Karlyle's loud panting filled the entire isolated training room. The vigorous fighting, alongside the fact it was 4 in the morning, made him feel like sleeping right then and there.
"Ok that's enough," Mimi wiped the back of her neck with a towel she got from a table.
By the end of this cruel session, Karlyle had negative 26 points out of 58 rounds. So though he didn't do too bad, it still wasn't much and Mimi was in fact going easy on him.
"Go get some rest, the first round begins at 1 so I'll come to get you at 12 for a tad bit more training. Arkana, send my trainee home."
A notification popped up in Karlyle's blurred view.
[Your trainer decided to send you to your homing allocation for mandatory rest, transporting now]
Karlyle's vision spiralled into black and green before clearing and revealing his room. The feeling of his kinetic being taken away again was no match for the exhaustion he felt from fighting Mimi so it was practically like nothing. He moved to the bathroom to have a quick shower. Karlyle washed the sweat and dirt off his body with the complimentary soap he was given. It smelled of lavender and honey.
He dried himself with a towel and put on his pyjamas. It didn't take him long to fall asleep on the soft bed.
Eight hours later, Karlyle was awoken by a hard slap to his face. It was Mimi. She was now dressed in black yoga pants and a black crop top rather than the denim skirt and white t-shirt she wore a few hours ago.
"Wake up Lyle, it's time to train again."
"How are you in my room?"
"I'm your trainer so I'm allowed to come here if you need to train. Now go get changed and we'll start, wear black if you plan on sweating."
Finishing his morning routine, Karlyle put on a black compression shirt and black shorts. Mimi and him were matching once more. They left the housing, immediately appearing in the isolated training room they were in previously.
"Instead of going for the first hit, now we're going about who gets knocked out of this area."
A rectangular prism rose from the middle of the room and Mimi hopped on it, Karlyle followed. Once on top, Mimi teleported to the opposite side and got ready to fight with a few quick stretches. Karlyle also did some random stretches as he didn't want to just stand there blankly.
They fought 3 times and Mimi won twice. Karlyle only won the last round.
"Go shower again and get changed," Mimi looked at the clock on the wall, "we have 27 minutes before the round begins so use it."
Karlyle obeyed the instructions of his trainer and went back to his housing. Now that he was forced into multiple fights with a high ranking fighter, he felt a bit better about himself and his chances. Since he was going to be fighting in front of people, he tried to look a bit better and as he thought of what to wear, a gift appeared on his bed. A note on the box read, 'Hey Karlyle, we can't wait to see you fight in the tourney. We got you an outfit you can wear for it. - Mimi and Foster, P.S it is fire resistant.'
The outfit they bought consisted of a sleeveless black compression shirt, a wide leather belt, some sort of cargo trousers, fingerless gloves, thick military boots, and a half cloak. The main colour of the outfit was black but there were some details that resembled flames stitched into it. Karlyle put it on and it fit perfectly onto him. He checked the time and there were only 5 minutes left so he left the room.
"Housing exit," he blinked.
This time, instead of ending up at the training grounds, he was teleported into a waiting room that contained a lot of other participants. A sudden notification came up in his sight.
[Arkana Network's tourney mode activating]
Like when Karlyle used visual correction, the notification formed into spinning circles, however this time it ended quickly.
[Tourney mode activated]
Above the heads of the other people that were near him, names popped up and the spinning circles dispersed.
'Dakhyo Park'
'Emma Ford'
'Cole Watts'
'Owen Reed'
Karlyle sat down on one of the seats that came from the wall and paid the most attention to the Dakhyo person as he was going to be his first opponent in the tourney. During the training, Mimi told Karlyle that the first battle matters the most for his rankings as it is the first impression the judges get of him; then the rest of the rankings are based on that sole impression. Dakhyo was busy playing with a knife, spinning it around his fingers. He was taller than Karlyle and didn't seem to be muscular. Contrary to what Karlyle thought, Dakhyo actually went to the gym regularly but had a sleeper build.
The door in the wall opened and inside came Mimi, she scanned the room and when she locked her sight on Karlyle she skipped towards him.
"You can do this Lyle," she assured him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it, "I have to go now but know that Foster will be watching you fight to support you. I will be watching every now and then but I'll also be scouting the other participants in your bracket so I can get a feel of what they can do. Foster will notify me when your battle is close to ending and I'll be definitely watching then. Also, that outfit looks great on you."
"Alright."
"Well, fingers crossed!"
She left from the same doors she entered and then a voice announced, "the tourney is now beginning."
Karlyle's vision went completely black as if all the light in the world disappeared. Blinking didn't do anything. Well, Karlyle didn't know if he was blinking as he couldn't see but he did feel his eyelids moving.
"Please get ready for the first round," the voice announced and Karlyle's vision cleared.
The arena itself was a plain cuboid with a screen hanging from the middle of the ceiling. On it, there was a countdown and a score count. Karlyle's initials - KM - were on the left while Dakhyo's - DP - were on the right. The countdown to the beginning started at 30. On the sides of the arena, there were drops into darkness, the reason behind the final training with Mimi being on a platform.
Karlyle's breathing quickened as the countdown got closer to 0. He deepened his breaths to work against their pace and managed to slightly slow them down. Dakhyo already summoned two swords into his hands. Karlyle lit his hands on fire, forgetting that he had gloves on. Their fire resistance was in fact top quality.
"Five."
Karlyle took a few final deep breaths.
"Four."
Swiiishhh.
Dakhyo scraped one of his swords against the other, almost knocking Karlyle out of the calm state he entered.
"Three."
Clankkk!
This time Dakhyo hit his blades together. It fully distracted Karlyle from his calmness and caused the speed of his breaths to creep up.
"Two."
Clllannkkk!
"One."
Nothing.
"Go!"
Unpredicted by Karlyle, Dakhyo threw his sword at Karlyle and in midair, it morphed into a javelin. Karlyle boosted himself to the side by releasing flames from his left palm. When the javelin moved past him, he grabbed it, spun it around, and threw it back at Dakhyo.
When it reached him, the javelin melted into a liquid and thinned till it disappeared, "not bad," Dakhyo spoke.
Karlyle slashed his right hand diagonally through the air, starting from top left to bottom right. It released a fiery crescent towards Dakhyo. To stop it, Dakhyo summoned a dozen spears out of the ground to act as a wall and they absorbed the hit.
'Perfect,' Karlyle thought in his head as he noticed the wall, he continued to release slashes of fire toward Dakhyo while slowly moving forward. Dakhyo struggled to hold up the weapons for so long and the fire was slowly making its way through in between them. Karlyle switched from simple slashes to a blazing stream that poured out from his palms.
Dakhyo's limitation was unknown, but it was obviously dragging him down. A single spark from Karlyle's fire landed on his skin and Dakhyo let out an immense scream. His kinetic weakened his body.
Karlyle split the stream of fire down the middle and it wrapped around Dakhyo's wall. Dakhyo pulled up more spears from the ground to extend the wall around himself. Now it was about who would last the longest, Karlyle or Dakhyo.
"Give in!" Karlyle shouted.
"Why should I?"
"You're already hiding, might as well."
Straining his arms, Karlyle increased the amount of fire he let out from his palms. The fire began to move like a liquid, circling around the wall of spears before creeping up. Flames spilt over the wall and into the area Dakhyo constructed. The spears went back down to the ground instantly and Dakhyo shot himself up with a staff.
Karlyle looked up to see Dakhyo's eyes being blackened out. From behind himself, Dakhyo summoned small droplets of the same black liquid that constructed his weapons. Each droplet expanded and formed into weapons ranging from daggers to polearms. All of them shot down at Karlyle like rain as more were created behind Dakhyo.
Extinguishing the flames and using what he learnt from his training, Karlyle managed to dodge each weapon. Some almost hit him, even scraping his skin and drawing blood, but ultimately he managed to avoid any major injury. The weapons melted away the moment they hit the ground so Karlyle couldn't even use them to fight back.
Whenever he got the chance to, Karlyle sent a fireball at the floating Dakhyo. None of them hit until one did.
"GAHHH!"
The fire spread around Dakhyo's clothes and his skin had severe reactions to the fire although it's only been a second. Karlyle withdrew the fire and the voice announced, "Karlyle Montgomery has won."
The point counter next to his initials on the board went up by one.
Foster and Mimi appeared in the arena and both ran up to hug him.
Mimi exclaimed, "you did it Lyle! You did it!"
"Is he gonna be ok?" Karlyle asked.
"Yeah, don't worry the medics will treat him."
Foster rubbed Karlyle's hair, "congrats Lyle, we're proud of you."
"Thanks guys, but there's still 4 more fights."
"Don't worry. Now let's go celebrate your first win."
A voice announced, "announcing to all tourney participants!"