Landon woke up, freshened up, and got ready to go to the Academy for his next duels. Upon arriving, he quickly met up with his friend Pella. With Pella keeping him updated.
After the first duelling day, Larne proposed that the number of challengers per day be increased from 20 to 50 to speed up the process. However, this proposal was rejected as the revenue generated from tickets and sales during each open duelling day was too high. The finance department of the academy made sure that the duels were dragged on as long as possible to maximize revenue and rejected Larne's request without consideration.
As expected, the next few challengers all attacked rapidly, but Larne's assertive vision ability allowed him to identify each sword strike with great detail. While Larne could easily break the momentum of his enemies with a single stroke, he had to hold back during these duels.
Many challengers attempted to use their superior Silver rank to break Larne's sword with their blade glows, but Larne cleverly put his blade out of the way of the blade glows and aimed for the crossguards of his opponents' swords. Although Larne won by a close margin against many opponents, most of his victories were due to his opponents' mistakes. The audience was convinced that Larne's weakness was a crazed flurry of attacks.
That was until a rank one silver mercenary started taking Lorist on with the standard rapid attack tactic. Sheesh, your Core-Energy is of the Earth attribute which makes you more suited for using a sword and a shield in battle, as a semi-aggressive guardian. how in the world did you think you would win with rapid attacks while hiding behind your shield? Can you even see where I'm standing at?
Larne merely took a few steps forward, side-stepped, and gave a low sweep to his opponent with his leg, tripping the whole guy over. Larne then proceeded to step on the fellow and tapped his shoulder with his sword twice. Hearing the laughter from the audience, the silver-levelled mercenary's face reddened as he picked up his equipment and dashed for the exit.
Clang, Clang..... Clang! Sharp resounding sounds of metal clashing rang out from within the hall.
It was currently the final duel scheduled for today and the opponent was a Level Three silver mercenary who looked middle-aged. The main difference between him and the rest of Larne's previous challengers was how he didn't bother to rain attacks on Larne and instead took on a defensive stance while awaiting Larne's move.
This was the most impressive challenger up to date as he had managed to perfectly hold his defenses against three of Larne's aggressive assaults. With his curiosity piqued, Larne circled around the defending challenger and started to observe him carefully.
The middle-aged man had an unfazed expression and calm and cool breathing. With one leg in front and the other behind, he seemed pretty relaxed and unconcerned. Every time Larne made a dash to his side, he merely swiped his front leg to point it in Larne's direction, not once exposing his back to him.
This person was a real expert who had the potential to break through to the next level in the near future and must have experienced his own fair share of life-and-death battles given his calm and reactive disposition and the solid swordplay that he has displayed. During the last three bouts of savage attacks by Larne, there were quite a number of strikes that would've been lethal to that mercenary but all of them were successfully by him by relying on his great reflexes. It was as Larne had said before, this person has mastered all the eight basic moves of swordsmanship to the point when every move was as natural as breathing which allowed him to emerge unscathed from the flurry of strikes.
Standing there, Larne said respectfully to that middle-aged mercenary, "Nice to meet you, I'm Ruslan Larne. It is an honour to be able to face you in this duel."
It was the first time Larne had introduced himself on the stage as this middle-aged mercenary was definitely worth this respect. No matter who it was, as long as one managed to practice the eight basic swordsmanship moves to this level, one would deserve this kind of respect.
The middle-aged man was slightly surprised as a warm light flashed past his eyes. He slightly nodded his head and replied, "My name is Isan Kraft. It's my pleasure to be able to fight you as well."
Larne waved the sword in his hand and said, "Please watch out, I'm about to attack."
This time, Larne didn't simply unleash all his force like he did the past three times but rather approached Kraft gradually and planned to use a steady and firm approach against him. From his Assertive vision, he could see that almost all of the middle-aged man's moves had a small window of opportunity that he could exploit. As long as he suddenly changed his move mid-trajectory, there was a chance that the middle-aged man wouldn't be able to respond in time and create the decisive opening for Larne's victory.
The experienced mercenary Isan Kraft was retreating step by step and neutralized Larne's blows one after another without leaving much of an opening. It was then that Larne's move suddenly changed from a round of quick attacks to a leap towards him in an attempt to launch a close-quarters move.
Kraft's expression changed instantly as he let out a low groan, expanded the blade glow from his sword and quickly slashed downwards. Larne's forward movement didn't slow down at all as the sword in his right hand came up and parried the downward-moving sword. The middle-aged man quickly tried to move a few steps back only to hear a sound of a blade unsheathing. A light flashed out before his eyes and a short blade could be seen dangerously pressed on the side of his neck. It appeared that Larne had pulled his sidearm; an action that was far beyond the mercenary's expectations.
Kraft's body froze as he placed the longsword in his hand down before saying, "It's my loss. I've forgotten about that other blade you were carrying on your hip..."
Larne kept the short blade and praised, "You're pretty skilled. Nobody else has managed to force me to draw my other blade until now."
"Nevertheless, a loss is still a loss, I have no excuses," replied Kraft with a bitter laugh. "Thank you for showing mercy. I have indeed learned much from this duel. I'll be taking my leave now."
Kraft turned around and left the duelling platform right away as the audience let out jeers and sighs and tore their betting tickets to pieces. This has been a common sight for the whole of the month.
In actuality, had Larne utilized the explosive power of the Inch Stage of the DualPrimal Technique, he could have easily broken through the middle-aged mercenary's defences but it would be difficult for him to control the amount of power he used and might end up injuring the mercenary badly. Given that he had already reached the Dark Stage, that kind of power was easily way beyond what a Silver rank could handle. If he could, Larne didn't want to hurt his opponent too badly and just tried to knock the opponent out. That was why he liked to go for his opponents' necks.
Pella looked at Larne's thoughtful expression and asked, "What's going on? Are you thinking of something?"
Larne replied, "That middle-aged mercenary just now was a true expert. If it were you or Els instead of me fighting here, I'm sure it wouldn't turn out well. He's far stronger than many of the Silver-levelled instructors of our academy.
Pella replied, "You didn't have to tell me that. I could feel the tension when I was watching from the seats and was truly concerned about whether you had finally met the one who would defeat you. This match was really exciting. It's the first time I've seen someone who managed to hold out in so many moves against you."
"Well, I still think that I wouldn't lose either way, that much I'm confident in. I just dragged it on to make it seem more tense for the audience. The 20 duels today have really worn me out. I really shouldn't have listened to what you guys said about faking the duels," complained Larne.
"Come on, just shrug it off. It's all for the golden bright future that awaits us. Please bear with it for our sake, would you? Oh, today's the academy payday. You haven't collected your salary from the finance department yet, right? We're having a party at the La Mesa Inn tonight," said Pella grinning slyly.
Thinking back at the day he covered their bills, Larne said in an annoyed tone, "Don't think that I'll pay for the bills this time. You even took so much food with you back home... You're really shameless you know!"