Shu had put his right arm over his eyes to protect them from the light. Once a few seconds passed, he felt that something had changed around him; that feeling was what caused him to uncover his eyes, and that's when he saw the changes he felt.
"What the hell?" he thought out loud.
He was no longer inside of Rose Academy's auditorium. He was teleported to what seemed like an ancient gladiator's arena. It was very big, and there was no audience. The only thing apart from the arena that Shu saw that caught his attention was that on the other side of said arena, there stood a figure, which he assumed was another person taking the test to attend Rose Academy.
"How are we-" he started thinking out loud once more but was immediately interrupted by a voice that he already recognized despite having first heard it less than 10 minutes ago.
"Hello again, everyone, and welcome to the Second Test!" Akio's voice appeared from who knows where. Shu probably didn't want to rethink it, but the voice startled him a little.
"What the…where's his voice coming from?" he thought to himself once more.
"And now, it's finally time to reveal what is the Second Test!" Akio started. "This is what we like to call…the Battle Test!"
"Battle Test?"
"In this Test, your goal is to win the battle against the other person that's inside of your arena. Oh, and in case any of you are curious as to how I placed each of you in an arena, my magic grants me the ability to create pocket dimensions, and since there somehow were exactly 500 of you, it made it much easier to place you in fights like these."
"That's so interesting…Have I heard about that before? It's so familiar…" Shu didn't really know where, but he felt like he'd read about that type of magic before.
"In order to actually win this battle, you must knock out your opponent's "health bar" to 0.
"Health bar? What does he mean?"
"This "health bar" is located in the top right of your field of vision."
Right after he heard this message, Shu looked at that exact location of his vision and surely enough, Akio was correct. "How did I not see that before…?" the bar showed the picture of someone's face, and to the right, there was the actual bar, with a green line going from its left to its right.
"Once that bar hits 0, you will faint. There will be 3 ways to win: make your opponent faint by making their health hit 0, make them yield, or the most common of the three: do more damage to your opponent's health than they do to yours. This is due to the fact that you will have a time limit of 5 minutes for this Test. Of course, killing your opponent is not allowed, so please don't go crazy. And also, for anyone who might eb asking, the reason you can only see your opponent's health bar is, so you don't start running away once you see it."
"Alright then. Let's do this!" Shu said to pump himself up. He then waited just in case, so he didn't do anything wrong.
"And that should be everything. Please start walking closer to the middle of the arena in order to begin the Test."
Shu started doing as he was told, and the figure to the other side started doing the same thing.
Once they both got closer to the middle, Akio's voice reappeared.
"Oh, and one more thing."
"Hm?" Shu said, and he could hear the other person inside the arena do the same thing, but he didn't really care about it.
"Whoever fails this Test will not be enrolled into Rose Academy."
"Huh?" Shu thought twice before he said something else. "What?!" he was surprised that he heard what he heard.
So, I'm going to have win this at all costs, huh? He thought while he looked at his opponent, which was the first time that he was able to clearly see how he looked; the picture next to his health bar wasn't very clear for him to see.
"Good luck, everyone! The battle will begin in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…"
Shu's opponent had short dirty blonde and a pair of vibrant dark yellow eyes.
"5."
His opponent was standing there, looking at his fingernails, for some reason while his other hand was in his pants' pocket. Just to say something, Shu said a simple phrase. The one that Akio had said a few seconds ago.
"Good luck." He told his opponent.
"4."
"Thanks." His opponent responded. "You too. But I don't need it." He finished.
"Huh?" Shu questioned his responded.
"3."
"His opponent grinned and looked at him. "I'm going to win anyway."
"2."
Shu smiled in a "serious" way in order to respond to his. "Sure. we'll see about that." He added. He wasn't really extremely serious; he'd done it as a way to taunt his opponent.
"1."
They were both facing each other now. And as they were both waiting…
"Begin!"
Right when Akio said the final word, Shu immediately disappeared somehow.
"Huh?" his opponent said, trying to see where he went. In reality, Shu wasn't that far away.
He'd ran somewhere he knew his opponent wouldn't look at when he did so. As he started running towards him, he put his right arm in a punching position, and the diamond shaped symbol appeared in the back of it. His right fist became engulfed with fire. He jumped behind him and was ready to punch him.
"Flaming Fist!" he said, which caused his opponent to turn around. He then realized that it probably wasn't a good idea to have shouted his attack's name. He sometimes liked shouting out his attack's names just because eh thought it was cool. His entire family thought it was strange, and so did Kaede even though she didn't really care that much, but he didn't care at all.
When he was about to punch his opponent, he saw him putting his right fist in a punching position. His fist was surrounded with yellow energy Shu wasn't able to recognize. Because he thought he was going to get punched, Shu closed his eyes for a second, and felt his opponent's attack.
He then opened them less than a second later when he felt the attack and saw that he hadn't attacked him. He'd just used his fist to counter his fist. Analyzing the yellow energy he thought he didn't recognize before, he now knew what it was.
So he's a lightning mage… he thought.
Shu was still in his attacking position, being held in mid air by both of the fists' pressure.
"Take this!" his opponent said while grinning whilst Shu was distracted thinking about everything. The lightning that was surrounding his fist shot out of it, hitting Shu directly.
"AHH!" Shu exclaimed, being shot back by the lightning and falling on the ground due to it.
"Ow…" he tried to get back up, but the lightning shocked him when he was very close to and caused him to go in a kneeling position. "Are you kidding me…right now?"
He saw his opponent walk towards him in his peripheral vision, and then he stopped.
"What was that attack?! I don't think you can do a sneak attack if you reveal yourself behind me! That's so stupid!" his opponent said whilst Shu was still struggling to move.
"Yeah…I guess it was…stupid…" he muttered under his breath.
"This is why you're going to lose. For fuck's sake I can never have any good fights with mages like seriously!" the opponent added to his insult.
Maybe he is right. Why DID I even do that? Am I seriously going to lose this early in the fight? He was still struggling to move.
But then, he remembered what was at stake. His chance to enroll into one of the 7 magic institutes in the world. The chance to finally live around magic. The chance to…discover new things.
"No…" he said quietly.
"Huh? What was that?!" his opponent shouted.
"I…refuse to lose."
"What…?"
Shu wasn't going to take this silly little insult. He wanted to enroll into Rose Academy, and he was going to get that chance!
I refuse to lose!" Shu shouted and used all of his strength to free himself of the lightning.
"How the…how did you…?!" his opponent was shocked.
Shu spent so much time training to be in the SR, and he was going to put those skills he learned in this fight.
The symbol on Shu's hand appeared again, and his hand became engulfed with fire once more. His opponent tried to attack him using both of his fists covered with lightning, but Shu was able to avoid it by doing 2 backflips back-to-back. When he landed straight up, the opponent shot 3 bolts of lightning at him, and he was able to block them by punching them with his flaming fist.
Shu took his right hand and made a specific motion. He extended his right arm to his right, as if it was the shape of a T without the other side. While his hand was covered with fire, he brought it from his right to his left side, which caused a big flaming ring to appear in front of him.
The ring levitated in a fast motion toward his right hand, which was currently in a position similar to a man bowing before an audience after a magnificent play.
And then, he extended his arm forward in a fast motion, and he shouted the name of his attack in a confident sounding voice.
"Ring Of Fire!" the ring was shot towards his opponent.
"Ring of Fire" was a ranged spell Shu had created to make ranged combat easier for him. Even though he excelled at melee combat with his fists, he decided to add some ranged attacks to his arsenal to make it easier to fight enemies during his missions in the SR.
He noticed that his opponent refused to move from his spot, and he could tell why. He was too overconfident that he was underestimating him.
"You think whatever that is can actually make me lose? How about you look at this?!"
He covered both of his hands with lightning and once the ring got close enough to him, he blocked it with his hands, as if he was holding it.
"You see? This isn't that-" his talk got interrupted by a feeling of intense burn on both his hands. "AGH! How strong is this fire?! I've never felt fire THIS hot! What the hell?!"
And right after he finished talking…
"ARGH!" The ring exploded, which caused his opponent to get launched back.
"Does that mean that he's…?" Shu looked at his health bar. And it wasn't empty yet. It was red.
His opponent slowly stood back up from the ground and looked at him, while in a weakened state.
"You see this?!" he started again. "You aren't going to beat me! And with only 1 and a half minutes left, you won't do enough damage to do so!" he said, and then began to laugh.
"Just how arrogant are you?" Shu said once he started laughing.
"W-what did you say- "
"And I'll let you know that your health is almost at 0. Do you REALLY think you can win like that?"
"Sh-shut up! I'll win! You'll see!"
Once his opponent finished being as arrogant as he was, he covered both of his entire arms in lightning.
"Huh?!" Shu said in a shocked state.
"Check THIS out, then! Time to lose!"
His opponent dashed towards him and hit Shu as he was doing a backflip to avoid it. He hit him on his right leg, which caused Shu to have to move slower. His opponent started to dash towards him again.
"Take this!"
But then, Shu smiled. In the serious way he'd done during the beginning of the battle again.
"Huh?! What're you smiling at?!" his opponent said with an angry tone.
"Do you think THAT'S going to stop me? Think again!"
Shu extended both of his arms which were currently covered with fire and said fire "detached" from his arms and started to float around him, making many small fire rings.
"Let's see how you avoid this! Ring Barrage!" all the rings launched towards his opponent, who was still running towards him.
A smaller version of "Ring of Fire, "Ring Barrage" makes many small rings around Shu and then he proceeds to launch them towards his opponent or, if extremely necessary, keep them around him as sort of "drones" to cover him from attacks. He doesn't do this often since it takes a considerate amount of energy from him.
The opponent grinned as he stopped running and punched all the rings to make them disappear. "Ha! That was nothing-"
He interrupted himself because Shu disappeared again.
"Oh, don't tell me…" he laughed under his breath. "Don't tell me you're…"
"HEYAA!" Shu exclaimed as he was about to punch him again but got stopped by another lightning fist.
"Didn't you learn from last time, you idiot?!" he shouted at Shu.
"Oh, yes, I did. Yes, I did."
"Oh really? Explain how-" as he was talking while looking at him, Shu used his other flaming fist to punch him in the face, which caused the lightning user to fall to the ground.
"Ow! How didn't I notice such a simple move?!"
And now, Shu dashed towards the lightning user. As the lightning user stood up, he once again covered his hands with lightning due to being too tired to cover his hands, and Shu had already covered his.
"Flaming Fist!" Shu shouted again and tried to hit, but was blocked by a lightning fist.
"You…will not…win!"
Shu and the lightning user kept hitting each other with their fists, due to both being extremely tired.
As they were doing so, the heard a voice say something that made the both of them even more nervous.
"Battles end in 15 seconds"
Oh no! Shu thought. If I don't win now, I won't be able to…
Shu then looked at his opponent's health, and realized that it was almost gone.
Alright. I have to win in 1 more attack!
Shu made another backflip to get far away from his opponent.
"What's wrong?! Chicken?!" his opponent taunted him.
Shu stood in the same place for 5 seconds, and then heard the final countdown:
"The battles end in 10, 9…"
As he heard this, he charged up his fists and once more dashed towards his opponent.
"8, 7, 6…"
"Come on! Let's see if you can win! Hahaha!"
"5…"
He put his left fist in an attacking position and when he was going towards him…
"4…"
He slipped and seemed like he was going to fall. His opponent saw this and laughed again.
"Oh, what's wrong?! Too tired to-" but then he realized too late…he didn't slip.
"3, 2…"
Shu looked up and still dashing towards his opponent, readied up his right fist and after slightly jumping.
"1!"
"Take THIS!" he hit him right in his face.
"Battles over!"
The exact moment he hit his face, the same bright light surrounded the both of them.