It turned out Naviel could back up his threats. As they rushed straight for each other, Rieren got the impression of rising strength from her opponent. An impression that proved true as soon as their blades met.

Naviel didn’t use a normal sword. That was an important detail. Instead of a using a blade made of metal, he summoned some of the black-gold flames the Arteroth clan was famous for and crafted them into the shape of a sword. Rieren had thought that a solid, tangible sword would easily shear through Naviel’s contraption, but she was proven wrong.

That blade of his was solid. The flames had somehow frozen in the shape of a longsword, their consistency somehow harder than regular metal.

But that wasn’t the worst bit. After Rieren exchanged several fast blows with her opponent, she quickly separated and created some distance between them. Naviel was strong. Arguably stronger than her, in terms of pure strength. Either his stats superseded hers, which felt unlikely, or he was in a higher stage in his cultivation.

The important takeaway was that Rieren wasn’t going to be able to defeat him easily with pure might alone.

Nevertheless, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. It was a challenge to see if she could defeat him with just swordplay. Well, maybe not defeat. There were too many other variables for her to secure victory just by besting him in blade-to-blade combat.

But wouldn’t she love the look on his face when Rieren proved her superior skill with a sword.

So, Rieren attacked again for now. Their blades clanged hard, resonating with the cheering of the crowd and the announcer’s infrequent comments.

It didn’t take long for Rieren to see that Naviel wasn’t relying on technique when it came to his swordplay. His slashes, thrusts, and deflects were not much better than the basics. Whether he could actually use more advanced swordplay or not didn’t matter. For, instead of relying on skillful use of his blade, he relied on his speed and power.

And curse the gods, Naviel had plenty of both to spare.

It was a good thing Rieren had a high enough Mind to compensate for it. However fast her opponent’s actions were, she saw them coming. She was able to choose the right counter, to attempt to land her own blow after deflecting Naviel’s.

Just marginally disappointing that she couldn’t break through his guard. Even when she carved out an opportunity to strike at him, his own sword was always there to stave her off. Rieren slashed and swung, twisting her Receptor sword past his, yet never even managed to scratch the concentrated Essence armour he obviously had to be wearing.

But even as she fought, she was able to squeeze in some glances around her. The briefest flickers of attention towards the stands, towards the audience drinking in the spectacle with wide eyes.

And towards the Arteroth soldiers spread throughout the audience.

Just as Rieren had suspected. Naviel did have a commander class that benefited from the empowerment by his subordinates. They had to be close for that to work. Clearly, he had progressed far enough in his class that the effective range of the empowerment was wide enough for his troops to stay out of the arena itself and mingle among the crowd.

The only reason Rieren had caught them was because of the Arteroth flames. They burned on the end of spears, on the hilts of swords and axes, some even on torches and within lanterns. Such a strange sight, since this was the middle of the day.

It almost looked casual, how the soldiers were spread out here and there. But Rieren understood the true reason why. They were arrayed in a circle, a net to make sure that the empowering aura would reach Naviel no matter which area of the arena he ended up in during the course of his battle.

“You’re better than I thought you would be with that sword of yours, monster,” Naviel said begrudgingly when they had separated once more for a moment.

“And you are stronger than I had assumed.” Rieren kept her eyes focused on her opponent, giving no indication that she knew his secret. “Though that does not mean you will win.”

Naviel tutted. She thought he would prolong the conversation, perhaps ask her how exactly she intended to defeat him. Instead, he simply attacked.

Rieren was forced on the defensive. Despite her better swordsmanship, Naviel’s strength and speed were extraordinary. She found herself falling back, step by step.

This wasn’t going to do. Focusing, Rieren slowly turned the momentum around. Earthfall Blade came in handy. She didn’t have to control the clashes of their swords as much thanks to her skill, which let her direct away the power imparted from Naviel’s strikes with the simplest of touches. In turn, this allowed her to focus on counterattacking where she could.

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Rieren just hadn’t foreseen Naviel mixing things up. Without warning, Naviel summoned a shield constructed of the same flames that his sword was made of. Rieren’s sword crashed down on it, her strike nullified entirely.

So far, her opponent had been using his own sword to block Rieren’s blows. But now that he had a shield to do that, his sword was free to continue striking. Even one handed, the blade blurred in the air to crash on Rieren’s shoulder. It was only the instinctive use of Fray Passage to somewhere behind her that Rieren was able to escape mostly unscathed.

She looked down at her shoulder with a little grimace. Even that glancing blow had eaten away at her Essence armour and left a heavy gash. Black blood bloomed from her wound, running down her side.

“So easy,” Naviel said. “And now you die!”

He charged in quickly, but Rieren was already countering. Her Domain was up too. Water bubbled at her feet, and activating Tidal Summons, Rieren slashed her sword upwards in the motion of River Serration.

A rushing wave of water crashed towards Naviel. Rieren applied lightning Aspect to it, churning the water into an explosive storm cloud, buoyed by her Divine and Abyss Aspects already.

The destrcuive power should have hammered Naviel back. But he bore the brunt of it all upon his shield, remaining completely unaffected.

“Is that it?” Naviel asked. “Is that all you can throw at me?”

“That seems enough,” Rieren said.

It was. After all, it had stopped him in his tracks. That had allowed Rieren to use Fray Passage again and put some more distance between the two of them. He had to have a movement skill, one that would allow him to close the gap with ease. Rieren had other plans before that could happen.

As Naviel took a step closer to her, Rieren focused on her Domain once more, calling it forth. Letting it spread out far over the dirt field that made up their battleground.

Naviel was already countering it. His own Domain came into play, the black-gold flames forming a barrier around him against Rieren’s water. But his Domain never got the chance to widen. Rieren’s had already covered up most of the arena, suppressing Naviel’s Domain from coming into play.

Rieren wasted no time making it rise in a powerful geyser. Its bounds stretched from one edge of the arena to the other, the column of rising water rising like an entire lake had taken to the air. Easily the strongest one she had created yet.

It was taxing her a great deal of Essence, a pull so strong that she actually felt it in her apparently frozen elixir field. But Rieren wasn’t done. She applied her Aspects to the rising water too, infusing it with Divine- and Abyss-Aspected Essence, combining them within the very centre of the gigantic liquid column.

The crowd’s roar was lost in the pandemonium of the rising column of water. Rieren certainly couldn’t hear them any longer. But if they were surprised already, then too bad for them.

Her mixture of Divine- and Abyss-Aspected Essence at the centre of the column made the whole thing explode.

Rieren had to admit that the explosion was quite striking. All the water burst apart, flinging the entire lake’s worth of content onto the shocked audience. It wasn’t truly dangerous. All they were being subjected to was an unexpected shower of water with potentially dubious qualities, though she had made sure to keep the Abyss and Divine Aspects only in the centre.

But their outrage at the treatment became apparent quite soon.

Rieren hadn’t been able to hear their initial outcries, but that was mostly because she had been too immersed in her own Domain. With it gone thanks to the explosion, she was now given a full display of the audience’s wrath.

She looked around. Almost everyone was flinging insults at her—and at her dead mother, her father, her entire family line stretching back for generations. They really didn’t spare anyone even slightly related to her by blood. It almost pierced her general emotionlessness and made her laugh. Almost.

But it wasn’t the crowd Rieren was looking upon. Her real target had been all the Arteroth soldiers who had been covertly assisting Naviel. She smiled. A success.

Almost all the little flames they had been carrying had been doused away.

When she turned back to her opponent, who had let his own Domain fall to see what was going on, she found that he wasn’t focused on her. Like she had been doing a moment ago, Naviel was staring at the audience all around them.

Except, unlike Rieren’s triumphant joy, he was aghast.

“I know your little secret,” Rieren said.

He twisted around to scowl at her. “You can’t!”

Rieren slowly shook her head. All that unflappableness she had remarked on just a few days ago. Where had it gone? “I can reasonably guess what your class is, how you have been empowering yourself. And so, I have taken care of it.”

Naviel faced her head-on then. His expression settled back into controlled resolution, the calmness that he typically held onto now reasserting itself. “You assume I was depending on it to win. On the contrary, you’ll be losing either way.”

“Come prove it, then.”

Naviel growled, then charged at Rieren.

She held her sword a little loose. When they clashed, Rieren attempted to keep up with his swordplay. But there was no point in extending herself unnecessarily. Not for what she ultimately intended.

A few blows that clashed in Rieren’s ears, a few exchanges that went much as they had done before she had used her Domain, and Rieren was struck. Once more, Naviel summoned his shield with no warning. Rieren’s counter was caught, leaving her open to a counter of a counter. Her opponent’s flaming blade slashed into her guts, and she went flying backwards.

Rieren crashed down well over two dozen paces away. The sheer power behind Naviel’s blow had made her hit the ground hard enough to leave a little crater.

Curse the Abyss, he still had a great deal of strength left. His blow had crushed her lower guts completely. Far too much blood was seeping out of the wound. The edges of Rieren’s vision turned dark. She steeled herself. Eternal Beyond was already acting, repairing her organs, reconstructing her blood vessels, and reknitting her flesh and bones. She would survive.

This was a calculated risk, after all.

As Rieren wasn’t rising from where she had fallen, the match official had to eventually come over to check on her. He took his time. Rieren was inundated by the crowd’s roars and insults, clutching her stomach as she lay deathly still. Just a little longer…

Starloper, in the form of this Skarlen Folster, had appeared before her with a judgmental look. He clearly believed she wasn’t down for the count.

Rieren opened her eyes and grinned up at him. “You finally arrive, Starloper.”