When I reached the gym, I was greeted by a powerful glare from Reeta. She was currently standing in the usual arena, with Victoria and a couple of other people looking fearfully at her.
A split second later, her expression changed to a confident smirk, after which she turned and pointed a finger at me. “Althea! Took your sweet time resting, didn’t you!?”
I walked in and towards her. “I didn’t… but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Heh,” she replied with a half-smile, but as soon as I was close to the arena, her expression changed to a frown.
I looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “What is it?”
She quickly jumped off the arena, rushing to be right in front of me in one quick hop. I was taken aback since I didn’t expect her to suddenly attack me, but she wasn’t in a fighting stance—rather, she was looking at me with narrowed eyes. After a moment of looking at me like that, she sniffed me, and I felt strange by that action, causing me to take a step back with my hands raised in front of me.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked.
After finishing her sniffing, she looked at me with narrowed eyes once more. “There’s something strange about you… something… different…”
I wondered if perhaps I hadn’t managed to clean the ‘hobo’ smell that Nicole's brother pointed to her yesterday, so I grabbed one corner of the uniform’s white shirt and took a small sniff myself. There wasn’t anything different about it—as there shouldn’t be, since according to what I knew, these things were supposed to clean themselves.
“I haven’t changed…?” I replied, unsure of what she actually meant.
She walked around me, inspecting me closely as she looked me over from top to bottom. “No, there’s definitely something different about you…”
Something different? But there wasn’t anything about me that—
It was then that I realized what it likely was. I had opened myself up to the Darkness and Hellfire power within me, and I had even willingly increased its power. Though, it had been by a small amount, one that I didn’t think anyone would notice.
“Ah,” I said in acknowledgement, “I’ve just gotten a few new powers.”
“Oh really?” she replied, her smirk back on her face. “Then perhaps we should put them to the test… It appears like they might be quite something.” Saying that, she jumped back to the arena where she looked at the people standing on it. “Scram! I’m going to have a test with Althea. You all go train with the machines for now.”
The few people standing in the arena quickly moved away from it, with a few of them even showing expressions of relief. Victoria was no exception as the anxious face that she had was replaced by a sigh as she made her way over to me.
“Hey, Althea. It’s good to see you again,” she said, standing next to me. “The coach seems rather eager.”
“That seems to be the case,” I said as I focused my attention on Reeta, who was stretching her arms and torso. “But, it could be interesting as well.”
“If you say so…” Victoria replied with an uncertain tone.
I handed over the phone and anything that could be damaged over to Victoria, keeping only the uniform as I jumped over to the arena. It was a good chance to test out my current power against someone that my old master asked me to defeat. I wasn’t sure that I could do that right now, but if I went all out, I might be able to bring her down—effectively completing one of Asteora’s requests.
“Well then,” Reeta said, taking a couple of hops on the spot. “Don’t be holding back on me like you usually do. I want to see it all!”
And I wasn’t going to hold back.
I didn’t have a weapon at hand, but that didn’t mean that I was at a disadvantage. By reaching into the Darkness and Hellfire Power, I summoned a blade made out of darkness to my right hand. It solidified to turn into something akin to a large saber, with a wide flat side, and a slight curve.
Reeta whistled when she saw the abyss-black blade. “Well… that is indeed something new… where did you learn to do dark magic? How much did you pay for that?”
“I learned to do it myself,” I replied, pointing the blade to her. “And it’s not the only thing.”
She raised an eyebrow in response, and from the place I was gripping the darkness blade, a spark of blood-red fire formed, exploding afterwards to cover the full blade.
“Ho ho,” she chuckled, impressed. “I knew you were really holding back.” Saying that, she snapped her fingers in the air, and around the arena, a pale blue barrier appeared. “If you’re going to go that hard, then I guess measures must be put in place. Do try not to break the barriers, as they’re there to protect both the equipment and the people around us.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said, swinging the sword to the side and leaving a red streak of the hellfire in the air. “Shall we?”
Reeta got into a fighting stance, with her hands forward, readied in the shape of claws, and a smirk on her face. “Start whenever you want.”
I quickly empowered my body with Darkness and Hellfire, and without warning, I burst forward to Reeta. Due to that empowerment, I was able to easily see the changes of her expression—or rather, the lack of it, as she remained as confident as always.
With a powerful swing, I moved the sword in a diagonal motion, going from top right to bottom left, but Reeta twisted her body in the same direction, moving just as fast I was moving the sword, so her head would be ahead of it, while her legs raised in the air. It was such a fast movement, that I was hardly able to react to it, allowing her foot to brush past my face.
But just like her, I used the movement of my own swing to move away from her kick, bursting to the side and away with a quick step. Reeta wasn’t going to turn down the pressure on me, following with a burst of her own and one claw in the air already surrounded by a fire spell.
I lifted my left hand as fast as I could and raised a dark barrier, where Reeta crashed, spreading a wall of flames that covered my barrier. I knew that someone like her would have no issue breaking down the barrier, so with a clutch of my left hand, I caused the barrier to explode, sending a shockwave of darkness forward, and leaving a few shattered pieces of darkness in the air.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
The mix of darkness and flame partially obscured my vision, but I could see that I had forced Reeta back a few steps. Taking that opportunity, I commanded the remains of the dark barrier and pointed them in her direction, sending a wave of pointy dark shards to wash over her.
She hopped to the side, moving outside the mess from the explosion, and dodging at the same time the shards that were crashing on the floor behind her. She was much faster than the previous spars I had with her, as even with my Darkness and Hellfire empowered spells, they were missing their marks completely.
But, this wasn’t an infinite field. Eventually, she reached the edge of the arena where the mana barriers stood.
Not being concerned about it, she stopped, and flipped in the air, making it so a few remaining shards passed right by the curves of her body, leaving her without a scratch. After she landed, she easily parried away the last bits of dark shards left, before bursting forward to me again.
There was no time to think about it, much less to give her the room to get close to me. She was a fighter, one that I was getting the suspicions that was no worse than Grey, my old blade and combat master, so I had to be careful in close combat.
To avoid having her close to me, I stuck the Darkness Sword on the ground, and created a shockwave forward.
From the ground, spikes of darkness popped, covering the field that she was running on, and forcing her yet again to back away from me. But even then, her smirk remained the same.
After a couple of hops back, she took one large leap back, flipping in the air, and placing her foot on the barrier surrounding the arena. With a short stop on it, she pushed herself with as much strength as the barrier would allow, which trembled under the power of her legs.
She did another flip in the air, and as she did, a fiery blade formed around the kick she was reading. I responded by lifting my left hand up, and sending the dark spikes that had popped before into the air, right in her path.
It was easy to tell that she was going to force her way through them, so instead of allowing that, I clutched my hand once more, and the spikes exploded into balls of Hellfire. The blood-red fire spread all over the air, where her figure disappeared momentarily.
But as if to prove that my power was not enough, she popped right out of the cloud of Hellfire, her kick covered in flames and her smirk as wide as always. I grit my teeth and prepared to receive her strike with the Darkness Sword.
A boom, and a dark shockwave followed up as I was crushed under the weight of that attack. However, it wasn’t enough to bring me down, as all it did was crack the floor under me.
“Impressive! See how good it is when you don’t hold back?” she said, her foot planted on the flat side of my blade as I struggled to keep her away. “I also like that empowering spell you’re using. The red irises, and the cute little fire horns really suit you.”
I was struggling to send her away, and the floor under me kept cracking. It was obvious that she was also using some other spell that I didn’t know to push herself harder on me. It felt as if she was getting heavier with each passing moment.
By empowering myself more with Darkness and Hellfire, I was able to finally stop her descent onto me, but doing so also drained some of the power off the blade, causing it to reduce in size. It was still not enough, so I completely focused all of my power in my body to be able to fight her back.
The blade completely disappeared and she speared down on top of me. I managed to grab her foot, and before she had the time to kick me with the other one, I burst my hands in Hellfire, covering her leg in it, before turning around and swinging her a couple of times to toss her away.
She flew off with her leg covered in Hellfire, and I expected her to fall to the floor with a heavy crash, but she landed as softly as a feather, the fire on her leg already disappearing.
I couldn’t help but feel awed at her power, since she was able to not only withstand my Darkness and Hellfire, but she appeared to not be concerned about it at all as her smirk remained the same.
Still, I had managed to stop her momentarily, and in that moment, I burst to her, empty handed but with a much more powerful body. I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea, since body power was her forte, but it would be a good test of my strength as well.
In an instant, I was already facing her smirking face. With a fist covered in darkness, I punched down with as much power as I could. She dodged it, and followed it up with a kick of her own. It was fast, but this time, I was barely able to grab it with my left hand, clutching it as hard as I could.
Knowing that this could very well be a repeat of our first meeting, all I did was lift her up from the ground and slam her on the floor behind me. She hit the ground with enough force to crack it, and I followed it up with a darkness spear that I launched while she was rebounding from the impact.
I made that spear as dense as I could, causing it to send her flying to the other side of the arena, creating a crashing boom that sent a dark shockwave and left a small mist of darkness.
I knew that she wouldn’t be hurt after that, but I was already heaving from the strain of using such dense powers one after the other, so if she didn’t come out right away, I could take a moment to rest.
I had to admit that she was much tougher than I expected.
There was another shockwave on the place where she landed, clearing away the mist that remained and revealing Reeta once more. She had a bloody arm where the darkness spear had hit her, but she was looking as confident as ever.
She laughed out loud. “How refreshing it is to finally fight someone who’s not afraid to hurt others!” She then slammed her fists together, holding them in that position. “But let's see how afraid you are of getting hurt!”
While keeping that stance, I felt a burst of magic from her body. Her eyes started glowing blue, and her hair floated slightly, just like the bits and pieces of rocks that were on the ground. It was a very powerful spell that she was using to empower herself even more, and I could already guess that whatever was coming after this was going to be devastating.
I could try to stop her by rushing an attack of my own, but I knew that she would simply brush that off to strike me and finish me off in one go, so as a last ditch effort, I focused the Darkness and Hellfire empowering spell to increase my body’s resistance. Then, I poured my mana into creating a rock wall, a mana barrier on top, and even a few water walls infused with lightning to try to stop her attack. Finally, with what remained of my Darkness and Hellfire, I created as many darkness barriers that I could.
“That won’t stop me!” she exclaimed, her voice booming just as much as the air around the arena when she moved.
As if to make a mockery out of my many defenses, she crushed each and every one of them as if they were all made out of thin glass, blowing the rock wall in every direction, shattering the mana barrier, bursting the water walls and taking the lightning as if it was nothing more than tickles, eventually reaching my darkness barriers and punching right through them to reach me.
I tried to block her, but the speed and power that she came with, hit me with enough force to send me flying against the arena’s barriers, making me bounce, only to have my face gripped by her hand and crushed into the floor.
“Guh!” I exclaimed painfully, since it hit me with much more power than I expected.
“And that’s that,” she said, the glow of her eyes disappearing and her hair floating back down. “I must say! You’ve improved quite a lot!”
She let go of my face, and snapped her fingers to make the arena’s barriers disappear. I remained on the floor for a while longer. I had used as much as I could currently handle, but it still wasn’t enough…
I glanced at Reeta, and she stretched a hand for me to grab on to. I looked at it for a moment. There was a long way to go if I wanted to defeat her, especially when even after all of that, she still held herself back to not hurt me. With a sigh, I grabbed her hand.
“Don’t be discouraged. It takes time and a lot of effort to defeat me, but you’re doing great already! So, keep at it, and you just might make me go all out!” she said, followed by a hearty laugh.
While doing so, I noticed the looks of awe from the people that had stopped doing whatever they had been doing to watch our spar. Among them were Steven, looking with bright eyes at Reeta; Victoria, who was quietly clapping with a soft smile; and David, who carried a look of surprise no different than the people around me.
“You should get some rest, and then train a while longer if you want to,” Reeta said, walking over to the edge to jump down and look at the people around the arena. “I’m still not done with you all! And you’ve had enough rest, so let's get back into it!”
The people who had been training with her before I came here had their expressions frozen, but they didn’t take longer to move.
It was then that the gym doors opened once more and Nicole walked in.