Point-of-View: Katie Cummins

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​​

The crowd was stunned into silence, before eventually breaking out into belated applause, as Sofia re-entered the arena with a wary frown, watching me with narrowed eyes...from the looks of it, she's taking me more seriously now. Okay, how should I approach this round?

She's quite skilled, and I don't know if I'm capable of defeating her without using Manifestation Overdrive...I'm down to just under half my XFE, so I have to make a decision...if I opt not to use Manifestation Overdrive but then it becomes apparent during the fight that I can't win without it, I'll be in trouble.

Because I've only got enough XFE to use it for a short while longer, assuming that I use my Secondary Manifestation again...when paired with my Manifestation Overdrive, it's a lot more powerful, but consumes about four times the amount of XFE that it does when paired with my Primary Manifestation.

I have been working on controlling the amount of output discharged with Dragon Lightning, but I'm far from mastering it just yet...so for now, it's all or nothing. And I'm going to take that risk...I'm going all out.

Sofia positioned herself right at the boundary of the Duel Field, keeping as much of as distance as possible as she activated her manifestations again and eyed me cautiously. Guess it's my turn...as the countdown ticked below five seconds...

"."

When we fought Kilella Floence, I was able to double the output of my Secondary Manifestation while in this state by charging it up...but I don't have enough XFE to pull that off again, and besides, it's kinda overkill since it's nearly impossible to dodge such a massive blasy in this enclosed barrier space.

Two seconds left...she's probably going to look to keep her distance and try to buy time till I'm out of XFE...in which case, I'll have to go on the offensive.

The instant the countdown ended, I raced forward at top speed, she swiftly responded by sprinting across to the left...she's fast, and she's trying to stay facing the side of my dragon head and avoid the line of my lightning attack...damn it, I can't line her up within my range, she's zipping around way too quickly...this form of mine is by no means slow, but she's just a bit faster than I am.

I'm running out of XFE, I can't maintain this form for much longer...I need to hurry and end this already.

I swung out one of my manifestation's arms towards her, she nimbly leapt over it, landed on the back of its hand and raced along the arm. As I swung the other arm towards her, aiming to slash at her with the claws, she sliced off the hand with a quick slash of her spear, as I swung my claws in towards her.

She's going to land to my right, this is my chance! I quickly turned the head of my manifestation to my right and opened its jaws, taking aim and firing out the lightning, right as she plunged her spear straight down towards the ground...and suddenly blasted herself straight up into the air with a windy slash aimed at the ground, my lightning narrowly missing her and blasting onto the floor and barrier with a devastating impact, sparks violently crackling through the air.

She dodged it...I think I partially got her legs with my attack, but she avoided taking it head on...but how? It looked like she suddenly propelled herself straight up...a compressed blast of wind, maybe?

Damn it, it doesn't matter, I need to focus...I'm effectively out of XFE, I don't even have enough to form my Primary Manifestation...which leaves me with one last option...an option that I never thought I'd ever use, and an option that I definitely never wanted to ever use, but after having put in this much into this fight...I don't want to lose.

My manifestation then dissipated, as my XFE nearly completely drained. I quickly backed away with a wince of pain and got some distance as Sofia landed back down onto the ground and shot towards me, raising her spear as she closed in with a triumphant look on her face.

Aghh, this really hurts...but I just need to bear it for a few seconds and time this right...otherwise, I will lose, no doubt about that. Sofia began to swing her spear down as she neared me, my back hitting the wall of the Duel Field barrier...no doubt she thinks that she has me cornered now.

I then gritted my teeth, focused...and zipped forward, closing in on her in the blink of an eye, a look of alarm and shock appearing in her eyes as I met her gaze from just inches away. I bit the inside of my cheek to bear the screaming pain in my legs, bracing myself.

Now to end this...before she could react, I swung my fist up in a rapid, crackling uppercut, an agonizing wave of pain bursting through my arm, but I ignored it as best I could, putting all the strength I could muster into my fist as it shot up towards her chin.

Right before my fist could connect with her face, she vanished from my sight, the Duel Field teleporting her out. Her mouth opened when she reacted in alarm, if my punch had landed, she'd have probably bitten her tongue off...lucky me, otherwise, I doubt that a punch would be enough to trigger the teleportation function.

"The winner of the first match...Katie Cummins!"

I then collapsed onto my knees in pain as the crowd began cheering, my legs and right arm trembling in agony...this hurts a lot, I can barely move anymore. Just like how Seila's Secondary Manifestation lets her run lightning through her arms and electrify and speed up her punches, I split my remaining XFE into three pieces and then divided those between my legs and right arm.

However, there's a reason why most Prodigies can't manifest the element of their XFE Attribute, it's because their bodies literally can't handle it. After I figured out how to manipulate my XFE better while working on my Manifestation Overdrive, I got a better understanding of my own energy and also figured out how to transform it from pure energy to lightning, by focusing on and manually imitating the flow of my XFE when I use Dragon Lightning.

Unfortunately, figuring that out didn't do me much good, because unlike forming lightning in the jaws of my manifestation, forming lightning directly from my body results in me damaging and electrocuting myself. So my legs and right arm are sort of fried right now. I can barely move them at all...but I did it...I won...

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Point-of-View: Kilzachs Light

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Huh...I might have underestimated the full-fledged X-Warriors. But I mean, considering all my encounters with them till now, can you really blame me? So many of the X-Warriors I've come across have been all bark and barely any bite, to the point where it's easy to forget that probably not all of them are so incompetent.

I was honestly expecting Katie to dominate her first match, and yeah, she messed up her first round, probably due to nerves...but that X-Warrior she fought was strong, and I'm not talking about her manifestations...in fact, they're pretty average, she's just extremely good as using them.

If they were to fight again, Katie would probably lose, since the element of surprise is no longer there to fall back on...well, unless she has more tricks up her sleeve. That last move that Katie used was really interesting, she manually controlled her XFE without using any activation chants...though from the looks of it, it was kind of a double-edged sword.

It looked like she could barely stand up, some of the event staff were helping her off the arena...she'll probably be in a Healing Pod for a while. And I've still got a ton of time left before my first match...guess there's nothing to do but wait...

...

...

After what felt like ages upon ages, it was finally, FINALLY time for my first match! Alright, it's about time, I was starting to get kinda restless. A time fast-forwarding power would really be nice at times like this...

"Hey, good luck!" Said Sakura, giving me a wave as I began to head out.

She'd won her first match pretty comprehensively, a one-sided victory. And now, finally...it's my turn...

"This should be good," Snickered the other Level A student.

I'm not gonna say anything...I'll let my actions do the talking and shut these assholes up. I made my way out to the arena with a quiet confidence...my first opponent was a Q-Ranked X-Warrior, but that wasn't why I felt confident...it's hard to explain, but I just felt really good right now.

As I stepped onto the arena, my opponent greeted me with an arrogant scoff, the announcer declaring the start of the countdown and introducing my opponent and I...well, I wasn't really listening, I felt like I was in the zone and...I wanted to stay there, I wanted to maintain this clear, sharp focus.

"Ohh, I know you, you're that Dud, aren't you?" Laughed my opponent, "Talk about lucky, this is gonna be an easy win...!"

A long, wide blue energy blade with a deeply jagged edge formed in his hands, as the countdown reached three and continued ticking down...I could end this in a single round if I poison him with my smoke bombs or freeze time and knock him out...but those options are way too boring and feel like easy-way-outs, I'll save those as last resorts.

I then activated one of my X-Blades as the countdown reached zero and my opponent shot towards me. Alright, let's see how he attacks-...wait, is he just...charging straight at me? Either that's the world's most obvious feint or it's just a blatantly straightforward attack...doesn't matter, either way, such a crude approach is going to fail miserably against me.

"I got you now!" He exclaimed, leaping forward as he closed in and swinging the blade straight down at me.

Oh...oh, wow, it wasn't a feint...he really thinks a wild slash is enough to defeat me? What a joke...get lost.

I evaded his slash with ridiculous ease, slipped behind him...and pressed my middle and index fingers onto the spot on his back between his shoulder blades, activating XFE Takeover.

"Who's got who now?" I inquired icily, before forcing him to swing his blade straight at his own neck.

Right before he could decapitate himself, he got teleported out...and a second later, a loud scream of pain echoed out from outside the barrier. I glanced over, before my eyes widened with realization...ohh, right, my control over his body may have gotten cut off when he got teleported out...but the momentum of the swing of his blade wasn't negated, so right now, he had sort of sliced into his neck, about an inch deep...medics were rushing over, applying pressure to the wound as he let out panicked screams of hysteria.

Oops, my bad-...nah, who am I kidding lol, I don't give a shit about some random asshole, and more importantly...I win.

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