It took Merlin quite a while to recover her mana, far more than usual because even though she had her eyes closed, she constantly heard the distinct clinking of metals around her. When she finished her round of mediation, she stood up from the ground and muttered, "This is insane."
Earlier, the moment Will was confronted by Ibrahim, Merlin sat down and started to immediately mediate. She had that much confidence in Ibrahim, they all did. Everyone else wanted to follow suit, but they couldn't concentrate long enough to actually gather energy, which should have become second nature to them.
Merlin had the greatest mental strength, so she was able to get into the groove of it, albeit with some difficulty. The reason everyone was having trouble concentration was simple. Ibrahim's fight with Will was ridiculous!
"Is this really a battle between two level 74's?" asked a bewildered Salty. The question wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but everyone who heard it shook their heads.
Will and Ibrahim, or rather their silhouettes, were constantly clashing, their blades clinging together. At the beginning of the battle, Will had created a weapon from water. To everyone's shock, instead of creating a katana like the one on his waist, he created a scimitar, just like Ibrahim's! To Ibrahim, this was a great insult, and so a battle ensued.
Ibrahim planned to teach Will a lesson for tiring to imitate him by fighting seriously from the get-go, unfortunately, he was really teaching Will a lesson…literally.
As the duo clashed more and more, Will's initially clumsy-looking movements started to mirror Ibrahim's, and this improvement was happening by the second!
This was due to multiple reasons. The first being Will's passive ability Sword Enlightenment. The second reason was the analytical ability he gained from Dual Mind Propagation. The third and most important reason, which linked the previous two reasons nicely, was the fact that Will had achieved Martial Harmony! The first bottleneck in the world of Martial Arts!
The difference between a martial artist with Martial Harmony and one without was as clear as day. Ibrahim himself was on the verge of achieving the state, but he still was lacking the final piece of the puzzle.
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It only took a few minutes for the young Will to completely pick up and utilize Ibrahim's saber art; Sandstorm Fury.
'It requires a lot of arm strength and focuses on applying swift straightforward attacks with varied agile footsteps. It seems to work better the calmer one is and is very demanding of a person's ability to control their strength.'
Will did not know what the art was called, but he didn't care, because he was not planning on using it that much. He did, however, gain a great understanding of scimitars, including how to not only wield them but also how to deal with a scimitar user.
After some time, Ibrahim realized that he was falling behind. Not only was he shocked by Will's sword skills, but he was also even more shocked by the fact that his weapon had not even caused a single nick. It was obvious that Will's scimitar was not made from ordinary ice.
With a snort, Ibrahim formed a pike of sand. Will lamented deep in his heart, 'Even when he snorts he looks so handsome. Life is just unfair.'
The pike and the ice scimitar made contact. Within a few seconds, the scimitar had cut through it like a hot knife through butter, whilst dissipating at the same time. The rest of the ice broke apart, leaving Will's right-hand clutching air. Ibrahim smirked and readied himself to attack with his scimitar in his free hand, but it was met with another ice scimitar.
'He made another one so fast?'
Ibrahim was shocked internally but made no sign of it externally. He aimed his pike for the new scimitar, intending to do the same thing. But this time he was met with disappointment. The pike of sand was stopped in its tracks.
Ibrahim's face contorted in shock.
"Well look at that, the pretty boy can look ugly once in a while. That makes all this worth it haha." Will laughed. Ibrahim's face contorted even further. He was a narcissistic man who cared a lot about his image, so Will hit a sore spot of his, resulting in the normally composed Ibrahim to lose his calm.
The sand was draining the scimitar of water, but at a much, much slower pace. It goes without saying that absorbing water in its solid-state was harder than when its a liquid. The colder the ice, the harder the absorption.
"I can't reach absolute zero at the moment, but this should be good enough to deal with you. Especially with this ugly face ur making." Wills words made no sense to the onlookers. What do good looks have to do with strength? It was simply him taking a dig at the man, and it worked.
The pike failed to absorb anything, so Ibrahim decided to bring out one of his trump cards, "Sands of Time!" Suddenly, Ibrahim's pike started to melt the ice scimitar albeit slowly.
'He is now getting serious.'
Alexa was impressed by Will's show, Ibrahim was not yet at full power, he had many trump cards, and Sands of Time was one of them. It was a skill that forced anything in contact with Ibrahim's sand containing water to age. Meaning that the Ice was aging from being a solid to a liquid. It was a warm day, so the ice aged according to its current surroundings.
Will was visibly shocked by this, and Ibrahim saw this as an opportunity. While he pinned down the weapon on Will's left arm with his pike, his scimitar went straight for Will's exposed right side, or so he thought.
Clang!
The sound of two hard objects clashing once more resounded out. Will easily produced another one. For his free hand.
'Useless, only delaying the inevitable!'
Ibrahim snickered inside as he attacked Will with his pike, who in turn created another ice scimitar after the old one had been melted by Sands of Time. Ibrahim grew excited.
'It's over!'
Clang!
Once more, the sound of hard objects clashing was heard, except this time it sounded a little bit different.
Will's ice scimitar firmly held Ibrahim's pike, powered by Sands of Time!