Our names appear on the screen, and I inject my Uua into my seat. Some seconds later, we are facing each other on the stage. Unlike our first fight, Keldin doesn’t look carefree. Instead, he looks tense. There can be only one reason for this, he must have realized from my previous fights that I am not as weak as before.

Gabe calls for the fight to begin and then disappears. Heart pounding, I waste no time activating D-three. Before I could begin attacking, Keldin jumps back, putting some distance between himself and me. The ground where he had originally been standing on cracks and a second later huge chunks of rock are ripped out and are fired at me. I use Burst to dash out of their path, but they change direction midair and keep on coming at me.

Hilla’s barrier appears in front of me just as the rocks slam into them, breaking into smaller but still large pieces. I expected the debris to fall to the ground behind me, the attack having failed, but instead they freeze midair before zooming toward my exposed back.

Thinking quickly, I turn around and put my hands up to guard my face, dropping Hilla’s barrier in the process. D-three consists of the enhancement, and strengthening noer, and also me Focusing my Uua. Since Keldin seems determined to keep attacking me with those rocks, the best thing to do would be to pulverize them, and the Uua Focused on me should do the trick.

The rocks slam into me and I wince. It hurts bad. Without the strengthening noer improving my resilience and overall defense, I definitely would not have been able to tank this attack. Still, it works as intended as the Focused Uua around me causes the rocks to disintegrate.

I turn in Keldin’s direction, only to see more rocks heading toward me, larger than the previous. I almost curse; tanking these rocks as they are would be suicide, they are large enough that if they hit me, they will break bones. At the same time, Keldin seems to be setting up a formation of sorts, quickly arranging various noers in a pattern on the ground. Whatever it is, I have no intention of letting him finish.

Using Burst, I dash toward him, threading through the space between the rocks. The rocks all change direction to follow me, but I ignore them. Noticing my movements, Keldin speeds up and completes what he is doing. He activates the noers and a small white point of light appears in front of him. Once it appears, he starts evading me, the point following him everywhere it goes.

Not long after the point appears, all the air in the stage begins swirling toward it, getting faster and faster by the second. For a moment I worry that he wants to create something like a tornado, but the air isn’t moving fast enough for that. I almost begin to doubt that it does anything when I notice that the air around me seems to be getting thinner and also somehow stranger. Since I have no idea what he is doing, I decide to play it safe and hold my breath.

Lathia had once told me that Laen could hold their breaths for several minutes without issue. I guess now is as good a time as any to figure out if that is true.

All of a sudden, the rocks that Keldin had been using to chase me drop to the ground as Keldin points a finger at me, the point of light just in front of the finger. Alarms go off in my head and I summon Hilla’s barrier. If the face of the unknown, it is better to be safe than sorry.

My decision proves to be the right one when a second later a massive explosion rocks the stage, white hot flames covering everything in sight. When the initial blast dies down, the rest of the stage, apart from the one within my barrier, has turned into a red-hot mess. Even with the barrier keeping the worst of the heat out, I can imagine how blistering it would be once I get out. Fighting on such terrain is going to be very difficult.

Thinking quickly, I draw the heat absorbing noer in the air, doing my absolute best to supply it with as much Uua as possible before dropping the barrier. The heat is far beyond what I expected but the heat absorbing noer does its work well, rapidly cooling the area around me.

Keldin clenches his hand and the ground I am standing on readily cracks. I dash out of the way just as huge chunks of it are ripped out and then thrown at me. At the same time the other rock slabs he had dropped earlier are picked up and also lobbed at me.

Like before I opt to dodge them, when a few seconds later I find myself cornered. Somehow, Keldin had used the rocks to form a cage around me and I hadn’t noticed. Once there is no way out the rocks rush at me from all sides. I am about to create Hilla’s barrier, when I notice a small gap between two rocks. I act, using Burst to dash through the gap, only to see Keldin, a palm aimed at me with golden noers forming a circle around it.

It was a trap, the gap I had seen. By going through it I played right into his hands. Still, I am not too worried, resorting to my tried-and-true method of defense. Hilla’s barrier. A golden beam shoots from Keldin’s palm in front, while the rock slabs smash into my barrier from the back. The barrier trembles, but it still holds. A frown appears on Keldin’s face, he probably didn’t think it would be so easy for me to tank his attacks one after the other, but unlike his other opponents whose Uua are more or less on par with his - with his sometimes being better - I have plenty of Uua to spare.

I drop the barrier and detonate the Uua Focused on me, instantly incinerating the small rock pieces still left around me. At this point my heat absorbing noer has reached it limit, so I create another one. The stage is rapidly cooling, but it is still far too hot for me not to care about it.

As for the first noer, I consider detonating it and releasing all the heat stored within, but then I remember that Keldin would probably be able to control the resulting flames and think better of it.

I use Burst to dash toward him, and like I expected he retreats, but I am not having that, not after my experience with Bree. Using more Uua, I boost my speed further while summoning several Roes. The Roes serve only one purpose, to control his movements. I dash off to his side while I begin to pepper him with Roes, and like I expect he dodges instead of using Hilla’s barrier, it was just more cost effective.

As the last Roe explodes, he moves into position. I use Burst to move toward him at greater speed than before, then I open my mouth and scream, releasing a wave of telekinesis mixed with Uua toward him. As expected, he summons Hilla’s barrier to block it, being unable to dodge due to the speed of the attack, and my well-timed use of Burst closing the distance between us enough for me to use it. But I don’t stop moving forward, and this alarms Keldin. Acting quickly, he causes the Hilla’s barrier which was originally just in front of him to surround him from all sides.

Inwardly I smile. Game over. The moment he surrounded himself on all sides, he prevented himself from being able to use his magic against me, since the barrier would keep his domain trapped within. In one move, I turned this to a battle of Uua. Either I stopped my attack first because I ran out of Uua, or he runs out of Uua and fails to maintain his barrier. If he hadn’t cornered himself with the barrier, I would have summoned mine around him since he is now within my domain, either way, the battle would have ended like this.

Keldin seems to realize this judging by the grim look on his face, but it is way too late. Either he surrenders, or he runs out of Uua and is forced to forfeit. Thinking about how he had beaten me during our first fight, I can’t help but feel some pleasure at his current plight. I had grown stronger, and while the same was true for him, he just hadn’t enough to keep pace with me.

My inward gloating is cut short when he abruptly sinks into the ground. I pause, only then realizing my mistake. He knew elemental magic; earth was within the range of what he could control and like a buffoon I hadn’t bothered to confirm that his barrier covered the earth beneath him.

Heart racing, I crouch and place my hands on the ground. With the enhancement noer boosting my senses I pray that should he choose to rise somewhere near me, I would be able to feel some vibrations that would alert me in time.

I wait, seconds pass with me imagining the worst. Then, just like I hoped I feel some vibrations. They are slight, but unmistakable. I turn around just in time to see him rise from the ground, Uua focused on his right hand as he punches me. Reacting quickly, I grab him hand with mine, our Uua reacting violently as they touch. Then I realize too late that the punch was just a distraction. With his other hand he had shot out a noer to my heat-absorbing noer. The one that was full. I turn but it is too late.

The two collide and the heat absorbing noer collapses, before releasing all the heat within it. Then I realize my second mistake, in my panic I had ignored Keldin in favor of focusing on the two noers. Now, the noer had exploded and my back was to him. I immediately try to summon Hilla’s barrier but then just like with my fight against Bree, everything freezes, then rewinds.

Gabe appears and shoots me an empathetic look before turning to face the crowd. “The winner is… Keldin.”