Chapter 81: Self Restriction
The drunkards and all the other spectators grew quiet..
Even the other stages stopped and witness the onslaught within the main stage. A small third year student, one by one defeating 10 other students!
Teo positioned himself near the edge of the ring during the fights, his first few wins were counted as luck or perhaps trickery, but one after another, by hook or by crook, each opponent fell by Teo’s hand. Some were won by ring out, the other were unable to continue or were knocked unconscious!
Everyone grasped cold air as they realized that this kid was actually very skilled. From Zachery’s helpers, only eight challenged Teo draining his energy! There were also two masked individuals who challenged Teo.
“Kid, you have fought that maximum amount of fights allowed for a student. We can no longer let you continue to fight.”
The judge told Teo to stop for the day, the sun had long set and the arena were only lit with torches.
“Then I will stop for today. I would like to rent a private room for the night, you can take it out from my winnings.”
Teo then walked up to the stands and with a loud voice he announced.
“I’ll be here again tomorrow! If any other students wishes to challenge me, then come back tomorrow!”
His eyes landed on Zachery and the others as his mouth curled up giving them a smile.
Within those 10 fights, he had only used the modified light reactor talisman three times. He even threw a fake one that forced his opponent to turn around trying to avoid the predicted flash of light that never appeared!
He looked at ease but in truth, he was already breathing very hard. His stamina was barely at his limit and knew that at his state he could not go on much longer.
If he did not ask Windle and Lia to disguise themselves as challengers and gave Teo a slow but choreographed fight, he would have had to seriously fight two more members from Zachery’s group!
He knew beforehand that the limit was 10 matches a day, so had Windle and Lia take up two slots of the 10. The room for rent within the arena was 10 silver coins a day, which was fairly high but it included an isolated room and a large training area. The only thing missing was food, but with Teo’s funds and instructions, Windle and Lia bought food for him that could last him a week.
Teo headed inside the building after being escorted by one of the guards. This was the only way Teo could come up with in such a small amount of time.
With this plan, his enemies will focus only on him. He would allow any challenger to fight him and prevent any of them from using their numbers’ advantage using the guards of the arena!
Although this restricts much of his freedom around the academy, there was an added benefit of him gaining more fighting experience with real matches. Even though they were not fights to the death, they would still give him enough experience to improve himself!
—–
Zachery was devastated knowing that Teo chose to hole himself up in this arena, but these fights he witnessed made him reevaluate the situation. Aside from Kristofer, everyone was rather calm considering that their men lost to Teo.
Although Erin wanted revenge for her brother, she was impressed by Teo’s performance. In regards to tactics, Teo choose the best possible way to win during these fights.
Most of his opponents specialized in chasing down their opponent. Despite having such terrifying speed, their agility and strength were quite average. When Teo positioned himself against the edge of the stage, his opponent’s combat effectiveness was clearly cut in half.
Ash one the other hand had a strange light in his eye. He was already thinking of getting his revenge for being stabbed in his hand before. Although he was not the bloodthirsty, he knew his own situation. Despite being “friends” with Zachery, they were nothing more than servants to him now. He wanted to establish his usefulness so when Zachery moves to the Imperial city, he would have a chance to serve him in the future.
“Looks like he’ll be hiding here for a while, since he wants challengers we’ll give him challengers.”
Zachery had a strange smile on his face. It was a chance for him to reach unprecedented heights of fame within the academy. Although he was shocked at Teo’s performance, he gauged that he could still win against Teo. The only problem was that he wanted to have a clearer understanding of Teo’s tricks before taking action himself.
—–
Teo sat down within a spacious room trying to calm his breathing. He had clearly pushed himself well past his limits and was trying to recover from the damage. Circulating the Qi in his body, wood elemental essence gathered around him as his body absorbed it.
The main property of the wood element was revitalization and restoration. As the essences passes through his body, they would heal a little bit of damage that Teo had taken.
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*knock knock knock*
“Teo it’ us.”
Teo opened the door and let both Windle and Lia inside.
The previous masks they wore was no longer there and instead they carried a bag of dried food with them.
Lia who could not wait any longer quickly took a hold of Teo.
“Teo! How!? How did your speed increased so much?!”
She and Windle only caught the later part of the matches as they were running out to buy masks and food with Teo’s money. When they arrived at the scene, they found out that Teo had already defeated 4 people!
After they went to challenge Teo, Lia observed that in the other matches, Teo’s speed would suddenly accelerate to an astonishing rate! Lia had always prided herself as being the agile and fasted among them but Teo had hidden this secret from her!
Windle who was at the side also wanted to know. Their eyes filled with curiosity as they waited for Teo to talk.
“This…”
Teo hesitated but then brought out the shackles he used. They were weighted shackles that was designed to be placed on the upper forearm and ankles.
Lia and Windle took one of each shackle and found that its weight was clearly very heavy. On the side of the shackles were several black metallic links that was fastened on to them.
Windle clearly recognize these black metallic links. They were black iron! A very expensive metal that was normally used to forge weapons that was heavier than their size. The density of black iron metal was ideal for people people who wanted to train their strength, but Teo was clearly using it to as weights to improve restrict his movements.
The weights that Teo had used before were actually regular iron, and was much cheaper than this, but after getting used to the weight of his previous shackles he bought a more expensive version of it. Each time his body would get used to the weight he would add a small link to each shackle, and over time speed would improve.
This was also another reason why the strength of his attacks were usually poor. The weight on his upper forearm did not add any momentum to his attack but rather slowed it even more.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been wearing these all this time?!”
Windle was shocked, even Lia was speechless.
To restrict his own movement while fighting at that level meant that Teo’s strength was probably very close to theirs if not stronger.
Rowen and Gina’s plans were to increase his overall speed over a long period of time. After Teo got used to the original weights, he would have enough speed to compete with Lia and Windle, but they did not expect Teo to purchase an even better set of weights that would propel his speed even better.
Teo nodded and explained.
“I’ve been wearing them since last year, my sister gave them to me.”
Windle was dumbfounded and Lia could not put anything into words.
‘If I was wearing this the whole time, would I be as fast as him?’
Teo had always worn long sleeved school uniforms which covered his arms to his wrist and pants that covered all the way to the ankles. The shackles were slim but extremely heavy.
Only now they realized that Teo’s potential in combat was actually much higher than they thought. Not even Rowen nor Gina knew of Teo’s improvement, and the first ones to realize this were Lia and Windle. Fire brewed inside their hearts, igniting their competitive spirits.
It was as if they could read each other’s minds and nodded to themselves.
‘I’ll start making weights like these,’ Lia thought
‘I’m gonna buy a set of weights like these,’ Windle thought
Teo could only helplessly smile, as he took a few dried goods and started eating. He was extremely tired and needed to replenish his spent energy. Although some practitioners used world Qi to recover their energy, it required one to reach the third stage of cultivation which involved tempering the body with Qi, but Teo was still far from reaching that stage.
—–
The next day, after most of the classes ended, a crowd of people gathered to watch the matches in the arena. The number of people who came to watch tripled as a rumor of a young third year student defeating 10 students in a row. Even more interesting was the fact that most of the 10 students were older students! For some reason, a rumor had started that a duelist had openly challenge any other students to fight with him and will match any amount of bet they wanted to place.
Very detailed information about yesterday’s fights were spread among the students. Some came to spectate, while others came to test their luck! A third year student that will accept any bet? The greed of several students slowly took root.
[Cienz: read ahead at bycienz.com]