Aki and Tsu were face to face with some meters between them while in the middle of the arena.
The announcer said something, but both ignored him and took weapons out of their storages before starting to buff themselves.
While Aki finished quickly and with few enchantments, Tsu kept going until the energy in her flesh, bones and marrow was barely contained, her eyes reddened and she growled a little before taking a deep breath and showing an icy countenance similar to her spouse's.
She knew that even with all the applied buffs and modifiers, his promise to use magic minimally and his inexperience with weapons in general, Aki still had higher stats than her and a body that was literally made to fight.
Feeling the wave of sound more than hearing the starting shout, Tsu leapt towards her partner and cracked the ground a little with her strength, consequently hitting his twin short swords, but even with all the power and weight of the hit, he was practically glued to the ground and didn't leave his place.
Following that he headbutted her chin, because apparently he'd grow a few centimeters just for the fight.
With ice suddenly appearing on the floor behind her, Tsu couldn't get any footing to right her posture or dodge the two slashes targeting her abdomen, but the damage was pretty much negligible for an ogre berserker.
Regaining her footing, Tsu blocked the next slash at her chest, but got a shallow wound on the thigh.
Even completely buffed, the ogress was still forced into the defensive, getting cuts here and there that bled her.
It was after she got cut on the twentieth time, but Tsu was finally able to cut off one of Aki's arms when swingging her axe in a downwards slash after being able to parry his blades. For that, she got a deep cut on her left side, done by the telekinectly controled arm before Aki jumped back and healed his arm in place before sending a wave of flames in Tsu's way, throwing his swords in the air and getting a long silver spear with a big blade that had small hooks on the back end of it.
Swinging the weapon a bit, Aki entered a posture to receive his spouse's attack and instead he hit her weapon while twirling through her side and hitting the spike on the butt of the spear on her calf before having his next attack deflected by her axe and letting himself be taken by it's force so he could float away while throwing a multitude of simple magic bolts at his oponent, who inevitably had to take some with her already bruised body before reaching him again, where he danced around her heavy attacks, but very rarely caused more cuts to her skin, instead, he focused on batering her war axe and breaking her tempo. When he finally did, she got another deep cut on the same hurt arm and a resounding crack could be heard.
"Enough. Surrender." Aki icily said.
You might think that Tsu should have healed herseft already, but the upkeep of her current state was costly, and she knew that most of Aki's weapons had curse effects, her axe being a fine example with it's ability of causing the effect of 'Enrage' on an area around it, which was of great help in maintaining her current resource regeneration and irronically enough her calm state of mind.
While constantly being in the area of an 'Enrage' spell for prolongued periods of time could make the most experienced of beserkers into beasts, for someone practicing the way of patience, married to someone like Aki, and with experience in fighting her murderous instincs since youth, this was nothing, only more food for her caulculating wrath.
Roaring a war cry, Tsu ran into Aki and used only one hand to swing her massive weapon, but instead of doing similarly as before, Aki suddenly vanished and she deacelerated for a moment before a familiar hot sensation traced her shoulder to her hip, followed by her collapse.
Aki immedialy directed all of his blood thrist and magic aura towards the judge, who meakly declared his victory, before he started throwing tons of mana into healing tsu until she was in pristine condition, which actually took less time than the healers stepping out of their posts.
*****
After the award cerimony
"Do you know what kind of healing was that?" Asked the queen
"I couldn't sense a drop of divine magic and that blue collor certainly isn't caracteristic of any school i've heard of. I'd need proper and direct inspection to determine other possible uses to it." Explained the wandering bishop who was currently sitting in front of the city's queen with her guards and the minister of foreing affairs. (Master spy for those too naive to politics)
"So we know nothing and as an attribute capable of healing we have no way of asking nicely for it. that leaves underway methods and asking dirrectly. The first would take measures we do not currently posses, cause high personel loss plus taking care of the repercussions, the second would problably take a good chunk of the coffers for any satisfactory result, and that is considering she is a greddy bastard that isn't magically conpulsed to guard the secret." Said the queen while frowing a lot and shugging her tea in one gulp. No need to say that the calming leaves were having almost no effect. "I wish i could just slap my past self when i told them to make a good show" She said, though she was not the actual woman to convince Aki to fight, just an excuse, but she will never know that.
As you might imagine, light, nature and water to some extent, are the elements with actual healing spells. Some other elements might provide first aid with some expertise of the caster, but otherwise there is no other bona fide magical healing if not for potions and elixirs.
There's some death magic that would naturally heal undead, and some otherworlders with a bit more knowledge could even use earth magic to regenerate a skeleton's bones, but such cases are mostly not really considered proper healing by anyone else but the specific races that can benefit from it.
Blood magic can be considered relatively normal on the mages of the underdark, hardly any of these people would be anything but spell slingers with no experience in healing others though, at max causing their regeneration to grow, but blood magic just doesn't fell right, literally, and there's a big diference on getting your regen higher and actually getting more hp when you're faccing something that can rip you a new one any moment. When you consider that normal healing spells can do both, than the better one is obvious.
Translating that, in the underdark healing is mostly done either by high ranking clergy, since their goddess has mostly to do with the oposite of healing, or by the greedy alchemists, so what Aki did will attract the attention of plenty of people. Not that he actually thought much of it at the moment.
Literally the whole place gives a debuff to light and nature spells, the light one being way bigger. Herbs, minerals and monster parts are aplenty. Who do you think would ask for little in health potions when you're the only option on selling something so precious as your life? Exactly, no one.
Just getting more clergy that can heal would already boost the temple's reputation and cause problems for the alchemists, reducing the city's cost, nevermind finding a whole new element school for healing.
While there certainly are laws that prohibit idiotic government officials from asking about something that is definetively guarded by magical contracts and causing problems with such important people, that does not mean that certain contracts can't be circunvented or ignored in certain forms of extraction of knowlege. That also means there's gonna be plenty of problem around the city for the queen to solve.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Does Aki actually care about this? Yes. He's going against the alchemy society after all, nevermind that every incompetent assasin turns into mana regen for him as their souls are taken for his generator.
He didn't use then as fuel, no, he just imprisioned then and made into criminal slaves with accomodations that consisted of basic cubicles with all their nescessities (Almost none) and the energy to keep then alive and concious. Some were quite irredimable, like the cat kin on that reunion he had on the first day of the tournament, he was broken till his personality didn't exist anymore and than affixed to a golem turning a lever on a hand generator Aki was making.
While he didn't really start to torture them, those guys actually provide quite the good labor with low maintenance, he started to give better treatment to the good boys and take certain conforts from the persistent idiots. If they had nothing more to be taken away, like this one specially hotheaded guy, they'd be infussed into armor and made to work silently as guards together with the goblins.
Something like that was hard to revert, but it even made the armor capable of giving bonus status, the kid would also be liberated to normal excavation work after three more days, would even have some more levels on him thanks to helping on hunts around Aki's territory, but he would eventually be turned over for his side since the souls were becoming specters, poltergeists and ghosts, all dungeon monsters.
Comanded by one succubus and her skeleton assistant, who was actually an old man Aki found floating around and acting like he was a broken record, ending up used as base to this special secretary undead, the souls were generating plenty of resources 'automatically', with most of the unusable rocks being turned into mana, their upkeep was actually lower than their production.
... I went rambling bout something that almost doesn't have anything to do with the current discussion, again... Sorry...
*****
*Grumble Thunk Grumble Thunk Grumble...*
"Aren't you supposed to only smith when you're calm or something?" Asked the beast woman behind silver. She was a young black cat-kin, with a slim but developed figure that showed she had worked heavy jobs for a long time, but somehow she maintained the feminity and grace of a woman.
"It's fine, ima do some rage and blood enchanting later, so this little shite will be nice for a roughing when it eats away at... Sorry, who are you?" Said aki after finally noticing there was someone on the forge other then him, making him change his tone completely and hammer his own hand by accident. It was a blow strong enough that the bone, blood and ligaments flew out even. "Shit! Don't you dare eat it you sonovabitch, ya hear me!? DON'T!" He said, screaming at the weapon with plenty of killing intent and magic in a voice that definetly didn't suit his small body, before removing the remains on the breast plate and giving it one last blow, which made the metal ripple and form into a distorted mouth-like image, but over all seem like a normal cuirass. Withouth sleeves. Is that still called a cuirass? Fuck it.
"Sorry you had so see that, but i don't remenber inviting anyone inside yet, some... did something happen?" Asked the vampire who already had a stub growing back.
"Yes, this woman claims to have the information you were looking for boss, but she says that there are people looking to kill her family and will kill herself in case we don't save them in time." Answered the completely unafected man before pushing his glasses up.
"That should be easy enough. Send a good squadrom with twenty or so men to save them and gently bring them here. We're already at war, so nevermind the appearences. I'm too pissed and tired to make you into blood slaves or something for offending me in case you're lying, so if don't have the info i want you will be in my debt and i will get your family a spot on my turf. Silver, write a normal contract, no underlines or anything, just get the family here first, I will finish this shit and we talk later." Aki rapidly said and got a nod from Silver.
"Really? That's..." The beast kin girl tried to voice her confusion, but Aki rapidly shoved a finger in her face. "Shhhhhh now, I have a migraine that can only be cured by spending time alone and eating unhealthy food, and that's what Ima gonna do, no extra social interaction, now go." He said and shoved both out of his forge before slamming the door shut.
*****
After Aki spent some more three hours alone, he finally appeared in front of the rescued family of eight who were in the middle of one large reception room in his manor.
"Great, you're all here and no one is crying. Have you signed the contract for the loan I suggested or do you have enough money to rent some place?" Asked Aki while sitting on the recliner in front of the rug covered in pillows where the beast kin sat.
"We were told that we could further discuss the contract when you came, so..." The cat girl that first came meakly talked.
"No, you will leave behind the culture and practices you all lived in and abide by more moderate ideas or i will kill all that are not below four years old. Rest asured though, since i will take in all the orphaned children, teaching them love and crafts, as well as making sure they completely forget your culture ever existed as anything but an abomination of the word 'civilization'. Though if you're asking for more money than that's totally fine, the mensal tax after the paying period will still be 2,5% of the total amount as well." Aki said with a smile on his face while explaining their options.
"Wa, what do you mean kill? Didn't you even save us and offer such deals?!" Asked the pale and suddenly afraid mother while clutching her baby next to her chest.
"Yes, of course, I'm a good person, so i saved you of rape, torture and slavery, but leaving any remains of such disgusting barbarie would both cause problem and induce vomit, so i can't take on the children that would remenber me dealing with the dissobedient people. That, i truly regret, but i will do what i consider right. I'd show you why the death a propose is painless, but that might awake the children." Aki calmly said this, but he already didn't have a smile on his face when he signaled the guards away. "I will be serious here, your other options are literally prostitution and slavery of the children so the adults can pay your debt away, nevermind you girl, who says she knows of their hidden fort out of the city. Accept my terms and live a less primitive life. I have to ask though, girl, does your father have some sickness or something, I only just restrained him for a bit, but he even burst a vein trying to scape already."
With Aki's words, the awake children, the eldest daughter and the mother of the family finaly noticed that their patriarc was strangely silent, turning around to see the man looking extremely angry and with blood on his forehead, but completely still in his sitting position. He made no noise, but his eyes darted eractlic. "By the way, since this rapist has entered my turf, he is now my property. Those are the rules. I don't let them unpunished. Ever." Aki commented as if saying that the rain was getting stronger.
"So, what will your choice be?" Asked Aki, already having a contract in his hand.