Welen panicked as his face started to pale. He tugged against Morne's hold, but Morne only tightened his grip further, dark energy swirling around as his fingers deformed Welen's flesh.
"Unhand me, you heathen!" demanded Welen angrily. "Have you no honor?"
Morne didn't deign to respond but for a strong headbutt that sent Welen's head rocking back.
He stepped in closer after doing so, robbing Welen of any room to maneuver.
Welen tilted his head forward to bare his teeth at Morne, blood dripping down his lips from his shattered nose and color being drained from his face with every passing second.
Now too close to kick or knee, and with his arms still restrained, he could only return the attack in kind, but since he was nearly a full head shorter than Morne, it could only collide with his lower jaw.
The impact forced Morne's jaw open only for it to snap back closed, jarring his gums and teeth.
But his Spell didn't stop.
He glared down at Welen, hazel eyes meeting the gray of his foe, and watched as the panic grew more and more within Welen's mind.
Welen felt himself becoming weaker every second, while Morne's hold on his wrists only tightened. To his horror, he watched as the cuts on Morne's jaw, along with his broken nose, slowly mended themselves.
It was a slow affair, so slow that Welen only noticed it after a minute of struggling, but it filled him with endless grief.
While his life was being sapped away by heretical magics, his opponent was healing himself? Where was the justice in this?
Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, he felt his Chimh Well hit empty, and his Gentle Force sputtered to a stop.
Morne, who was staring down Welen, saw the exact moment the latter's panic turned to fear, and his gaze flashed as he felt the Power Mage's wrists lighten by several stages.
'Time to end this.'
Morne cut off his Withering Touch Spell just before he hit empty. With Welen's Spell gone and the strength sapped from his limbs, he was little more than a pushover.
Morne dropped Welen's wrists and snaked his hands around the Power Mage's throat.
This time, it was Welen's turn to have the air robbed from his lungs. He kicked and clawed at Morne to no avail, each attack carrying as much force as a limp noodle.
Gentle Force, the Spell Welen had been using up until a few seconds ago, was a great Spell by Apprentice standards, if not top-tier.
It increased Welen's weight by 20% at the Apprentice Grade, which didn't seem like a very impressive thing on the surface. But as a comparison, the average for the Apprentice Grade was a mere 10%!
This Graceful Force Spell being twice as good as other Apprentice Spells of similar design was a testament to the monastery Welen had learned it from.
Combine this with his already hefty weight of 250 pounds, an amount someone as scrawny as him had no business being anywhere near, and the Spell brought him to around 300 pounds.
Normally this would be more detrimental than anything, but Welen's Gentle Justice martial arts style was designed specifically to use and abuse this extra weight.
His entire fighting style was about manipulating the extra weight to flow from one motion to the next without losing any of the power behind his strikes.
This sounded contradictory, but that was exactly what he did.
He had trained for years until he could shift his weight however he pleased, to the point he could walk and attack as if he was actually 100 pounds lighter while affected by the Spell!
Imagine a bucket. Said bucket was full of water and quite heavy.
But if you grabbed the bucket by the handle, lifted it, and started to spin it around in a circle, the inertia would make it seem as if it was much lighter than it was, to the point you could keep up the motion with ease.
Gentle Justice worked similarly, except the entire body used such principles. It was far easier to keep something in motion than to brake and start anew, hence the way Welen seemed to flow from one action to the next.
This had come into play the first time Morne had swung his mace at Welen. The way Welen had bent at the waist, only to whip around in a circular
This was a very exhausting exercise, requiring so much stamina and such concentration that an average user of Gentle Justice would barely be able to stand after each fight.
It also needed a fair amount of space.
Larger movements with this martial art were much preferred over smaller ones when one was close to their opponent, as just like it was easier to spin the bucket from the earlier analogy in a wider circle, so too was it easier to instill more power in each movement if those movements are larger.
This is why the martial art emphasized ending fights quickly, aiming for vitals and other such weak points to incapacitate their enemy while relying on their excess weight for extra power and speed.
But now Welen's extra weight was gone, along with another chunk and a percentage of his strength that had been taken with Withering Touch. His combat prowess hadn't just fallen by 20%, it had fallen by over 40%!
But that didn't matter anyway, as he had no way to bring what weight he did have to bear, shackled as he was by Morne's hold.
Welen could feel only despair as his attacks were entirely ineffective. As his sight became darker, his last thoughts were of his failure.
.......
Welen's body dropped to the ground to the cheers of the crowd.
Morne glanced down at his kill, then turned his gaze to Inprek above.
"And thus concludes this season's Tongue Tussles!" Inprek announced. "This fine necromancer here has earned his freedom, and his foes have earned a trip to the afterlife! Find Fendbern, necromancer, and he'll get you sorted out. As for you, dear audience, I have…"
Morne tuned out the chatty criminal and did as instructed, heading into the waiting room. He waited for only a few seconds before it opened to reveal the short man, Fendbern, whose expression was as stony as always.
"Follow," he said, gesturing.