The roar of the crowd is a distant, muffled thunder.
A constant vibrating energy that seems to seep through the very stone of the arena.
High above the sandy stone floor, in a spartan waiting room reserved for the combatants, Carter sits on a cold stone bench.
His head in his hands. The adrenaline from his fight with Amy has long since faded, leaving behind the brutal throbbing hangover of Dissonance.
It is a sharp stabbing pain that pulses behind his eyes with every beat of his heart.
A grim physical reminder of the immense power he had unleashed, and the price it had exacted upon his body.
The other recruits are scattered around the room, each dealing with the aftermath of their own battles in their own way.
Yulian fully recovered, and buzzing with a restless energy, paces back and forth like a caged lion.
Keyona is meticulously cleaning her scythe, her movements sharp and precise.
Nico sits in a corner, his eyes closed breathing slow and steady.
A picture book definition of calm focused meditation.
“Is it the backlash?” a soft voice asks.
Carter looks up to see Paige standing before him, her expression one of quiet concern.
“I read about it in the Great Archive. What happens when Dissonance get too severe.”
“The way it warps the user’s own perception… it puts an incredible strain on the mind.”
Before Carter can answer, Paige reaches into a small pouch at her belt and pulls out a small, glowing, golden fruit.
One of the last few she had saved from her own aptitude test.
“Here,” she says, offering it to him. “This should help.”
Carter takes the fruit, its gentle warmth a soothing presence in his hand.
He takes a bite, and the taste is a burst of pure goodness. If a sunny picnic day had a taste, this would be it.
A wave of warmth and vitality spreads throughout Carter’s body. The sharp stabbing pain in his head receding to a dull headache.
“Thanks Paige,” he says, a look of genuine grateful surprise on his face.
“I… I really needed that.”
“We’re a team now, aren’t we?” she replies with a small shy smile.
“I know we’re all fighting now, but we should still look out for each other.”
She then offers the remaining pieces of the healing fruit to the others, a quiet, supportive gesture that seems to bring them together.
“Good luck everyone,” she wishes with a genuine peaceful voice.
Gabriel’s voice booms through the waiting room, the sound amplified by magic shaking the very stone beneath their feet.
“After a short break, the semi final round will now commence! For our first match; Nico Reyes versus Akira Kendo!”
Nico opens his eyes, with a look of furious determination on his face.
He gives the others a respectful nod and walks towards the tunnel that leads to the arena floor.
Akira, who has been leaning against the far wall in a state of bored, arrogant detachment, pushes himself off the wall and follows.
He has a cold predatory smirk on his face.
The clash of the confident underdog and the untouchable prodigy is about to begin.
Nico Vs. Akira…
The roar of the crowd intensifies as Nico and Akira step onto the sandy stone arena.
The energy is filled with electric waves of anticipation.
Nico temporarily boosted by his victory over Paige, carries himself with a new found sense of cockiness.
Akira on the other hand, is a mask of cold focused intensity.
His earlier attitude is now replaced by the deadly seriousness of a warrior.
They take their places, fifty feet apart, with the afternoon sun casting long sharp shadows on the sand.
The gong sounds with its deep, resonant boom signaling the start of the battle.
“GONNNNG! BEGIN!”
Nico immediately takes a defensive stance, his glaive held at the ready.
His body a coiled spring of potential energy, preparing for a ranged attack from Akira.
Expecting a blast of fire or a bullet of wind, he is tenses his musscles as he squeezes that staff of his glaive.
Ready to absorb, nullify, and turn his opponent’s own power against him.
But Akira doesn’t give him the chance.
He doesn’t cast a flashy spell. He doesn’t waste a single, precious moment. He simply moves with terrifying levels of speed.
Something Nico was NOT prepared for
Akira has become a total blur, like some all black phantom that covers the fifty foot distance between them in a single, impossible heartbeat.
How did he move so fast? Does he have physical enhancement tattoos? Nico thinks as he struggles to react.
No… This is AKIRA we’re talking about. He’s just that good.
The crowd gasps.
The recruits in the waiting room focus their eyes and stand close to the glass, watching with shock and awe.
Nico’s mind, as sharp and tactical as it is, cannot process the sheer overwhelming speed of Akira’s katana assault.
Before he can even think to raise his glaive, before he can even begin to cast a defensive spell, Akira is ON him.
He doesn’t strike with just the blade of his katana. He uses the hilt in a single brutal and perfectly executed blow that strikes Nico’s wrist with the force of a hammer.
Nico cries out in pain
“AAHH! Shit!”
His fingers quickly going numb, and his grimoire Lianghai fallign uselessly to the sand colored arena floor.
In the blink of an eye, Nico has quickly become disarmed and defenseless. He stumbles back with his hands still ringing from the pain.
But Akira is a relentless force.
He follows the first blow with a poweruful sweeping leg kick that takes Nico’s feet out from under him.
Nico is sent sprawling to the sand of the arena with the air knocked out from his lungs.
His world quickly becoming a blurry spinning mess of blue sky and brown sand.
In the viewing stands Miguel just shakes his head, a grim, almost pitying look on his face.
“The kid’s good,” he says to Killian.
“He’s smart for sure.”
“But compared to Akira’s years of training…” Killian replies
“He’s not even remotely in the same league.”
“The gap in real life experience is just too much for anyone to overcome.”
Down on the arena floor, Nico pushes himself up. His mind now racing for solutions.
He has quickly lost his grimoire, and he cannot win a physical fight.
There is only one option left. He begins to gather his kinetic energy to form a defensive shield, a final desperate act of defiance.
But Akira is already a step ahead. He is alreay on to Nico’s strategy.
And he is not going to let him use it.
As Nico begins to gather his kinetic energy, the air around him shimmering with a faint invisible power, Akira acts.
Without pressing his physical advantage, or going for the finishing blow, he simply stops.
An expression of clinical precision immediately takes over him. Then he begins to quietly speak a single unexpected command he hadn’t shown yet.
“AKIMARU… WATER!”
- Spell Tag On Grimoire: Akimaru + Water{水}
- Phonetic: Akimaru (Grimoire Name) + Mizu (base)
- Japanese Base Spell Translation: “Water”
A torrent of pure water erupts from the blade of Akimaru.
It is not a violent high pressure blast, but a heavy controlled flood.
It douses Nico and the sand around him, soaking him to the bone in an instant.
Nico sputters, his concentration completely broken. His defensive spell now fizzling into nothingness as he looks up at Akira.
A look of pure unadulterated confusion on his face. Water? Why water?
Before he can even begin to process the strange, seemingly pointless attack.
Akira speaks another even colder spell, as a sharp final command that cuts through the air.
“AKIMARU! ICE!”
- Spell Tag On Grimoire: Akimaru + Ice{氷}
- Phonetic: Akimaru (Grimoire Name) + Kōri (base)
- Japanese Base Spell Translation: “Ice”
The water that soaks Nico’s legs and the sand around him instantly flash freezes.
A solid crystalline block of ice erupts from the ground. It traps his legs completely, pinning him to the arena floor.
He is now totally immobilized with his lower body encased in a tomb of ice.
Akira walks over and stands above him.
The tip of his katana rests gently on Nico’s shoulder.
The match is over, and it lasted less than a minute.
“I yield,” Nico says. His voice a mixture of shock, frustration, and a more profound level of grudging respect.
He was not just beaten, he was systematically and intelligently dismantled with ease
Gabriel’s voice booms across the arena.
“An overwhelming display of speed, power and tactical prowess!
The winner and our first finalist is Akira Kendo!”
“YAAAAAAHHHH!”
As the crowd roars in approval, in the stands the whispers begin again as a wave of awe and praise for the young prodigy.
Gabriel’s voice booms across the arena. The sound is a deep, resonant bell that signals the start of the next and final match of the round.
“For our second semi final, we have Yulian Volkov versus Carter Cross!”
Yula Vs. Carter…
A primal energy fills the coliseum in anticipation.
They had just witnessed a display of precision.
Now, they were about to witness a clash of titans.
Yulian, fully recovered and filled with a joyful, ferocious energy, strides onto the field. His heavy mace, Tiberius, held loosely in one hand.
Carter follows, his movements calm, his face a mask of focused intensity.
The dull throb behind his eyes is a constant reminder of the price he paid in his last fight. A warning to be cautious, to be controlled.
They take their places.
The massive crater from Yulian’s last battle and the shattered remains of the training dummies are a sign of the power that is about to be unleashed.
The gong sounds, its deep, mournful echo signaling the start of the battle.
“GONNNNG! BEGIN!
Yulian doesn’t waste a moment.
He knows Carter is fast, that he can teleport.
He’s not going to give him space to think, to plan.
He’s going to overwhelm him from the very first second.
Yulian lets out a deep roar and swings his mace in a wide, powerful arc.
“TIBERIUS. PIERCE!”
- Spell Tag On Grimoire: Tiberius + Pierce{Пробить землю шипами(base)}
- Phonetic: Tiberius (Grimoire Name) + Probit’ zemlyu shipami (base)
- Russian Base Spell Translation: “Pierce the ground with spikes/thorns”
A wave of massive, jagged stone spikes erupts from the sandy floor.
Each one as thick as a man’s torso.
A rolling, unstoppable wave of earth and rock that surges towards Carter.
Carter reacts on pure instinct.
He doesn’t try to block. Doesn’t try to destroy.
He just… moves.
He teleports, his body dissolving into a flicker of distorted space just as the first spike is about to impale him.
He reappears thirty feet to the left.
The moment he materializes, a searing, white hot pain shoots through his skull.
AHHHHHHhhhhhh….GOD…. Carter thinks.
The Dissonance from his fight with Amy is still a raw wound, and the teleporting makes it worse.
He stumbles, a pained grunt escaping his lips, his vision blurring for a second.
He can’t use his teleportation this time.
Not like he did against Amy.
The cost is FAR too high.
Now moving like a wounded animal, Carter’s greatest weapon has become a source of agonizing pain.
In the viewing stands, Killian leans forward, his expression grim.
“He’s hurt,” he says to Ruby, his voice a low, worried murmur.
“The backlash from the last fight… he’s running on empty. He can’t keep spamming the teleport with Chinese magic. Yulian’s got him pinned.”
Down on the arena floor, Yulian knows it.
He sees the flicker of pain on Carter’s face, the slight hesitation in his movements.
And he presses his advantage with a brutal, relentless efficiency.
He became a master of the battlefield, reshaping the arena with every swing of his mace.
Sending relentless waves of earthen spikes, creating deep pits to trap Carter, raising massive stone walls to block his movement.
Carter is forced to rely on pure agility.
He is a blur of motion, dodging, weaving, and sprinting, the stone spikes quickly and randomly erupting from the ground just inches behind him.
The pain in his head is a constant, deafening roar, making it almost impossible to think, to focus, to cast.
He is trapped in a deadly, shifting labyrinth of Yulian’s making.
The walls are closing in…
Carter is cornered.
A massive wall of solid rock erupts from the ground behind him, cutting off his only escape route.
In front of him, Yulian stands with a wide, triumphant grin. His mace raised for a final, crushing blow.
Trapped. His body now aching, his mind a throbbing mess of pain and exhaustion.
He has no other option.
He cannot teleport. He cannot outrun the earth itself.
Forced to rely on the one power that feels as instinctual as breathing, the one power that whispers to him of endings.
He raised his left hand, wearing the leathery gauntlet of Archer. A stark contrast against the rough stone of the arena.
Then speaks the blade’s command with a desperate shout.
“ARCHER! DEVOUR!”
- Spell Tag On Grimoire: Archer + Devour{Цохих болгондоо байг минь залгидаг харанхуйн дөл}
- Phonetic: Archer (Grimoire Name) + Tsokhikh bolgondoo baig mini zalgidag kharankhuin döl (base)
- Mongolian Base Spell Translation: “Flames of darkness which devour my target with every strike”
A wave of silent, black fire erupts from his chain dagger.
It does not explode outward. It flows like a liquid ribbon of darkness that washes over the earthen walls of his prison.
The solid stone does not burn. It does not crumble.
It just… dissolves.
Its matter unmade by the cold purple and black flames. Turning the erected stone into a fine black dust scattered by the wind.
Carter bursts free from the collapsing cage just as Yulian’s mace is about to descend.
The big Russian’s eyes go wide with surprise, his attack now aimed at an empty space.
Carter doesn’t give him a single moment to recover.
Every second counts.
He charges with a cold focused precision.
He is no longer the prey, this is the movment of an apex predator backed into a corner.
Using his superior speed, agility, an smaller size, to get inside Yuluian’s guard. Like a hornet against a bear.
Yulian swings his mace Tiberius in a wide, defensive circle, but Carter is moved too quickly.
Lashing out with Archer’s chain, the silver links a blur of motion. The chain wraps twice around the thick pole of Yulian’s mace.
With a sharp, powerful tug that uses Yulian’s own momentum against him, Carter rips the grimoire from the big Russian’s hands.
Tiberius falls to the arena floor, a dozen feet away. Too far for Yulian to grab it, and now too defenseless to win this battle.
On top of being disarmed and off balance, Carter is on him in an instant. The black flames retracted, and the cold unicorn horn blade of Archer pressed gently against Yulian’s throat.
The crowd is silent. Stunned by the sudden reversal, when it looked as though Carter had no chance.
Yulian stares at the blade at his throat, then at Carter’s determined eyes.
A slow, appreciative grin spreads across his face.
“I yield,” he says. His voice a low respectful rumble.
Gabriel’s voice booms across the arena.
“An incredible display of resilience and strategy!
The winner is Carter Cross!”
The crowd erupts in a deafening roar.
“YEEEAAAHHHHHH!”
Carter stands victorious, his body trembling with exhaustion. The pain in his head is now nearly unmanagable.
He looks across the arena at his final opponent.
The calm confident, and terrifying figure of Akira Kendo.