"Eugene," Daniel said, "he might be the shame of my family, but he has his uses. He's ours, our property. He will live and die chained up like a dog until we put him down. He is, and will always be, nothing but a toy for us to play with. You don't have the right to take him away. He just fooled you, crying about suicide and all that bull. He'll never do it. He doesn't have the balls."

"Daniel," Jackal said, his voice a calm in the middle of the storm of tense air. "You can insult me all you want, but for insulting one of my friends, I'll take your head." He raised his great sword in the air. "I will be the greatest knight in the kingdom." His words were to be directed at Daniel, but Alexander smirked. "Just like my father before me tried to become. I will succeed where he failed. I cannot lose."

"Begin!" Alexander announced.

Both disappeared in a puff of blue mist. Two red swords clanged against the single metallic great sword. Sand flew into the air from force of the shock wave, seeking to find a hiding spot in the new cracks on the stage. Daniel slid back, parrying the great sword's force just shy of his stomach, then jabbing the side of Jackal's head with his elbow with a dull crack.

While Jackal reeled back, his pummel crashed into Daniel's nose. Blood wet the floor. Both got back into a stance some distance apart from each other. Their wounds healed at visible speed under a layer of blue life essence but the blood remained on the floor. Their swords ripped through the heavy air much like their feet sliding through the sand, throwing even more of it off the stage.

Their battle traveled all around the arena, forcing Alexander to step away as not to interfere. Daniel's blades sliced through a layer of Jackal's breastplate only for the force to be dispersed from the chain mail shirt. Jackal stepped back to regain his breath. Daniel kept pressing forward only to slip on the thick layers of sweat and blood no longer absorbed by the sand, which had long since been flung to the sides.

Jackal raised his great sword, his target at the perfect distance from him. Daniel pulled his swords close to block before the giant hunk of sharp metal swatted him off the stage and into the arena's wall. Jackal's life essence moved to his legs as he jumped with his great sword aimed at Daniel's crumpled figure.

Daniel regained consciousness and lept away just before the great sword sailed where he had been. The arena's wall cracked and fell. Jackal turned to Daniel, who held up his blades which were now dulled from only a single block.

Alexander appeared between them and pushed them back to the center, where they continued cutting each other up. The crowd was quiet, observing the fight at the edge of their seats. The opponents' wounds were healing, but after each time, their life essence dwindled. The cloud of mist that once engulfed them turned into a mist that only went to select muscles as the fight progressed.

Jackal made some distance, flipped his sword around, and pulled a cork from the bottom of the pummel. A small flame flicked into existence just above it. Blue life essence condensed around his stomach; his belly grew to twice its size.

Daniel didn't rush in, opting instead to slide his gauntlets off, cross his arms in front of his face and chest, and crouch low. Life essence condensed around his sweaty arms as if replacing the armor.

Jackal's stomach shrank and a torrent of liquid shot out of his mouth, ignited on the flame and was blown across the entire stage. The mages teleported to the front row seats. With layers of magic circles, a dome surrounded the audience, which the fire went around. Alexander merely surrounded himself in a small layer of golden life essence. Daniel disappeared under the flames.

"What the hell was that?" Thomas asked as the orb's view turned into a view of flames. "Since when can a person breath fire? Is Jackal a dragonkin or something like that?"

"He is a normal human," Dag hissed. "It is yet another trick with life essence that you will learn at the academy. Now shut up, we are all trying to watch." Thomas looked to the others, who were all practically glaring at him. He quickly apologized and sat back down.

Jackal put the cork back on the pummel of his weapon and got into a stance. There was no screaming, only a cloud of smoke and steam that took the place of the dwindling flames. "That was weak!" Daniel yelled as he bust out of the smoke. Jackal didn't react in time. The two red swords circled around his great sword and into his sides.

He cursed and shoved Daniel away. As the swords came loose, streams of blood followed behind them as if it was pulled by a string out of him. Even though Jackal applied life essence to his wounds, they didn't heal until a full second later.

"Isn't that…" Jackal coughed up a handful of blood. His wounds healed, but he had lost a lot of blood, which was now swirling around Daniel's swords.

"You got it," Daniel chuckled. "This is something good for dealing with knights, something I got from a mutual slave of ours. That's why you want him right, to come up with ideas for these sorts of things?" Daniel circled around his opponent. "It does quite a bit of bleeding damage, making you use more life essence to replenish what you lost. From how fast you recovered, it looks like they still need some work. These are my family's latest artifact; something that will outsell your father's poor inventions I'm sure."

"That plagiarizing entitled fuck!" Eugene cursed and punched the orb. "The idea for that was mine."

"He stole those swords from you?" Thomas asked while he distanced himself.

"His family stole a lot from me, those swords are just one of them." Eugene reeled his fist back, his knuckles leaving spots of blood on the orb from punching too hard. "My job as their slave was to come up with ideas for new artifacts. Their mages made my work into reality if they thought my artifacts would useful at all. Any other ideas that they saw to be bad, like my glasses, were thrown out, and then I was beaten. Before I left, Daniel's family stole a whole notebook full of my ideas and claimed that they invented them."

"I know that artifact," Jackal stood up with the support of his great sword. "You stole that from Eugene too."

"What about it?" Daniel asked as he flipped the two blades around. The blood swirled around them, restoring some of its former sharpness, but not all. "You say that like it'll change something."

"It does," Jackal said as he and Daniel circled each other. "Because Eugene talked constantly about its strengths, and its weaknesses. It's his passion and you stomped on it. I bet you don't even know how that thing works. I do."

"A design flaw was that it couldn't differentiate between blood and any other liquid." He took a sac from out of his spatial ring, uncorked it, and aimed it at Daniel. Life essence condensed around his arms as he squished the pouch and a jet of black liquid shot out of it. Daniel dodged but his swords pulled the sticky liquid onto him.

Daniel tried to wipe it off or pull it into his spatial ring, but the blades wouldn't let go. "If not for those swords, I would've had to use more life essence to make more flammable liquid. Now your greed has come back to bite you. Even drenching you with a slow attack like that is easy."

"Oil is sticky. It's hard to get off regularly, not to mention when your swords are drawing it around them." His skin turned from a pale white to a dark grey and cracked, as if losing all its moisture. "I know how to resist fire, but do you?" He dumped the rest of the oil sac on himself, uncorked the hilt of his blade, and held the flame to his hand, which crept along his arm and eventually engulfed his body.

Jackal wasted no time in charging at the oil-covered Daniel like a human fireball. Daniel ran, but Jackal was faster. The flames spread to Daniel's swords, then his skin. He screamed at the top of his lungs while blindly swinging his blades around. "It burns! Von Trike, I'll kill you for this! Von Trike! Von Trike!"

Jackal stepped back. "And now you know how Eugene suffered for so long." He waited for the flames to burn out, a decision he soon regretted when Daniel tore off his own skin.

It fell off like a coat, sliding to the floor and taking the flames with it. In under a second, the exposed muscle system was covered in life essence and a new layer of flesh grew over it. A smile formed on Daniel's newly formed face. "That must have taken more life essence from you that it did for me, isn't that right?"

Jackal's blue life essence responded for him, it faded to a near transparent level. The flames eating at his body dispersed. Daniel's life essence, on the other hand, was condensing around his arms as he got into a stance.