The excitement was pounding in the air. If the riotous noise from the crowds and the exuberance of the commentating was anything to go by, this was indeed the highlight of the first series of bouts in the second round.
Rieren was pretty certain there were strong stakes at play for both competitors entering the field. Both Rykion Karlosyne and Oromin Tarciel were under heavy pressure from their respective contingents. If they failed here, if they lost and were eliminated, then that would potentially signal the end of their side’s participation in the Trials of Ascendance.
For Rykion, things had been worsened by Rollo’s defeat. Just a day before this final battle, Rollo had lost—with unsurprising ease—to the Silvas Frale, the Sword Saint of the East. Just the outcome Rieren had expected. She recalled well just how powerful Silvas had grown in the previous timeline.
But Rollo’s loss meant that his Archnoble clan would now depend entirely on his brother to carry on their name in the tournament. Rykion had no room to breathe. His loss would be his entire clan’s defeat.
It was a similar scenario for Oromin. The Shatterlands contingent had been wiped out through the first round. Mercion’s team had failed to qualify, Rieren’s team had been broken apart, and of Oromin’s team, there had only been one other competitor who had been fit enough to fight in the second round’s bouts. A man who had gone on to lose.
As such, it was arguable that Oromin was the last representative of Clanmistress Avathene’s intentions in the tournament. He had to win.
Just like Rykion.
But this was what the tournament was ultimately about. A cauldron of pressures brought to a boiling point with every outcome already agreed-upon to be favourable enough to not cause any further strife. All their differences, all their conflicts, they were to end with the Trials.
For just a second, Rieren turned her head to reply to the Darkstalker about who she thought would win. But the monster wasn’t here. Still wounded gravely from its fight against Essalina, it was in no condition to be attending other battles as a part of the audience. Rieren wondered if it would ever recover to that stage.
The match official retreated with hurried steps as both competitors prepared to get the battle underway. Every single member of the human crowd seemed to be yelling in anticipation.
To amp up the tension, the competitors added some pre-match insults to spice things up.
“Surrender, Tarciel,” Rykion said, loud enough to be heard over the whole arena. “You know you can’t win against me. This match is entirely a waste of time.”
Oromin tutted, matching Rykion’s sneer. His voice was raised high too, ensuring that everyone heard his reply. “You would deprive all these good people their entertainment?”
“Your unconditional surrender would be the most entertaining thing they would see since this tournament began.”
“If you’re that scared of me, you could just say so, Karlosyne.”
As much as the crowd went wild at their traded insults, Rieren just shook her head. Boring. They ought to get on with the actual fighting. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“Begin!” yelled both the commentator and the match official simultaneously.
The fight was explosive from the very get-go. Rykion flashed forward with spears of pure light burning in his hands. Oromin glimmered as ethereal mirrors formed around him.
Rykion’s strikes left no mark or damage. Both spears broke upon contact with Oromin’s mirrors, their light shattering and repelling backwards thanks to the reflective properties of the Tarciel scion’s Essence.
With his opponent’s attacks flung back, Oromin rushed in with his own attack. It was interesting to observe his fighting style again. Rieren noted that he was still relying on direct, physical combat to overcome his opponent, though he had added a weapon to his repertoire now. Instead of using just his fists and legs, he had a small dagger in one hand to complement his punches and kicks.
Rykion was no slouch either when it came to physical combat. No cultivator who had advanced all the way to the Ascendant realm could be.
He fought Oromin blow for blow, blocking where appropriate, countering with his own moves when the opportunity allowed. Oromin wasn’t going to land a proper hit so easily.
They seemed evenly matched at first, but the momentum slowly shifted. Rieren shook her head. As expected. Rykion was in the Early-Ascendant realm, as far as Rieren had been able to tell, while Oromin was in Peak-Exalted realm. Just one stage below so their difference in strength wasn’t that enormous. But still.
The discrepancy was showing itself in just how Rykion was slowly but surely overpowering Oromin at his own game.
It helped Rykion that he was no longer depending on his light spears to land blows. Once he realized that all his attacks that incorporated Essence would simply bounce off his opponent, he too had reverted to focusing solely on physical strikes to win.
What he hadn’t counted on was Oromin’s ability to switch his mirror’s reflective properties from affecting Essence to physical attacks.
Just as Rykion began hitting his opponent more than defending or evading, he found the power he imparted reflected right back at him. The force he struck Oromin with rebounded right at the points of impact. If he punched, the force returned right to his fist, so that he ended up crushing his own knuckles. Same went for his kicks and any other strike he dealt.
But it was the surprise that struck Rykion that was truly dangerous. Oromin took quick advantage of his opponent’s shock at having his own strength beating him back. He slammed a hard palm on Rykion’s chest, then almost managed to bury his dagger in the Karlosyne heir’s guts.
Rykion barely managed to dodge. Oromin’s blow had been so hard that Rykion’s concentrated Essence armour had broken at his waist, leaving a nasty wound.
“Full of tricks, aren’t you?” Rykion yelled. “They won’t win you this fight!”
Oromin grinned fiercely. “I’ll make your unconscious body eat those words.”
He attempted to restart their close-quarters combat, but Rykion had decided that wasn’t going to be on the cards. The Karlosyne scion summoned a spear overhead and jumped straight upwards to stand on the shaft of light.
Rieren frowned. What was he thinking? His ranged attacks weren’t going to work, thanks to Oromin’s reflective Essence. Then again, the the same went for his physical attacks.
Oromin looked like he was about to insult Rykion for running away from the fight, but he didn’t get the time to do so. His opponent had already launched his next attack.
Stolen story; please report.
Rykion’s Domain materialized high in the air. The crowd murmured in awe as brilliant light shimmered into existence around Rykion, glinting with a riot of colours, each as bright as a star.
Within that miasma of rippling light that made even Rieren squint her eyes, dozens of spears sizzled into being. A heartbeat later, they all shot down together in a storm of blistering light.
Oromin dealt with the storm of spears as he had been doing already. His reflective Essence armour shimmered as though he was reinforcing it. At the same, he created several more mirrors all around himself, over a dozen more shields to hold back his opponent’s virulent display of power. Like last time, it was just as effective at repelling every spear of light.
But there was one difference. A difference that the Karlosyne heir was taking full advantage of. As the storm of light continued, Oromin found no gap or space to counterattack. Rieren wasn’t sure he even had any ranged attacks like Rykion did.
Even if he’d had any, that unending storm of light wouldn’t have allowed him to execute anything. Which was exactly what Rykion had been counting on.
At some point, Rykion himself shot down towards Oromin. Rieren wasn’t sure if Oromin could have seen his opponent descending. She herself only caught Ryion’s motion as a shadow within the storm of light.
Less than a heartbeat later, it turned out that Oromin had indeed failed to catch Rykion’s motion. The Karlosyne heir reached his opponent, close enough to land a vicious punch.
Ah. So that was his goal. Rieren had to admit it was worth trying. Rykion had assumed that Oromin could only reflect one kind of attack at a time. Either techniques or skills using Essence, or ones that were purely physical. His assumption was proven right when he managed to get through Oromin’s defence, his punch shattering the mirrorlike Essence armour.
Except, it shattered Oromin too. The crowd erupted in shock and surprise, as did Rieren, as an enormous mirror materialized at the point where Rykion had struck.
He had been attacking a gigantic mirror all this time.
Oromin reappeared behind Rykion at the same time. In the brilliance at the location where all the light spears were falling, where radiant explosions were sending up blinding spikes like lightning flashes in the sky, it was difficult to make out the specifics of what happened. But it became all clear a second later when the spear storm stopped.
Oromin had managed to land a strike with his dagger. A powerful thrust that had buried his knife to the hilt in the middle of Rykion’s chest, the impact sending the Karlosyne heir flying off several paces.
Rieren stared. That had been smart of Oromin to use Rykion’s own literal brilliance against. All that blinding light had prevented the Karlosyne scion from seeing when Oromin had switched his location with a mirrored version of himself. A reflection that reflected all the attacks in his place, a lure that had drawn his opponent just where he wanted.
Just where Rykion needed to be to get stabbed with the dagger.
The Karlosyne heir was struggling to his feet where he had fallen. Rieren frowned. There was something wrong. A wound like the one Oromin had delivered should have pulled out a great deal of blood. The only way that Rykion could have survived was by—
Her eyes widened. The only way Rykion had prevented a stab like that from taking his life was by awakening the true powers of an Ascendant.
At the point where Oromin’s dagger was buried in Rykion’s chest, there was no blood at all. Instead, the wound only bled light. Glimmers of shining gold, white, red, and other fainter colours seeped out around the blade.
The knife started falling vertically through Rykion’s body. As it descended, the light around it shifted down alongside it.
“What is going on?” the Stifler-Nebula Arisen asked. “Is he… made of light?”
Rieren nodded. That was essentially what it was. “Advanced cultivators in the Ascendant realm are capable of turning their corporeal body into their main Aspect. They no longer have to occupy a physical body at all times.”
“And for this man, the chosen Aspect is light?”
“Correct.”
Rykion had been smart. By the looks of it, he hadn’t mastered the full extent of an Ascendant’s powers. To be expected since, like Essalina, he had reached the Ascendant realm not that long ago. Essalina herself hadn’t managed to acquire the same power yet.
But even still, the amount of his body that Rykion could convert to his chosen Aspect was enough to stop his opponent from dealing a grievous blow. A dagger couldn’t hurt light, after all.
“I commend you for forcing me to reveal my light-body,” Rykion said. The dagger finished descending through his entire body and clattered to the ground. “I sincerely believed I wouldn’t need it in this tournament at all.”
Oromin slowly shook his head. He didn’t show it on his face, but even he knew that things had turned a lot more difficult for him than he had thought. “I commend you on your advancement, Karlosyne.”
“So you do. But you do not commend me enough to surrender, do you?”
Oromin sneered. “Neither of us are fools here.”
“True enough.”
Rykion attacked. His motion was nearly as fast as the Aspect he favoured. His hand trust forward, a spear of light materializing in his grasp at the same instant.
He didn’t fling the spear or anything. Instead, he threw out a beam of compressed, burning light from the end of his spear.
As he had been doing already, Oromin tried to block it. He created another mirror. His concentrated Essence armour shimmered with a reflective sheen. Together, they ought to have reflected back whatever his opponent had flung at him.
But Rykion had discovered a different weakness or was perhaps acting on a different assumption. His attack wasn’t a one-off blow as they had been so far in the course of the battle. No, his latest move—the beam of light pulsing at its target—was ceaseless. Continuous. A straight line of pure power that used Oromin’s reflective properties against him.
Oromin’s Essence could only reflect any power that struck back in the direction it had come from. This was just a property of mirrors, after all. All light struck and was reflected perpendicularly. Quite ingenious of Rykion, then, to prevent any of the reflection form ever properly coming out.
As the beam was reflected back, it only met the rest of the oncoming beam as soon as it exited the mirror. This meant that the reflected beam simply exploded as soon as it exited Oromin’s mirror.
Ideally, Oromin’s mirrors would reflect the explosion too. But the continuous nature of the powers clashing meant that mirrors were overwhelmed in seconds.
Oromin wasn’t foolish. He had recognized what Rykion was trying to accomplish. Oromin had tried to dodge away as soon as his mirrors started failing, the beam of light shooting through his defences.
But Rykion had seen that coming. The Karlosyne heir had already prepared countermeasures.
Another storm of light spears rained down on Oromin’s location. He was forced to stop to defend himself. But that allowed Rykion to reach his position, to throw a punch that overwhelmed Oromin’s reflective mirrors again. A punch that crashed through the reflective armour and sent Oromin flying backwards.
When the dust and blistering light finally cleared, Rykion was standing over a fallen Oromin.
“This decides who among us is the victor, yes?” Rykion asked.
Oromin looked like he wanted to reply that his opponent would need to pull a victory out of his corpse, but then he sighed and thought better of it. “It appears I’ve been bested. You’ve won.”
It didn’t take long for the match official to confirm Rykion’s victory, nor any time for the commentator to echo it out over the entire arena. Not that the audience had needed it. The conversation between the two competitors had been loud enough for everyone to hear. In fact, they were already cheering at the end of the match so much that the commentator could barely be heard.
Rieren looked down at the two warriors in the middle of the arena. In a rare show of sportsmanship, Rykion had assisted Oromin back to his feet. Of course, that made the crowd go even wilder.
But Rieren could only shake her head even more. With this loss, the Shatterlands contingent had most likely lost their place in the tournament. Her former contingent.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, which wasn’t helped with the lack of emotional processing that her current form offered. But in the end, did it matter? It wasn’t as though Rieren was associated with them any longer.
“Do you think I might have to face that one in the next round?” the Life Stifler-Nebula Arisen asked.
Rieren shrugged. “I cannot say. We will find out when they announce the pairings for the next round.”
The two cultivators left the arena together, heads bent together in quiet conversation as though they were old friends catching up. A strange show of camaraderie. Of togetherness. In a tournament where every contingent and individual were determined to score their victory and claim a seat in the imperial court, it was a rare sight to see friendly relations like that.
That was when Rieren understood what was happening for her and for what she was seeing. The little display of friendship between Rykion and Oromin was reminding her of the togetherness the monster had displayed after the Arisen’s victory.
A part of her had begun to see the monsters as the cooperative ones in the Trials of Ascendance. As the ones who presented a united front against the disparate forces of the humans.
A notion now disabused by Rykion and Oromin. Maybe this was what Essalina ought to have done to strike at Rieren because it hit deeper than she would have ever thought.