"Why do you say it like we are going to do something lewd, pervert!" Exclaimed Talia with a disgusted face.
"I don't know what you are talking about" said Alex with a chuckle as he got up from his chair.
"I won't be long" he said to Amelia and Anna.
"Humph, you won't be coming back, I'm the one that's going to come back!" Exclaimed Talia as she walked past him.
"We will see about that in a few minutes I guess" replied Alex as he also made way to the arena.
"Here they go again" sighed Ava as she saw Talia and Alex walking in the arena while bantering like kids.
Talia, like Amelia and Anna, was also trained by Ava, mostly due to her possessing the same water manipulation ability as Ava. As a result, Alex and Talia spent a lot of time together growing up. However, since a certain incident during their teen years, the two have been at each other's throats every time they see each other.
'It would be nice if they could go back to how it used to be when they played together,' Ava wishes, as both Alex and Talia stand in front of each other.
"Ready?"
"Old man, you should stop asking if people are ready and directly start the fight, you are wasting our time" said Alex to Adrian.
Adrian's lips twitched hearing him, but he remained calm and glanced at Talia to make sure she was ready.
"Start!" Shouted Adrian after Talia nodded.
Once the fight started, Alex took out his pipe and took a puff, he had already chosen what he would use to make smoke in this fight.
He barely had time to exhale the smoke when a large wave, at least ten meters high, was coming toward him, intent on engulfing him.
'Doing the same attack as her last fight, didn't she think that I would have thought of a manner to evade the wave ?' wondered Alex.
Talia last opponent might have been caught off guard by the wave of water that Talia created, but Alex was already prepared for it.
Just as the giant wave was about to reach him, he crouched on the ground and leaped into the air, clearing the wave!
"Humph, did you think I wouldn't anticipate such a move?" snorted Talia as she conjured large arms of water, balled into fists, from the wave.
There were five arms in total, each shooting toward Alex with deadly speed!
From an outsider's point of view, Alex looked like an annoying fly about to be swatted; however, this fly named Alex was more tricky than he appeared.
Before the hands could reach him, Alex enlarged the smoke he had exhaled moments ago, which was swirling around his neck, to at least three meters around him. What he did next quite clearly shocked everyone present!
He grabbed the smoke like it was an elastic and propelled himself towards the quickly approaching arms of water.
When he was a few inches from colliding with the fist of one of the arms, he quickly pulled on the smoke haze around him and changed his trajectory, narrowly avoiding the fist of water.
After evading the first fist, a second one tried to hit him, but Alex pulled on the surrounding smoke again to change his trajectory, propelling himself onto the arm of the third one coming at him.
He spun in the air, and his feet touched the arm of water. Thanks to his nearly perfect control of his body and his high agility, before his feet could dive into the water, Alex jumped again, using the arm of water as a propelling stage!
Under the astonished gaze of everyone, Alex continued to evade the fists of water in a mesmerizing display of acrobatics, defying gravity with every move. Suspended in the air, his maneuvers were nothing short of extraordinary, leaving the onlookers with wide eyes.
Each time that a fist was about to collide with him, he pulled on the smoke around him and changed his trajectory, causing the fist to miss.
Seeing Alex's performance, Talia dissolved the arms of water into the wave and then molded the whole wave into many arms, ten in total, and then launched them at Alex that was still in the air.
However, even with this many arms, Alex remained elusive.
For Talia, catching him became as difficult as trying to catch fish with bare hands. So, she merged all the arms and created one super large arm, 30 meters in height and 20 meters in width.
Despite the super large fist that descended on him with a deathly momentum, Alex remained calm.
The first thing he did was expand the smoke in one direction. When the fist was about to land on him, he pulled on the smoke, allowing himself to glide through the air. The smoke acted like a whip of some sort, helping him slip away from the huge fist.
Boom
The water fist collided with the ground and lost its structure, seconds later, Alex fell to the ground with not even a drop of water on him.
"...."
"...."
"...."
"...."
When he observed around him, Alex remarked that everyone was looking at him with wide eyes.
No one could believe what they had just witnessed, and it was normal to feel that way, they had just seen someone manipulating smoke as if it was something tangible, touching it and using as if it was a rope.
The only one that looked less surprised than the others, although she herself was pretty shocked, was Lilia.
She was the only person here aware of Alex's smoke sovereignty, but even she didn't think that one could touch the smoke element.
But it's not even that which shocked her. He was a true sovereign through and through. She had never seen someone like that, so she couldn't know what they were capable of. What was most shocking to her was that Alex managed to attain such a level in just a few hours of training. She didn't doubt that doing such a thing was difficult even for a sovereign, but here was Alex doing it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
'What kind of ridiculous growth speed is that ?'
*****
Soooo, Last time I asked for reviews, some of you provided feedback (and good ones at that!), still, I'm a greedy person, so I will ask again, GIVE A REVIEW TO THE NOVEL!
It doesn't have to be praise; you can simply share your honest thoughts, how you feel about the story and the development of characters, things like that.
Also, the number of power stones given is dwindling, so GIVE POWER STONES.
I think it's about it for now.
Thanks for reading!