With my sword drawn, I took the measure of my attacker. He was young, though not as young as me. Early twenties, maybe? He wore a long white coat, with large golden pauldrons and shin guards, studded with rubies. His arrogant smirk, golden hair and upturned chin spoke of a certain attitude he held toward me. Perhaps he just looked down on everybody but himself. From his initial attacks, I could guess who this was. The aristocratic faction’s champion, Peter Arcellus, if I remembered correctly. His sun affinity was derived from the light affinity, which meant that affinity-wise, I was at a disadvantage.

That didn’t mean I would run away from a fight though.

“What is it, peasant? Cat got your tongue?” he asked mirthfully.

“Hardly.” I replied stoically, before sending a sword arc his way.

He shifted to the right and leaned into his movement, narrowly avoiding the vertical black trail that passed by his previous location. He didn’t even bother counterattacking. Out of arrogance, maybe?

His loss.

At this point, enough mana floated around me for me to activate my maelstrom, which quickly grew to an impressive size. My black cyclone tore the surface of the forest into the air, sending debris flying in all directions.

Arcellus looked my maelstrom up and down.

“Impressive…” he said guardedly, before turning his palm to the sky, summoning four small flaming balls above it. They were brighter than normal fire would be. They were clearly not normal fireballs.

With a wave, he threw them at my maelstrom, which intercepted the projectiles, causing them to explode.

With an incredibly bright flash, four separate shockwaves erupted right on top of my spinning blades. The physical force of the shockwaves wasn’t enough to send me flying, and my maelstrom managed to persist, even at a disadvantage against the light-based mana.

I would have been able to dodge them normally, but while concentrating on my maelstrom, moving quickly was difficult.

Unfortunately, I had failed to account for one thing.

I felt the heat around me increase, to the point that my skin felt like it was lit aflame.

I grimaced, sweat forming on my forehead. I had underestimated the heat his attacks could create.

The metal of my armor was starting to heat up as well, nearly cooking me by itself. Luckily, my constitution was keeping me from being hurt too badly.

As my skin and flesh started to burn, my dark form kicked in, swiftly healing me from my mistake.

Arcellus didn’t know about that, though.

With an exaggerated moan, I launched myself away from the scorched craters, causing my maelstrom to dissipate.

“So that’s it, huh?” Arcellus said disinterestedly, before summoning more flaming orbs above his palms.

I put one of my hands behind my back and summoned my own [Overloaded orb]. A few seconds later, we were both done charging, so we threw our respective attacks at each other. Under the bright light of his attacks, I couldn’t even see my own attack anymore. As his flaming orbs shot at me, I used aura step to skip from tree to tree, the explosions I left behind causing the ground to shake. A moment later, Arcellus’ orbs hit random objects, because I had dodged out of the way.

That was nothing in comparison to the screeching sound of my own orb, though, because a black shockwave rocked the forest near my opponent’s location, sending nearby birds into the sky.

After the dust settled, it was clear my single attack had left a bigger crater than all of the small suns combined.

The only trace of my opponent was a knocked-over tree, torn in two by a flying object.

“Looks like you spoke too soon.” I said, almost to myself.

As I turned to leave, a voice came from behind me, surprising me slightly.

“It… seems so.” Arcellus’ voice spoke mockingly.

From behind the leftover tree stump, an arm appeared. It grabbed onto a loose piece of wood, and pulled up the rest of its body, revealing Arcellus, mostly unharmed, apart from some blood trickling down his forehead.

From his goofy smile, I could tell he was enjoying this.

“Looks like you’re strong after all! Let’s have some fun, you and me!”

“Sorry pal, I don’t swing that way.” I quipped back, frustrated that he managed to stay conscious.

Arcellus, however, just laughed uproariously at my comment, before drawing his sword, which started to shine in a golden light.

I brought up my own sword and started to whirl some overloaded mana around it. I wasn’t willing to use my intrusive skill yet, since I wanted to keep it for the singles tournament, but that didn’t mean that I would hold back in any other way.

For a few seconds, we just stared at each other, our hair floating in the whirlwind created by our clashing mana. Even Arcellus’ short, golden hair was standing sideways from the gale.

Then, all at once, everything moved. I shot forward at the exact same time as Arcellus, who shimmered slightly as he moved.

Our swords met, forcing both of us to dig our feet into the ground to remain stable.

I felt my overloaded mana course through my sword, similarly clashing with its opposing force. My mana was having a tough time dealing with the sun mana, but it managed to maintain its force, using its chaotic properties. If I still used normal dark mana, I would have lost that clash.

With a heave, we separated and flew into an onslaught of swift stabs, slashes and blocks. With my swordsmanship reaching the journeyman level, I could no longer be called a novice. Despite that, I wasn’t making any progress fighting Arcellus. He had an answer to everything. Every attack I made, he blocked, before countering with a swift and precise strike. After a while, I was starting to be pushed back. His swordsmanship was… creative… fluid, dynamic. He wasn’t even putting up a sweat, smiling in glee each time I blocked one of his strikes; which became increasingly difficult to deal with. It was like he was testing how much I could take.

Each second, his swordsmanship seemed to improve, and it wasn’t because of a skill, this I knew. No, Arcellus was just that good. This was someone that didn’t rely on the swordsmanship skill. He was a natural. A genius when it came to the sword.

I, in comparison, had almost no practice with weapons before awakening. I was just a kid that relied on skills and Doran’s training in this department.

Realizing I was outmatched in swordsmanship, I decided to back up with aura step, creating an explosion at my previous position, which knocked back my opponent.

We regarded each other for a moment. I had several options. I considered playing to my strengths and relying on my mobility and mana supply to overcome Arcellus, but that would take time. Time we didn’t have. We were supposed to be in the middle of gaining points, not fighting other seeded fighters. Pushing down my pride, I spoke up.

“How about we stop this here. We both need to gain points. We can fight in the next round.” I said diplomatically.

Arcellus chuckled.

“We could do that… But I want to fight now. It’s not everyday I come across an interesting opponent. Most of the other contestants are boring ants. Too weak to put up a fight, you get me?” he shrugged.

I grunted. What a dumbass. I wanted to fight too, but I didn’t want to lose first place because of one jackass, so I refused.

“Yeah… That’s not going to work for me. I’m leaving.”

A split second later, I shot to the right, as a spear of light struck my previous location, burning straight through a nearby boulder and leaving a smoldering hole.

“No, you’re not.” Arcellus declared, looking like a kid that had been denied dessert.

I smirked and broke out into a chuckle.

“You can’t keep me here, I’m afraid. Bye.”

Before he could even reply, my form turned into smoke, and my form disappeared.

I appeared some distance away, on a tree branch. Even from a few hundred meters away, I heard Arcellus' furious scream. I breathed a sigh of relief and decided to travel silently for a while. Aura step would have to wait, unfortunately.

~scene transition~

About half an hour later, I had procured our team another package and a defeated team, netting us 550 more points. When I moved to leave, Cerion appeared from the treeline, calling out to me just as I was about to apparate away.

“Arthur! Fancy seeing you here!”

I turned around and laughed, happy to see my friend again. Surprisingly, his blue leather attire was scorched in several places, ending up as no more than rags.

“Did you fight someone strong or something? You look like you come from a volcano.” I teased.

He chuckled.

“I could say the same about you.” he replied, pointing at my armor, which had melted in several places.

“Yeah, I came across that sun guy. I couldn’t defeat him quickly, so I gave up and went for more points. Did you fight him too?” I asked.

“No, I encountered the oil guy at one of the package places. He put the entire place to the torch. I managed to come out ahead and grab the package, though.”

“Good. Did you want to split up again or…?”

“No, with the emergence of some powerful competitors, I think it best we travel together for a while. The packages have become far fewer in number anyway.”

I nodded, agreeing with him. At this point, hunting teams would be easier than packages anyway.

We traveled together, coming across another two packages and three teams in an hour, netting us another 145O points, before all the lights in the sky were gone. A system notification appeared right as the last one disappeared.

Event notification: All packages have been collected! This is the top ten leaderboard:

Team A3: 10150 points.

Team A2: 9300 points.

Team A9: 7450 points.

Team B5: 6400 points.

Team A7: 5300 points.

Team B2: 4850 points.

Team C9: 3950 points.

Team A1: 3850 points.

Team E3: 3300 points.

Team D5: 3150 points.

Event notification: The final phase will now begin. 96 teams have survived the first 2 phases, but only 16 can go on to the final. From now on, a map will be available to all participants.

Slowly, a force field will appear on the outskirts of the forest, which will become smaller and smaller as time passes, pushing participants to the center of the forest. In one hour, the round will end.

At that point, only a third of the forest’s surface area will be available to you. The 16 teams with the most points by then, will go on to the next round.

“The final phase already? Since they mentioned the round would last the entire day before, so I thought it would take that long.” Cerion asked.

“Maybe it depends on how many teams are knocked out?” I replied in thought.

Cerion hummed.

“It seems that the organizer wanted to encourage battles between teams, but didn’t want to discount the value of points entirely. Hunting stronger teams will reward us with more points, but it will also take longer to defeat them. How do you want to play this?”

“I think heading right to the center will be our best bet. We look for a bit of high ground and search for opponents to fight. Stronger teams will hunt, weaker teams will hide on the outskirts. Splitting up is out of the question. If that oil dude alone was enough to fight you, adding his teammate to the mix might be too much to handle.” I analyzed.

Cerion nodded and agreed to my rudimentary plan. Truthfully, I wanted to head to the center to look for Arcellus. I hadn’t forgotten about our fight, after all.

I cracked my knuckles in anticipation, before shooting off into the sunset.