Kyle returned to his seat and continued watching the rest of the matches.
Cole, Dale, and Hector, the winners of Group A, C, and G respectively all won their matches.
After finishing watching the tournament, Kyle decided to head home and train his breathing technique a bit.
Kyle sat in position and activated his breathing technique and absorbed all the mana present in the room in an instant, he quickly stopped and realized that there was only enough mana left for him to survive and decided to deactivate his technique. 'This is why I don't use this technique' thought Kyle as he let out a sigh, although Kyle was a bit disappointed that he couldn't use the technique he was still grateful for its efficiency in absorbing mana since he didn't want to train any martial technique he reviewed his battle with Alex and Leon and the others' battles, then went to sleep.
The next day, Kyle headed out to the arena for his match in the quarter-final. The Academy decided to make the finals of all tournaments on the same day, so today there was no match in the main families' tournament.
The moment Kyle got there, the crowd's cheering peaked. Although, the crowd feared Kyle after the last two displays, that didn't change the fact that he was one of the strongest contestants this year, and had many fans.
Dale Stone, his opponent felt tension he had never felt before. Throughout the tournament, it was an easy sail, with him being the favored one among his group during the battle royal, and going up against weaker opponents.
This time, it was the opposite, his opponent was not only stronger than him, he had the highest rank in the tournament and is possibly the strongest as well.
Dale let out a deep breath as he focused, removing the tension, as he decided to go all out from the start.
The moment the Professor announced the start of the match, Dale reinforced his body with mana as he rushed towards Kyle with 5 water missiles forming a vertical pentagon shape behind him.
Kyle was confused by such a style but ignored it as he equipped the 'knuckle knives' and rushed to him as well.
Kyle threw a punch laced with ice knives at Dale, but the 5 water missiles instantly shot at him, destroying all 4 of them, with one damaging Kyle's hand. Kyle was surprised, thrilled he threw another punch yet another 5 water missiles were summoned in the same way and shot at him like before.
Whenever Kyle threw a punch laced with those knives they were instantly destroyed by Dale's 5 never-ending water missiles.
Kyle was thrilled with such an opponent and continued on with his useless attacks, as he knew that he possessed a bigger mana pool than Dale did, meaning that Kyle could easily wait it out and would still win, although with damaged arms which could be avoided by coating it by mana.
Kyle continued with a barrage of his attacks until he stopped and backed away after getting bored with Dale not changing his attack style. "What are you doing? Do you enjoy fighting like cowards?" asked Kyle
"Let's end this, it's gotten boring now!" stated Kyle, as he stayed still and summoned a 'fire blade' after fast chanting.
Kyle demonstrated his sword technique for the first time in front of anyone other than Old Man Allen.
The audience's voice was stolen and their view was focused as they witnessed such swordsmanship, even Henry, who was there, was surprised by Kyle's swordsmanship.
Kyle gracefully sent countless consecutive fire slashes toward Dale's way without moving from his place.
Kyle controlled the fire and lowered the heat to a level that not even Dale's hair would burn, yet Dale felt his throat become dry, his breathing heavy, and his head hurt more with the slashed coming near him. Even though he wasn't visibly hurt by the fire slashes coming at him, they were still fatal, and could easily kill any 2-circle mage.
Dale got out the words "I give up" before emptying his breath and passing out. The moment Dale gave up, Kyle put the fire away with a simple hand gesture.
The audience went crazy with cheers as they all chanted Kyle's name out loud.
Kyle kept his face cool yet was excited deep inside, he was happy with such recognition from other people, he also knew this technique was strong from training it multiple times with even Old Man Allen vouching for it, but he wasn't expecting it to be so strong that he had to lower the heat of the flames multiple times over and would still win with just the first stance before the slashes reached his opponent.
The sword technique had three main stances. The slash, The stab, and The parry.
The slash is an offensive technique where the user can perform a thousand slashes from any direction.
The stab is an offensive technique as well where the user can stab and lunge at his opponent a thousand times.
The parry is a defensive technique where the user can parry and block up to a thousand attacks instantly and quickly switch back to either the slash or stab stances, which makes it an all-around technique with no weak points.
This technique is called the 'Thousand Movement Sword' where in any stance the user can perform a thousand movements with the sword.
The technique is split into ten levels with each level allowing the user to use a hundred movements in an instant. Kyle had barely reached a third of the first level, and was kind of disappointed with such a result despite training like hell for the past 4 months, yet now he figured out that he didn't even need to use the full power of his current mastery to subdue his peers.
Kyle launched himself back to his seat and was met with Henry who gave him a proud smile as he said, "I knew you were exceptional, yet you keep on surprising me every time I see you fight!"
Kyle was embarrassed by such flattery from a usually cold person like Henry, yet he was also proud of himself, proud of such progress. Kyle got a little sad as he thought of his family not being there and seeing his current self, until he was reminded of his promise to his mother about returning on every holiday which he wasn't doing, and got cold chills all over his body.
"Hey, Kyle! This time I'm going to beat you without a doubt, it's going to be nothing like last time!" said Cole as his voice roared throughout the crowd.
"Heh, you need to make it to the finals first!" replied Kyle, excited to see Cole's improvement in his potential fight against him if they both make it to the finals.