Before the woman with cerulean hair had even arrived at the pair, she had withdrawn her Spiritual Pressure from Mikhail, and gathered a vibrant green orb of water. It was large, bigger than Lily's head.
Mikhail watched the process as he leaned on his spear, noticing how the healer's expression didn't even falter. This looked like it was nothing to her. As if she had dealt with this kind of situation countless times before this.
Lily's head was engulfed by the vibrant green water. The shape of her head quickly returned to normal, and the bruise around the side of her head quickly disappeared.
The orb of vibrant green water dissipated into the air quickly as the healing process continued, until it was gone. Thankfully, Lily looked fine once again.
With a gasp and a violent fit of coughing, Lily's consciousness returned. Her sight was still spinning, and her thoughts were in disarray.
Meanwhile, the woman moved on to Mikhail, healing his injuries until they became superficial. He was extremely thankful that she fixed his teeth first, as it was the most uncomfortable kind of pain he had ever felt.
Not the worst, but the most uncomfortable.
The vibrant green water tasted gamey, unfortunately. Mikhail gagged several times as the water healed his teeth. However, the taste didn't linger, which he was extremely happy about.
His body was still in pain, but at least he wasn't tasting the healing juice anymore.
The distant woman walked off, leaving Mikhail and Lily on their own. The more experienced of the group didn't pay much mind to it and continued like normal, fighting as much as possible.
Meanwhile, Lily was on the ground, dazed still. Her mind had trouble processing anything even after the five minutes it took Mikhail to get patched up. Seeing that, Mikhail walked over, leaning down to offer her his hand. She looked up at it with a confused glint in her eye.
"Eh…? Elijah?"
She looked up at Mikhail's face, but her vision was still a little hazy. On top of that, Mikhail was covering the afternoon sun from reaching her eyes, casting a shadow over his visage. He silently held out his hand, watching her expression become a mix of sadness and relief.
Tears began to form in her eyes as she reached up, but Mikhail flicked her forehead with a bit of force.
She reeled back and covered her face, rubbing her forehead while grumbling.
"What the hell, Elijah!?"
Mikhail turned to the nearest person with a questioning gaze, who happened to be Azalea. She returned that gaze with her usual aloof expression. She knew what this was about, but she didn't want to speak about it right now.
He could somehow gleam all that from her expression, confusing him slightly.
'Since when could I read such a blank face?'
He shook his head before turning back down to the loopy lady.
"I'm… Not Elijah, Lily," he said cautiously.
Lily's hands moved away from her face, and she looked up at Mikhail once more. Her vision had returned, and when she realized the truth, her eyes suddenly flashed with a crimson light, before she clicked her tongue and shook her head.
Like a switch had been flipped, the crimson light vanished and she returned to her usual cold and distant self.
An odd contrast, for sure.
Many of the younger onlookers had no idea what that was about, but every single young adult knew.
Unaware of the complexity of the situation, Mikhail quickly found another opponent in Azalea.
She wielded a sword in her left hand and a shield in her right hand. The sword was a simple double edged shortsword, while her shield was a small buckler.
Despite this strange choice, basically focusing entirely on maneuverability and getting up close and personal, sacrificing both her attack power and range, she beat the fucking shit out of Mikhail.
One would think that she was at a disadvantage because of the difference in attack range and strength, but she turned this disadvantage into an extremely strong advantage when she faced off against Mikhail.
She didn't let Mikhail use his strength.
By fighting defensively until he got annoyed, she managed to take control of the flow of the fight. She baited a strong thrust, parried it, and got into attacking range.
At such a close range, the effectiveness of Mikhail's spear became negligible, since he couldn't retreat far enough to properly stab at Azalea. His spear had essentially become a fancy stave, and he wasn't experienced in fighting with one.
On top of that, Azalea employed the Shade Element numerous times to blind Mikhail, leaving him at her mercy, open to devastating strikes.
Despite that, it still took a while for the fight to come to a close.
Mikhail's strong defence coupled with the fact that he was aware of his poor position meant that he did his best to gain distance, often getting himself entangled with other fights before inevitably being knocked out with a strong shield bash to the temple.
He only suffered a minor concussion in comparison to Lily, though.
However, more often than not, the fights he interrupted let him pass through unabated.
Mikhail was new, and the others had been giving him the courtesy of getting used to this. Today was the end of that. Everyone saw how talented he was. Letting his strength go to waste by continuing to only experience fair one on one duels would harm the tribe's future.
He might've lost almost every single duel he took part in, but it was more than obvious that if not for his severe fatigue, Mikhail would've won a great many of them.
His fight against Azalea for example.
With more energy, he definitely would've brought that fight to a win after exhausting Azalea with his hit and run tactics. Because despite her extreme finesse, Mikhail had still managed to get a few stabs in, however shallow they might've been.
Most others could not claim such a feat.