On the fighting floor of the Quarreling Quarry, Donovan and Sullivan were now in charging distance of each other, with only the announcer/referee standing between them. The referee could feel the animosity boiling between the two combatants, but he still had to follow procedure.
"Red Corner! Are you ready?," he asked the Wolfe Family scion.
Donovan gave a proud smirk at the announcer's question. "Of course sir, always." The young master took up a fighting stance and as he clenched his fists, mechanisms could be heard turning in the continues of his sleeves. Seconds later, a pair of wolf-claw blades shot out of his sleeves and settled on his knuckles.
"Blue Corner! Are you ready?"
"Just ring the bell so I can smash his face in already!," Sullivan shouted while clenching his fists. He had been waiting for this moment for quite some time and he was starting to get impatient.
Noting the readiness of the two fighters, the referee prepared to jump out of the arena after signaling for the fight to start.
"First to knockout or ring out the other wins," the referee quickly said, "Begin fighting...now!"
The referee leaped out of the arena, while at the same time, Donovan and Sullivan rushed at each other like bats out of hell.
Despite going at roughly the same speed, Sullivan managed to close the gap faster thanks to his long limbs. Once he had a clear point of attack, Sullivan struck out hard and fast
[Rock Breaker!]
Earth aether began to coalesce around Sullivan's fist as he sent it flying towards Donovan's head in the form of a wild haymaker punch.
Sensing the aether fluctuating around Sullivan's fist, Donovan proceeded to stop his charge and spin backwards, going against the flow of the haymaker in order to use it's momentum to increase his distance.
However, Sullivan was not one to give up the attack.
Sullivan leaned further into the punch and kicked his opposite upward. Using the momentum of his missed punch, he launched a backwards roundhouse kick that roared with the power of Earth and Water aether.
[Erosion Cutter Kick!]
The sound of rushing water crashing into stone echoed throughout the quarry as Sullivan swung his leg at the retreating, spinning form of Donovan.
'Try dodging this, you pampered mutt! Even if you avoid my kick, I'll just follow up with another attack until I hit you or spin you out of this arena!,' Sullivan thought to himself as he began to circulate aether into his fists. While such aggressive behavior would normally be considered reckless, in this case it was the smartest move for him to make against someone like Donovan Wolfe.
It's an open secret that every member of the Wolfe Family, from branch members to core members, is expected to master a weapon to the point of perfection within their lifetime. From tonfas to swords to hammers to spears, people knowledgeable about Stone Claw City's inhabitants could be certain that if they ran into someone wearing the Wolfe Family emblem, they were probably armed.
As a proud heir to the Wolfe Family name, Donovan Wolfe was no exception to this idea. In fact, he was the golden boy standard.
It was not uncommon for the Four Great Powers of Stone Claw to send their disciples and heirs out to do more "practical" forms of training, so it was a known fact that Donovan became mildly infamous for his perchance of ripping his opponents to shreds via usage of his handmade wolf claw gauntlets.
People, especially Sullivan in this instance, knew that Donovan was the aggressive attacker type who paid very little attention to defensive arts. He preferred to use mobility arts in order to avoid attacks and follow up with hyper aggressive countermoves. This had lead to the belief that if one wanted to attempt to defeat Donovan, that one had to be aggressive from the start and make it nigh impossible for Donovan to catch his breath long enough to set up an attack.
Granted, knowing how someone fights and understanding how they fight are very different things.
"Sullivan's gonna lose if he keeps attacking like that," Zhen Liu suddenly commented to Jin Fang.
"Huh?"
"Take a look."
Sullivan kept up his offensive, alternating between his two attack arts in a wild spinning motion. All the while, Donovan just kept doing his odd spinning evasive maneuver, always seeming just out of reach of Sullivan's attacks.
"What are you talking about? Looks like Sullivan is going to spin Donovan right out of the arena at this rate."
Zhen Liu didn't immediately respond, instead he nodded in the direction of a middle-aged guy who was sitting a bit further away from them. "See where that guy is staring?"
Jin Fang followed the middle-aged man's gaze and noticed that it wasn't fixated on the dueling combatants on the arena floor, rather it was focused on the floor itself. Jin Fang squinted her eyes in order to focus on what he was seeing.
The realization hit her like a brick once she comprehended what was going on.
"Oh. That's what you meant."
"Yup."
With their bird's eye view, Jin Fang and Zhen Liu noticed that despite it appearing that Sullivan had the advantage and was just only inches away from caving Donovan's skull in, the reality was that Donovan had ensnared Sullivan in a trap!
Everytime Sullivan swung out to hit Donovan with a punch or a kick, Donovan would simply spin away, but every time he spun, he would change the direction. Sullivan was under the impression that he was pressuring the Wolfe Family scion and that he was about to cause a ring out, but the reality was the Donovan had been leading him in a circle the whole time.
Such a tactic wouldn't normally work on someone like Sullivan, but there was two very important reasons why it had worked this time: rage and assumption.
Sullivan was too blinded by his anger towards Donovan and he was too sure of his method of defeating him. Combing these two factors with the fact that Donovan was much more calculating than his fighting style suggested, Sullivan was headed towards disaster.
"Here comes the counter attack."