Not all the lunar natives have taken kindly to our colonization, but when our every stream seeks to consume the land, what choice do we have?
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The environments of the arena dissolved, leaving only Denor and his next opponent. This one resembled an elf, taller and more compact than the previous five, and for the first time the brightness change was dramatic enough that everyone would notice it.
"Intermediate level! These are normally only challenged by fully imprinted mageblades, how shall Denor fare?" Lord Veshin boomed.
The first intermediate level adversary took its stance, the elf standing straight and proud, one hand raised, the other extended. Jair could make out the lines denoting imprints across its arms, impressed by the attention to detail. The imprints showed two available spells, Dazzle and Slingshot. A good selection, considering that the operator could only use force and light to mimic the spells' effects. Things like fire or lightning might look more dramatic, but hardlight couldn’t properly imitate their stunning or burning, breaking the illusion of the fight's 'realness'.
Even if he didn’t already know firsthand the jump in difficulty for higher tiers, Jair would’ve guessed something serious was going down from how drastically Denor’s stance shifted. His aggression disappeared entirely, replaced by watchful wariness.
Even Denor’s father looked worried. Clearly this wasn’t how he expected the morning to go.
Ongoing chatter in the crowd hushed as the intensity built. This was something rarely seen. Denor was good, but was he really ready for this?
"Begin!"
The elf simulacrum wasted no time. Even as its sword appeared in one hand, it raised the other and flung a fist-sized stone made of the same blue light as its body. The ‘spell’ flashed toward Denor in a blur, followed immediately by the elf’s sword as it charged him using the spell as cover.
Denor slashed the stone from the air, but the force drove him back and threw him off balance. Frantic backpedaling barely saved him from the followup lunge.
He and his opponent flowed across the arena, this fight much more dynamic than those that came before. Over a full minute passed, frantic and intense with exchanged blows, without either of them scoring a hit.
The elf kept throwing blue-light 'rocks' or setting off strategically timed bursts of blinding light. That Denor could keep up at all meant he fought at a higher level than he normally displayed.
Denor’s frantic rhythm shifted and he snuck in a strike, changing the sword’s direction and swiping
The number 1 appeared above the simulacrum’s head to a burst of cheers, immediately followed by gasps as the elf’s simultaneous Slingshot slammed into Denor’s leg and sent him staggering back.
To a less prepared opponent, that kind of hit would have been immediately debilitating. Denor dropped back to one knee, using the momentum of the attack to evade a followup slash at chest height. A burst of light immediately followed by a deep lunge from the simulacrum drove him back further. When the Dazzle cleared Jair saw a line of blood down the side of Denor’s robe.
Lord Veshin gripped the balcony railing where he stood watching, as the observers gasped. Until now, Denor hadn’t been actually hurt in any of the exhibition rounds.
Denor didn’t surrender. He ignored the injury and continued the frantic dance.
There was no official limit on the number of strikes the fighter could receive. He wouldn’t be disqualified for being hit too many times, but fewer was generally considered better. If you barely scraped out a win while taking severe injuries, that signified a certain sort of determination, sure, but it wasn’t usually what potential sponsors were looking for.
Denor wouldn’t need to curry favor. He wanted to prove something on his own behalf, and every slip-up made that harder to accomplish.
If he were even a little slower, he’d be completely overwhelmed.
The two combatants continued their dance across the arena, exchanging attacks and parries, but it was pretty clear that Denor was the weaker in this exchange. The absence of any imprinted spells to even the playing field left him perpetually at a disadvantage.
It continued to be a near-draw right up until Denor struck a killing blow through the opponent's head for the final point needed to pass the round.
The adversary dissolved into blue sparkles, and Denor bowed. He paused to catch his breath while everyone waited, then his voice rang out across the arena. "I am satisfied."
"SIX ROUNDS!" Lord Veshin shouted, his box reforming beneath him to float him over to where Denor was also rising on a cube of blue light. The two came together and he lifted Denor's fist triumphantly into the air as they hovered to the center of the arena. Fully illuminated by all the spotlights, flushed from the exertion, Denor grinned uncontrollably. "Matching the previous initiate record! Denor Veshin!"
Lian showed off his swordsmanship focus and made it through the fourth round with several minor injuries, then hesitated for the longest time before deciding to attempt the fifth. Bad idea.
Lian was good, but he was no prodigy. Reaching the third round was in itself respectable, and clearing the fourth would have been a solid achievement, proving he had a good foundation and room to grow.
But no. Rather than accepting he’d come as far as he was going to, Lian pressed on. He hadn’t done well in the previous round against the two opponents, and he did even worse in this one. Both simulacrums moved faster and more aggressively than the fourth round’s duo, and Lian’s ability to keep up was stretched past the breaking point.
If he’d come into it fresh, he could have won. Being tired and injured already, he wore himself out trying to defend from two directions and never gained any advantage.
He managed a single hit on one enemy, two on the other, but after that spent several minutes fighting with grim determination that didn’t do more than protect himself. And before long, he flagged at even that.
It took a very particular skillset to carry on constant fighting for minutes on end without the slightest pause. Unlike living enemies, the simulacrums didn’t need to rest. Lian would have been better served to imitate Denor’s strategies if he was insistent on forcing his way through. Overly aggressive attacks may have been rebuffed by his opponents but at least he wouldn’t have put on a long tedious show of being gradually beaten down.
It showed his tenacity, at least, if Jair were feeling charitable.
He wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, if he were honest. Standing here was less annoying than standing in the initiation ceremony, but not by a lot.
Still, it only took a glance up at the observation balconies to remind him of how valuable today’s event could be.
As much as Lian was showing off the wrong traits, Jair could show off all the right ones. At least to the extent his untrained and unprepared younger body could handle.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“I yield,” Lian muttered, as the two simulacrums closed in on him. He’d dropped his sword and didn’t have the soul strength to pull it back to him, trapped with his back to a white-glowing cliff face. When no one heard him, he repeated louder, “I surrender.”
The environment gradually faded down to the floor level, and Lian’s two opponents bowed and disappeared in a flash of light, as Lord Veshin descended from the central balcony on his usual moving platform.
Hardlight didn’t ‘float’ the way most people imagined, having no real ‘weight’ to it, but it could be a stable platform as long as it was connected to the ground. Only Starshaper’s extreme skill made everything look so smooth and mimicked Lift so well.
“Four rounds! Lian Teretho!”
The obligatory applause was accompanied by minor ripples of laughter. Lian, red-faced, turned and stomped away with ill grace.
“Fourth and finally, Jair Welburne!”
Jair stepped forward, the platform he stood on moving with him to slide him toward the center. It descended, leaving him standing in the center of the arena.
Blue light flashed, glinting off the outline of the created opponent. They both took their standard starting positions, one hand on forehead, the other extended with a loose grasp. Jair could see the different pieces that made up the opponent only because he knew what to look for. Each section—body, head, upper and lower arm and leg—was operated independently from the others. Yalenin’s puppeteering of his simulacrums was unsurpassed.
“BEGIN!”
“Soulblade, manifest,” Jair whispered, already shifting his balance backward. His sword appeared in a flash of silver that overshadowed the brief blue glint of his adversary’s.
Jair retreated three quick steps, then abruptly shifted direction and lunged at the hardlight adversary.
The man made of blue light raised his weapon to meet Jair’s charge. Compared to the fifth level opponents Lian had been fighting, this one seemed to move almost in slow motion.
He'd prepared himself for a difficult fight, one where he would need to use the utmost of his capabilities and stretch the limits of his weak former-self's body to finish this quickly and decisively.
Maelstrom had other ideas.
The swords met in a bright flare. With a sharp crack and a pop that echoed across the arena, his opponent's created sword broke and vanished in a cloud of sparkles.
Jair's momentum carried him forward, his strike meeting no real resistance. His blade slammed into the adversary's chest. Another crack BANG, and the entire central section of the creation disappeared.
Jair jumped back, raising an eyebrow. Though his reforged blade had now reached the ascendant level, he’d watched plenty of ascendant mageblades practice against Starshaper’s creations in the past. To be able to destroy one with such light blows…
The entire creation dissipated into sparkles. For a long moment no one reacted, as taken aback by the display as Jair himself.
"Well, would you look at that!" Lord Veshin chuckled heartily, not quite hiding the surprise. "I think we have a new record for round one, eh? I assume you’ll be continuing to the second round?"
Jair finished the entire initiate tier in under a minute, even with the pauses for Lord Veshin’s announcements. By the third round, the increased stability on the simulacrums meant that he was taking a full hit to destroy their weapon and another to killshot the hardlight opponent, but that barely slowed him down.
Just how strong was Maelstrom anyway?
He’d heard stories of legendary weapons, but they were so rare that the stories were appropriately legendary themselves. Stories of severing a mountain’s peak with a single blow, or felling a whole forest in a morning. The kind of nonsense that people came up with when they heard about anything rare and unexpected.
For the first time, Jair found himself wondering if Maelstrom might truly be capable of doing something like that. If he trained a farsever technique, could he cleave an entire grove of trees? Would the misshapen blade carve through a mountain with impunity?
The reinforced materials of Astralla Institute had given him trouble, but apparently the reinforcement on the library towers and greenhouse dome were significantly stronger than those on a hardlight simulacrum.
“Will you be challenging the intermediate levels today?” Lord Veshin asked, once Jair finished off the second opponent in the fifth round with a diagonal slash that destroyed its chest and one arm entirely.
“Yes. Thank you.”
People were leaning forward, or leaning sideways to whisper to their friends. More people pointing at him, more people staring at him, than he could have hoped.
Wrong reasons, perhaps; he’d wanted to establish himself as a capable fighter. But he could use this just as easily. More easily, perhaps, since it didn’t rely on skills he’d be hard pressed to demonstrate in more inaccessible environments.
The arena emptied of its complicated layout, leaving only Jair and his lone elven simulacrum opponent as round six began.
Like it had done against Denor, the simulacrum started off the combat with a Slingshot to Jair’s face. Jair smacked the glowing hardlight rock aside with Maelstrom, the blade slicing through and fully destabilizing the attack. His sideways swipe smacked hard into the simulacrum’s created sword, but the light of its weapon only glared brighter instead of shattering under the blow.
"Guess they're not going to let me get away that easily again. Fair enough."
After all, the point was for him to show off his swordsmanship, not how well he could stab an unarmed opponent.
Now the true challenge began. Without relying on Maelstrom’s overwhelming power to destroy his enemies in a single strike, Jair had to focus.
A single opponent with ranged and distraction spells, an arena with no obstacles, and an intensely interested audience staring down at him.
The simulacrum had the undeniable advantage in speed and flexibility. Regardless of what training Jair managed during the brief downtime to prepare, his untrained body could only move so fast.
That said, he couldn’t rule Maelstrom out completely. Five quick exchanges, backing carefully away in a retreat that didn’t provide any openings, and the brilliant sword of light cracked.
Jair grinned and went on the attack. Two more hits and the enemy’s weapon shattered completely, dissipating into sparkles of light.
Jair lunged forward into the opening, striking the enemy’s chest with a heavy stab that lit up a 1 above the simulacrum’s head.
He swept Maelstrom to the side, adding a 2 and then 3 to the counter, then jumped back as the simulacrum’s fist swung at him.
Too fast to be evaded. The fist clipped Jair’s arm, jostling him off course. He brought Maelstrom around a split second too slow. He knew exactly how to move and where to evade, but his body couldn’t keep up.
A Dazzle set off in his face all but blinded him. Jair instinctively grabbed at the spell to muffle it, trusting Absorb to draw away the excess power, but of course his imprints were still missing. He did grab it, the hardlight construction feeling slick and glassy under his fingers rather than the formless softness of an actual Dazzle, but apart from his hand blocking the central part of the imitation spell, nothing else happened.
The simulacrum took advantage of his momentary confusion to retreat, raising its hands to starting stance. Its sword reappeared in its hand, fully repaired and glowing brighter than ever.
Jair chuckled. It wasn’t quite how soulswords worked, but for the sake of the drama and the exhibition, he could play along.
He only needed two more hits, he could play conservative now, didn’t need to rush in or try for killshots.
But where was the fun in that?
Grinning, heartbeat thrumming in his veins, Jair charged the simulacrum before it had even dropped stance, Maelstrom raised above his head in one hand, other hand out to the side.
The opponent raised its sword to meet the descending Maelstrom, braced against the blow. Learning from experience what to expect. Skillfully done.
And also predictable.
Jair sidestepped and let go of Maelstrom midswing, hurling it over the simulacrum’s attempt to block. The simulacrum reacted fast, its sword slashed upward to knock Maelstrom aside.
But it couldn’t recover in time to block Jair himself. Swinging his other hand around he collided bodily into the simulacrum, grabbing its sword arm to hold it away from him.
Recall.
Maelstrom vanished from where it lay in a flash of light, reappearing in Jair’s extended second hand.
The crowd gasped.
The simulacrum didn’t have time to react as Jair drove Maelstrom into its back from the side angle, shattering its torso piece and eliminating it in a burst of blue sparkles.
“Jair Welburne!” Lord Veshin announced, sounding stunned and baffled. “In a single day, the record has been matched twice over!” He waved a hand as though to signify that this was the end.
Jair spoke up before he could get any further. “I’d like to try the next.”
“Second tier intermediate?” Lord Veshin looked around, as though searching for a referee to tell him what to do. “But you’re only an initiate this morning.”
“I think we’ve all seen that I can handle myself.” He grinned up at Raina, who was standing staring openmouthed over the railing of her box at him, and winked. “Why stop at equalling the record when I can shatter it entirely?”
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