I fretted about what I should say to Nodel as I returned to pick my beasts for my final match, and again I found someone waiting for me.
“Oh, good, I wanted to talk to you before our bout,” I said.
“Me too,” Atlessoa replied, her hands pulling at her sundress. A cold gust of air blew, a reminder that summer was coming to an end and that the fall would be here in full force soon. She shivered slightly in the breeze, but it soon passed.
“So, this whole thing,” I said, waving my hand broadly at the arena where the tournament was being held. “It isn’t something that really matters to me. I came because I had to, as the leader of the Tamers Guild, but I’ve shown off what I needed to about beast taming and what we’re accomplishing out east. But this matters to you, and affects your future. If you want me to fold in the last match, just say the word.”
Atlessoa frowned. “Oh. Well. I was going to offer to fold to you, since… I mean, really, Pilus, I never would have even survived the streets if I hadn’t met you.” Her eyes watered a bit as she continued. “Even if I had lived, I almost certainly would have disappeared into the worst parts of the city’s underbelly against my will. You gave me all the tools I needed to survive and thrive, and those tools saved me, but I also misused them, and… well, the finals are far enough. I have a way out from the mess I made in Roko now. But it was all thanks to you. If you wanted the win…”
“Hmm. I still think it’s better for you to win, but… it kind of sounds like we both think that we’re going to be the obvious winners in a fair match,” I said with a laugh.
Atlessoa blushed a bit. “Well, I mean… I haven’t met someone who could beat me in a long, long time. I know you helped me gain these talents, but you were a child when you did, and I’ve been honing them ever since.”
I leaned in towards her, a cocky grin on my face. “And you think I haven’t been advancing my own talents?” Atlessoa was a higher level than me, but if I accounted for all the skillfruit I had eaten, I had many more total points applied to my overall skill growth. I tilted my head towards the beasts. “Have you considered that all my skills have advanced as much as my taming?”
Unperturbed, Atlessoa did not pull her face from mine. She returned my grin. “I guess we’ll just have to have a proper bout and see, then.”
My grin warmed into a genuine smile. “That sounds like a plan.”
Atlessoa stepped forwards and wrapped her arms around me in a warm hug, and I hugged her back. When she stepped back, I reached up and put my hand on her head, lightly tousling her hair. I could clearly remember her young face glaring up at me from under tousled hair when I did this a decade ago, but this time she just sighed contentedly and leaned into my hand.
“Oh, but… I’m a little worried about Meaila. She’s only iron rank, and I don’t want her to get too hurt in the fighting by accident.”
Atlessoa looked pensive for a moment, then nodded. “I’ve gone on missions without Meaila before, so her absence shouldn’t affect me too badly. Although… it’s only fair that you bring one less beast in as well, then,” she said with a wicked smile.
Trading the loss of her rank E beast against the loss of my own rank C beast was not exactly fair, but it was the most reasonable ask from her in order to keep Meaila safe. I nodded, accepting the terms.
“All right, get going now,” I said, stepping away. “I’ve gotta pick who will be fighting and prepare for my win.”
She stuck her tongue out at me, and turned to leave, her Shadowblade illusion filling in around her as she did. “See you in the arena,” she said with a wave as she walked away.
I glanced back at my beasts. Atlessoa’s main advantages over me were her speed and agility as well as her overall stealth. The nocturne urstrig was a sure thing—it was probably my speediest, stealthiest beast in my current team, and was also the freshest, having not fought any battles that day—but I was not sure what my second beast should be.
Glancing at Horsey, I realized that I could opt to enter the arena on the ground, and only lose a rank D beast instead of a rank C while still fulfilling our private conditions of the battle. Gorban had put both Horsey and the mecrokotas through their paces in the last battle, and I was not sure the benefits of being mounted counted for much against someone with an assassin build.
“Sure wish I could ride the flying moose,” I muttered. The alcewing was a good choice, giving me the ability to attack with powerful blows from above. He wasn’t the fastest beast, though, and might not even be able to land an attack on Atlessoa, so the better choice was the lightning collus.
With my speed team selected, the three of us headed into the arena. The crowd of spectators started to buzz with conversation, seeing me not riding in on Horsey and only using two beasts, speculating about the match. On the other side of the arena stood the man garbed in black, known to all as the Shadowblade of Roko. Under the illusion was a girl who I basically considered my little sister. I was going to have to shove that feeling deep down and away so that I did not pull my strikes and lose the match because I was afraid of hurting her. There were priests on deck for healing. Still, my plan was to remove her from the arena and win by ring-out instead of knockout.
“Two greats, each dominating their way through the bracket, finally coming to face each other in the final match of the tournament!” the master of ceremonies cried.
He’s really getting into this, I thought.
“No one could have seen this coming at the start of the tournament. On the one side, we have the dagger wielder who shocked and awed us all as he slashed down his competition, evading every strike and completely mastering the flow of his battles. Even against some of the best swordsmen in the Kingdom, this rogue has come out on top time and time again! I give you the Shadowblade of Roko!”
Atlessoa’s developing fanbase in the crowd started to cheer, but she received some jeers and boos as well. There were plenty of people who did not like the way she fought, and did not like that she was fighting under an alias, as it all hinted strongly at her criminal past. Still, she raised her hand in a perfunctory wave, then focused back on me.
“Who could have known that we would see a tamer, of all things, make it to the finals of our tournament today? An unknown factor in every way, the gold-ranked leader of the Tamers Guild has shown us all the potential of fighting alongside the wild and powerful beasts of our lands. His advancements in taming have already revolutionized trade and transport along the roads of our Kingdom, and clearly he has even more to teach us still about his methods known as battle taming. I give you tamer Pilus of Gurt!”
Applause and cheers, especially from young kids who, once they got over the intimidation factor of the beasts, had become incredibly fond of seeing the beasts in person. I grinned and waved, and my beasts did some showboating for the audience as well, to increased shouts of joy from the audience.
I turned to the viewing box, and saw Nodel watching with a wry smile. The priestess continued to hide behind her veil, but my eyes met the king’s haughty gaze as he looked down at me. I nodded my head to him, and after a moment, he just barely inclined his in return. I faced Atlessoa again, and the master of ceremonies raised his voice.
“The match begins… now!”
And Atlessoa vanished.
* * *
The collective sharp gasp of the crowd made me chuckle as I began performing some of my own spellcraft. Atlessoa had not overtly used her 5-point magic yet during the competition, instead using it in subtler ways that only her opponents would truly notice. Phantom limbs, the invisible aid of Meaila, and throwing sounds that caused distractions and reactions allowed her to control the flow of every fight, which she conducted with ease using her raw martial talent.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Not this time.
While I could have technically scryed her location with 3-point magic, it only gave me her position in a single moment, and I would need to be continuously casting it with the bulk of my focus to track her in real time. It was not a practical solution for live combat. Furthermore, I wanted to win primarily using her own specialty of 5-point magic against her.
My childhood study of magic had taught me 5-point magic early on, and it had always been a staple of my life. When Vorel had explained to me the aspects of this magic circle on my fourth birthday, he defined it as sensory magic. Light and dark, sound and silence, and solidity made up the five points.
The way I used this magic was, largely, the same way most people in this world did. 5-point magic allowed the mage to create illusions, and at a high level, apply enough solidity to the illusions that they became additional combatants in their own right.
Note to self, teach Atlessoa a shadow clone technique after this. Every good ninja needs a shadow clone jutsu.
I predominantly used the solidity aspect of the magic to create barriers, which had been incredibly useful in my combat style as well. Once I got to the point where I could reactively throw a barrier in the way of an oncoming attack, a lot of potential damage was mitigated, and my ability to go head to head against stronger enemies grew exponentially.
It was not until after I came to learn the truth about 4-point magic—which this world considered magic that controlled the Aristotelian elements but was, in fact, actually oxidation magic—that I started considering that there was likely a deeper truth to 5-point magic as well. It took years before my life had calmed down enough to properly sit down and study the magic that I was underutilizing, and then many more years before I had properly started to make headway with my new understanding.
Something which had always bothered me about 5-point magic was that light and dark were considered different aspects of the magic, when darkness was just the absence of light. Likewise, sound and silence were not two opposing forces, but just the presence or absence of vibrations in the air.
Light and sound were similar, in some ways. At their core, each was just a kind of wave. Sound existed as soundwaves, and light as lightwaves. However, solidity seemed like a different beast altogether.
A mass had solidity based on the structure of the molecules, something I had learned when I created magic ice out of water, and crystals out of various oxides. My barriers seemed like micron-thick, impossibly dense structures that could halt all oncoming force, at least until the magic that fed the barrier failed.
Something about that seemed fundamentally incorrect to me. To give a barrier that much density seemed like it would require creating mass out of nothing. While this was magic, and I could not discount that as a possibility, I was unable to create stone or water out of nothing at all; my magic only controlled matter, not created it. It was possible that 5-point magic was different from 4-point magic in that regard, but I continued seeking different answers, painstakingly meditating on my memories from Earth.
I knew I needed to mentally reclassify 5-point magic the same way I had 4-point magic. What was formerly either illusory, barrier, and overall considered to be sensory magic had to fundamentally change in my worldview. When it finally clicked, I understood that 5-point magic was magic which controlled wavelengths and frequencies. It was spectrum magic.
When I started considering solidity as a function not of mass, but of waves and spectrums, I began to form hypotheses about how it might work. There was a vibration spectrum, and perhaps by creating a region that set the frequency of molecular vibration to zero, I was creating a type of “immovable object” that physical force could simply not pass through.
Beyond the crystalline structure of solid matter, I knew that electrostatic repulsion also related to reaction force and prevented objects from moving through each other, but I could vaguely recall a possible quantum reasoning as well. I dredged my memory about the Pauli exclusion principle and quantum physics, but I had only ever had a passing interest in it myself. Long bouts of focused meditation helped me recall something about how two electrons could not occupy the same state as it would cause a wavefunction to be zero. Perhaps that was how solidity actually worked? Some kind of quantum oscillation that was being controlled?
Ultimately, I knew I would likely never truly know, but it presented strong evidence that solidity was also a form of wave or spectrum magic. If I could truly figure it out, perhaps I could even phase through objects, but I immediately knew that I would never, ever try that. I had no desire to start trying to manipulate the solidity of my brain.
Nonetheless, starting to think about 5-point magic as spectrum magic allowed me to start experimenting with light and sound in new ways. I prepared to try one such experiment in live combat against Atlessoa, and started building a new kind of spell.
I had already learned how to anchor spells like my barriers to my own body in such a way that they moved with me, and so I did so again, but this time applying a different type of barrier in front of my eyes. Rather than attempting to manipulate molecular vibration or electron repulsive fields or quantum oscillation or whatever it was that allowed me to make barriers from physical forces, I instead created a barrier that only affected the light spectrum. I made a lens, and it was a lens that obstructed all visible light.
Immediately, I was blinded, but then I created my second lens, tucked just behind the first. The original lens only blocked off any wavelengths shorter than red. The second lens took the spectrum with a lower frequency and crushed the wavelength down before it hit my eyes. I took the infrared spectrum and converted it to visible color. It was a form of magical thermal vision, and it revealed to me the invisible.
I turned my head to where I saw a red splotch that vaguely resembled the outline of the real Atlessoa creeping around the edge of the arena. I lifted my arm, extended my finger, and pointed directly at her.
“Found you.”
Atlessoa froze for a mere moment before she broke into a sprint towards me, her position being revealed. I sent a mental command to my urstrig, guiding him to engage the invisible assassin with her position, and it swung aggressively at her location, forcing her to halt her charge and evade the attacks.
Her daggers slashed at the beast as it continued to ensnare her, and soon my collus descended onto her as well, slashing with talons and forcing her to defend from two threats at once. Even still, as I watched through the growing headache of my thermal vision, I saw her somehow pulling ahead, the damage to my beasts adding up while she avoided the worst of their attacks.
I did not want her to end up killing one of my beasts, knowing it would make her feel even worse than I would at the loss for having caused it, so it was time that I joined the fray and ended things.
There were any number of things I could do to end the battle, using all sorts of tricks and magic. What I could not do was actually engage her in melee and try to win through submission or pure martial victory. She was too good. No matter what, I would have to reveal one of my tricks, so I decided to keep with 5-point magic and do something that would be, to most, entirely incomprehensible.
Rushing forward, I reared my fist back and tossed out a punch towards Atlessoa while commanding my beasts to retreat behind me. As my punch extended to its maximum reach, I pushed a huge amount of my MP into another new 5-point magic spell.
Usually, 5-point magic was the type that would gradually eat away at your MP, and large singular outlays of magic were reserved for the more combat-oriented 4-point magic. This time, I poured my MP into a sound. Having tested and studied the crack of a bullwhip I made back on the farm, I replicated the wave writ large.
My punch terminated in a massive sonic boom.
The thundering, explosive sound crashed into the surrounding air and created a pressure that turned into a physical force. Atlessoa was blown backwards and the entire arena shook as spectators covered their ears in surprise.
The Shadowblade’s body crashed into the ground outside of the arena, invisibility dropped. Atlessoa’s true, unconscious figure was temporarily revealed, ears bloody from the audio attack, and I quickly used the last dregs of my MP to recreate her illusion until she could be healed.
“You’ll want to heal his ears as well,” I shouted at the priestess who went to the fallen combatant, my own ears ringing from the proximity to the blast. In healing, the priestess would probably figure out that Atlessoa was wearing a disguise, but the least I could do was keep her identity hidden from the public.
The priestess nodded, then examined Atlessoa and started healing, signing to the judges that the Shadowblade lived. Since he was outside of the ring, I was obviously the winner, and the official declaration was made.
“Pilus of Gurt is the winner of the Tournament of Talents!” the master of ceremonies yelled.
The response was not as raucous as I had hoped, probably because a lot of the spectators were still confused as to what exactly had happened in the arena, and those closest were still rubbing their ringing ears and wincing. Maybe I didn’t need such a powerful sonic boom, I thought with a grimace.
I glanced up at the viewing box and saw the ever-inscrutable priestess, King Rugnor politely applauding and speaking with an advisor of sorts, and Nodel, looking rather perplexed with her mouth partially open and furrowed brows. I grinned at her, and she scowled and shook her head. I looked away to make sure Atlessoa was being healed and the illusion was holding, and when I looked back I could see a satisfied smirk on Nodel’s face as she answered a question from the king.
“Well,” I said, patting the urstrig and stroking the collus. “Let’s get out of here and get you all healed up.”