Chapter 123 - Battle Royale (3)
The onlookers had gotten quiet after the start of the skirmish, and many of them had looks of surprise on their faces. Barely one second had happened, and most of the students had not even started fighting but there were three who had already been defeated.
Moreover, this was clearly just the start.
Since the students that had gone to attack Reina and Karles weren't too far away, Nerun used his
Other two students defeated.
Nerun then disappeared, going for one of the enemies that had attacked Reina. The latter managed to fend them off with her powerful kicks and abilities, however, she would find herself on the losing end of the bout if she had no support. However, Nerun arrived barely seconds after they had started fighting. The other student from the middle-ranked group was flustered because he couldn't understand how could Nerun be so powerful. Nevertheless, he had no time to understand, since he had to defend himself quickly, otherwise, he would soon be defeated. He couldn't help cursing Solda and his friends for making him attack Nerun guaranteeing benefits for him and his family. He was about to be humiliated in front of the entire school, having accomplished nothing.
He started moving his arms rapidly, as if they were a veritable machine gun, making over ten punches in a single second.
But it was all for nought. Nerun moved his hands with incredible accuracy and fended off all the attacks without breaking a sweat, even pushing him back several steps. Nerun then felt the Natural Energy of Heaven and Earth moving behind him and catching one of the student's arms, he immediately turned around and threw him right in front of him, where the student faced a giant energy bomb that someone had thrown towards Nerun.
"Αεροπορική βόμβα" - /Aeroporikí vómva/*
- BOOM
The student was quickly taken off commission. Nerun then looked towards his attacker. It happened to be a male adept from the top-ranked class that was paired with a female warrior, who was ranked fourth among the first-year students. After Nerun had shown his prowess, not much time had gone by, and since they were part of the stronger bunch they were idle for the moment since none had dared to attack them yet. However, they were soon shocked and scared by Nerun's power. They quickly noticed his ability and power and realized that he would be their greatest obstacle for the test, so, they decided to take care of him quickly while the latter was occupied with other rivals.
However, how could they fool Nerun's senses with one of his head meridians open? After all, these meridians were the hardest to open among the auxiliary meridians, and not even all adepts are able to open them while in the lower realms of power. Most Adepts and Warriors started opening them when they were Centurions or Mages at the very least.
So far, the rest of the students had barely started finding their own battles, but Nerun and his friends had already defeated six enemies in but scarce seconds since the beginning of the battle royale. This was beyond scary.
When Nerun saw his attackers, he didn't get mad. No, he smiled back and then went straight for them. Meanwhile, Reina and Karles had quickly ganged upon the last of their pursuers and had quickly defeated him, and then followed Nerun.
The male adept, whose name was Jason, tried to use some more spells against Nerun but quickly found it impossible since Nerun was moving like a phantom in the Arena. Nerun's speed was already quite close to the one used by a Centurion. For Grandmaster level students this was something impossible to achieve, for even the best of them so-called "geniuses" could at best go toe to toe with a normal Praetorian who had only opened two or fewer auxiliary meridians, and that was considered praiseworthy. All of a sudden they found someone who could not be considered a genius, but a monster.
Elijah was smiling the whole time while watching Nerun's performance. In the meantime, Cynthia was clenching her beautiful fists and her face had gone pale. Vega was quite serious as well next to her and said nothing. The rest of the audience was already beyond flabbergasted by Nerun's explosive attacks and couldn't get their eyes off the arena.
The Core Students so far had had a lackadaisical attitude while watching the battles. The tall and burly one had been talking with the beautiful lady the entire time and had not watched any of the battles save for some moments here and there when Roman and Julieth had used their special attacks, but even then, he made no comments. The other student had even directly fallen asleep. However, when Nerun started his furious attacks he got quite solemn, as well as his lady companion.
Likewise, the students from the rest of the years in the audience were shocked by Nerun's show of power. They didn't necessarily think they were weaker than Nerun, in fact, many of them were sure they could defeat Nerun after an exhausting battle. But who were they? third, Fourth and Fifth year students of the Inner Class of the Lyceum. Geniuses among geniuses that had received several years of martial education, and that were considered the very best in the kingdom. They were already Praetorians, and some had already become Centurions. Meanwhile, Nerun had barely entered the Academia for little more than a month and was but a Grandmaster, yet many of them were already considering their equal.
Then again, Nerun had managed to defeat so many students so far, on the one hand, because he had both Nerun and Karles' help, on the other hand, because this was a battle royale and the students were fighting among each other, a chaotic environment that Nerun had used to quickly get the upper hand. Add the fact that Nerun was much stronger than the regular Grandmaster and that he had been sorely underestimated before. It was this accumulation of situations that finally triggered the spectacle that was now unfolding.
Back in the arena, Gonzo and Marcia had managed to defeat two more students and were about to pounce on another group when they noticed the activity in the centre of the arena. The arena was big enough for many students to fight on it comfortably, the size of two football fields.
Another group of four students that were fighting in the arena had to stop when Nerun approached them. They were scared for a bit, since Nerun's speed and agility were off the charts, and two students that were fighting each other previously tried attacking Nerun. However their balance was all over the place since they had been battling, and Nerun quickly dispatched them without much effort. The other two students then attacked Nerun with a technique each which caused an explosion right in the place Nerun had been, making a small crater appear. However, Nerun had already vanished before the attack landed, and appeared behind of the attackers and hit him right with his elbow on the back, and using the recoil from the hit approaching the other one who could barely mount some kind of hasty defense that Nerun quickly breached after three palm attacks and pushed him right towards the fast approaching Karles and Reina.
When this happened, most of the other fights going on in the arena stopped. Gonzo and Marcia had defeated two students themselves, and the other pair of Warrior and Adept that had not attacked Nerun did the same. With Nerun's defeat of eleven students, there were only half of the students originally fighting remaining still in the arena.
Barely a minute had gone by since the start of the battle. Jason couldn't help but notice that Nerun had not taken his eyes off him, and with some fright in his voice shouted towards the rest of the students.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? We either gang together and defeat him, or it's over for all of us." He was trying to incite the other twelve students, not including Karles, Reina and Nerun, to group together and fight Nerun.
However, only eight of the students decided to attack Nerun, because Gonzo and Marcia had decided to attack another two students that could only turn back and defend against this powerful pair. Jason could not understand Gonzo's choice, but he had to make do with what he had. Jason and the other Adept, a cute-looking female named Mirna started gathering their energy to attack Nerun with spells while the other six students went to fight Nerun.
Leading them were the third and fourth-ranked students among the first year's classmates. The third-ranked student was called Bufford and was a slim and black-haired young man. The fourth-ranked student was a female and atlethic-looking female named Lala. Both were also members of the nobility, however, they were not from Eonia or the surrounding Counties. They were quite talented in their own right, however, Jason was from the high nobility, and his father was another Marquis of the Empire and was also close to the Alaria Family. That, along with Nerun's scary fighting ability was the reason that pushed these usual rivals to group together against a common enemy.
Most people were expecting Nerun to get flustered by being ganged upon by so many of his classmates, but they were sorely disappointed since Nerun actually got excited while fighting with so many enemies. After all, his Martial Art was quite good in defending against many enemies and using their own power against themselves. After Nerun had reunited with Elijah and got to train regularly under him his prowess skyrocketed. The constant sparring with Elijah and his friends allowed him to notice many of the issues his fighting style had, and Nerun managed to improve so much that he had not even noticed himself as being well above the rest of his peers.
Nerun took the initiative to approach the incoming enemies led by Bufford and Lala. They didn't use powerful techniques haphazardly, since they were clear with Nerun's speed and didn't want to attack their companions by mistake. Otherwise, it was quite easy to hurt each other, while Nerun escaped unscathed. After all, none of them had worked together as a team before this Ranking, something that the upperclassmen had already received classes on. Therefore it was more likely they would disturb each other. So they decided to enclose Nerun and attack him one after the other, forcing him to make a mistake and finally eliminating him. Karles and Reina were not close to Nerun, so they thought they could defeat the latter before his friends tried to rescue him.
Bufford reached Nerun first and quickly started punching and kicking towards Nerun ferociously. His attacks were both strong and hard to defend from, however, Nerun used his
Lala once again approached Nerun and using her Qi gathered at her fingernails she tried using it as a blade and cutting Nerun from his blind point.
Nerun used a well-timed kick to hit Lala's wrist and diverted the attack away, meanwhile, he used his ethereal walk to get away from Bufford and Lala and appear beside another student who Nerun hit in the chin with his palm. There were already two of the six students out of commission. Nerun's attacks and movements were flawless and so aesthetically pleasant, that some people even thought that this was all choreographed.
Bufford decided that he needed to risk it, otherwise, Nerun would finish them all in no time, so he gathered a grand amount of Qi that surrounded him in a red-coloured halo, and flashed towards Nerun with great speed and power.
A bang sounded in the arena, and Bufford had cracked the arena at the place where he landed. This attack, had it landed on any of his rivals was more than enough to send them to the hospital for several weeks. Nonetheless, Nerun jumped very high and managed to avoid the attack.
It was then that Jason and Mirna found their chance to attack Nerun. This was the best chance they had, while Nerun was in mid-air and couldn't use his uncanny movement to defend himself, to attack him with all they had. Jason used a grand blad made of air, over two meters tall that flew towards Nerun at great speed. Meanwhile, Mirna summoned 5 balls of floating water that shot high-pressure liquid towards Nerun.
"Λεπίδα αέρα" - /Lepída aéra/*
"Νεροπίστολο" - /Neropístolo/*
After these attacks, everyone thought that Nerun was bound for defeat.
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Αεροπορική βόμβα - /Aeroporikí vómva/ : Air Bomb
Λεπίδα αέρα" - /Lepída aéra/: Air Blade
Νεροπίστολο" - /Neropístolo/: Water Gun