The judge knelt beside Travis, healing the boys wounds. Travis sent Damien an angry glance as Darcy rose, but Damien ignored it. The searing pain in his shoulder had grown now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

Damien glanced at the spot where he’d been hit, but the mage armor barely even looked damaged. Darcy walked over to him and raised his hand over where Damien had been hit. A moment later, a relieved breath escaped his mouth as the pain vanished. Darcy waved both of them off the stage.

What was that? Why is my armor undamaged? I clearly got hit by a spell.

“Mage armor doesn’t interfere with magic. There are runes on it to allow magic to pass through,” Henry replied. “That way it doesn’t get destroyed by the first spell that hits you. You shouldn’t have been hit at all. You got distracted.”

I know. I don’t need you to tell me a second time. I won’t let it happen again.

Darcy cleared his throat behind Damien and Travis as the two of them stepped off the stairs. A few minutes passed in relative silence, the cheers of the crowd and the sound of fighting from the other stages drowning everything else out.

“Actually, Damien, please return to the stage. You’ve been selected to fight again for the third round of combat.”

Damien grimaced. Getting hit by whatever spell Travis had cast clearly excluded him from skipping out on the third round of combat. He steeled his expression and turned on his heel, heading back up the stairs to stand beside Darcy. He’d used up a decent amount of his energy already, but he wasn’t in bad shape either.

“Loretta, please join us,” Darcy said.

Shit.

“Don’t even think about going easy on her because she’s in your class. She’ll beat your ass,” Henry warned.

Don’t worry. I won’t, but this is going to make training awkward.

Loretta gave Damien a half smile as she stepped onto the stage. It wasn’t hard to tell that she was thinking around the same thing that Damien was.

“Begin!” Darcy ordered.

Water rippled around Loretta’s arms, launching out at Damien like twin snakes. His eyes widened at the speed of the attack and he dropped to the ground, enlarging the sand into a wall. The water slammed into it, boring two holes clean through his defense and passing by Damien’s head.

“Enlarge doesn’t make things stronger!” Henry snapped. “It just makes them bigger. Either make your walls thicker or don’t bother with them.”

Damien didn’t have time to respond. He scrambled away from the wall as a jet of water tore a path through it, cutting it clean in two. His spell faded and the sand collapsed back to its normal size.

The Ether leapt to Damien’s palms as he formed two gravity spheres. He threw both of them at Loretta, then ducked to the side as a bullet of water narrowly missed him.

Loretta enveloped herself in an orb of spinning water moments before the gravity spheres connected. The magic crackled and large amounts of the sphere were torn away as the magic detonated, but Loretta remained unharmed.

While Loretta was channeling her magic, Damien formed another two spheres and tossed them in her direction. She blocked them again, then sent two blasts of water streaming towards im.

Damien gritted his teeth, raising enlarging several grains of sand before him to make a wall thick enough to block Loretta’s follow up attack. He gathered more Ether from a nearby line and channeled it into two more gravity spheres.

He lobbed one over the wall, then ducked back as water hissed by his face. Sweat trickled down his forehead and back, and Damien was starting to feel the strain of casting so many spells. He wasn’t near the edge, but continuing at this pace would make it difficult to do well in future fights if he managed to beat Loretta.

Damien collapsed the wall of sand and hurled the gravity sphere straight at Loretta. Her eyes widened. The girl was breathing heavily and looked to be in much worse shape than Damien. She wrapped the water around herself, blocking the majority of the spell’s damage but still getting dragged several feet to the side.

Damien sent several more spheres towards the girl, forcing her to remain within her watery shield to avoid them.

“You’re going to wear yourself out if you keep throwing these,” Loretta warned him.

Damien tossed another sphere slightly to her side. She stumbled as the spell nearly pulled her over the edge of the stage. As the water gathered around her to attack Damien, he changed his plans. Instead of creating another wall, Damien dashed straight towards the girl.

Her eyebrows raised, but a flicker of a grin crossed her face. Loretta thrust her hands forward and two more bullets of water tore through the air. Damien twisted to the side, avoiding one of them.

The other caught him in the right collar bone. Damien felt it punch clean through him. Pain erupted throughout his body as screaming tendrils of agony traced down his side, but he didn’t stop running.

Loretta stepped to the side as Damien dove forwards, landing on the ground directly in front of her. She grinned, water gathering at her hands as she prepared the final blow to put Damien down.

Damien pressed his hand against the ground beneath Loretta’s feet and cast the enlarge spell. The girl didn’t even have a chance to scream as the sand erupted out from beneath her, launching the girl several feet into the air and over the edge of the stage.

Darcy flickered forward, grabbing her by the collar before the girl could hit the ground. Damien rolled over, holding his bleeding shoulder and cursing through gritted teeth.

The judge set Loretta on the stage and strode over to Damien, kneeling and healing his wounds.

“Thank you.” Damien groaned as he stood up. Phantom pain still echoed through his body, but a quick check with his left hand quickly proved that it was entirely in his mind.

“No problem,” Darcy said, frowning slightly. “I’m here to judge who wins, not your decision making. That being said, it wasn’t smart to run straight at Loretta. In a real fight, that would have gotten you killed.”

“I know, Sir,” Damien said. “But this isn’t a real fight. My Ether is limited, and your healing isn’t. It was my best chance of winning the fight while preserving myself for the future ones.”

Darcy gave him a complicated look. Then he grunted and gestured for Damien and Loretta to get off the stage.