This time I won’t let him cheat or ambush me, I’ll attack right away and show him who’s the superior! Quin thought while walking onto the stage. He faked a smile as they had to shake each other’s hands and then walked back a few meters, to his designated spot.

The gong echoed signaling the start of the fight.

“BOOM!” an enormous sound of explosion rang out.

Quin did not waste any time, merged with lightning as soon as possible and started the fight just like the previous ones: first a Flash Jump to get close, then attacking with a Lightning Pillar. Though he was more cautious than before, he thought he would have no trouble at winning quickly.

Just as his arm was halfway to reach Mang, he saw him moving his hands up. He was faster, but even if Mang managed to block him, he did not want to stop such a good attack and in truth he was not worried about the matter either. Mang finished moving his arms up just in time, and blocked the punch with both of his palms on each other.

Another sound of explosion could be heard as they met. Mang was pushed a couple of meters back -- seemingly without suffering any injuries -- and shards and spikes of earth was flying in all directions.

That lucky bastard! He just managed to cast a spell before I’d have punched through him. Quin vexed.

He did not waste much time, and went on the offense once again, shooting two Bolts out, before using another Flash Jump. Mang was vigilant as well, and answered by shooting out several fist-sized balls of earth.

The lightning bolts destroyed most of the rocks easily, sending their remains flying everywhere, however due to this Quin had to stop, as his field of vision was filled with dust in front of him. He leapt back a few meters and decided to pour out his Lightning Qi in all directions to prepare for ambushes.

As he shot out a couple of Bolts again he noticed from the corner of his eyes that from his left side tiny but numerous earth shards and spikes were making their ways toward him.

He snorted and his whole body flickered, nearly instantly appearing several meters away, in the direction where those shards came from. This ability called Flash was possible after merging with the lightning element. The entire body of the user takes on the properties of lightning, and just like a lightning bolt, shoots out at an unbelievable speed towards its target. Although similar to Flash Jump, it was of higher caliber.

A grin could be seen on his face, as he appeared right next to Mang.

Lightning Pillar! He attacked again. This time Quin caught him unprepared and hit him without him being able to block the strike at all.

Mang flew meters back but was eventually stopped by a rock that suddenly emerged. The shocking thing was that the collision made not much sound and the stone behaved more like a sponge than an actual rock, making Mang bouncing back to his feet.

“Not bad,” Despite taking a great hit, he said smiling like he had no care in the world.

“Hmph!” Quin did not pay much mind to it, and was instead focused on finishing the fight as quickly as possible. The longer it takes the more humiliating it will be!

Lightning Whirlpool! He put up his arms in parallel to the ground, his palms facing his opponent and started moving his arms in circular motions, faster and faster while constantly releasing his qi.

Meanwhile Mang was back to using his ball of rocks, but this time he conjured up even more.

He thinks that I’m that stupid? You can try that again, but don’t hate me for not being lenient! He smirked at the thought.

Just like he thought, as his Lightning Whirlpool destroyed the rock, another cloud of dust appeared, blocking his vision. The reason he was not worried at all was due to that he has been already able to cast his spell for more than six seconds. This meant that it has already reached its strongest power.

Quin was quite proud of the Lightning Whirlpool spell, as it was something he invented. It was based on what he did on the First Blood, but a more developed version of it -- focusing on his immense output rate. Although the area it could affect was smaller, it was more focused thus stronger and to top it off the circular motions of his Lightning Qi worked like a drill as well, further increasing its strength.

For covering a bigger area, after the spell reached its maximum power, he started to move his arms left and right. His speed was great, so the opponent would find it hard to dodge and eventually the waves would hit them.

Then another unexpected thing happened, Mang was nowhere to be found!

What the heck?! He should’ve been in that area, then why couldn’t I hit him?! Bastard! He was not simply angry, no, now he was furious! At first he thought he would win easily, then he still thought that he would only have to exert himself a bit more, but now he had no idea what was happening.

Another spray of earth shards and spikes exited the dust cloud, again from his left. He guessed their trajectory and flashed inside the cloud.

There he is! This time I won’t let him escape! he thought after seeing Mang’s silhouette in the dense cloud, and attacked.

There was no movement to his opponent and his Lightning Pillar hit straight through his head, making it explode afterwards.

What? Shit! What have I done? Cold sweat ran through his face. He wanted to hit him hard, he wanted to punish him for the humiliation he suffered, he wanted for it to hurt, but killing him? There was no way he would do that intentionally.

“Knock. Knock. Knock.” He was so deep in his thoughts and desperation that he did not notice the first two times that something was hitting him. After the third one he turned his head, only to see that hundreds of earth shards were flying in his direction. The previous ones hurt a lot, but he leapt backwards without delay, his instincts kicking in.

That damn fucker is playing with me! he just realized that what he had hit before probably was just an earth copy of him. He became even more furious at him, but he was also kind of impressed at the same time. I really shouldn’t drag this any further, but how to defeat him that’s the real question? While dodging -- he did not want limit his vision another time, as it was obviously not advantageous for him even twice -- he was trying to come up with a solution.

He looked around and saw that these shards were going off in every direction, even upwards.

Seems like he’s tired and losing control. He smirked. I should attack now, before his qi runs out completely. Defeating him only due to his energy depleting before mine would quite lame. I think if I fully exert myself with the use of flash and my ability to react I can get through his barrage unharmed and surprise him. Then I’ll unleash a whole circle of my exploding qi at him. Alright, that sounds good. Honestly he did not have any other idea at defeating him. Before, just when he had thought Mang was in his grip, the boy disappeared like he had some kind of mysterious vanishing art and although he did managed to hit him once, merging with Earth Qi made him undoubtedly resilient. Thus in the end he concluded that he need to attack as fast as he could, and with a hard hit, while not leaving him any opportunity to vanish.

Quin filled all of his body with his Lightning Qi to the brim, and then flashed. His concentration was at his maximum, avoiding the projectiles but also looking out for ambushes and in an instant he was right in front of Mang. He grabbed him with one of his hands and then palmed him in the face with the other. Through his palms he exploded all of his qi out, right at him.

Naturally he focused his attack to penetrate his hard earthen armor and it only took a moment or two for him to succeed. Mang’s body convulsed and then he fell to his knees, blood oozing out from the corner of his mouth.

Just as Quin was preparing to hit him with another attack, just to be sure, he had to flash back because spikes were constantly erupting in front of him. Mang was still on his knees, breathing hard but smiling.

Suddenly, Quin had a bad premonition and surrounded himself with qi as far as he could. Mang was laughing now loudly, but more importantly he discovered that shards and spikes of earth were falling down from the sky, covering nearly the whole stage they were fighting on.

Shit! How’s this even possible, conjuring a rain of earth shards?! He shouldn’t be able to, these things are falling down from too far away and aren’t directly connected to the earth; there’s no way his power could reach there. He was desperately trying to dodge or hit them, while grinding his gears. They were just simple spikes made of earth, however dropping at him from that height, it would probably take only a single one to take him out for good. Only if... He wasn’t shooting them helter-skelter because his control decreased, but intentionally. Wait, that still wouldn’t be enough to cover this whole area for this long.’It became gradually harder to evade or destroy all of them, but he simply needed to know how his opponent had accomplished it. He went through their fight briefly, trying to figure it out, and then he realized, It wasn’t just then, but during the whole fight shards and spikes were flying constantly in all directions... He was preparing this during the entire fight? How? How?! He was on the brink of madness, fuming but then he saw Mang, who was barely conscious and was falling down. He did not have more time to observe him, as he had to jump backwards to dodge, only to lose his balance and fall on his butt.

He looked up, the sky above him was clear, then he looked at Mang, who was laying on the floor, blacked out. Just as he inspected why he had lost his balance, he realized his mistake but was interrupted by the voice of the announcement.

“Quin is disqualified for leaving the stage. Mang fell unconscious just at the same time, so after this amazing, eventful fight the result of the match is something unprecedented in any finals of the previous tournaments: a draw!”

Author's Note: This was the long promised fighting scene, which took me quite a long time to finish, as this was my first attempt at writing something like this.

I often find the fighting scenes somewhat lacking in various novels, as they are not descriptive enough to get an understanding at what is exactly happening and thus I'm left with only people wildly shouting the names of their techniques at each others, however having no idea about the actual details of the fight. I've spent a long time trying not to commit the same mistakes (and to make it interesting as well), but so far I've only got the opinion of my beta reader, so I'd be glad to hear what you guys think about it.