"The winner is Jason!" Vict announces, causing the crowd to go wild. Hearing himself be declared the winner, Jason releases the blade of wind and falls over, passing out from over exhausting his wind aura.
"I'll win next time, for sure," Indra says, catching Jason before he hits the ground. The two of them wait there until the healers show up to bring them out of the arena.
'At least they both seem fine,' Sydra thinks as he watches them get carried off the arena. During this time, Vict has several people around the arena fix the barrier, and the king goes back to his seat.
"Alright, the next two batteling will be Sydra and Percy!" Vict announces, getting the crowd all worked up. This is what most of them had come to see, as when the announcement went out for the tournament, it stated that a traveler was going to be fighting against one of the academy's top students.
Getting up, Sydra made his way into the arena, which had been turned back into solid ground. On the other side of the arena, Percy stands there, waiting for Sydra to finish getting to his position.
"Unlike the failure that fought you earlier, I'm not going to go easy on you!" Percy shouts, his arms stretched out. Pointing his palms towards the ground, Percy raises two smalls columns of ice into them, where he then shatters them and pulls out two slick blue swords.
"The Terrain has been chosen!" Vict announces, sending his aura into a rune that resembles a large wave of water. Suddenly, water starts spouting out of the ground, and the area Sydra is standing on turns into a raised island. There are several other islands around the arena, which would normally be used to get across the Sea Terrain, but neither Sydra nor Percy plans on using them.
"Let the battle begin!" Several fireballs go off above the arena, causing everyone to shout and cheer as both Sydra and Percy shoot towards one another.
Instead of changing the entire terrain into ice as he had done earlier, Percy skates across the waves, creating a path with spikes of ice while he goes and sending them towards Sydra. The spikes of ice each have a tint of blue lightning around them, which both increases their speed, and lethality.
Dodging the incoming spikes of ice, Sydra manipulates the water underneath his feet to propel himself forward. Every step he takes sends him forward several meters, and Sydra is quickly closing in on Percy.
'Why isn't he changing the entire terrain like he normally does? I can't flash behind him until he does,' Sydra thinks as he creates a wall of water to block off several attacks. Dropping the wall of water, Sydra creates a spear of amber lightning and hurls it back towards Percy.
The spear spins through the air at speeds that only the king and a few others can follow, but Percy is one of those few and he creates a massive wall of ice spikes right before the spear can hit him. As the spear slams into the wall of ice, it explodes, sending chunks of ice flying through the air until they crash down into the water.
'Now!' Sydra thinks, creating a portal of amber behind him. Using the limited visibility people have of him, Sydra activates one of the abilities of the portal and several chains fly out of it, weaving their way through the falling pieces of ice until they get to Percy.
'What are these?' Percy thinks, using his ice blades to knock the amber chains back. However, each time he knocks them back, the amber chains seem to increase their speed, until Percy is forced to activate his lightning aura to keep pace with them.
As his body is covered in a layer of blue lightning, the chains lunging at him seem too slow to a stop, but that is simply because Percy is moving at a speed so fast the chains appear frozen. Walking through them, Percy taps each of the chains with his ice swords, covering them with a layer of ice so cold that the lightning freezes over.
'Now to find out where these chains came from,' Percy thinks, flashing through the ice until he reaches the amber portal. Looking around, he expects to see Sydra somewhere around, but Percy is unable to find him.
At least until Percy feels a foot slam into his back with enough force to send him flying through the portal. The foot came from none other than Sydra, who jumps into the portal after Percy, leaving the onlookers to wonder what is happening on the other side.
Within the amber portal, Percy finds himself standing on a floor made from condensed amber lightning, inside a domed room. The top of the room is covered in an amber cloud, and every few seconds the sound of lightning rumbling could be heard coming from within.
"What do you think?" Sydra asks, landing on the ground behind Percy. Whipping around, Percy lunges towards Sydra, but a wall of amber shoots up in his way. Slamming his fist into the wall, Percy creates a few cracks, but they quickly disappear as Sydra adds more lightning to it.
"What is this place?" Percy shouts, cutting at the wall with one of his ice swords. The sword manages to slice through the wall, but Sydra quickly puts up another one.
"You can keep cutting through the walls, but I think you might want to focus on what's happening above you," Sydra says, motioning towards the amber cloud. Glancing back, Percy notices that the cloud is starting to glow in the middle, and the hair on his head is starting to stick up.
'Crap,' Percy thinks, a large amber lightning bolt in the shape of a dragon slamming down into him. The lightning bolt has enough force to burn through the armor of ice Percy created at the last moment and send him flying back out of the portal.
Watching him fly back out, a blank look comes over Sydra's face, "Well, that's not what I wanted to happen,"
Sydra jumps out of the portal after Percy, closing the amber vortex as he goes. Back outside, he finds Percy standing hunched over on one of the islands with waves crashing into it from all sides.
"Never... have I ever been treated in such a way!" Percy shouts, glaring at Sydra as he raises his hands into the air. Slamming them down, Percy releases a huge blast of ice aura that spreads out around him, turning all the churning waves into ice.
'This is it!' Sydra thinks, activating all of his amber lightning at once throughout his body. As the lightning travels through him, veins of lightning appear on his skin, all heading towards his heart.
With so much lightning flowing through him, even Sydra's eyes glow with the amber light, and everything around him seems to stop moving. Looking around, Sydra notices water droplets hanging in the air, sent flying by the power behind Percy's attack.
Making his way across the arena, Sydra studies the ice as he goes, some of which was still partly water. Pulling his gaze away from the ice, Sydra turns back to Percy, who had blue lightning forming around his body.
"So even other people's lightning is frozen in this state," Sydra says, flicking one of the blue bolts of lightning out of his way. Stepping past it, Sydra studies Percy's face, which was frozen while he was shouting something about power beyond Sydra's understanding.
"You said you wanted to feel power beyond all understanding, right?" Sydra asks, smirking as he pulls back his fist. Clenching it tightly, Sydra directs all of the amber lightning into it, causing it to begin glowing, "Well, here, let me show you what that power feels like,"
Slamming his fist into Percy's face, Sydra sends him flying back, but before Percy's body can hit the barrier, Sydra is already there, punching him again. Sydra keeps doing this for the next few minutes, which is actually all done within the span of a second.
Outside of the arena, people are watching as the entire arena turns an amber color, but not even the king is able to see why, "Um... Rachel? You said this person was your friend, right?"
"Yeah..." Rachel says, her eyes widening as she watches the arena, "Are you able to see what's happening?"
The king shook his head, completely in shock at what he was seeing, "No... I just hope that Percy boy is okay,"
Inside the arena, Sydra feels his aura running out and decides to stop pummeling Percy. Slowing to a stop, Sydra grabs Percy by his shirt and creates a dagger made from water.
"Do you surrender?" Sydra asks, pointing the dagger towards Percy's bruised face. However, Percy is in too much shock to respond and simply passes out, his body covered in bruises and broken bones. Seeing this, Sydra sighs and drops Percy to the ground, before looking out to the silent crowd.