After almost ten minutes of this one-sided feint festival, Naomi was starting to lose patience. Her fighting skills required physical contact with the opponent. If the opponent himself refused to make contact, then Naomi couldn’t use them.

The crowds were starting to call out for Briar to just hit her already.

“Come on! Stop dancing around the stage and strike at me like a man!” Naomi growled, also trying to goad Kael into attacking her.

“Is that what any self-respecting young lady would say?” Kael asked, ironically.

“Any self-respecting young lady who is a martial practitioner would not hesitate to say that after watching you flit about the stage like a butterfly.” Naomi replied.

“But, ojou-san, it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that your skill is that dangerous, you know? All of your strikes would have hit lethal areas 100% of the times.” Kael pointed out.

Naomi gasped. “How did you know about that!?”

Kael’s smile turned dark. “So you were deliberately aiming at lethal areas, instead of trying to disable me. That’s real vicious, ojou-san. Am I to take that as a complement, then?”

“What kind of thing are you thinking of?” Naomi snorted.

“Well, seeing that you refuse to use debilitating strikes, instead opting towards lethal ones, means that you don’t think you can defeat me without them. Either that, or you have no respect for life.”

At this point, Kael ran at her, as if to strike her, getting within a centimeter of her outstretched hand, before bending backwards, using his forward momentum to dodge past Naomi’s grab. For Naomi it was like grasping onto thin air. She had never encountered an opponent like this: slippery as an eel, always staying outside of arms’ length, yet dangerous enough hat he couldn’t be ignored.

To be honest, Kael could have ended this with a single shot of the martial spirit laser skill she had learned in one of the previous duels, but he didn’t want that. Since his martial spirit power couldn’t be regenerated until after the end of the match, he had to use it sparingly.

“Yep. Lethal strike to the solar plexus, followed by a vicious kidney-crusher. Woman, did I harm you in a past life? Or do you not have any sympathy for your peers?”

“So what if I don’t!?” Naomi retorted. “In this world, only the strong will survive. What’s wrong with me picking off the weak ones while I have the chance?”

Kael’s eyes glinted with a strange light. “So, your lethal strikes mean that you think me weak? Ha-ha-ha. That’s real rich coming from you. Let me tell you, the moment I strike you is the moment you lose.”

He began to pick up speed. As he dashed around her, flashing past at faster speeds.

“You think you’re invincible because you learned some technique? You think you have the right to choose who lives and who dies? Ha! You’re just a frog in a well. [1]Kaeru-chan, you may think you know everything, but you still have a lot to learn.”

“Stop calling me that! My name is Naomi!” She spat out. “No matter how fast you are, you can’t excape my counter attack!”

“No matter what the name, a frog in a well is just a frog in a well. It can never dictate the width and depth of the sky.” Came the reply.

Kael was now going so fast that Naomi was having trouble keeping up with his location. She glanced about frenziedly, trying to keep him in sight.

That’s when Kael pulled his move.

Naomi snapped her head to the left. There was no Briar. She snapped her head to the right. There was no Briar there, either. She quickly turned around, several times. There was no Briar. Her senses were screaming danger at her.

Then her eyes grew wide. No way! He’s above- Her thought was cut short there, as Kael descended down behind her. She quickly swirled about, arms ready to receive his strike. Surprisingly, her hand managed to grab onto his leg.

“HAH! Now I can finally teach you a lesson for running your smart mouth!” Naomi smirked, exerting her skill in order to turn Kael’s momentum into her own. But, then Kael did something that she had never experienced before.

Yin-Yang Riposte! At the last moment, Kael used this martial skill to revolve the momentum back around to him again. Naomi’s eyes grew wide.

No way! She thought to herself as she stared unbelieving at Kael, who was now close enough to strike. In her shock, she forgot to use her skill again. A hand flashed. Then she collapsed to the ground under a well-aimed strike to the back of the head from Kael.

“You don’t know yet, that you’re one of the weak ones, too.” He said, looking down upon her with a somewhat bitter expression.

“And the winner is Briar!” The announcer declared with a bitter look upon his face. Why had that brat not been flattened into a pancake, yet? Of course, he had been announcing every move, reveling in the fact that the skinny lad looked like he was exerting all that effort for nothing. But then, he went and actually pulled it off.

Now, regardless of the other two contestants, Briar (Kael) was one step shy of first place. If that lad won one more time, he would become the provisional winner of the martial contest. The announcer felt like spitting up blood, he was that upset. But, even so, he had to do his job, no matter how unpleasant the person on top.

Kael looked around at the audience, and then raised his fist in triumph. The audience broke out into a roar of cheering. Then it was time to vacate the stage. Walking down the steps, he passed by Laura, who was walking up the steps. He sent a wink at her as he passed by.

Good luck. He mouthed, before directly jumping up into Madam Rothema’s viewing platform. Once inside, he staggered a bit, feeling exhausted. It had been a long time since he had been in a life or death battle like that.

This was the longest he’d stayed in the ring so far, and it had been a very difficult battle. While most others simply saw it as him dodging about like an idiot, the more experienced martial practitioners could tell that each time he dodged, he escaped lethal blow after lethal blow.

Many appreciated how the kid could recognize such strikes before they were thrown out. It usually took many years to acquire that kind of insight. No wonder why this kid had bragged that he could win this year!

The older generation was somewhat flustered. Many of them muttered under their breath against Arthur Pendrag, who had bet against them that Briar(Kael) would seize first place that year. How he could find such a promising young man after disappearing for so long was almost beyond them. In the end, they could only sigh and curse their bad fortune.

Of course, Grandpa Thur was practically beaming as he chortled over how much he had won this round.

“Cut it out, old man. Aren’t you rich enough to start your own kingdom already?” Kael growled in annoyance.

“Capital is one thing, my boy. What’s really the trial is managing to generate constant profits.” The old man said, as if he were an experienced merchant instead of an ancient king.

“Your enthusiasm for that particular metal could rival that of the dwarves.” Kael muttered as he helped himself to a cup of tea. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you fell down that death chute because you were cleaning out some poor unfortunate debtor’s gold mines.”

The old man coughed and said. “There’s no way I’d be foolish enough to do something like that!” To get to the truth of the matter, he had fallen down the proverbial death chute while cleaning out an unfortunate debtor’s mines of diamonds, not gold.

As an earth mage, it was as simple as picking fruits off a tree. But, diamonds couldn’t buy food in a place bereft of mankind. In the end, the diamonds were fused together into that large viewing screen of the fire lake, that Briar had seen when she had fallen down there.

Then the old man’s eyes flashed again as he felt that gaze once more aimed towards Rothema’s room. He glanced around in a flash, but was still unable to pinpoint the precise person who was spying on him. Kael was already lying down on the couch to take a nap until Briar returned.

But, that old man did notice one thing. That gaze seemed to originate from the general area of the Magicians Council. He frowned as he pondered who would be so bold. Was it really someone from the Magicians Council? He readied himself. The next time he would surely latch onto that person!

----------------

Helen and Rothema were on the other side of her observation room, looking down at the Magic Contest. That day, there would be four rounds among the contestants. That meant that Briar would have to fight four times if she wished to become the winner. While it might seem a bit unfair, there was actually a good reason for it being this way.

The back-to back duels were placed to judge the management and pacing of the young magicians’ use of spells. Having one fight a day, you could spam all the spells you knew and not have to worry about anything aside from mana deficiency. But, having subsequent battles meant that you had to try to finish the round with as little mana expenditure as possible so that you would still have enough to put up a good fight in the other rounds.

It was also the seniors’ way of knocking the students down a peg so that they could learn how to manipulate their mana more efficiently.

Briar, of course, was an exception. If there had to be a comparison between her mana capacity and that of the other fifteen contestants, hers would be at least three times more than the one with the largest capacity. Coupled with her mana veins, she had a much higher rate of mana recovery.

If the magicians only knew her true abilities, they wouldn’t even care if she was Rothema’s student or not. They would all instantly gang up to steal her away.

Of course, Briar knew when to hide strength and when to use it. She had decided to regulate her power levels down to when she was 1st rank Master class-just under 2nd rank. Even with that, Briar had an advantage, because her mana capacity at 1st rank master class was still about twice as much as the largest capacity of the other 15 contestants.

Right now, Briar was waiting for her turn to fight, as her match was the last of the first round. That position was somewhat of an unlucky placing. Since round two started right after round one, the last fight basically gave the winner almost no time to regain their lost mana.

But Briar’s unique situation actually managed to negate this unfortunate deficit, so it was actually somewhat of a plus for her. At least, she wouldn’t have long to wait before the next round began. Briar analyzed the fights before her, as she waited for her turn.

In the end, it was as she surmised. The two Magi disciples were among the strongest. And the white-clad lad had the most interesting battle so far. Taking off his white cloak, he generated a swirling wind. Then, using the wind to hide his strategy in plain sight, he allowed the cloak to be swept away in the airy cyclone.

While most simply saw it as he was feeling a bit warm under the sun, Briar quickly caught on to the blue sparkle hidden in the cloak. The cloak swirled around behind the opponent magician, and slowly crept up behind him. Then, while the magician and the self-taught lad hurled spells at each other, the cloak got as close as possible.

When the magician turned his entire attention onto a large spell that the self-taught lad was using, the cloak finally pounced! Wrapping itself about the magician’s head, it broke the magician’s concentration, blinding him enough for the self-taught lad to knock him out of the ring with an air ball.

Soon enough, there were only nine people remaining, and it was Briar’s turn to fight.

[1] Kaeru means Frog