The Hidden Sage would be far more of a challenge than Arthur had been. Unlike Arthur, who had one less heart ring than I did, the Hidden Sage’s core was an entire ring above mine.
We faced off on opposite sides of the newly combined stage, which had been restored to a point of unnatural pristine. Not a single crack remained from the previous battles. A soft gust of wind blew across the arena, sending strands of my hair fluttering alongside the Hidden Sage’s thick cloak. He stood motionless, a statue of absolute confidence, his piercing gaze sharp with scrutiny. One brow arched slightly as if weighing my worth.
I placed a hand on my hip and yawned, making no move to unsheathe my enchanted blade. Jarold’s voice droned on in the background, his monologue little more than white noise. My stance exuded nonchalance, but inwardly my guard was raised to the highest level.
I knew nothing about the Sage beyond the brief demonstration he’d given against Nida. He was fast, strong, and experienced. The fight had been over too quickly to glean any exploitable weaknesses. His earlier display of sympathy had meant nothing; it hadn’t stopped him from shattering Nida’s bones. Kindness, clearly, was not among his flaws.
“Will you not arm yourself?” he asked, his gaze flicking briefly to the sheathed blade at my hip. His voice carried a calm authority. “You’ll be at a great disadvantage.” With deliberate slowness, he raised his twin gauntlets and smashed them together, producing a deafening metallic boom that reverberated through the arena.
The shockwave rattled my bones, but I forced myself to remain unflinching, suppressing the instinct to wince. I shrugged. “I’ll pull it out when necessary.”
In truth, I preferred not to reveal my hand too soon. Even the smallest shift in my stance could betray my fighting style, especially after the variety of techniques I’d employed against Arthur.
“Begin!”
Neither of us hesitated. Energy erupted from our cores in a burst of power as we surged toward each other, the air between us igniting with heightened intensity. The force of our collision tore stones from the stage, sending shards flying in every direction as the energy storm enveloped, whipping around like a typhoon.
This wasn’t a battle of finesse or technique, or even raw strength. It was a contest of experience. Though the Sage’s heart core outclassed mine, his energy lacked the purity of the power circulating through my core. The true test would be in how we wielded that power—and in this, I had no doubt I held the advantage.
Despite his age, I was confident that my decades of battle experience would prove more fruitful than his.
He was a warrior, a wanderer, a scavenger of battle.
I had conquered civilizations. Toppled kingdoms. Subjugated entire races. I had faced the largest empire on Graedon with less than a fifth of their forces and nearly won, thwarted only by the betrayal of aristocratic cowards.
Our energies clashed violently as I drew my blade and brought it down against his gauntlets. The sharp edge of my sword cracking slightly under the force, while the surface of his gauntlets dented and chipped.
When the Sage drew back, lifting his gauntlets steady before his chin, I began channeling energy outward from my core. Instead of circulating it through my body, I extended it into floating spheres that formed a halo around me.
It had been some time since I relied on my long-range energy tactics, but the Hidden Sage seemed to be a worthy enough opponent to help shake off that rust.
From then on, each time he closed the distance, a laser of energy burst from one of the spheres to intercept him. Maintaining the spheres drained my core steadily, but it was worth it as I charged the Sage, supported by the long range spheres.
The Sage dodged and countered with remarkable speed, though his face was a picture of shock and confusion as he shouted, “How are you doing that without a mana core?”
I ignored the question. It was absurd. What energy user couldn’t manifest long-range attacks?
We clashed again and again, each of our strikes powerful enough to obliterate anyone of a lesser core level. As the battle dragged on, lasting five minutes, then ten, then fifty, I began to gain the upper hand. My spheres landed more strikes, while the Sage’s movements slowed. But my core was also running low. The purity of my energy couldn’t compensate for the limited reserves of a lower ranked core.
Realizing the fight was reaching its climax, both of us abandoned all defense, giving way to all-out aggression. The battle of veterans devolved into a brutal brawl. My blade slashed into him repeatedly, while his gauntleted fists drove into my body with crushing force. Blood splattered across the shattered remnants of the arena even as more stones were broken and cracked from the ground. The only sounds were my bloodthirsty screams and the Sage’s battle cries. Even Jarold has ceased to speak, allowing the colosseum to fall into a state of silence.
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That was when, for the first time, the Hidden Sage’s energy shifted from raw energy to lightning attributed energy.
Finally, I thought through heaving breaths. Whatever thoughts the Sage had harbored about keeping his attribute a secret against the double heart ring fighter he’d been matched against, was clearly thrown away. Lightning rampaged around him, white and blue bolts dancing across his body as his gray eyes glowed with power. He slammed his gauntlets together, and a bolt of lightning streaked from the sky, obliterating the spot I’d stood a moment earlier as I just barely dodged. My spheres retargeted the approaching bolts of lightning, ignoring the man to meet the attributed energy with their own raw version.
I could still unleash my lunar-attributed energy to end perhaps end this fight decisively, but I was determined to win without it.
The instant energy from my spheres engaged the Sage’s lightning energy, I surged forward under the subsequent barrage of concussive explosions and shrapnel energy.
My enchanted blade, wrapped tightly in my energy, trailed behind me as I ducked under a stray line of lightning to finish closing the distance between us. At the last moment, I allowed the smallest amount of Soul Weaver energy to merge with the raw energy sharpening my blade, causing it to cut toward the Hidden Sage with a speed that even an early gold realm might have been unable to follow.
His fists managed to slip under the blade, pushing the trajectory so that instead of dislodging him of his head it sliced through the top of his shoulder. Blood sprayed from the area of missing flesh and muscle, followed by a cry of pain from the Hidden Sage. He rushed to tear off his left gauntlet before the weight ripped off the arm’s remaining attachment from his shoulder.
I grinned, my bloodlust rising as I tapped the flat of my blade against my shoulder—the same one where the Hydra had once ripped off my arm. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
The Sage’s face twisted with pain, but his eyes remained defiant. “How… how does a girl as young as you possess such…” He winced, a large amount of blood suddenly pouring from his wound. “It’s as if you’ve lived through countless battlefields. But that’s impossible for someone not yet twenty.”
With a flick of my wrist, I shifted the blade from its resting spot on my shoulder, leveling its point directly at the Hidden Sage. Ignoring his confusion, I asked, “What happened to your eyes?”
At no point throughout our match had his eyes shifted—not even once. They'd remained fixed, staring straight ahead without sight, yet I'd felt the Hidden Sage constantly watching me. He'd never looked, but he'd always seen.
And the moment he’d activated his lightning attributed energy, his core had begun feeding massive amounts of it to his eyes, though they’d done approximately nothing in the fight that I saw.
His expression saddened, his eyebrows lowering along with the corners of his mouth. “The Gods wanted me to see what this world does not.”
That was when something tickled the back of my neck. Not a physical sensation, but a feeling. A sense of the man’s words. His intentions. His… desires.
“Have you been able to see what the Gods intended you to, then?” I pressed.
He shook his head. “I have not, Lady Lilliana.”
“You’re an oracle?”
“In a manner.”
“Ah. Propethic eyes, perhaps,” I muttered. After a moment I nodded and tilted my head. “Speak to me after the tournament is complete,” I said, cleaning the blood from my blade against the length of my pants before sheathing it. “I may be able to help you see it.”
The man looked surprised for a moment but it was quickly overshadowed by an expression of pain as he dropped to a knee, still clutching at the massive hole in his shoulder. Before he could say anything, before he could even blink, I was in front of him, my foot cracking down into his face. Something snapped—probably his nose—as the bottom of my foot slammed between his eyes. Although he wasn’t sent careening quite as far or as hard as Nida had been, the Hidden Sage was still launched from the arena. He crashed into the sandy ground with enough momentum to bounce a few times before coming to rest against the stone wall at the arena’s far end.
I didn’t say anything, just watched him flop around a few times until he went still. Then I turned away and walked down the five steps to the ground, the sound of uproarious cheers following me. I didn’t look at them or wave, but my attitude seemed to spur the audience on.
After a while, the cheers of “Lili-ana, Lili-ana” began to mix with a second chant. One I’d heard before and one I’d been waiting to hear again today.
“Sain-tess! Sain-tess!”
Alaric waited a few dozen feet from the stage, standing between me and my paragons, who still sat against the colosseum’s walls.
“Good match,” he said. “I look forward to ours.”
I nodded, glancing around to spot the broken body of Edith being carried away on a stretcher, her entire form enveloped by the green and white lights of healing magic. “Brutal ending, I see.”
He shrugged. “She’s alive.”
I snorted but didn’t slow my pace, attempting to walk past his stoic form.
“What was that attribute at the end?” he asked softly, his deep black eyes peering at me as if trying to see the very depths of my soul. “It felt… unnatural.”
I stopped for a brief moment, turning to look at the knight. “Fight hard, and maybe you’ll find out.”
I left him with that. I needed to rest and recover as much of my energy as I could before facing Alaric.
“Group 2!” Jarold shouted after announcing the Group 1 Round 2 winners. “START!”
I sat next to Nida and Nasq, leaning against the wall, and closed my eyes. My core shuddered as I began to circulate it, revving my energy reserves for the next fight. One more to go and then a battle royal.
Then the real fun would begin.