It is always an education to watch Telram fight. Many cultivators have an unfortunate tendency to forget about most of the techniques and martial arts that they had learned and instead only use the ‘most powerful’ ones that they know even if the technique wasn’t suitable for the opponent they were fighting. Telram however is different in that he uses any fighting style that he knows and is suitable for the situation regardless of how ‘powerful’ said fighting style is. Even I learned to emulate this level of flexibility over the years that I have known him, and it has never served me poorly.

Excerpt from the memoirs of Gerald Rence.

By the time that they had all made their way over to the arenas where Telram was going to be fighting a large crowd had already gathered. Thankfully all Telram had to do was show one of the guards the marker that he had been given when he had registered for the tournament and the guards let them right on through.

“There are some talented cultivators taking part in this tournament,” Gerry noted as they walked towards the smaller arenas where the first round was going to be held. “Are you sure that you can reach the Semi-finals?”

“Nope,” Telram replied easily. “But even if I don’t, taking part will still be excellent experience.”

“Provided of course that you don’t meet anyone too powerful in the early rounds we should be able to make back most of the money that we spent to sign you up so I suppose that you’re right,” the old man sighed. “Just be careful.”

“I will Gerry,” Telram told his master before turning towards the students. “Make sure you guys pay attention to the fights. You can learn a lot from just watching how other cultivators deal with different situations.”

The students all nodded in agreement and Telram turned back around just in time to hand the registration marker over to the guard who was standing in front of the small arena that they had been directed to.

“Alright, Telram was it?” the man asked and Telram nodded in agreement. “You enter on the left-hand side and go down the stairs. The rest of your party can follow my partner who will take you to the seats that have been reserved for the contestant’s entourage.”

“Okay,” Telram nodded as he started to make his way down the stairs. “Wish me luck guys.”

The others watched him walk down the stairs with conflicted looks on their faces. They all knew that Telram was more capable than most cultivators with a similar cultivation Level to him, but they had seen quite a few cultivators who seemed to be participating as well who were considerably more powerful than he was.

“Right then, let’s follow the guard to our seat,” Fergus said eventually. “There’s nothing more that we can do for him now except for cheering him on.”

Once he had made his way down the stairs Telram found himself in a small room. With a shrug he sat down on the small cushion that was in the middle of the room and started meditating. He assumed that he would be called when it was time for him to fight.

In the end he only had to meditate for a few minutes before the door in front of him banged open and a guard walked in.

“Are you ready?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Telram replied as he rose to his feet.

“Then follow me.”

The guard turned around and walked back out the door that he had opened with Telram following him. Outside the room there was a short tunnel and as they walked along it Telram could hear the sound of people cheering and a look of excitement crossed his face as he was reminded of the sports events back on Earth.

“Be careful out there, kid,” the guard said as they came to a halt in front of a small gate that opened up to reveal the arena. “Your opponent has a higher cultivation level than you do.”

“Thanks for worrying about me but I’ll be fine,” Telram replied in a calm tone as he stepped out into the arena leaving the guard watching after him with an irritated look on his face.

The guard sighed and shook his head in exasperation. He had been doing this for a while now and there were always several people who were way too confident in their skills.

Telram blinked as the sunlight hit his eyes and he immediately noticed the figure of his opponent. A young man with dark hair who was slightly shorter and less muscular than he was. However, despite the obvious difference in their size Telram could sense that the guard had been correct; his opponent was stronger than he was.

The two young men stood silently watching each other while they waited for the referee to start the match. The referee was an older looking man whose cultivation was in the middle stages of the Ascendant Realm and after checking that both Telram and his opponent were ready raised his right hand causing the crowd to roar in excitement.

“Young masters Telram and Konrad are you ready to fight?” the referee asked loudly once the crowd had settled back down and both young men nodded in agreement.

“Then you may begin!” The man shouted as he brought his hand down hard enough to create a gust of wind that ruffled Telram’s hair. The referee was a considerably more powerful than either of the contestants in the ring so if anything went wrong, he should be able to step in and stop it.

However, Telram didn’t have any more time to think about that sort of thing because his opponent attacked immediately. The Konrad moved with incredible speed and lashed out with a roundhouse kick aimed at Telram’s head. Unfortunately for him Telram had trained against Fergus who was considerably faster and often started out a fight with a similar (but much more polished) technique. As such Telram reacted on instinct grabbing Konrad’s and using his momentum to spin around before smashing him into the ground with enough force to kick up a cloud of dust.

The crowd fell silent as they tried to process what they had just witnessed. Telram’s opponent had used a relatively powerful movement technique but Telram’s reaction time had been so fast that he might as well have been standing still. Their consternation was compounded by the fact that Konrad had one foot in the Ascendant Realm while Telram was still only at the 8th Layer of the Core Formation Stage.

Once the cloud of dust had cleared, they roared in shock once more as they saw that this one attack had been enough to knock Konrad unconscious and break several bones putting him out of the fight. Many of the onlookers immediately realised that Telram used some sort of body strengthening technique that increased his reaction time and physical strength. The fact that Telram used a body strengthening technique had been obvious from the beginning because of his height and build but they had been assuming that the technique that Telram was using mainly increased his strength, so they hadn’t been expecting him to be able to move fast enough to counter Konrad’s blindingly fast attack.

“That’s enough!” The referee shouted despite the fact that Telram had already stepped away from his downed opponent with a surprised look on his face. He hadn’t actually meant to slam Konrad into the ground quite as hard as he had. He had simply reacted based on instinct and he was used to fighting either against people who were considerably stronger than he was or his students who couldn’t move as fast as Konrad had and as such he would’ve had more than enough time to dial back his strength so that he didn’t injure them.

No one in Telram’s group were particularly surprised by the outcome of this fight. They had been expecting it to last a bit longer though. Spotting them Telram raised a single hand over his head causing them to smile before he was asked to return to his waiting room while the next few fights took place.

While the next few fights were taking place a completely unworried Gerry made his way over to the bookie who had taken his bet for the first round and placed all of his winnings on Telram to win the next round. After seeing how quickly Telram had defeated Konrad the bookie had changed the odds, but they were still high enough that the money that Gerry had placed on Telram would be doubled if he won the next round which Gerry fully expected his student to do.

The next couple of rounds took slightly longer than the first had. However, Telram did something in these fights that surprised the crowd. He used different fighting styles to take out each opponent instead of just the one. Even his students were surprised by this. Not because of Telram using different fighting styles against different opponents but because he used the fighting styles that he, Gerry, Fergus, and Diane had been teaching them. In the second fight Telram had finished his opponent off in three hits using the fighting style that Fergus had been teaching Ryan which was mostly made up of kicks. Using his own movement technique Telram easily dodged his opponent’s attacks before kicking the unfortunate young man once in the knee then flowing it up with another kick to his stomach and a finishing blow to the back of his head. Thankfully Telram controlled his strength this time or that last blow would’ve killed his opponent who had a broken leg as it was.

As for the third fight Telram actually took a single hit from his opponent. Unfortunately for the cultivator that he was fighting that was only because Telram had allowed himself to be hit so that he could deliver two punishing blows that sent his opponent flying into the wall of the arena hard enough to knock him out.

By this point Telram was starting to get a bit bored with fighting these surprisingly weak opponents but that didn’t stop the crowd from cheering even louder every time he won. Telram was rapidly becoming a crowd favourite because of the speed with which he took out opponents who all had higher cultivation levels than he did. While someone defeating a cultivator, who was more powerful than them wasn’t unheard of defeating multiple opponents who were all supposed to be able to defeat them easily without even breaking a sweat was definitely unusual.

Some of the more experienced cultivators in the crowd had tried to work out what body strengthening technique Telram was using but so far they had been unable to do so which bothered them greatly as some of them were actually scouting for other contestants and it was growing more and more likely by the minute that Telram was going to make his way through to the next round without any real difficulties. So, the fact that they were unable to identify Telram’s body strengthening technique was a problem for them especially since they were all pretty sure that he had plenty more tricks hidden up his sleeve.

As the guard escorted Telram into the arena once more he looked over at the young man who had the same calm look on his face he’d had every time the guard had seen him. After seeing what Telram was capable of in the first round he had refrained from warning the young man about his opponents but this time his opponent was one of the more well-known cultivators taking part in the tournament. However, before he could open his mouth Telram patted him on the shoulder and made his way out into the arena once more.

“Well this is unexpected,” he muttered quietly to himself when he saw that his opponent was a young woman with long dark hair that was tied back into a ponytail who was introduced as Lara by the referee. Apparently, she had quite a few fans in the crowd because as soon as the referee said her name his voice was drowned out by cheering.

As soon as the crowd had calmed down the referee started the fight which led to Telram being surprised again when a long streamer of water appeared in Lara’s hands which she began to wield like a whip. While Gerry and the others were able to do things like create gusts of wind or gouts of flame this was the first time that Telram had seen a technique quite like this. Diane’s ability to create gauntlets of rock around her hands was close but this technique seemed like it had a lot more flexibility in how it could be used.

The crowd fell silent as Telram continued to dodge Lara’s vicious attacks by a hair’s breadth. For the first time that he had stepped out into the arena it looked like he was struggling. However, those who knew him all knew that this wasn’t true at all. Mostly because he had yet to use the movement technique that he had made himself but was using his father’s Graceful mist Steps instead but also because of the look on his face which was one of concentration but not the look of concentration that he usually had when he was struggling in a sparring match but rather the one that he wore when he was trying to figure out how a new technique worked.

As he dodged Lara’s attacks Telram was using his Spiritual Vision technique to examine the strange technique that the young woman was using from every angle while he tried to work out how it worked. Every time any part of the whip struck the floor of the arena shards of stone went everywhere which suggested that it worked in a similar manner to a pressurised water cutter that workers used to cut concrete back on Earth. The whip seemed to normally be about two meters long but he had noticed it extend to twice that length during certain attacks however which made it a giant pain in the ass to dodge.

From the strained look on Lara’s face using this technique used up a lot of Mana as well which meant that he could probably outlast her easily enough. On the other hand, there was no need for him to humiliate her in that way so in exchange for showing him such an interesting technique he decided to get a little bit serious.

Grey mist began to form around Telram’s body as he activated his Dissonance technique. A technique like the one that Lara was using had to be one that used a great deal of control and seeing as it used Water Mana it was unlikely that Lara (who was around the same age as he was) had a lot of practice using it.

Sure enough, the next time she attacked him the whip started to break down the moment that it came into contact with Telram’s Dissonance technique it suddenly burst apart spraying the surrounding area with water.

Seeing this the crowd fell silent. Even Telram was surprised by how quickly Lara had lost control of the whip. He had expected that it would take much longer for his Dissonance technique to effect Lara badly enough that she lost control over her technique but apparently suing her whip used more Mana and concentration than he’d thought.

However, Telram recovered from his surprise far faster than Lara herself did getting in close and striking her several times with the tips of his fingers. Most people missed these movements and only saw Telram run up to Lara who then collapsed. In fact, other than Telram’s friends only a few people in the audience understood what had just happened. The technique that Telram had just used was one that he had made for Iris using his own Resonance Palms technique. Unlike the Resonance Palm technique this one used far less Mana, but each strike didn’t deal as much damage. Instead you could strike your opponent in certain spots to cause them to lose control of that particular body part.

Stepping back Telram watched as a cultivator ran over to check on his opponent before turning away and allowing himself to lead back to his waiting room by the guard.

“How did you do that?” the guard asked suddenly once they had arrived back at the waiting room.

“Do what?”

“Defeat her so easily,” the guard replied. “She was at the Ascendant Realm and your still only in the Human Realm.”

“There are several reasons,” Telram explained. “The first is that I practice a fairly powerful Body Strengthening technique so I’m quite a bit faster than a normal cultivator at my level would be and I combined that natural speed with a movement technique that specialises in evasion which allowed me to avoid her attacks. The second thing was the mist that surrounded me later in the fight.”

“That mist was made out of Mana wasn’t it?” the guard asked. “Why did she lose control over her technique when it came into contact with the mist?”

“Good question,” Telram nodded as he automatically adopted his teaching persona. “That mist wasn’t just made out of Mana. My soul energy was mixed in as well. I also caused the particles of Mana to move chaotically which tore the technique apart. Honestly it worked better than I had expect so I’m guessing the Lara didn’t have a very powerful soul.”

“I’ve never heard of a technique like that,” the guard told Telram who nodded in agreement.

“I’m not surprised by that,” he replied. “In fact, I’d be surprised if you had considering that I was the one who created that technique.”

“You created that technique?!” The guard exclaimed in surprise. “How would you even come up with that sort of thing?”

“Well you know how two noises can drown each other out?’ Telram asked after a few seconds wondering what the easiest way to explain how his Dissonance technique worked. “Sort of like that.”

“If you say so,’ the guard replied. “Anyway, I’ll be back in a bit for your final fight so make sure you get some rest. No matter who wins the next fight it’ll be a tough one.”

“Okay, thanks,” Telram nodded. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

He was pretty amused by the way the guard was treating him now. At first the man had looked down on him which was normal for someone who had a higher cultivation level but after watching Telram fight this had slowly changed and now the guard treated him with much more respect.

“At least that last fight was a bit more interesting,” Telram muttered after the guard had closed the door behind him. “It still wasn’t that difficult to defeat her, but I guess that I’m just spoiled for opponents.”

It was pretty obvious that none of his opponents in this tournament so far had any real experience fighting which meant they were at a massive disadvantage to Telram despite being more powerful than he was. In fact, Telram was starting to get a bit bored fighting these inexperienced opponents which was part of the reason that he had taken such a long time to examine Lara’s technique instead of just defeating her like he had with his previous opponents.

“Oh well, maybe the next round will be more interesting.”