We didn't have to wait for long until Tess woke up from her short slumber and get up ready for her fight.
I looked over at her and I could see she was tired.
"Tess do you want to rest for longer?" I asked.
"Hm? Well yeah but it's my turn is it not?"
"I can just ask to fight Mio now and you can rest." I said as I got up.
'I want to see how well Tess can fight against Iris. Also fighting Mio now would be quite good, I need to see how strong the strongest of this academy is.' I thought as I walked to Callum and whispered to him,
"Can I fight Mio now and let Tess rest more. She was just unconscious and we need to entertain the audience."
"No, sorry Kiera. You've got to wait since your battle is for the finale."
"Alright then." I said as I walked back, "your up." I said to Tess.
"I'll be fine. Just watch." Tess replied with a genuine smile, "thank you."
..
(Tess POV)
'Oh my gosh. Kiera, she is being nicer. Maybe she just wanted to end her fights quicker or she was concerned about me!' I thought to myself as I came up to the centre of the arena once again but this time I was facing Iris.
"Let's have a good fight." Iris said to me with a smile.
She drew her sword and held it in front of her. I did the same and waited for Callum's shout to start.
"Ready?" He said and I gave a nod, Iris did the same.
"BEGIN!" He shouted and I jumped right at Iris without wasting time.
My sword cut down through the air and clashed with Iris's producing a high pitched screech from the metal rubbing. Iris pushed my sword and did a roundhouse kick at my abdomen which sent me skidding backwards.
My chest was now aching and I was still a little low on energy from my previous matches and although my injuries had been healed, the blood I lost did not come back.
My body was tired but I still wanted to put up a good fight or at least try to.
I made spears from flames and sent them flying at Iris while I ran towards her. My spear made of fire was broken from Iris slashing through it with her sword and as I was running she jumped at me.
Our swords clashed and she quickly moved her sword into various slashes all of different strengths which kind of put me off. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, thrusts - straight down, straight up, diagonally down to the right, diagonally down to the left, diagonally up to the right, diagonally up to the left and left and right strikes horizontally. She did them all and all in quick succession.
I quickly moved my sword around to try block all the strikes but she was just too fast. Too quick. I couldn't keep up and felt new cuts form all over my body, my entirety.
Cuts formed on my thigh, calves, upper arm, lower arm, chest, abdomen, shoulders and she didn't leave a single place out apart from my neck so the fight would continue.
The only ways for me to lose is a strike to the neck, me surrendering myself, me passing out or being dealt a fatal blow and needed medical attention. I wasn't going to let these happen until I was satisfied with myself and how I performed.
I jumped back while Iris was about to slash me and dashed at her side straight after with my sword ready to hit the side of her chest.
Iris didn't dodge and got a cut all across her side from my horizontal slash and begun to bleed.
She froze her cut so she didn't lose any more blood than necessary and began forming ice needles in the air.
'How am I going to dodge these? They are so small and thin.. Kiera made a sort of barrier but I couldn't possibly do that.' I began to think of ways to defend myself. If I didn't defend I would have lost too much blood and have close to no energy.
'Shoot fire at it? Attempt to melt it? My flames aren't strong enough and her ice is too dense. Shoot water at it? The ice would go straight through it. A shield of boiling water? That might work. If I heat up the water enough it might melt it or at least slow it down. Okay.'
I quickly formed a wall of water in front of me and made it boil by using my strongest flames. The wall of water in front of me bag an to bubble and steam was produced off of it as a kind of smoke screen of sorts.
Iris shot her ice needles which were slowly, when I say slowly I mean extremely slowly, began to melt a little and when it hit the wall of boiling water it melted faster.
Her ice needles were very thin and very powerful from what I could tell. Due to it being thin it should be easy to melt right? No, it wasn't. Yes my wall of water was melting it but it wasn't enough and they were still coming at me full throttle.
'I'm going to get hit.' I thought.
The ice needles that were formed were aimed at my vitals.. I have a chance to die even if I'm a dragon. I mean I could reveal myself right here right now and survive or get hit and have a low chance of survival.
'Think.. think.. how can I make it through this without transforming. Ugh.' I began to rack my brain. There was no chance at dodging and no chance at breaking her spell. My boiling wall of water did melt it down a bit but it worked to my disadvantage.
The ice needles became smaller but they were just as sharp and powerful. I just made it harder to block.
'I think I might have to transform..' I thought and prepared myself to transform.
'Don't transform.' I heard Kiera's voice in my head?
'Huh Kiera?'
'I'll deal with it.'
Next thing I knew Kiera was in front of me and all the magic I had formed along with Iris's disappeared.
"Kiera? You know you aren't allowed to interfere." I heard Callum say to Kiera in a stern voice.
"Of course I know that." She replied.
"Then why did you interfere?" He asked.
The crowd was looking at us with anticipation and shock at this current turn of events. Most of them probably thought I would die form this spell.
"Did you not realise?" Kiera said looking at him blankly.
"What do you mean?"
"Those ice needles were all aimed at vitals, it was a move to kill. If you can't break the spell or don't have a good enough spell or skill to block you will get killed. Tess attempted to melt it using a wall of boiling water but it wasn't at a high enough temperature so it just made the ice a little thinner which made it impossible for her to block. She had already lost a lot of blood and she is fatigued which would make her chances of survival very slim even with the best healers at this academy. My interference was necessary since you didn't realise the threat that that spell posed." Kiera gave her explanation and Callum stated at her wide eyed.
"Iris was that spell intended to kill her?" Callum questioned.
"Ah, I'm so sorry! No, no it wasn't. I thought she would be able to block it or dispel it in time and from her being stunned from the attack, give me the opportunity to rush in and finish the fight. Tess! Are you alright? I didn't mean to hurt you." Iris said looking at me with concern and gave me an apologetic look.
"Haha don't worry I'm fine. Kiera saved me. Thank you Kiera." I said looking at Kiera and smiled.
Kiera turned her head away from me and gave me a nod.
'I just didn't want you to die.' Kiera spoke through my head which made me giggle.
"Alright then. Since Kiera's interference was justified we will give the results due to how the audience thought you performed and who they want to win this fight. The audience may vote by shooting your mana at this hologram artifact." Callum said as a hologram of me and Iris appeared. Underneath the holograms of us was a number which currently showed the score of 0% : 0%.
"You may begin voting." Callum said and the audience shot out their mana and the scores began to change.
There was a lot of people here and all we had to do was wait for four minutes before the voting finished.
"Thank you for casting your votes. Now the score is 51% : 49% which was very close and the winner of this match is.. IRIS!" Callum shouted.
I gave a small smile.
'At least I tried.' I thought to myself.
'This outcome was only natural. She is stronger than you while you're human. Unless you wanted to reveal yourself then she would win 89% of the time. Despite this you still performed to the best of your ability.' I heard Kiera say through my head.
"Haha, was this meant to cheer me up?" I laughed out loud. It was a genuine laugh and I was happy that Kiera tried to cheer me up and also save me from death or revealing my #1 secret, me being a dragon.
"Iris you have came in 3rd place and Tess you've came in 4th place. Well done both of you."
..
Name:[Kiera]
Age:[6]
Race:[Black elemental wyrm]
Gender:[Female]
Level:[1/250]
EXP:[892/2500]
HP:[684/684]
MP:[974/974]
SP:[749/749]
..
Strength:[681]
Intelligence:[808]
Endurance:[739]
Mental force/power:[ERROR]
Agility:[696]
..
Skills - [Scratch] , [Thrust] , [Inspect] , [Bow mastery] , [Perfect aim] , [Elemental breath] , [Bloodlust] , [Elemental master] , [True dragon] , [Copy] , [Spacial storage] , [Sword mastery] , [Fire blade] , [Transform] , [Chef] , [Scythe mastery: 64%] , [Wind enhancer] , [Inferno] , [Poison manipulation] , [Fire resistance] , [Telepathy] , [Lightning enhancer] , [Flash steps]
..
Passive skills - [Night vision] , [Spacial awareness] , [Steal] , [Regeneration] , [Elemental resistance] , [Polyglot]
..
Body modifications - [Armoured scales - activated]
..
Titles - NONE
..
Blessings - [Blessed by goddess of reincarnation] , [Blessed by goddess of space]
(A/N - I've decided to make it so Kiera is slightly nicer for those she cares for and usually indifferent to everyone else. Sorry for not posting yesterday.)