ice serpent around it without losing any momentum and slammed into the 2nd year. To his surprise the 2nd year only slid back a few feet, and the counter attack was instant, he used gravity magic to cause a force pulse to push both him and his opponent back several feet creating some distance and avoiding being frozen in a pillar of ice. Just as he was about to go for another attack his body lit up with arcane symbols. His eyes widened, that couldn’t be good.
***
Azura had tried to take advantage of the fact Kaiser didn’t seem to be using any magic, but the difference between their abilities was just too vast. Nothing he did worked, any magic that got anywhere close to his opponent was simply blown away with a powerful burst of Kaiser’s mana. Nothing was working, none of his elemental spells had any effect, his battlefield enchantments were overloaded and broken as soon as he placed them, and it was quite clear any form of anti-magic would only make his current situation worse.
Even a constant barrage of ranged attacks via his bow was shrugged off like it was nothing. The only solace he had been able to take in all this was that this guy was scary strong even among the 4th years so that made it a little less humiliating at least. He considered attempting to teleport again. It had worked during his trials with Garrion, but that was an incredibly short range one, and even then it had some side effects he wasn’t too keen to revisit. On the other hand his strengthened connection to the spirit world might ease the burden. Plus according to his research teleporting to somewhere you can see is much easier than somewhere you can’t.
It was worth a shot, but he’d have a copy try it first just in case. He gave the mental order to one of his copies and a magic circle appeared in front of them. Before they could jump through though Kaiser went through the circle aiming to strike at the copy. To his surprise he heard a loud crash as Kaiser slammed into a building off to his left. He smirked, he would pretend that was on purpose if anyone asked. Even better than the momentary elation of getting a hit in even if only by accident was that, Kaiser looked no worse for wear meaning, the spell was a complete success. With that in mind he quickly opened up 2 blink circles. He fell through the 1 below him, and landed on a rooftop a decent distance away. His copies had teleported in different directions hoping that the disorientation from when Kaiser went through the portal on accident might have made him lose track of which was the original.
That hope died pretty quickly, and it was only a quick portal that stopped a spear made out of blood from impaling him. Apparently the no spells rule Kaiser had set for himself up until now had been dropped. Thankfully one of his copies had seen the spell before he did and teleported him out of the way. He wasn’t sure where he was now, he was in an alley between 2 buildings. He could feel Kaiser’s presence still, but now he was far enough that there was almost no way Kaiser would be able to keep track of him specifically, especially since he was right next to one of his copies.
“Go for the dorm, we'll try our best to make sure you get there.” He nodded to his copy and rushed in the direction his copy had pointed. Once he knew the right direction he had a much easier time getting his bearings. He didn’t try to disguise his presence, since that would only serve to make it easier to distinguish which was the real one, and while he considered having a copy do it to throw Kaiser off, that came with the risk of 1 less copy watching out and being able to set up blink circles. Clairvoyance was a major blessing now. His range wasn’t near as good as Luna’s yet, but it certainly gave him a lot more options with his new spell than he’d have otherwise. Especially with the tricks she’d given him to help with external manipulation.
Kaiser wasn’t one of the strongest 4th years for nothing though, and he couldn’t help getting a little nervous when a red light shot towards the sky overtaking the calm blue color with a malevolent crimson. The red sky was enough to deeply disturb him on its own, but the blood red clouds forming into the shapes of eyes might just take the cake for creepiest thing he had ever seen. “Come out, come out wherever you are. You can’t hide from me firstie.” The voice came from all around. Surely this wasn’t allowed right?
Kaiser’s spell covered the sky as far as his eyes could see. Surely something like this was beyond the scope of this event. The rain of blood that followed only reinforced his thoughts. Despite the risk being inside would bring he got the feeling being caught in this rain wasn’t a good idea. Thankfully he got inside before the blood rain picked up enough that he wouldn’t be able to avoid getting wet. The memory of one of his copies being torn to shreds by the rain quickly entered his mind. At least none of the other students seemed to be affected by the rain. Other than the horror of being drenched in blood, and watching his copy be torn into bloody chunks before disappearing.
He ran down the halls doing his best to avoid the older students even if part of him thought letting himself be captured by literally anyone else might be his best option. Even knowing that, he just couldn’t bring himself to quit now, not after coming this far. He had plenty of mana left stored away, but his body wouldn’t be able to handle this level of physical abuse much longer. Even worse, he couldn't feel Kaiser anymore. Thankfully the 4th year wasn’t in his clairvoyance range, but Kaiser had slipped past it once before, so he wasn’t sure that really meant anything.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he was running out of time. The original tunneling had been slow to try and avoid attracting attention, and he had gone just as slow after he was confident his copy had bought him enough time that he didn’t have to rush. He probably had less than an hour left, which meant he couldn’t afford to get caught up in another fight, even if Kaiser wasn’t on his tail.
Thankfully only a few of the students tried to stop him, and most of the attempts were rather half-hearted. Many of them he noted looked deeply sympathetic. He supposed those were the ones who had interacted with Kaiser before. Either way he knew his luck wouldn’t last, but he hadn’t expected one of his copies to get to his room before him, and worse he hadn’t expected the current bane of his existence to be there waiting. Kaiser hadn’t killed this copy, only captured it, the copy dispelled on its own. At least that meant Kaiser only killed the one in the rain because he knew it was a copy. Small mercies.