Kaede was too late to cover her eyes from the white light that surrounded everyone. Instead, she was only able to do it right after that'd happened.
"Ow! Are you kidding me?" she said with a slight whining tone, while she rubbed her eyes to relieve the pain she felt.
"Why does it have to be so…" she started but then got interrupted by herself looking at her surrounding area. She was in a gladiator's arena. The sky was very clear, and the clouds on the sky looked as white as ever.
"Is this…an arena?" she asked as if there was someone who could answer her question.
Right after asking herself that one question, she heard the voice of the overseer of the Test.
"Hello again, everyone, and welcome to the Second Test!" she heard Akio's voice perfectly, which seemed to come from the sky.
Kaede started thinking about what the Second Test could be. She went into a relatively deep thought for 5 or so seconds and thought of a few different possibilities. But then, she reached a fair conclusion while putting her right hand on her chin in a thinking position.
"Assuming that the fact that were inside of an arena is important, then this should be a-" she was interrupted once again by Akio's announcement.
"And now, it's finally time to reveal what the Second Test is!" Akio started. "This is what we like to call…the Battle Test!"
Kaede was sort of surprised, but not as much as she would have been if she didn't assume they were going to battle. "So, my assumption was right…" she sounded very serious at first, but then, she said something that made her sound extremely happy. "Yes! I can finally use my magic again!"
Akio then started with the same explanation her brother had heard during his Test: your goal is to win the battle against the other person that's inside of your arena, his explanation of how his magic allowed him to do what he did, you must knock your opponent's health bar to 0, and the three basic ways to win the battle: make your opponent faint, surrender, or deal more damage to them than they do to you in the 5 minute time limit. The only different was that unlike her brother, Kaede stayed quiet during the entire explanation.
"Alright then. This should be fun," she thought to herself while she started walking towards the middle of the arena after Akio told them to.
Once they got to the middle, Akio had said that "that should be everything", but Kaede was surprised when his voice reappeared again.
"Oh actually. There IS one more thing."
"Huh?" Kaede answered as thought he could hear him.
"Whoever fails this Test will not be enrolled into Rose Academy."
Once hearing that, she was as surprised as she could have been.
"What?!" she said out loud to herself, but her opponent was able to hear her since he was so close to her. She closed her eyes for a second.
I won't enroll if I lose?! She started thinking. Well in that case, it's time to win this fight!
Kaede reopened her eyes and analyzed her opponent. He was taller than her and had short brown hair and a light gray bandana over his forehead. His eyes were covered by both the bandana's slight shadow and his hair, so she couldn't see them.
"Good luck, everyone!" the voice appeared again. "The battle will begin in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…"
Kaede was looking at her opponent during the entire countdown, and she assumed he was doing the same.
"4, 3, 2, 1…"
They were both waiting for the battle for officially start, and when they least expected it…
"Begin!"
As soon as Akio uttered the word that officially began the fight, Kaede's opponent charged up an attack by moving the right side of his arm to the left side of his body.
Kaede gasped the moment she saw this, but a second later…
"Take THIS!" her opponent shouted out after charging up a big ball of water on the palm of his left hand. And then, he extended his right arm forward, which caused a giant flurry of water to launch from the water ball to Kaede. Kaede very quickly got on a position in order to dodge the attack that was very reminiscent of water tentacles, for some reason and started ducking and running in order to avoid the flurry. As she was running, she noticed that her opponent raised his right hand and extended it to her direction, causing the water tentacles to advance to her new position.
As she was running, she noticed that one of the tentacles was getting close to her leg, so in order to dodge it, she jumped towards the tentacle's opposite direction, and landed safely on her feet.
She looked at her opponent, who looked at her back with a soulless face. His grey eyes looked like their life was forcefully taken from them, but Kaede just assumed that he was probably just tired.
After looking at each other for what seemed like a pretty long time to do so, her opponent put his arms in the position of an X on his chest, causing water to emerge from thin air, which then proceeded to make its way towards his fists which caused them to be covered by clean blue water.
"HYAH!" He charged her. He tried to punch her, but Kaede just barely dodged it.
Right when she dodged it, she attempted to hit him with a normal fist, but he also barely dodged it.
"Dammi-" she was interrupted by a sudden feeling of intense pain.
She was hit on her stomach. She fell to the ground in pain and tried to calm herself down by slowly inhaling and exhaling.
"Okay then…" she muttered to herself. "I suppose it's time to actually use magic against magic!"
She was able to stand up after 15 seconds of breathing and proceeded to activate her own magic.
She took her right hand's middle finger, brought it up to her mouth…and bit its tip!
She flinched due to the slight pain, but she's done this so many times that she was used to it.
She was surprised that her opponent hadn't moved a single inch as she was doing what she usually did to activate her magic.
"What the-" she heard her opponent say.
"Hehe…" she grinned at him, and extended her right arm forward, and let a single drop of her blood fall to the floor, which caused a blood red magic circle to appear as soon as it hit it.
The circle was in front of Kaede and out of it, huge blood red blades appeared from it. As soon as these blades emerged, they quickly floated to Kaede's back, now hovering behind her.
As soon as the blades reached this position, she took her bleeding middle finger and drew a symbol on the back of her left hand. It was a small red circle with a pattern similar to the circle summoned by her blood. Once the circle was drawn, it gave off a red gleam.
"Let's go!" Kaede exclaimed as she started running towards her opponent. As she was running, she extended her right arm, causing one of the blades hovering behind her to launch towards the boy. The boy used his water magic to grab the blade and force it to stop in its tracks. He then pushed it back, causing the blade to fade out of existence.
The boy put his hands near each other, causing a sphere of water to charge up in between them. As he was doing so, Kaede was running around him and launched 2 of the now 4 blades that were behind her, which hit him back and caused his health bar to take damage.
Perfect! Kaede thought to herself.
"Ugh…" the boy said as he was standing up, trying his hardest to combat the pain he was currently feeling in this body. The boy let out a grin towards Kaede.
"You might have hit me…but at least you now only have 2 of those things left…hehe."
As Kaede was still running, she smiled confidently at him and less than 3 seconds later, from the red circle that Kaede created on the floor, 3 more blades came out and went towards Kaede's back.
"Huh?! How the fu-"
As he attempted to talk, Kaede once again extended her right arm and all of the blades shot towards him, 3 of the 5 hitting him.
"UGH!" He was in excruciating pain.
"Hehe…" Kaede started. As she slightly smiled at him, she started walking towards him, causing him to be surprised. "I'm not sure if you get the way my magic works. You shouldn't assume, because it's way stronger than you might think."
As we all know, Kaede possesses her family's signature magic: Crimson Magic. A very powerful kind of magic, it allows her to use her blood, named "Ceremonial Blood", for many versatile types of spells. Usually, to create these Bleeding Blades, Kaede would need to bite part of her finger to use that blood that dripped from it to either create the blades directly, or to create a circle on the floor, causing a limited number of blades to appear from it, with only around 25 or so blades able to appear from one of these circles. From her own finger, only 1 blade could be created every 3 seconds or so.
But there was a way to summon these circles at a much faster, unlimited rate. By drawing a circle on the back of her hand, Kaede could make the circle on the floor summon blades using the blood from the inside of her body. A normal person would usually think: "why doesn't she just do this every time she uses these blades?"
Well, the answer is simple: it's extremely risky to do so. Using this spell to create many different blades could cause Kaede to lose a huge amount of blood, which isn't very safe for the human body, no matter what kind of human you are. She decided to use it now because she felt that she needed to.
He proceeded to stand up once again, another grin on his face.
He put his arms in the position for an X once again, and then…
"AAAAAHH!" Kaede was pushed back by his magic.
Once he did this movement, water that appeared out of thin air started to surround him. It surrounded his entire body, from his head to his feet.
"I knew something like this was going to happen…"
As Kaede thought this out loud, she concentrated for a second, which caused 10 more blades to appear from the circle. Now she had 15 blades hovering behind her.
"I refuse to lose. I WILL GET INTO THIS SCHOOL IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!"
As the boy exclaimed this, he jumped towards Kaede, his body covered completely in water. He put his fist in a punching motion and was about to punch Kaede. As he was about to do so, Kaede took 1 of the blades and used it to hit him, and while his health bar took damage, he didn't stop moving. In less than a second…
Kaede was almost hit. But somehow, thanks to her reaction time, she was able to use 2 of her blades to block the fist from hitting her.
She used one of the blades on her back to try slashing the boy by launching it from under her, but when she tried doing so, it instantly disappeared when it hit the water surrounding him.
"You've got to be-"
As she was muttering these words to herself, Kaede was hit and launched back by the impact. She couldn't help but think about the possible status of her health bar that only her opponent had the ability to see.
She quickly stood up and launched all her blades towards him, all of them disappearing due to the water surrounding him.
So they don't work anymore… Kaede thought to herself as she looked at her opponent, surrounded in water.
What can I do…? She thought once again. She was thinking about the different spells she could use in order to try and hit him. His health bar was already halfway down, but since the blades didn't work against the water, she was forced to attempt something else.
Suddenly, she had an idea.
That might actually work…
She extended her right arm outwards. After a second of doing so, out of the magic circle on the floor, something that could be described as "a floating river of blood" emerged, making its way towards both Kaede.
As this was happening, the boy was dashing towards her. He was extremely close to her, only a few feet away.
Suddenly, Kaede disappeared.
"Huh? Where did she-"
He had to interrupt himself. He had a very strange feeling for a second. He quickly turned around, and looked up. Kaede was in the air, but she looked different. She was wearing a blood red cloak, and was making her way towards him at fast speeds from above.
This was a spell that Kaede rarely used because of the amount of both blood and mana it requires to use.
She made her way towards him from above and got in a position that would allow her to kick him from above.
As she got into this position, she heard something that she wasn't expecting.
"Battles end in 15 seconds."
She heard and easily recognized Akio's voice.
In order to end this fight, Kaede unleashed another one of her rarely used spells.
Blood emerged once again from the circle on the ground and surrounded Kaede's foot.
"This has to be enough!" She said to herself whilst the boy overheard her.
The boy, though, was prepared to defend himself.
He put his right arm up, causing water to surround it.
Clash!
Kaede's kicking foot and the boy's blocking arm clashed. So much force was exerted by both sides that neither knew who was really going to win.
"The battles end in 10, 9…
The boy, however, was able to reflect the attack, causing Kaede to return to the air and fall to the ground on her feet.
"Dammit!" She exclaimed.
"I will win…YOU'LL SEE!"
The boy charged towards Kaede, not surrounded by water anymore. This was due to all the energy it took up to surround himself for long amounts of time.
He extended his left arm, and water appeared around him in the form of spikes. He quickly extended that same arm forward, causing the spikes to shoot towards Kaede at extremely fast speeds.
"8, 7…"
Kaede summoned 10 blades from the circle. She used 3 of them to slice the spikes in half as she was running towards him. He then launched 2 at him, but missed, causing them to disappear.
"6, 5…"
She kept going.
"4…"
She was able to get right in front of him.
"3…"
And that was when…"
"2…"
The boy tried to punch her with his right arm surrounded by water, but missed. At the same time, Kaede summoned 10 more blades.
Forget it…I gotta leave this up to chance.
She launched all the 15 blades she had behind her towards him.
He dogded, blocked, and hit 14 of them. But for the last one…
"1…"
He didn't see it coming. The final blade, the blade that would decide Kaede's fate, stabbed him right in the heart.
"Battles over!"
As soon as this was said by Akio, a bright light covered Kaede's line of sight as it did when she was summoned to the arena.