The context was wrong, but “fake it until you make it” was so far turning out to be a viable strategy more maintaining my cover. Having just finished my second battle of the City Tournament, I could definitely say that having opponents more focused on spiritual techniques than melee was helping. I was still kicking ass, but not in an existential-threat-to-the-City way.

That was true to an extent with Vince in the District final—he’s really quite strong—but I had to put on a really genuine fight. Of course, knowing Vince, if this scrawny kid—me—just showed up and beat him out of the blue, that would sting incredibly harshly. And, in so much as I actually needed to re-befriend him, figuratively kicking his teeth in on the first go-around probably wasn’t the impression I wanted to make.

And it seemed to work out well. Vince in a good mood post district tournament and, in the interim period between the tournaments, Becca, Lennie, and I actually hung out a bit with Vince. It was juvenile, but I needed the break. Plus, no matter how old I felt, I was still in a teenage body and frankly that really pushed me to try and be social.

Of course, losing to Vince was very difficult in the I need to make this seem genuine way. Before the match even started, I had partially withdrawn the mask over my ki so that Vince and any spiritualist spectators could actually perceive my strength. This was a pretty advanced technique, and I was pretty nervous most of the fight that my attention would slip. Plus, the partial withdrawal of the mask meant that the shape of my ki would have an odd “texture.” Maybe there were more advanced ways of masking that would relieve this issue, but masking had never been a strong suit in my old life. In any event, I had my fingers crossed that there were no spiritual perception experts that could recognize that I was using a masking technique.

Still, the fight itself may have been troublesome. I couldn’t bring myself to fake a knockout, or a break of my aura. It was just too ingrained in my being. But I decided that a knockoff might be in the cards, especially since Vince had an ice affinity. I would have worried Vince was going to exhaust himself when he started off immediately with spiritual techniques, but trying to actually fake a spiritual technique instead of just calling on my ki when needed was pretty taxing. Fortunately, once Vince set Tundra off, I already had a plan in place based on the wall of water I called up. I allowed that to collapse, and spread it very thinly across my half of the arena, giving it just a push to freeze faster than Tundra would cause it to. Then I just had to bait Vince into noticing the frozen ground, and then using Ice Wave to knock me off. And other than the one time I genuinely lost my balance—I should do more ice training this winter—the plan worked great!

At least the City Tournament was easier to fake. The first round was against a young man dual wielding hand axes, with affinities for air and light. I made a show of blowing off ki to increase my speed, dodged his attacks, and threw around a little water before closing the distance to smack him around with my staff. The second was against a young woman wielding what appeared to be a weaponized shovel, which she used to throw balls of magma at me. That was interesting at least because the crowd expected me to do everything to dodge the magma, least I take a critical hit. I fulfilled that expectation, but only because if the magma did hit me, my aura was so strong I wouldn’t take any damage and explaining that would be rather difficult. I ramped up the speed on that, faking more gray ki releases, and threw up a number of water walls. They tended to be ineffective due to the mass difference between earth and water, and I didn’t want to reveal my thermal affinity since I had avoided doing so in the District Tournament. So I threw some water balls both at them—the kinetic energy deflected or stopped them well—or at my opponent—I got her rather wet in the end. I was feeling a little cheeky by that point, so I threw my hat up in the air over her. When she looked up to track it, I rushed in and starting striking her with my staff. Incredibly, she managed to block the third and fourth strike, but by the sixth she was knocked out.

So far, things were doing great. Vince had already won his first two battles, and Becca was up next. The three of us stood together sizing up Becca’s next opponent: Patrick O’Harran a precocious 19 year old that had been generating a lot of buzz in the City. Surprisingly, Vince had little to say about him. On the other hand, Becca was more than happy to trash-talk.

“I’m not sure why they’re calling a 19 year old precocious. I mean, I’m 18 and I made it here. You know, clearly out dojo needs better marketing.”

“I don’t run a dojo,” I responded, then paused. “He might beat you.”

“Hey!” she responded, “what kind of encouraging talk is that, master?”

“You don’t need encouragement. You need a genuine analysis of your opponent and a strategy to win against him. And I’m saying that you need to pull out a lot of tricks to do so.”

“Shouldn’t I be saving my ki for our matchup?”

“No, not really. As much as I know you’d enjoy going out in a blaze against me, our match wouldn’t really be productive and I’m trying to maintain a low profile. In any event, it’s not clear you can even beat Patrick. You have the edge in raw physical and spiritual power, but his control on both ends is a hair better, and he clearly has a lot more combat experience with humans than you do.”

“So, he’s more likely to win, huh. Alright, so how do I win?”

I signed a bit heavily at that. “We know he’s got affinities in air, electric and light. He’s already demonstrated a technique that electrifies his weapons. That makes him difficult to engage at melee range. While he’ll certainly have ranged electric techniques, you have your own ranged techniques and there’s no reason that the two would naturally cancel each other out, so it may be a slugfest. I really wished you would have developed an electric affinity by now.”

“Hell no. That doesn’t play all that well with fire. Kinetic all the way! Fireball!” she said, punching the air.

More sighs. “Hmm. You don’t have much to work with, I’d suggest rushing in and maintain a short ranged distance, maybe five meters, but not close quarters. Then just start pounding him with techniques as fast as you can. You have the edge in raw power, and that seems to be the best to lean into right now.”

“Alright! Wish me luck!”

Vince sidled up to me. “So, what’s this about a dojo?”

***

As Becca squared up against Patrick in the arena, I gave some thought to the inflexibility of the Tournaments. They were, of course, human versus human and in individual combat. And the contestants were solely youths who had just broken into E-rank (and a few F-rankers). Vince stood out for his age, not his skill. I knew that in other cities, there were tournaments for older more powerful spiritualists, but I was unaware of any in Dorflich. Did they not exist? Or were they simply inconspicuous? I knew Dorflich had a much smaller proportion of mid- and high- ranked spiritualists, but still it was curious. If they did exist, I should probably find out about them. But, I wasn’t sure I’d do anything about it—I wasn’t keen on going too public with my full strength, and winning this tournament would bring enough attention as-is. Still, I was now comfortable that I could rebuff any pressure brought to bear by the other great powers in Dorflich and winning the tournament somehow played a role in the nascent plan that was forming in my mind.

Snapping out of my reverie, I turned back to the fight. “Vince, what’s happened?”

Noticing I hadn’t been paying attention, “You didn’t miss much. It’s been quite the slog. Lots of spiritual techniques, but little melee. Not sure how much ki they’ve gone through.”

“Becca’s burned through about half of what she had left,” I responded instantly using my spiritual sense. “Patrick about the same, but he started with much less than Becca.”

“You can tell that easily?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.

I was about to respond, when a blinding flash emanated from the arena. I instinctively blocked the light with my hand before it could blind me, but Vince wasn’t nearly as quick and he started cursing at his slow reaction.

The flash didn’t last more than two seconds, and when it was gone, everything seemed to move in slow motion. Patrick had moved within melee range, and his sword and small shield had been electrified. While Becca was still disoriented, he had landed a blow on Becca’s shoulder; the sword pierced through her aura, then her clothing, then her flesh. In just a moment, the electrical charge coursed through her body, seizing up her muscles. As he withdrew his weapon, Patrick sensed his imminent victory, and smashed his shield into Becca’s face. The force combined with the electricity was enough to break Becca’s aura, which shattered with that characteristic tinkling noise.

The referee called the match, as Becca lay on the ground, crying out and grasping her shoulder. Already, two spiritualists skilled in healing were rushing out to treat her and move her out of the arena.

“What happened,” Vince asked, exaggeratedly blinking his eyes as the blindness went away.

“Patrick used some Flash-style spiritual technique and his follow up was excellent. Becca was unable to counter at all.”

“That’s awfully cold,” Vince grunted, “shouldn’t you see to your friend?”

“It’s a clean cut into muscle. She’ll be healed up within the half bell.”

“Still, she lost. Most people would be devastated.”

“She understands that this is…” I waved my hand around absently at the arena, “a game. Amusement. A distraction. It’s just pride and puffery. The real stakes are … out there.”

And just like that, the quarterfinals were over.

***

As much as I wanted to continue mulling over the nature of the Tournament and the state of the City, I thought it better not to miss the beginning of the first semifinal between Vince and Saul.

To be lazy about it, Saul was a similar spiritualist to Vince, albeit with fire and an axe rather than water and a hammer. They were similarly tall and broad shouldered; heavily muscled; and rather composed as they prepared for battle. I could sense that Saul had a slight edge in remaining ki over Vince, which I attributed more to his efficiency in earlier battles than any innate characteristic. Still, they were broadly similar.

Actually, peering at them more closely, I noticed that Saul had on a decent set of plate armor, while Vince was only wearing chain mail under this clothing. Most of the spectators likely noticed it earlier than I, but armor had been unnecessary in my old life for so long that I unconsciously disregarded it. Nonetheless, armor was moderately effective for E and D rankers. And while it might have played a role for me in this life, that period of time was rapidly closing, if it had not done so already.

And so, while I had initially considered the armor inconsequential, it was at least two more fingers on the scale in Saul’s favor.

Krrk, whoosh.

Shit, got distracted again. From the looks of it, it appeared that they had exchanged a pair of basic spiritual techniques to start the fight, though I had a hard time guessing which ones merely from the aftermath. Before I had any more time to speculate, Vince finished the final movement for Ice Wave, which he had narrowed and shot horizontally, with Saul a moment later returning a Fireball. The two techniques clashed in the center, with the Fireball consuming the Ice Wave, but sputtering out before reaching Vince. As it did so, Vince finished the movements for Ice Wall, which sprang up in front of him, and I saw him immediately launch into another set of movements, which I recognized as the beginning of the Tundra domain skill he had used against me.

While Vince was progressing through that lengthy set of moves, Saul had launched a Fireball at the Ice Wall, and when the Ice Wall was left mostly untouched, Saul went through a series of movements which culminated in the head of his axe being wreathed in fire. I wasn’t familiar with that specific technique—again, such techniques were largely useless late in my life—but it was probably named something silly like Fire Axe. Or would Fire Axe be an axe made of fire?

Crraaack. My attention snapped back to the fight as Saul plowed through the Ice Wall and closed the distance to Vince. Vince had just completed Tundra, and, with the arena rapidly chilling, ice and snow were accumulating from out of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, Vince had no time to invoke another technique, and had to rapidly bring up his hammer to block Saul’s flaming axe. They continued to trade blows, dancing across the arena, but Saul held the initiative the entire time. Though they both took strikes to their auras, Saul’s strikes were more frequent and more powerful. Finally, after nearly a dozen such exchanges, a final blow by Saul led to the tinkling sound of Vince’s aura breaking.

Vince’s chainmail meant that he had suffered little physical harm from the blows and had remained standing at the end of the fight. As the referee called the match, Vince and Saul exchanged handshakes and a few words before they exited the arena in my direction. The two of them went off to one corner of the competitor’s room to continue talking.

***

The next match—the semifinal between Patrick and I—was actually delayed as the earth spiritualist meant to patch up the arena had to search out a fire spiritualist to speed up the natural degradation of Vince’s Tundra.

Nonetheless, shortly thereafter, I found myself standing in the arena a short distance across from Patrick. I was pulling my staff off my back when Patrick spoke up.

“I saw you speaking with Rebecca earlier. Do you know each other?”

I was a little taken aback. All the matches I had seen the past week were preceded by either taunts—i.e., childish puffery—or silence, with the latter more common as the tournaments proceeded. This was the first serious—if off-topic—question I had heard.

“Yes, we’re friends and we train together. Why?”

“Allow me to apologize for her injury before we begin,” he replied, then gave a short bow.

“There is nothing to apologize for. You fought well. Your tactic was sound. And the injury was not unwarranted.”

Patrick’s face grew puzzled before he replied. “Then I must admit I do not know why you are directing your spiritual pressure at me.”

My attention flashed inward at that comment to see that my mask had slipped a little bit and that I was radiating a faint spiritual pressure. Indeed, Patrick was likely the only one who could have sensed that.

“My apologies,” I said, adjusting my mask, “that was… unintentional. As recompense, take this advice: as much as I would prefer that we drag this match out, it would be better for you to try to end this quickly.”

With that, we both took stances and, seeing our readiness, the referee called “Begin!”

Patrick immediately began a spiritual technique, a long range electric attack from the look of it. I countered by faking the movements for a wall of water. However, instead of raising it in front of me, I raised it at a distance and almost immediately in front of Patrick, coalescing just before he unleashed his attack. The electricity steamed away some of the water wall, but most of it simply grounded it ineffectively.

Although I now had the initiative, I did not make any further moves. Patrick seemed to have stopped as well, and was now trying to evaluate me through the murkiness of the water wall. I made two quick, but exaggerated movements, freezing the wall and turning it opaque. Although I was partially masking my ki, my spiritual sense was more than fine enough to pick up on Patrick’s movements and I was curious how refined his sense was. He was already mid-movement through another spiritual technique, which looked similar to the first but with a slight variation. I took several steps right, while feigning the movements for another technique, when a bolt of electricity arced overtop of the now-ice wall right towards where I was about to step. I launched a vertical slice of water to intercept, and yet again, the electrical attack grounded itself out.

Patrick however had already moved onto his next technique, and as he repeated the last two steps over and over, I could sense ball of attuned ki hover around him, but otherwise not move. Curious… I managed to think before Patrick immediately sprinted out from behind cover. In front of him, floated in a staggered formation five balls of electricity.

Ah shit. I’d been so caught up, I hadn’t been feigning any spiritual movements. That was one cover I didn’t want to drop, nor did I want to reveal I had air and electrical affinities as well. I took several steps back, slowing Patrick’s advance, while exaggerating my movements in the hope they appeared “spiritual” enough. On the third step, I started generating three meter tall vertical ropes of water between Patrick and I, which quickly collided with four of the spheres and grounded them.

The fifth I just smacked with my staff. It wasn’t pretty, but it dispersed the ki holding it together and the electricity faded. Frankly, anyone but me would have had their aura seriously zapped by that.

Just as I turned my attention back to Patrick, who was still closing in, I saw him completing his flare technique.

I quickly shut my eyes, just as a bright light shown through my eyelids, and started tracking Patrick with my spiritual sense. Clearly he could initiate that technique on the run and it did not affect him any, as he quickly closed the distance and swung his sword at me. Using my spiritual sense, I blocked both his initial swing, his follow up shield bash, and then a second swipe before opening my eyes.

While in his duel with Becca, Patrick had electrified his weapons after blinding Becca, here he had not done so, and was instead attacking mundanely. I still wasn’t sure how he electrified his weapons, but clearly the movements needed were rather minimal as after the second swipe, both his sword and shield crackled as they became encased in electricity.

Patrick paused for only a breath before going on the offensive again. As his sword arm came down, I bared my killing intent at him for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to knock him off balance into the direction of his swing. I ducked under the swing and towards him, catching my staff behind the crook of his knee and pulling it towards me as my foot came forward to swipe his ankle back. Patrick fell forward to where I had just been. I planted my foot, and brought my staff over my head like a hammer to strike at Patrick back.

That familiar tinkling sound of an aura breaking followed.

Patrick was breathing heavily from the exertion, lay on his stomach for several seconds, before rolling onto his back. I offered him a hand and pulled him up onto his feet, congratulating him on a good fight.

“Thanks, hah hah,” he replied, panting heavily, “how did you, hah, how did you block my attack after my Solar Flare?, hah hah.”

“Spiritual sense.”

“Oh? Haah. I never thought of that, hah, as a possible counter.”

“It’s a good move at E-rank, but it’s largely a novelty. If you can catch an enemy with their eyes open, it’ll blind them for a good long while, but all I had to do was shut my eyes for the second or two that the flash actually lasted and then I could open them again.”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Patrick looked away embarrassed. “I guess that’s what you get for fighting your elders. They’ve seen just about everything.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

***

Three minutes into the Finals match with Saul, and I was all tied up in knots.

Saul was good. Really good. Heck, I unintentionally used air attuned ki once or twice to dodge some of Saul’s really nasty attacks. Subtly used, fortunately, because I really didn’t need the rest of the City to notice that.

I really had expected Saul’s ki to have been more exhausted after the semifinal match with Vince, but his well was surprisingly deep and it looks like this would go for a few minutes more.

Still, I haven’t played any soft affinities yet, and maybe just one would be good.

As I dithered, Saul was completing a spiritual technique that sent a broad wave of fire towards me. I was sure it had a name, but I just didn’t care. Faking a few moves, I rose a wedge-shaped wall of water, and began running forward with it. But, as my wedge broke through the flame wave, suddenly the flame wave wrapped around the wall and was coming at me from both sides. I quickly raised water walls on all three unprotected sides, and then broke had my water wedge split as I ran through it, while simulataneously urging my water structure to wrap back around and envelop the flames themselves.

Unfortunately, just as I broke through the water, I was already upon Saul and he had seen me coming. I narrowly dodged an axe swing. Then, chanelling electricity into my staff, I went on the offensive.

Despite his hammer being less effective at parrying, Saul put up a good defense, but still took several electrically charged strikes to his aura. Suddenly, Saul’s axe bloomed with a huge fireball larger than his own body, and I dodged backwards as it swept by him. With that opportunity, Saul quickly put distance between us, while preparing another spiritual technique.

Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be a big one and very well may be all of Saul’s remaining ki. Grinning with anticipation, and with a bit of showmanship, I began to fake a few movements of my own for my “finishing move.”

When Saul completed, a twelve pointed star of blue fire began to slowly roll through the air across the arena. That, what actually really impressive for his level.

For my move, I conjured a wall of water two meters thick, and as long as any other, and had it too begin a slow waltz across the arena. The two attacks met in the middle in a hiss of boiling water and steam, and the center of the arena lost visibility. As the cloud cleared and we saw each other, we took off running at each other at “full” speed, with Saul in particular issuing a war cry.

Both of our weapons were charged with attuned ki, and they struck each other with a vengeance, a loud crack reverberating throughout the arena.

We blew apart from each other and landed several meters apart. The arena was impressively messy considering we were both fighting on an E-rank. Still, we were now up to six or seven minutes at this point, and Saul was breathing hard.

I let one end of my staff rest on the ground as I addressed Saul, just loud enough for him to hear. “Forfeit,”

“What?” he strangled out between heavy breathes.

“You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. You’ve got almost no ki left. And you still haven’t recovered your breath.”

“Are you nuts?” he replied. “I can’t just forfeit in the City finals. I’m never going to make it back here again. I’m too old for this crap.”

“You’re only 25. You’ve got another good 30 years of fighting in you, probably more. This tournament is chump change compared to what’s ahead. And you should at least have enough pride to know when you’re beaten.”

“No,” his face was conflicted and seemed to run through several emotions sequentially. “I can’t do that.” As he said those last words, I saw him begin the movements for another spiritual technique and felt him dig deep into his ki. “NO!” he cried, just as his axe lit up in massive blue flames, “I can’t lose!” Taking one step and a lead forward, he swung the axe overhead right on top of me. “ARRRGGHH!”

“So stupid,” I muttered. As the axe head came towards me slowly in my enhanced perception, I deftly moved out of the way. Forming a thin layer of gray ki around my fist, I punched Saul in the temple as he went by me. The familiar tinkle of an aura breaking reached my ears, as Saul was knocked off course, landing face first into the dirt and sliding a few meters.

The crowd went wild at my knockout punch, and I quickly left the arena through the competitor’s tunnel. For all that the crowd loved it, the two officials there were standing in shock. Becca and Lennie cried out and came up to me in good cheer, “Yeah, I knew you could do it,” “Way to go Bossman,” and other banalities.

As I passed Vince, I stopped next to him, but didn’t look at him. “If you want you training to move past your plateau,” I said under my voice, “meet us at the West Gate first thing Wednesday morning.”

“Huh,” Vince cleared his throat as I started moving down the hall again. “This master of yours must really be something, huh?”

I called back, “You could say that.”