Before the quarterfinals commenced, there was a small break before the next stage of the tournament was to continue.

The exosuit warriors were escorted to another section of this venue, which consisted of several mechanical arms and workers strolling around a gleaming silver workplace. The walls, and practically everything inside was a similar type of metal, giving the area a futuristic, monochromatic appearance.

During this time, the fighters were attended to but weren’t given the luxury of complete refurbishments of their exosuits. Not only were their abilities tested in battle but also their ability to claim victory while incurring the least amount of damage.

Cael’s suit was not in a particularly good state, since he had taken several powerful blasts from Zacharias’ super powerful energy blasts.

This caused him to receive slightly more intensive care, through minor repairments applied to his outer armour layers.

During this process, many of the surrounding warriors gave him scornful looks. After his performance in the event, the 7 other fighters that were here to attack him seemed to be very hostile toward him.

It was like they had made up their minds and were going to crush Cael if they had the chance.

He saw no need to entertain this isolation, and just continued looking forward as he kept his arms still and stretched outward.

He’d let his hands do the talking.

As this happened, Cael tried to be quite attentive of how the repairmen would work with their suits. This field of repair -simply changing the exterior of this technology- seemed quite easy as there were no fiddly internals to work with.

However, it would be hard to incorporate different metals together, and add them in a way so that the exosuit would still remain relatively balanced afterward.

The different coloured metals seamlessly blended into the other parts of his suit through a simple finishing job though.

After a few more minutes of repairs to his exosuit, he was going to be the first match of the following quarter finals.

This was going to be quite the struggle.

Both fighters entered the arena, and Cael couldn’t feel the same confidence that he had done before. He was trembling slightly and had a light nauseating feeling from his stomach.

This was going to be a very tough battle, and he’d have to give it his all.

Cael immediately revealed his extreme-heated dagger, and was looking to use a lot of the power that he had here.

Beating this fighter would take everything out of him and he could easily receive an energy refill after he was over. Here, he’d have to leave everything out on the battlefield.

Cael sped forward and whipped his dagger straight into reverse grip. Upon activating power surge, he could feel the heat from his dagger become more intense. However, this wouldn’t be the maximum output to his blades.

Swipe!

Throwing a wild, swift swing, he utilised the power of his gauntlet overdrive to rev up his power output to the very maximum.

As his blade whistled through the air, it left a cloud of smoke and flames behind it from igniting the surrounding air.

He continuously whipped the blade around in Arthur’s direction, but his feet were like those of a ballerina’s. With the lightest, most graceful steps, he could stop himself from getting hurt entirely.

As Cael swung downward with desperation, Arthur stepped to his side to immediately close the distance. With his bodyweight thrown forwards, there would be nothing he could do to stop himself from receiving the next attack.

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Arthur hurled his fist straight into his flank in the form of a powerful hook. Cael could hear the vibrations of his thick exosuit as he threw out his fist, and he felt crippled by that hit. Cowering away, he continuously swung out the burning blade to stop him from coming any closer.

Here, Arthur revealed a thin-barrelled rifle mounted onto the outside of his wrist. It had two thin barrels and started firing several rounds of pellet-like energy blasts in quick succession. They just continued to fire out and flew with immense speed due to their lightness.

Cael was forced to take on several of these blasts and felt shaken up by them as they continued to land on his person.

His armour was receiving significant damage from these pellets, that he assumed would barely even make it through the outer layer of his armour.

Due to Arthur’s large mana reserves, he could easily output large amounts of energy without feeling drained.

Cael soon felt a pellet slam into the inner layers of armour plates, making his skin burn from the intense heat. He nearly fell to the ground, holding that side of his body in pain.

The agony was hard to steel through, but he had to put his mind back in the game. He didn’t want to lose here, and would try his absolute hardest to come out on top.

“Come on, Cael! YOU CAN DO THIS!” Cael roared, activating power surge once again.

He dashed forward, causing a cloud of sand to erupt behind him.

Swinging his blade with great speed, its raging flames managed to catch Arthur’s helmet as he started to retreat. He could see that there was damage done to his armour and a surprising amount at that.

Activating gauntlet overdrive, he sliced his blade straight across his abdomen, aiming in an area that he wasn’t looking at. This managed to bamboozle his adversary, leaving him unable to predict where he was going to slash. With this fiery, extremely hot blade, he literally slashed straight through the outer and even middle layers of his armour in one clean slash.

Near the centre of the gash, he had reached even the inner layers.

The crowd were dumbfounded by this weapon and achievement, as Arthur fell back with a hiss from the pain.

Many thought that Cael wouldn’t even last seconds against this prodigy. However, he had managed to land an attack of some sort on him.

Cael was struggling to even believe it was true. He remained stood there, taken aback by his own capabilities.

In this moment, though, Arthur charged forward with a shout and left him flustered.

His speed was insanely great, and he landed a clean punch straight to Cael’s face. Even through the helmet, he received a large bruise across the size of his face that started bleeding rather profusely from his skin breaking open.

A second strike was a straight punch right in the solar plexus, knocking the wind right out of him.

Finally, a swinging kick to his abdomen cracked one of his ribs and dropped him to his knees.

“Know your place you weakling! The fact that they even let you compete in this tournament is beyond me!” Arthur shouted down with disdain and tightly clenched fists.

Just as he was stood there, it seemed he was getting angrier and angrier from just looking at Cael. The sight of him and Cael being pit against one another in the same arena irked him.

With another punch clean to his helmet, Cael was out cold.

****

Suddenly, he awoke in one of the medical facilities within the arena. With nanobots coursing through his veins, the damage to his body was fading by the minute.

"Please remains sat, Cael Breckenridge. The nanobots will work most efficiently when you move as little as possible.” A doctor explained, lightly pushing him down to lay back on the bed.

Cael could feel a warm sensation stemming from within his body, which was a common feature of nanobot healing. When rather significant injuries were being healed by them, he could almost feel their activity in his veins through heat.

“Your fractured ribcage is the last main injury to heal. Any other pains and wounds should naturally fade in the coming hours or days.” The doctor furthered.

After about a minute or so, she went on to remove the nanobots through the opening that they had entered through. Scuttering into a large hovering medical drone, the drone gave off a positive ringing sound to display that all of the nanobots had been retrieved and returned to the floating medical kit.

It slowly floated away, and Cael was then allowed to raise and leave the room.

Upon touching his feet, he felt an overwhelming sensation of defeat come over him. It was hard to stomach at first, but he tried his best to rationalise it in his mind.

He had come against the best talent at the time. Even if he wasn’t exactly trying his hardest at the beginning of the fight, he landed a slash on him and a good one at that.

His extreme-heated blade managed to slice through the metal on the outside of his armour like it was butter! His theory was totally correct that the extra energy would make it much better than it should be.

After exiting the small room, he returned to the arena to just spectate the fights that remained. It was hard to see the other fighters still in the tournament when he had been removed from it so quickly, but he had to remind himself of the family he was a part of.

They weren’t exactly strong enough to be the leaders of armies or very high-ranking officials, but they weren’t foot soldiers.

Some held more office-like positions in the military, reserved for the stronger members of the defence force. Arthur was destined to hold a position like that in the future from his great talent.