The weapon started glowing as Kairos infused his energy into it. A powerful flame appeared like a golden sun on one of his slender curved blades, and an earthly blue frost appeared on his other blade.

The suit of armour patiently waited for the boy to prepare, as part of its contract demands. Only once the boy is ready, it is allowed to attack.

“Young Lord. I have to engage in combat with thou. Before thy act, allow me to tell you thus thy regulations.”

Seeing that Kairos made no protest, the Greater Metal Spirit continued, “Shouldst thou lose in combat against me, thou art to challenge me again. I shalt lower mine prowess until thou art able to emerge victoriously.

Shouldst thou defeats me in combat, thou art to challenge me again as well. I shalt increase mine prowess until thou art defeated or surrenders.

Thus shalt thou knowest thine strength. Art thou clear?”

With a sombre nod, Kairos raised his weapon and said, “Begin.”

The two clashed immediately. The force of their weapons blew them backwards, and the moment their feet touched the ground, they dashed towards their opponent again.

During the trade fair, Kairos has purchased his first skill book, a Xuan grade sword mastery manual called the Formless Sword. Although it is rather unsuited for Kairos and his brothers, after reading it through, he had understood the concept behind the technique and used it to create the Formless Style technique to be used with any weapons.

When the suit of armour animated by the greater metal spirit fought Kairos, it had at first felt that the boy was weak.

Again and again, it tried to smash the weapon that the boy held.

It pierced, it slashed, and it smashed at the steel Swallow, yet every attack was deflected though just barely.

Kairos parried, countered and redirected all the strokes aimed at him. His Soul Perception traced every single movement of his opponent without fail.

The concept of the formless combat style is now burned into his mind, as he honed the skill in battle.

It is truly a Xuan grade technique that has power, speed and control unlike how Kairos and his group were fighting by solely using their instincts before.

After adopting this Formless Style, he suddenly felt as if the way that they were fighting before were as primitive as cavemen swinging their clubs around.

The two slashes at each other once more, but as the battle went on the Elemental had an inkling of suspicion that Kairos was predicting its every move.

The number of attacks it dished out increased as the greater spirit raised its speed and power to the limits of Entry D rank.

But the furry of strikes only resulted in consecutive near-misses.

Just like the weapons were during the mock battlefield exam, the edge of the long sword has been gelled.

However, if one of those attacks land, even with Kairos’ Ki barrier it will still cause a large amount of damage. Without the protection, it will easily break the bones of anyone of Entry E rank without a Beast rank physique.

Their battle continued to drag, but after an hour past, they were still battling at the same pace as before.

As the fight lengthens, the greater spirit felt more and more depressed. After multiple attacks, it had realised that all its moves no matter how close it reached the boy, was fruitless. The animated armour realised that without defeating Kairos or defeated by the latter, it was forced to stay at Entry D rank.

These spirits of the earth do not have complicated thoughts, it took the greater spirit this long that it finally realised it is merely a training partner for the young boy.

All this while, Kairos continued to refine his style of combat.

Within the Formless Style, there are offensive and defensive techniques.

The offensive styles include breaking, crushing, piercing and striking methods.

The defensive styles include parrying, redirection, receiving and nullifying methods.

The combat manual was derived from the Formless Sword Arts because it was useless for them. None of in his team uses the sword as their main weapon. To create the Formless Style, Kairos dissected the original martial arts, left only its true essence, reused the suitable parts, and adopted the core methods.

The two continued on to battle for three hours with the basic movements repeated hundreds of times during their fight.

By the end of it, Kairos felt confident that he had mastered the basics while the Greater Metal Spirit was in tears.

“It’s time to end this,” he thought. It was rare to have an opponent not too weak or strong and able to fight without tiring and succumbing to wounds, but all good things must end. Kairos had outgrown the level of Entry D rank.

With an easy pace, he redirected a strike from the greater spirit’s longsword sending the weapon accelerating towards the ground and creating a gap in its defence at the same time. In the fraction of a second Kairos twirled his Swallow and struck it deftly at its shoulder plate.

The spirit awkwardly pulled back its weapon, reversing its direction and tries to slash again at the boy, but once again its sword was flicked away harmlessly at a greater speed than it attacked.

Once again Kairos struck and this time on the other shoulder plate with his Swallow.

Just like before, the spirit had no choice but to pull back its weapon, but this time around it tried to keep its long sword away from the boy’s manipulative fighting style.

Yet Kairos did not give it any time to breathe, without allowing his opponent a choice the Swallow once again flicked the back of the Elemental’s long sword just as it was trying to pull back, causing the weapon to once again accelerate backwards.

As the metal spirit lost total control of its weapon, Kairos struck it at the middle of its breastplate this time.

*CLANG*

The animated suit of armour flew backwards from the impact, hitting the back wall of the room and smashed into pieces.

“Hmm… just average,” Kairos commented on his current mastery of the foundation on the Formless Style. His muscle memory was far too inferior when compared to others, a side-effect of his poor bloodlines. At his level, he might be as well from a different planet than Jones.

The pieces of armour on the floor immediately gathered and soon reattached itself and stood back up.

“Young Lord, I have increased to the strength of Mid D rank. Be prepared. Have at thee!”

After hearing the power behind that voice that ordered it to be silent, the greater spirit has become more respectful towards the boy whom the words came from. However, it understands that it has a contract to fulfil and therefore it continued the combat test.

The armour sped forward at twice the speed it had before. This swiftness is incomparable to what it used previously, and the change in pace is enough to throw many veteran fighters off-balance after getting used to a three hours battle.

“Formless Style, Breaking the swaying cherry blossom!”

After completed the basic movements of the Formless Style, Kairos moved on to try out the skills. The sudden acceleration of the armour did not throw him off his pace, but instead, he prepared the most appropriate counter-measure. The reason for this was the combination of his Soul Perception and the new Formless Style.

The former gave him a heads-up on things, while the latter provided the proper skills to counter. It was a huge change from the past.

Within the original sword art manual, there are several techniques mentioned. Combat techniques are classified into Heaven, Earth, Xuan, and Huang grades in descending order depending on how potent they are. Though those written in the original sword art manual were all at the lowest Huang grade, Kairos converted all of them over to become his moves.

He has a suspicion that these skills might be the legendary transcending types that could slowly become stronger when his ability improves. However, at his level, he could only be considered as a beginner.

The combat arts are all categorised by their levels of mastery. Those that started practising and reached the first level of understanding are at the stage of initial mastery, followed by basic, core, superior and finally, the highest level perfected mastery.

Like how he had destroyed the armour before by striking at its two shoulder plates and then breaking through its breastplate, Kairos repeated this exact move, however, this time he completed the sequence within a breath. The chain of movements flowed like a single river turning into a combat skill.

This martial arts technique which targeted the armour’s shoulders and chest is not a fixed form that always aims at the same points, but one which changes accordingly to the opponent’s weak points. Just like the name of the stance, this style is formless, therefore if the opponent’s weak spots are elsewhere, then Kairos would’ve struck other parts of the enemy.

The armour that shot forward were smashed back without even the time to react. Kairos’ Swallow struck it like a three-headed dragon causing the Greater Metal Spirit to crush into the wall once more, landing at the exact same spot as before and smashing into pieces.

“Again!” Kairos shouted. His voice is filled with determination to see how far he can go.

Outside of this combat room, the others have already stopped their measurements and crowded at the viewing crystal that is placed outside.

Soon, the armour reformed itself. This time, the greater spirit of metal has empowered its suit to the Peak of D rank as it rushed at the young boy.

“Formless Style, crushing the mountains, striking the moon!”

Kairos spun his Swallow in front of him like a fan. Without letting it slow down, he brought the twirling weapon behind his back with a single arm and released it in mid-air.

The Swallow hovered behind him, and instead of decelerating, the flame and frost on its two blades caused its kinetic force to slowly accumulate.

Then bending his knees like a coiled up spring, he leapt forward to meet with the armour’s charge.

His hand shot out backwards and gripped the handle of the Swallow neatly as the weapon falls perfectly onto his outreached palm. The kinetic energy was not lost but instead transferred because of the skill.

Pulling the weapon from behind, he sent it pummelling downwards like a lance with a powerful thrust and smashed straight into the helmet of the animated armour.

With a tremendous crash, the armour was pinned headfirst into the ground, but even before its boots of armour could land on the ground, Kairos reversely spun his Swallow.

The curved blade on the other end sliced forward like a reaping sickle, and with a great speed that easily matched Edward’s arrows, he sliced upwards cutting a crescent strike across the breastplate.

Without offering resistance, the entire suit of armour was split into two as its gauntlets and boots shot off like missiles by the impact.

*GASP*

“Did he defeat something two grades above him with one move?”

The uproar in the other room had even the principal glued to the viewing crystal. Meanwhile, Kairos is preparing his next fight.

Like before, the armour slowly recombined but this time it took a while longer for the metal spirit to fix the titan ranked equipment that was cut into two.

Its Peak D ranked barrier and Titan rank armour have proved useless against Kairos’ refined frost and fire Swallow that is now using the Formless Style offensive arts and infused with energy.

This time after it reformed, it ascended into Entry C rank, raising its speed and power by several folds once again.

Feeling its increase in strength, Kairos responded by enchanting his body with his life force, using a smaller amount that is just enough to equal his opponent so that he may have longer stamina.

“Come,” He said.