And in a sense, Nilia never did dodge the blow. The blasts of light simply never managed to succeed at reaching her location. Or… well most of them didn’t succeed anyway. It would seem that her dimensional gate had a space limit, and although Nilia did successfully maintain her safety against that amazing barrage of feather-born light arrows, the ‘space’ within her shoddy and hurriedly – crafted gate instantly collapsed after 75 percent of the arrows had been consumed.

Soon after, she felt the energy beams smashing against the layer of energy that efficiently covered her body in an even spread. The beams struck one of her legs, her right cheek, left breast and abdomen repeatedly and at the same time. She didn’t even have a chance to think of tracking those which pierced her dimension gate. She didn’t have the opportunity to even consider canceling the ‘equal spread of energy’ she’s always been fond of producing due to its constant source of overall protection from even surprise attacks she’d never thought about defending against. The efficiency and consistent positive performance in her numerous fights of late, proved to Nilia that this was a suitable way to use her energy for defense and strength enhancement.

It’s a pity though. Because Nilia chose such a ‘stable’ method of usage as this one; she ended up in a situation where her aura was ‘powerful, but not powerful enough’ to completely fend off the onslaught of divine energy bursts.

Nilia’s ‘aura’ visibly dimmed, before unfortunately winding up filled with several holes.

After protecting her against the first three hits of this final wave – filled with twenty – five percent of residual power from Gabby’s big move… the remaining few blows directly pierced her trained body. At the same time as Nilia gritted her teeth through the severe pain of having her flesh burned by blasts of searing light, she reshaped her hilt into a massive claymore, and once more, gathered energy into the blade’s sharpened tip.

Gabby now had the advantage, but she was visibly exhausted. That move took more out of her then her seniors since she still isn’t as proficient with it, yet even so; she successfully pulled it off! Now, she held two options for her next move: The first option was straightforward – heal her exhaustion by absorbing divine energy! Though the process was a fairly slow method and wouldn’t guarantee a fully restored state in this short period of time. Gabby’s second choice, was to attack while Nilia was temporarily charging her power again! To rush right in for one final exchange!

...Even though this did indeed run the risk of Gabby finding herself facing an unexpected slash by Nilia’s still charging blade, should the infamous Rage King candidate stop prematurely and release her gathered power at a tricky time. But even if that DOES happen, Gabby would be satisfied with forcibly stunting its power and tanking, or evading, a weakened blast of power.

All in all, Gabby felt confident with today’s match.

She knew nothing about Nilia Eseria, save for the supposed strength the girl held after a controversial win against Elijah Abiko – former Prince of Shades. She also learned that right after, the girl defeated nearly all the Kings one – by – one, except the Undefeated King Rhys, who apparently was too lazy to be bothered. But she was sure of her own strength. This was a time when her powers were developing at last, and her hard work was finally beginning to bear fruit! Losing wasn’t an option!

Random crowd student #40: “Woah… did anyone else … expect this fight to be so…”

Random crowd student #41: “...F-Fierce? Flashy? Frightening and spectacular?? Bewildering to the point I’m almost speechless? Of course I didn’t. In fact, I assumed that brutal Rage Queen wouldn’t hesitate at all and ruthlessly crush this Gabby fellow into the metallic flooring. I didn’t expect the fodder girl would be so insanely powerful!”

Random crowd student #42: “But… but- but that other match was flashy too! the second one, remember? Between Tetra Terror and Luxor Al Amin! If I had to compare, that one had black smoke, zombies and creepy noises for every audience member to hear… in our HEADS even! If we talk about flashy matches, there were really a lot of them. So why wouldn’t you expect this one to be the same??”

Random crowd student #43: “Hahaha! This sort of remark is a damned deserved riot! Asking such a thing, is that question of yours really deserving of a proper response?? Naturally, it’s because of two things:

1.) Those matches which you mentioned, were all performed by A PAIR OF KINGS!

2.) Rage Queen is soooo fucking strong that I, along with many other fans of hers, completely understand the normality of her dominating the field.

No lie.

Really though, heh, she may have this kind of match against a King like Rhys or Luxor, Although I seriously doubt it since she already dominated Elijah Abiko, the previously unbeaten Prince…

...But a random no-namer? Where in the world did this girl even come from, trying to put up such a strong front. She should just give up already!”

Random crowd student #44: “...Um, okay… your biased viewpoint on this matter has begun to leak out at the end of your comment there. Besides, I don’t find it all that surprising. There’s no way the school actually checked every single student that signed up for enrollment. At the very least, they couldn’t possibly check the students for there hidden talents like some sort of machine-driven talent scouts. The school, in fact, does have people that DID scout talents out, which were namely the 10 Kings and their several ‘King’ candidates as substitutes. But this… if someone was really strong, like, at this level of strength…

*Points to Nilia*

Then…

wouldn’t it be extremely easy for them to only utilize the ‘bare minimum’ of their power required to pass enrollment into the superhero division? It’s shocking at first after revelation; but such a feat for Gabby, this girl that seems to be nearly on Rage Queen’s level, is effectively child’s play. After the initial shock, this matter isn’t all that unusual if you give it a bit more thought before your hastily – drawn conclusions.”

Random crowd student #45: “Yeah! Besides, this battle can be said to LITERALLY be flashier than the others! I was nearly blinded just now!! That never happened to me before, in the other matches!”

Random crowd student #46: “…Aren’t you fools forgetting something critical here?? Nilia, the Rage Queen who has been on an undefeated rampage against the school’s strongest freshman students and EVEN some sophomores… is losing! She is ACTUALLY fucking losing here!! Yet all you people can do is point out Gabby’s surprising feat of hiding her powers and claiming that Gabby’s ‘almost’ as strong as Nilia! Really?! Because what it looks like to me is that Nilia is actually losing here!”

…

Random crowd student #41: “Wh- HOW- How dare you say that-- insinuate that the almighty Rage Queen is going to lose!! She’s just taking it easy on the other one, that’s all!! You just watch as she’s gonna reverse the circumstances completely in the next minute- NO! The next INSTANT!”

Random crowd student #47: “The almighty ‘Rage Queen’ herself was taking it easy on this newcomer? Yeah, okay. What did she do, ALLOW herself to be impaled multiple times and let her defenses and countermeasures get crushed back to back, one after another, without retaliating? Stop chasing her ass for a quick second and use your brains. She got beat just now. Whether she wins or not isn’t gonna erase Gabby’s impressive skills here.”

Random crowd student #43: “Are you fucking stupid, or are you fucking stupid?? Nilia is NOT about to lose to this nameless bitch, alright?! If anything, she is the only individual ALIVE that can crush top hero trainees and freshman as a nameless nobody, okay?!”

Random crowd student #48: “Pffft! Getting so worked up and hyped over somebody else’s achievements and strength… how embarrassing…!”

…

Gabby dashed forward, with rising momentum. Her beautiful wings flapped the scattered specs of dirt away with absolute force as her slender but powerful body spurred forth.

Nilia wasn’t surprised though. She half-expected that this would happen. Thus she was fully prepared to unleash her vicious wave at any given moment in time – her whole body was filled with tension and ready to react to any abnormal changes during their match! Thus, when Gabby’s gliding physique darted towards her… she had already swung her blade!

Similar to before, her energy took no solid color while it spread. But unlike before, it’s shape was akin to a vicious vertical wave of destructive ferocity! She struck down and upon seeing this, Gabby shifted her body in order to fly up! She deliberately took to the skies in order to avoid the blast!

Yet, it was right then, as she flew high enough to observe the attack striking below where she once stood, that Nilia showed a contemptuous and smug smirk.

the energy wave cracked the metal flooring until it reached directly below gabby before dying into the platform and dissipating…

Or so it would seem. Without pause, the energy suddenly shot upwards like a geyser, and its speed was shockingly no less than Gabby’s own light speed laser attack from before!

Well, it was, in fact a bit slower, but it was still far beyond anything Gabby could react to. Therefore, from Gabby’s perspective, the blast’s speed was similar to her own!

Her wings moved involuntarily and on their own, and with them folding inwards, the blast struck her head-on – crushing what defense she concocted out of energy and dragging her back down into the arena surface.

Yet even so… trembling as she and Nilia both were thanks to their accumulated wounds, Gabby actually managed to drag her body up and onto her feet.

Unfortunately for the crowd, who were just beginning to gather their hopes together and start holding higher expectations for an even more stimulating battle between the two high – level freshman Goddesses…

Dome called the match. One of these two girls, begrudgingly admitted defeat.

---