"You have 30 seconds to retrieve any items that you feel may be of use in this battle. Your time starts now." The voice said, and then it began to count down.
Calibri stared at the rusty Golem for a moment, tapping his cheek. It wasn't moving to attack him just yet, but it stared at him with its red eyes, almost curiously. With a deep sniff, Calibri concluded that it had to have been made with iron. He wasn't sure if there were any other metals, but he could definitely tell that iron was the most prevalent one.
He swiped his left hand across the air, making his luggage unshrink and he quickly began to rummage through his medical supplies, quickly glancing at roots and powders that he had.
Kol dodged a heavy slash from Cloud, skidding backward. He took the opportunity to glance at Calibri.
"Is he seriously playing with his flowers and crystals now?" He asked breathlessly, almost affronted at the calm face and nonchalance.
Haochen shot several arrows, enchanting them so that they followed both Kol and Cloud in an attempt to strike them. He too looked over in confusion.
Calibri was looking at a few crystals and glancing at some strangely shaped bottles.
Cloud sent his scythe flying toward Haochen, it moved at if it were a boomerang, curving when Haochen dodged and returning to Cloud.
"Seems like you don't value your neck, Haochen," Cloud said.
Haochen looked at him distastefully and pulled out three more arrows, sending them at Cloud from different directions. The wild-hearted boy dodged them and also the incoming blade from Kol.
"Why are you so slippery?" Kol snapped at him.
"Oh trust me, that's a very good thing!"
"Y-You creep!" Kol said, unleashing a barrage of attacks upon him. In response, Cloud laughed and continued to dodge and bombard Haochen with sporadic attacks.
Meanwhile, Calibri took several items, shrunk several of them, and popped them into his forearm covers. He'd found exactly what he was looking for.
The area around him seemed to expand, just as it had done before on the stage. Now, there was more than enough space on the four sides of the stage for Calibri.
"-four, three, two, one. Begin."
Instantly, the golem shot forward, bringing both its huge fists down onto the spot where Calibri stood, and the boy in question jumped backward, avoiding the blow easily. In his hand, he held a forest green glass bottle and a delicate-looking blue bottle.
He flicked his left index finger up and slapped his hand on the ground, making four ridiculously enormous, metallic-looking stones suddenly poke through the ground...
Calibri clenched his fist, causing all four stones to tremble for a moment before turning into what looked like bracelets.
Before he could do anything else, the Golem took another swing at him, but he dodged it again. Calibri was starting to feel dizzy. He jumped up onto the Golem's head and then decided to run in the direction it's back had been facing. His intention was to get to the side of the stage opposite the side they were currently fighting on, but he couldn't simply walk over because of the barricade enclosing the other boys and preventing him from getting back in.
He didn't have his dagger-whips out either to do the quickened version of the Nullifying spell, so he had no choice but to run as fast as he could. Before his feet left the Golem's head, he stretched out his hand towards the ground and shot out what looked like rapid miniature explosions.
"What's going on over there?" Cloud muttered to himself. Glancing over allowed him to deduce that Calibri was somehow trying to make a canal leading from the stone bracelets to the other end of the stage.
He was sprinting very quickly, but the Golem was huge and followed closely. When Calibri reached the other side, he looked back at the golem and jumped back on its head.
The golem swung it's hand up in an attempt of hitting him but missed. In the meantime, Calibri took the opportunity to mix the contents of the green bottle into the blue one. Jumping back down onto the floor, he continued to form the canal all the way back to the diamond bracelets. Simultaneously, he wordlessly cast a spell on the bottle making the contents churn on its own.
He shrunk the bottle and quickly stowed it in his sleeves, unsheathing his daggers.
The diamond hilts glinted against the lighting of the room. Calibri exhaled and began to teleport. He first kicked it upside the head, then disappeared and reappeared near its feet to attack its ankles. Then he was suddenly kicking its back, and then it's head again.
Though the attacks were not strong, it was beginning to confuse the Golem, making it turn in all directions to try and catch him. It almost seemed agitated, but its irritation heightened when the four bracelets from earlier also began to fly at it, hitting it hard and causing it to stumble.
The Golem let out a cry of fury and moved its hands rapidly. Calibri dodged the blows but continued his relentless attacks, pulling out the little bottles he'd stowed away earlier and smashing them on the ground to create smoke bombs. Very soon, the Golem was stumbling around, disconcerted.
At this point, Calibri spread open his fingers and the large bracelets flew to the Golems wrists and ankles. When he clenched his fists, the stone bracelets began to squeeze around these parts. The Golem looked at them and tried to hit them off, but in it it's distraction, Calibri took the opportunity to raise his palm upward and swipe his hand in the direction of the roof, then bring his hand down in a vertical motion, crouching down so his palm touched the ground.
As if following his hand motions, the bracelets shot down towards the ground, forcing the Golem to be flattened against it, restrained.
It was as if an immense amount of gravitational force was acting on the bracelets, to the extent that they even sunk further down into the ground, pulling the golem down to at least 6 feet. The two canals that led to it from the opposite side of the stage were perfectly positioned. Knowing that the Golem was strong and that he had less than a few minutes before it broke free of its restraints, Calibri ran to the other side of the stage.
Haochen was covered in sweat from his own relentless fight but took the risk of looking at the Verbatian prince who had smacked his hand on the wall to make a small edge high up near the roof area of the wall.
Calibri jumped up to it and crouched, looking across the stage at the restrained golem on the other side. He looked back at the bottle and started writing down an enchantment on it. It wasn't the neatest, but it would do.
After a few seconds, the bottle started to make bubbling noises before duplicating. With a slight pause, Calibri held both hands out with the two bottles and let the contents start pouring into the canal. The entire canal ran from the spot below him right up to the Golem in one large continuous circle, but once the liquid started pouring out of the bottle, it didn't stop. It moved out rapidly and began to fill the canal and the pit with the Golem too at an alarming rate.
Once it was full, Calibri swished his finger left making the liquid in the part of the canal on his left side flow to the left, around the stage, and to the Golem on the other side. He swiped right and the same happened in the opposite direction. The Golem was wildly trying to free itself.
Calibri clicked both his fingers and suddenly the liquid began to move rapidly in their respective directions, but interestingly, once the liquid from the respective sides hit the golem, it moved back to where it had been dropped, making the liquid flow in a rapid cycle. Golden eyes flicked about the canals.
The liquid was a simple mixture of Sodium Chloride crystals and water. At a normal rate, saltwater would take a long time to further corrode the iron, but with the fast flow of the water, it would be quicker. And even quicker when he turned up the heat.
He pulled out his daggers, crossed them against his chest, and whipped down making the gold and purple lighting everyone had seen before reappear. Once the lightning touched the water, it began to heat up, and the Golem began to scream.
Haochen and the others stopped fighting and began to cover their ears.
"WHAT THE HELL!?" Kol shouted, dropping his saber.
Calibri let go of the daggers and let them hover on their own, heating the water with unforgiving, continuous zaps of lighting. He winced upon hearing the scream, and flicked his wrist towards the creature, making a large bubble sort of structure form over the canals, his daggers, and over the entire Golem.
No sound could be heard from within it, and soon the entire envelopment began to glow white and gold. One could vaguely see what was happening within it.
The boys uncovered their ears and looked at the bubble-type of enclosure, stunned and wondering what in the world Calibri was doing. It was Kol who realized first what he did. His mouth dropped open and he looked at Calibri with wide eyes.
"How did he-?"
"What?" Cloud asked.
Haochen's eyes widened upon the realization too. He looked between Calibri and the glowing enclosure.
"What? What happened?" Cloud asked.
"That's time-warp cultivation!" Kol said.
Cloud's jaw dropped. "That-No that's not possible," Kol said, his mouth hanging open.
Calibri let out a slight groan. He really needed to end this battle and leave before he fainted.
The heat, the saltwater, the rapid flow, and the time-warp spell should have expanded the iron to an immovable shape. The stones he'd used to restrain the Golem were Hafnium Carbide, which should have also corroded in the bombardment of conditions making the corrosion on the Golem's limbs even more enormous. The Golem wouldn't be able to fight anymore because it wouldn't be able to move.
After a minute, the time-warp envelope faded into golden sparkles, and sure enough, a massive lump of corroded iron lay where the Golem once lay.
Kol's eyebrows furrowed.
"That was definitely a time-warp. You can't create corrosion that quickly without it. Especially not alone."
"But wasn't that one of the lost cultivation techniques?" Haochen reasoned.
Kol sun on him. "It's supposed to be, so why the hell does that princess know how to do it?"
Calibri jumped down from his little perch and picked up his daggers.
"Congratulations. You have defeated your opponent, and we are very impressed with your cultivation level. You may now leave. Enter the portal to be transported to your dormitory region. Walk towards the door that has a portrait of you on it. After changing, you may follow the map placed on your bed back to the hall."
Calibri swiped his hand, drawing the salt out of the water. He opened the bottle and let it go in before swiping his hand again to shrink down the water and return it to his bottle. It was polite not to leave an area filthy, so he clapped his hands and reversed the damage he'd made.
If Cloud and Kol could drop their jaws any lower they would have, but they couldn't without unhinging them.
Even Haochen's face was the epitome of gobsmacked.
Calibri shook the dizziness off and moved towards the portal that had formed near him. He looked back at the others still trapped on the stage.
"Good luck then. I'll see you soon. Be safe." He said with a bow. With that, he entered the portal.
Cloud glanced at the others. "Well, I don't know about you guys, but I feel inferior."
Haochen just blinked, stunned that Calibri was more powerful than he let on.
Calibri stepped through the portal and found himself in a courtyard. It was absolutely beautiful, with white stone walkways, continuous red and white imperial themed buildings all around the square area. At the center was a cherry blossom tree surrounded by a circular pond that was filled with koi fish. The petals floated off to the edges of the pond.
Calibri closed his eyes, and they changed back to violet. He felt sick.
One simple talisman was enough to take him down. He did even understand the inscription on it meant, so he couldn't remove it. Why was he such a weakling? Slowly, streams of blood began to flow from his ears, the aftermath of the Golems screams. He was afraid to take a step, afraid of falling down.
"Your Majesty?"
Calibri opened his eyes to see Alexei running towards him.
Alexei and Flora had already finished their battles and had been pacing in the courtyard, awaiting the return of their prince after scanning all the portraits and realizing they were allocated the same dormitory area.
When they saw him swaying like a limp stem, their blood ran cold and they ran to him immediately.
Calibri opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, he slumped forward. Alexei caught him before he hit the ground, his eyes were wide and horrified.
"Your Majesty?!"