It took Jon a couple of moments to process the words. Then came the applause, and he finally allowed his muscles to relax. Muffled by the clapping, a collective sigh of relief spread through the contestants.

“One thousand participants have come out of the melee stage. To guarantee their safety, our various officials have overseen the proceedings with utmost attention, making sure to remove anyone eventually downed. Now, they shall once again look after the contestants’ well-being during the one-on-one combats.”

Following the herald’s words, dozens of men and women flew down towards the field, their gray robes fluttering as they moved. Contestants scampered to clear space as the aeromancers landed among them. In tandem with the aeromancers landing, the sands parted at different spots as geomancers in earthly brown robes emerged from the ground, not a single grain of sand on their bodies.

“The one-on-one is the second and last stage of the tourney. Contestants will be separated into groups of eight before facing against one another in single combat.”

Without warning, Jon sunk knees deep to the ground. The sands began to move next, and he struggled to balance himself as he was forcibly brought closer to a stone-faced geomancer along with seven other contestants.

Similar sights could be seen all around the field, with armored men and women being either dragged through the ground or levitated through the air.

“Contestants shall be ranked according to their number of wins. To win, they must either disarm, incapacitate, or push their opponents out of bounds.”

Circles began to form in the sand to the front, back, and both sides of each one of the spellcasters. With around six paces in diameter, they all seemed to have the exact same size.

“If a duel takes too long to resolve, then both contestants shall receive a loss. The top two hundred and fifty participants will be accepted into the Phoenix Academy. The top twenty-five participants will also receive rewards to help speed up their cultivation.”

Jon’s feet were pushed back above ground. He was placed at one of the circles’ edge. On the other side of the circle was the same shieldwoman from before. His first duel during this stage would be a continuation of the previous one.

The rippled steel shield looked impossible for him to break. The armor on her body was much more modest by comparison, composed entirely of regular steel. It made sense. If she had proper armor to protect her, then there would be no need for the shield.

The tip of her sword rested against the top of the shield, poised to stab.

The same way he did before the melee, the herald raised a hand.

Jon locked eyes with the woman, his sword pointing straight at her.

The hand came down, and they both charged towards one another. Like before, she obviously intended to bash into him and follow up with a stab.

Jon took one step, two, and then his shoulder crashed against her shield. It almost felt like running straight into a brick wall. Almost. The woman was forced to take a step back, signaling a slight strength difference in his favor.

Her sword moved next, the tip coming straight to his face, though the loss of momentum made it much less harmful. Jon turned his head to the side, preventing the sword tip from getting into the slit of his visor. With no other gaps to get into, the blade glanced off his helmet.

Still pushing against the shield, Jon swung his sword against her legs, but it was unable to cut through her chausses. Without putting all of his strength into the attack, he would never manage to get through that mail. And so, he stopped pushing and jumped to the side, the sudden shift causing the shieldwoman to lose her balance and stumble forward.

Jon capitalized on her mistake, directing another swing of his sword towards her leg. Again, the blade lacked the strength to get through the armor, but it did manage to trip her. The shieldwoman fell to the ground.

“You’re down, fight’s over,” the geomancer spoke, both his eyes closed. He opened his eyes to glance at Jon’s number before closing them again. “1703 gets a win.”

Contestants continued their duels all around him, the officials on watch all having their eyes closed. Jon had seen this before at the war camp. The geomancers were using the ground vibrations to oversee the fights, while the aeromancers did it through the air movements. Closing their eyes served to help them focus.

The defeated woman huffed angrily as she got back to her feet. Jon moved his left arm around, checking for a possible injury. His shoulder still ached a bit from the earlier contact, though it shouldn’t be enough to impair his movement.

As the other fights continued, some of the contestants would get truly injured. Those who did were promptly removed from the field, only to be returned a couple of minutes later, completely healed.

When all the fights had ended, contestants found themselves once again being carried away. This time Jon found himself against a man in chain mail under a padded jacket, a large claymore in his hands.

The herald repeated his ceremony, raising his hand up high before bringing it down.

Jon advanced slowly this time, taking the time to study his opponent’s movements. The man seemed to be of the same mind as he cautiously moving forward with his weapon held high. Rather than trying to find a gap in Jon’s armor, he seemed set on slashing down against his head. The helmet would stop the blade from splitting Jon’s head in half, but not from causing a nasty concussion.

As soon as they entered striking range, the man made his move. Jon didn’t even try to parry, instead choosing to jump to the side. Trying to block a weapon of that size could only end badly.

With a woosh, the weapon passed dangerously close to Jon’s shoulder but ultimately missed its target. The heavy blade thumped against the ground, the tip disappearing into the sand.

From there, Jon grabbed the longsword in both hands and swung it down, not at the man but at his weapon. The blades clanged against one another, the impact knocking the claymore out of the man’s hands.

“Disarmed, 1703 gets a win.”

The next fight was against a man in full plate armor. While made of regular steel, the plate looked much thicker than Jon’s, without any noticeable gap that could be exploited.

Jon grabbed his weapon by the blade, opting once again for the murder-strike. The man did something similar, one gauntleted hand on the grip and another on the middle of the blade itself. A half-sword.

While Jon’s technique was designed to bludgeon his opponents, a half-sword decreased the weapon’s reach in favor of more forceful and accurate thrusts against any weak spots in an opponent’s armor. Jon had a lot more of those.

As the fight began, Jon maintained his distance from the man, circling around him at all times. The difference in reach forced the man to keep chasing after Jon, but the thick armor weighed him down too much.

Jon struck his opponent on the shoulder, head, and side, though the blows barely managed to hurt the man. Still, these attacks made sure that the man wouldn’t have time to rest as, if he stopped, Jon would be able to put more strength on the blows. So for minutes on end, the two kept this game of cat and mouse, with the man getting ever more tired.

Finally, when almost all the other fights had already ended and the official looked ready to proceed to the next round, Jon stopped running and went on the offensive. Exhausted, the man could barely react as the pommel hit him on one knee and then the other before going straight for the head, knocking him down.

“Down, 1703 gets a win.”

Jon sighed in relief. A little bit more and they would both have taken a loss.

In the fourth round of fighting, Jon faced against a raven-haired woman wearing only a fitted jacket, linen trousers, and black boots. There was no proper armor, no metal other than her short sword and dagger. It wasn’t much different from how he used to fight, and he could only imagine how she managed to get through the chaotic melee stage.

As the fight began, she immediately went on the attack, striking left and right without pause. It took all of Jon’s skill and attention to parry her attacks, each one aimed towards a weak part of his armor. For a moment he understood a bit of how his previous opponent felt.

After parrying a dagger aimed at his groin, Jon took a moment too long to bring his weapon back, and he barely managed to block the sword coming for his throat. While he succeeded at not gaining another breathing hole, the maneuver left him completely exposed.

The woman raised one foot off the ground and kicked at Jon’s chest, pushing him a couple of steps back.

“Out of bounds, 924 gets a win.”

At first, Jon thought the official had spoken towards another duel. Then he saw the number burned on the woman’s jacket; 924. He looked down and found out he had both feet out of the circle.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath.

The fifth fight played out just like the second one, though a bit easier. A large bastard sword in hands, the man attempted an overhead swing. Jon sidestepped it before knocking the weapon out of the man’s hands.

The sixth fight was against another fast opponent. Other than the chainmail, the man was dressed in normal clothes, not much different from the ones worn by everyday people, and somewhat similar to the woman who defeated Jon.

Refusing to let the same thing happen again, Jon started out on the offensive and kept on it throughout the duel. He slashed, stabbed, and kicked, giving his opponent no time to rest.

Such a reckless assault left a lot of openings, and the man was able to advantage of some of them. Most notably, Jon’s left arm was sleek with blood from a stab he received on the elbow, between two plates of armor.

The cut stung while his muscle ached and the fatigue began to set in.

Ultimately though, the man was the one to fall first, Jon’s blade stabbed through his bowels.

The seventh and last fight couldn’t even be called that. He faced off against a woman who did nothing but hide behind her shield. After an onslaught of attacks in which she barely moved her sword arm, Jon simply grabbed her blade and yanked it off of her hand.

Branded on her shield was the number 3056. Jon hadn’t heard the official calling victory to that number a single time. If he had to guess, she only managed to get through the melee stage on some sort of fluke

And so, Jon came out of the one-on-one stage with six out of seven wins. Under his helmet, he had a large smile. With this number, it would be practically impossible to stay out of the top 250.