Scarlet

Just how many skills has she hidden?!

I quickly create over a dozen weapons of blood before smashing them together and sending the resulting orb of blood towards the net, quickly losing most of my control over it in the process. All while I get the hell out of its way by leaping into a roll.

When I get back to my feet several meters away, I turn back around to find the giant orb of blood having only delayed the large purple net, not having damaged it much at all. Which is rather impressive in its own right. But nevertheless, the net slams into the ground where I was, missing me entirely while the spikes dig into the ground sending some sort of purple electricity into it that makes me really glad I moved out of the way.

I turn back to Abigail with my entire body tensed to move, only to suddenly find several clones rushing in to surround me as a white light builds up around her hand which is pointing in my direction.

Shit.

Then another mental spike radiates pain through my head, momentarily making my sight go blurry.

Why is this one even more painful than the others?!

I hear the clones getting closer as she continues preparing her skill, and after a few seconds, my vision clears up right at around the same time the clones begin grabbing onto me and attempting to pin me down, apparently not even bothering with attacking me themselves.

“Seriously?” I mutter before suddenly increasing my use of blood boil and life drain on Abigail, which doesn’t seem to do much as she completely ignores it somehow and continues focusing on her skill. So I push hard with blood sacrifice before breaking out of the hold of the clones grabbing onto my arms and sending them flying. Then I send the ones holding onto my neck and torso flying as well, only for a bright white light to shine from Abigail’s hands for a moment, signaling the end of the skill’s preparation.

Without a moment of hesitation, I ignore the clones grabbing onto my legs since I don’t have the time to deal with them as I activate blood shadow, making my blood shadow appear right in front of me.

Then Lost’s signature skill fires, directly striking my clone and making it dissipate along with the white beam, sending a massive headache to me that has me dropping to my knees. But I’m not the only one as out of the corner of my blurry vision, I find Abigail falling flat on her back, unmoving.

Why did that hurt so much!? The backlash isn’t normally this bad!

“It looks like some of the mental damage transferred to you from your clone,” Tar answers. “Thankfully the vast majority of it was taken by the clone, otherwise you’d be dead.”

Oh. Good to know that mental attacks might traverse from my clone to me.

The crowd watching us starts to go quiet despite my not being able to see them, the fog having returned to block our sight but not our hearing of the crowd. Probably to make the battle feel more intense. They did have a fancy stage for it and all.

My headache slowly begins to go away, and after a few seconds, I regain my movement. Only to realize that the purple clones that were holding onto my legs, along with the other clones that I had knocked off of me, had all just vanished at some point.

“She most likely lost control of them when her backlash hit,” Tar answers, making perfect sense.

I turn my attention back to the girl in question to find her still lying on the ground. So I walk over to her before standing in front of her and saying, “You certainly hid a lot of tricks for this fight, didn’t you?”

She doesn’t say anything. Actually, she doesn’t move at all.

Oh, right. She’s paralyzed.

I should be able to knock her unconscious, right?

“With ease,” Tar says.

So I lift my foot and kick her in the head.

Almost immediately after doing that, the fog surrounding the tower vanishes, both below it and on the edges of the artificial arena, revealing the bleachers again and a loudly roaring crowd. Not to mention the loudly shouting Black.

“The Scarlet Wolf has taken the first spot in the semifinals by defeating Lost!! And what a battle that was!” the man enthusiastically shouts. “Also, if I’m not mistaken, this was the pup’s first battle against a combat focused mental magic user!! Give her a round of applause!”

His last words aren’t really needed as the crowd was already going crazy. And surprisingly, I’m not immediately sent back to my private booth. Instead I’m left standing on the tower even after Abigail’s unconscious body vanishes.

The reason for this becomes apparent when Black suddenly appears in a surge of shadows in the air above me, following which I find myself floating into the air, my feet reaching out for a moment to reaffirm myself to solid ground only to give up within seconds.

“Now how about we get a word from our victor!” he says, sounding rather smug as he sees me glaring at him. “What say you, young pup?”

I answer without thinking, “How about you stop calling me a pup?”

My eyes widen as I hear my voice resounding throughout the stadium despite not having a microphone. But the crowd seems to love it as they all break out into laughter, so I guess it’s okay?

Black also laughs at it though, which is annoying.

“Maybe when you’re at least a few decades old, young pup,” he says with a hint of smug amusement clear in his voice, sending another round of laughter throughout the stadium. And when he sees me scowling at him, he adds, “You do remember that I’m two hundred and fifteen years old, right? So I think I can call you a young pup if I want, right everyone?!”

Then, against his expectations, the absolute best thing to ever happen to me throughout this tournament happens in the form of thousands of people shouting ‘no’ in response to him, crippling the grin on his face. Even better than the last battle that I just fought.

I can’t help but smirk at him.

He immediately sends me to my private booth, where I’m tackled by Aria within seconds of appearing.

Hah! He ran away!

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll take offense to that or something?” Tar asks, sounding genuinely confused.

Nah, Black’s not the type to take offense to jokes. He plays them all the time after all. Especially on the government.

Although the government has to tolerate it since they can’t really complain or retaliate against their strongest backer. They wouldn’t have much if really any power without Black and Purple backing them after all, and Purple isn’t a fighter. She can fight quite well, of course. But she isn’t a combat focused Guardian like he is. So she wouldn’t be of much help against the other Knights in a direct conflict.

“Interesting,” Tar mutter.

I can’t help but take pride in winning against Black like that as I pick Aria up and move over to my seat, briefly accepting a congratulations from Allen in the process.

Then the brackets reappear as the arena I fought in vanishes.

“Now to announce the next battle’s participants!” Black shouts, having already gotten over what just happened by the sounds of it.

Wonder who they’ll be?