Tough Fight

"Hmph, another small trick..." Ayrete said, examining Kies' new weapon, or rather, its new form.

"You can say that." Kies wasn't particularly offended from having it called a trick, since it wasn't really false, most of his arsenal consisted of these tricks to catch the enemy off guard. In all honesty, he purposely devised his fighting style and attacks to be this way. The less he showed what he could do, the better. This was all so that he wouldn't have to use his emergency last resort... Hopefully, he wouldn't have to use it here, in this fight. The last thing he wanted was to bring down the entire colosseum. Actually... Scratch that. He would probably destroy half the city if he did that...

"Why can't you just go down easy..." Kies mumbled to himself.

Ayrete advanced toward him, delivering a set of swift strikes. However, none of them hit. Kies parried all of them without breaking a sweat. Well, that was if he could even sweat in the first place. Ayrete may be fast, but Kies was faster. His swordsmanship may be severely lacking, but overall, his fighting skills were on par with that of a veteran soldier. This much was nothing.

Even without his winds, Kies was much more used to fighting with his sword in this form than he was in its original form. Having a blade on either side really helped as he could respond to almost any attack by turning the blade around to the other end.

Now that the tides have turned, with Kies being on the offensive against Ayrete, he put the pressure on his opponent, not giving him a chance to recover or fight back. High swings, low swings, Kies attacked at every angle and position, making it difficult for Ayrete to counter them all.

Eventually, all the attacks wore Ayrete out and he slipped, allowing himself to get hit by one of Kies' attacks. The tip of the blade cut across the soldier's arm, almost making him drop his sword.

"Tch..." Ayrete backed away from his opponent and took a second to look at the wound. Blood trickled out of the wound, running like a small river down his arm. It wasn't a terrible wound, but it wasn't a light one either. An old washcloth was more than enough to treat it. However, it did make it impossible for him to continue fighting. One wrong movement with his arm and he could end up tearing the tissue, making the wound worse.

"Not bad. But it's still nothing more than a simple trick in the end..." Ayrete's blood boiled as rage took over him. He was one of the best soldiers in the entire kingdom, standing on the same ground as the royal guards! No, he was above them. But here he was, getting pushed back by some no-name fighter.

"I refuse to lose to the likes of you!" Ayrete shouted in his rage-induced voice. He still had one last card to use. As much as he wanted to save it for his fight against the Iceblade, it didn't seem possible to win with his sword arm injured now, unless he used his trump card.

The air grew cold, then hot. The power of the electrifying aura from the scarf was amplified several times, completely and utterly destroying and disabling all magic in the area. It was so powerful that it rattled Kies' core, causing it to jitter stop, interrupting the flow of magic throughout his body.

"W-what i-is that?..." Kies felt his body freeze several times, for a split second at random intervals. Whatever the soldier was doing, it wasn't good! He was a being made of magic. This was practically his worst enemy.

"D*mn it... M-move!" Kies tried to get his body to listen to him but the electric field was too powerful and he kept freezing. It was like he was moving in slow motion.

Even Ayrete was not expecting it to be this effective. The anti-magic should only seal all magic, essentially weakening mages as their bodies were empowered by the magic. However, something like this shouldn't be happening... Unless...

Ayrete's eyes widened as he figured out why this was the reason. "Well, well... Who would have guessed?" The soldier walked towards Kies until he was directly in front of him and leaned in. Kies tried to retaliate but the null-magic field prevented him from moving.

"You're no human..."

Kies froze when he heard those words. Ayrete snickered and yanked Kies' hood off, revealing his face to the crowd. Unable to move, Kies had no way to put on his hood or cover his face.

The crowd all pointed and gasped in shock at how young Kies looked. They couldn't believe that the person who stirred up the tournament was just a brat.

"How odd... You certainly look human..." Ayrete noted Kies' appearance, which didn't add up with what was going on. "Are you perhaps... A ghost?"

"What nonsense are you saying?" Kies manage your stutter, pretending to not know what Ayrete was talking about. He was no ghost, but he did get one thing right and it was that he wasn't human.

"You're right. That's nonsense," Ayrete agreed to Kies' surprise. "A ghost or any other spirit would be killed by my anti-magic field as their bodies are made up of magic. You... You're something else..."

"..."

"It doesn't look like you're willing to tell me what you are. Alas, it looks like I will have to dissect you to find out." With an evil laugh, Ayrete swung his blade at Kies' neck.

Kies clenched his teeth and used all the power he had while under the influence of the anti-magic field and tilted his head very slightly to the slide, barely moving a part of his cloak up to block the attack.

The sword connected with the cloak but it wasn't able to pierce it, causing the attack to knock him onto the ground instead of decapitating him.

Kies smashed head first into the sand and his sword fell out of his hand and landed beside him.

"Still fighting to the end?" Ayrete said pitifully, observing Kies' efforts to stay alive. Kies reached for his sword but his body didn't listen to him. His arm froze midway, stopped by the nullifying field.

Ayrete stomped his foot on Kies blade and kicked it away, sliding it across the sand, meters away from where they were.

"You lost your weapon... Now, what are you going to do?" Ayrete asked in an amused tone. Kies no longer had the means to fight back and he was just playing around at this point.

"..."

Ayrete proceeded to kick Kies around for a bit which was further encouraged by the cheer of the crowd, but he eventually grew tired and lifted his sword.

"Well, time to finish this. Let's see what your insides look like. After this, I can finally kill that wretched woman too." Ayrete raised his sword until the tip was pointing at the sun. He brought it down on Kies, planning to cut him straight down the middle, but something unexpected happened.

Faster than a blink of an eye, something long and black appeared between them. "Huh-" Ayrete felt something fall off his neck. This distracted him for a split second, allowing Kies to roll to the side, dodging the strike by just a hair.

Puzzled by what occurred, Ayrete reached with his open hand and patted his neck. Something was missing! His eyes quickly shot to the ground where a long red cloth was sitting on the sand. There was no mistaking it. It was his scarf.

"What!? How!?"

"How, indeed..." Kies didn't give the soldier any time to figure out what just happened and swung his sword which had appeared back in his hand and cut the soldier's hand clean off, sending his sword away too.

"Argh!" Ayrete stumbled back and fell onto the sand, clenching his arm in agony. Before he had a chance to even think, Kies pointed his sword at the soldier's neck.

"It's my victory."

The soldier was in too much pain to respond, but the referees called the match for him. They rushed to Ayrete and helped the soldier up onto his feet. One of them ran and retrieved his severed hand and brought it to him to have it stitched back on as quickly as possible. They escorted him out of the arena, leaving Kies standing there, alone.

The crowd was silent, stunned by what they saw, or rather, what they didn't see. It all happened faster than a heartbeat. But Kies knew what happened. His sword, which was meters away from him, suddenly teleported into his hand and it sliced the scarf in half, bringing down the anti-magic field. This gave Kies the ability to move again, and the rest played out exactly as he planned.

Kies put his sword away, making it disappear into thin air, and put his hood back on. It was a good thing that his sword had an anti-magic property, or shall he say, a real one, unlike the scarf. After he cut the scarf, he learned the truth about it. The scarf did not nullify magic. In fact, it was using magic to disrupt other magic. The moment it came into contact with his sword, the scarf went out of control and its magic stopped working.

If it weren't for that and the magical returning function of the sword whenever it got too far from him, he would've been doomed. Thank goodness his opponent was an absolute idiot. Instead of choosing to kill him when he had the chance, he messed around, ultimately allowing Kies to do that to him.

By now, the crowd regained their senses and started booing Kies for doing something so cowardly. Faking vulnerability and attacking when his opponent left his guard down, they didn't know what really happened, and this was what they saw with their eyes.

Kies took a deep breath and walked out of the arena. It didn't matter what they thought or said, the fight was over and he was the winner. He had something else to do now, and besides, he was planning to go all out tomorrow in his match against Rui. They will see just what he could really do then.

Right now, they may be booing, but... "Just wait and see..." Keeping quiet was no longer an option. Kies might as well reveal his strength here and shock everyone to save trouble in the long run. Strength determined everything in Otane, and he was tired of being looked down on. This will all change in tomorrow's match.

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