Thorne landed from his leap, his leg stinging. The pain branched throughout his left leg, begging him to just collapse and be free of the pain. Thorne diverted his gaze downward to see the damage.
“Oh shit.” The mumble was a soft whisper as he looked down to see the consequence of his fearless leap.
A long curving slash stretched all over his thigh. It was indented and bleeding, and Thorne knew that, in some capacity, the bone was injured.
‘If he wakes up, I lose.’ The self-realization hit him; he had thrown everything into one last-ditch effort to acquire another knockdown, but he had messed up. He knew the tail was powerful and wasn’t even fully confident in withstanding the hit to his leg. But in the heat of battle and adrenaline, Thorne had neglected to think of what would happen if he miraculously took the cultivator down.
He sat down, his legs outstretched, not daring to hurt the left leg more by sitting cross-legged.
‘Just stay unconscious; that’s all you got to do.’ Thorne pleaded as he stared down his downed enemy, hoping that his gamble would win him the ultimate jackpot of not having to fight again. His strength and durability had undoubtedly increased from when he was an ordinary earthling, but if he sustained another hit from that tail, Thorne was not confident in surviving.
An eternity passed, and Thorne felt his leg feel somewhat better as he stood up and put pressure on it.
‘At least it’s walkable.’ He smiled, not expecting his spectrums to be able to heal him so fast and so effectively.
Unfortunately, self-healing did not only apply to him as Thorne saw his opponent stumble into a standing position out of the corner of his eye. Thorne also projected a calm persona as he viewed his awakened opponent.
His mind was far from calm; however, ‘oh goddamit! Why wake up now? We barely have any time left.’
The creature took a few seconds to collect itself and get its bearings, and then the fight was on! Thorne immediately had to turn his torso to the side as the creature charged at him, the tail swinging at Thorne’s chest.
Thorne continuously dodged; he ducked, jumped, rolled, and ran. His body was slow due to his injured leg, and the opponent did not falter in their advances once. The cultivator in question now appeared as a ravaging beast who truly desired to kill Thorne. Its scaly snake body thrashed in the hot desert, small clouds of obscuring sand rising in its wake. This onslaught of attack took its toll on Thorne despite no attacks landing; his body, already weakened from the previous fights, had now reached its natural limit.
Sweat mixed with blood poured down his body, the sand entering and aggravating his leg wound. Blurry vision mixed with hearing dulled by the constant explosive sounds of the thrashing beast. He was barely conscious, his mind solely focused on dodging the next attack, the one after, and then the one after that. His amber and red robe was long ago ripped, torn by the enraged tail.
The snake creature charged forward, its tail remaining behind the torso! Thorne stood diagonally to the opponent, prepared to dodge when the tail took its fateful seeing. No swing came. Instead, the torso continued charging, and the creature’s humanoid head lowered in attack!
‘WHAT THE?’ Thorne barely had enough time to raise his arm as the charging head of the beast slammed into his sweaty forearm.
He flew backward, at least ten meters, the force of the attack truly devastating with an impact causing the grains of sand around the two combatants to shoot up into the air!
He stood steadfast, however, barely wobbling, and quickly gained his footing despite a roaring pain afflicting his forearm. He stood firm, his arms swaying at his waist.
His enemy looked distraught, reptilian eyes wide and fury, the tail shook violently behind it.
Thorne smiled a crooked grin while forcing his head not to droop. But he quickly extinguished it; the fight was still ongoing, though clearly something had shifted. His opponent was also exhausted; two knockouts, as well as a constant barrage of attacks, had cost much in terms of physical energy. His once waterlike flowing movement was now rigid and predictable, the power of the once disastrous attack somewhat lessening.
The slithering of the movement was slow and crawling but inevitable. Thorne could not run; he could not dodge; he was at an impasse. His body was too exhausted and weak to support him in the battle anymore.
He closed his eyes slightly, hearing the soft slithering, ‘I have to survive one attack, then I have to punch it in the face again.’ The slithering intensified slightly as the snake grew closer, ‘worst case, we both lose.’
Thorne readied himself and stood firm, raising his fists with difficulty, pain shooting up her arms in a lousy, exhausted boxing stance. His body ached and hurt, begging him to just give up and collapse.
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‘I will not give up; I only need to firm one attack! ONE!’
But before the resounding boom of that attack came, another sound rang out in Thorne’s ears: a voice!
“Attention, students, the first class is over; a healer will await you at the entranceway.” The drawling voice caused a dumbfounded expression to overtake Thorne’s once-determined face.
‘This is a class?’ Thorne’s face scrunched, confused. Then he remembered the Zupu Academy, Zal, and Master Khal. Adrenaline had caught up to him, muddying his memories during the duel, causing him to think only of survival. Thorne threw off the tattered robe and righted himself, determined not to fall over from exhaustion.
He bowed slightly to his opponent and spoke softly, “Good fight.”
The creature returned the bow solemnly and, in the snake equivalent, limped away, its tail twitching, not fully able to support the entire body.
Thorne then followed behind the snake and limped slowly. While stumbling to the exit, he cut and tore up every time he moved his leg. Thorne only cared about quickly being healed and being able to return to his dorm room to shower and regain his lost energy before his next class.
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Master Khal floated in the air, recalling tendrils of his energy from around the sandy landscape. Once the energy had been absorbed into the battlefield, it observed the various battles at Master Khal’s command. If energy is in a place, it knows what is happening there; if said energy is under the total control of someone, naturally, they can view exactly what their energy observed.
He stood still, levitating in the air as he scrutinized five of the thousands of newly returned energy information packets. Master Khal then clicked on a circular metal device, and suddenly, five cultivators were projected in front of him. The rest of the energy packets flew out, ordered by Master Khal to navigate themselves to employees of the academy who would analyze the battles and decide which weapon suited each student. Of course, the five cultivators in front of the destruction master would be analyzed by him personally.
One was a tall, bulky, bronze-skinned human amber cultivator. He carried a bulky shield in one hand, coated with mystical amber energy. The edges of the shield were circular and sharp, and if used correctly, it could easily maim someone. On his other hand was a Romanic-type spear. It had a long metallic cylinder shaft and a fierce bronze tip at the end. In the holographic depiction, the spear was retracting and advancing in the man’s hand.
The following projection was a tiny pail girl with deep blue eyes and a blue spectrum crystal. She appeared outwardly human, yet this was soon dissuaded by the barely visible dark blue runic lining shining throughout her inner arm. In the projection, she held no weapon and instead held two orbs, each appearing to be full of water-type blue spectrum energy. They glowed and seeped into her vein-like runes, empowering the girl internally and her external manifestations of calm, protective power.
The third was humanoid, yet that was the only human distinction it possessed. It appeared male and was short with grey skin, a tiny torso, and abnormally long limbs. Its sable crystal shone on the top of its skull, protruding slightly like a horn. Its face was long; it started out thin from the bottom, and as it grew longer, it eventually widened slightly and almost resembled a vertical horse’s head with a pair of deep pupilless eyes. The being held two pure black daggers in each hand, each long, sleek, and thin, emanating a foreboding sense of death. Along its waist, a belt of various needles, knives, and even weapons resembling throwing stars was neatly organized and easily accessible to the being.
Next was a rocky, molten figure. It was average by human height standards yet extensive and bulky. The rocks seemed separate and barely glued together, a loose conglomeration constructing the being. In the center of its broad torso was an orange crystal, and magma and heat seeped from this source, spreading throughout the external body and seeping down its chest and legs. In each hand, they also held no weapon and instead held two orbs of orange energy. The orbs were nearly identical to the girls, except instead of soothing water, raging fire energy surged out from the orbs.
The last one, a human, while normally considered quite tall, looked short compared to the rocky creature and the amber spear wielder. He was Caucasian, and a blank, emotionless expression coated his face while the multicolored amber and red crystal swirled happily along. Unlike the rest, no set weapon appeared; instead, they kept appearing and disappearing, and new ones appeared. Two-handed longsword, no. Axe and shield, no.
Master Khal thought to himself and growled loudly before slamming his fists together.
‘What should he have? Nothing works!’ He seethed in anger.
He thought some more, attempting to incorporate what he had seen from the human’s battle; ‘quick, decisive, unpredictable, and willing to sacrifice his body.’ Master Khal smiled before withdrawing two objects from his own personal space. His two black and red sabers were destructive and fierce. A simple look at them could determine that they had killed an unsurmountable amount of people.
‘Yes, this would be perfect,’ he thought to himself. Yet, a conflicted expression still afflicted him, ‘yet is he worthy of the blades of the destructor.’ he spent a few minutes floating and unmoving in the air, pondering, ‘No destructor has been born for millennia,’ Master Khal sighed melancholily and looked with drooping eyes at his own metallic skin and red symbols, ‘the human at least has the destruction spectrum, and he displays the qualities in battle the elders support of,’ He thought with a severe expression.
Then suddenly, the projection shifted, and a pair of sabers appeared in the humans’ hands. They were different than Master Khal’s, however. Instead of the black undertone and red lining Master Khal’s blades, the humans had red and amber material coating the blades.
Master Khal smiled softly, displaying his red pointed teeth shining in the golden desert, a nostalgic twinge faintly visible in his typically apathetic eyes. ‘The spectrum of destruction has been quiet for too long in the universe; I hope that with the destructor's blades you will be able to revive the glory of true destruction, human.’