A Nascent Sect(3)

It was time for me to see if all that hassle was worth it. As I entered the main square, I was immediately impressed, lining the sides of the square were fantastic looking buildings all with different signs on them.

In the middle was a ring that was currently being used for fighting. On it were two relatively weak coremasters. Surprisingly, they were using weapons as if they were planning on killing each other. It turns out that they were because just as I started watching one of them dodged a thrust and then chopped down almost bisecting the coremaster in two. As soon as this happened, a voice rang out through the square,

"Once again our champion wins yet another bout defeating the challenger with a perfect dodge and counterattack. Next up is our weekly King of the Ring event. If you want to compete, you need to signup now. The winner will get one green coin. Also, I will state this once, this is a non-lethal event, but if you are not a coremaster, we do not guarantee anything. Lastly, if we get over the required amount of competitors, slots will be decided by lottery."

After the announcement, the crowd surged forward with noise and frenzy, and a stream of people slowly fell into two lines. I joined them falling into the shorter one not certain what was the difference between the lines. As I reached near the front of the line, I figured out why it was shorter as they checked everyone who entered if they were a coremaster or not. This surprised me, so I tried to clarify by asking the guy behind me,

"Why is the Champion such a weak coremaster if there are so many other coremasters here?"

The guy started laughing before managing to gasp out,

"That guy is only the champion of the loser. No self-respecting coremaster fights in lethal bouts. Also, everyone knows some sects even send scouts to the once a month King of the Rings event that is why so many coremasters are here."

Now understanding, I nodded my thanks. When I got to the front of the line, the guard demanded my guest pass. When I handed it to him, he took one look at it. Before handing it back, he gave me a number and indicated for me to sit in the stands where the rest of the coremasters sat.

I sat down and watched as a trickle of people slowly filled the stands. Eventually, they finished registering everyone, and the announcer's voice rang out once again,

"Now that everyone has registered, here's how the events work. I'll call out a number, and the person with the number will come to the ring and stay there until either he is eliminated or he eliminates his opponent. Easy, right?"

As soon as he stopped speaking, the whole ring in cheers. As the crowd's noise rose, the announcers' voice rang out over us once again,

"Number 1 and 2!"

Immediately two men entered the ring and started brawling. Looking at my number of one-hundred and twenty-two, I realized I was going to have a long wait before I could go into the ring. As I sat there, the first fights were reasonably dull due to all of the non-coremasters being called first. Finally, the first coremaster was called; he was able to knock out the guy with little to no effort.

As the coremasters started fighting, I immediately noticed the difference between them and the so-called champion. All of them either had an element of some kind of unique technique. Eventually, the number one-hundred and twenty-two rang out and from the announcer, and I jumped up eager to have a little fun with these coremasters.

I quickly moved out the ring entering with my teleportation technique catching the guy off guard and knocking him out of the ring with a palm strike to the chest. Immediately the next opponent entered the ring, and I dispatched him with about the same amount of effort. I quickly started eliminating the rest of the coremasters, but when one of the last ones jumped into the ring, I could sense something was different about him.

I immediately put up my guard hoping he would be strong enough to actually test out my new abilities. The first punch he threw was so fast I barely managed to get up my arm before it hit me knocking me to the other side of the ring. I started grinning knowing I had found someone that I could go all out against. I activated my movement technique and blinked behind him attacking his blind spot, but he whipped around throwing an overhead kill at me that I just barely dodged.

Deciding to go all out, I blinked away and formed my attacking technique on my hand. Thrusting forward as if I had a spear, the cone of lightning blades flew forward lifting his leg and burrowing a hole entirely through it before impacting the ground nearly tearing the whole ring apart. This created a hole at the impact zone which went down who knows how deep.

I blinked back to the ravaged ring expecting him to give up but somehow he managed to keep standing with a half-foot hole in his leg through which blood steadily poured out. I was impressed by his tenacity, but there was no hope for him. I constantly blinked in and out abusing his limited mobility to continually batter him with strikes.

Finally, after taking more hits than I thought possible and being entirely covered in blood, he collapsed bringing an end to our match. After fighting him, none of the other participants offered any challenge, and I quickly dispatched them all with a few hits.

As the last participant fell, the announcer's voice again filled the air, "Folks, we have our winner. What a battle it was especially the fight between him and our young Lord. Now, I will let him give some words."

The announcer went silent, and the noise quieted down as if everyone was holding their breath waiting for me to speak. Realizing I had to say something, I decided I might as well advertise for my sect, so, I said,

"I don't have much to add other than I will be creating a sect based in this area and I need members who have reached coremaster level. Just ask for the Lightning Dragon Sect."