Chapter 44

After getting dressed Timothy exited the little room he was situated in and immediately saw the attendant who was waiting for him. "Hello Masked Fighter, good news is that your opponent for the final match is resting and will be ready in several minutes. If you could please, follow me to the stage so that we could finish this tournament up at a decent hour." Shrugging his shoulders, Timothy began to follow this attendant who was escorting him over. "Your opponent is also a dual expert and surprising us all who were watching, she completely dominated her opponent and did not sustain any injuries during the match."

After inquiring about the girl's name, Timothy realized that it was the same girl that was in his bracket in the beginning of the tournament, except, he did not know that she was a dual expert as well since she had hidden this information very well just like he did since he waited until his last match against Kai to use any sort of fire element type techniques. The attendant explained that the girl has a high affinity for the fire element as well so she believed it would end up being a wonderful match and wished Timothy luck before gesturing him to head through a small door which led to the stage for the final match.

As he entered through the door, Timothy realized that the door itself blocked the sound coming from the stadium and was not ready for the almost ground shaking level of noise that he felt immediately. For him to have defeated a member of an ancient clan in an overwhelming victory, or the fact that the ancestor level figure who looked over the coliseum outright came to his defense, every single one of the spectators wished that they knew who Timothy was. However, it was the mask that would continue to throw them off. Due to keeping his privacy as well as protecting the other contestants, the coliseum had special artifacts that shielded each contestant's energy from being branded by spectators of any rank who tried to.

This did not mean that no one would be able to detect how much strength a contestant had left during a match, but it did prevent the crowd from keeping tabs on the energy signatures of each individual cultivator. And as Timothy made it onto the stage for his last match which he would hopefully be able to win, he spotted a group of senior students from the Grey Imperial Academy all sitting around the same area. It looked like there was a group of at least fifteen students present all in different year classes almost as if there was a field trip of some sort.

Before he could think of anything else, his final opponent walked out onto the stage as well and from the looks of it, she was much more serious compared to in the preliminary match. "I knew that I made a mistake with allowing you to advance until you made your way here to face me. Luckily, I was able to finally grasp the secrets to becoming a rank two warrior through my bottleneck with that ability passed down to me by my master!" she shouted towards him before the referee wasted no time telling the two to begin.

With a wave of her hand after circulating the mana in her body, Timothy's opponent quickly used a fireball technique and created three at a time as she tossed them towards him. Timothy withdrew his ordinary sword and even a small shield in order to block them. What he did not know, was that his opponent's specialty was as a mage and not a warrior while he was the opposite and before long, the small shield he had broken apart as he stumbled backwards. If he did not utilize his flames to act as an armor on his arm, it would have been torn apart by the fireball.

The only reason it seemed that his opponent only used the fireball technique she had, was because it looked to be that she perfected the amount of mana she needed to spend casting the technique which allowed her to keep her perfect pacing as to not waste a single bit of mana. There were many aspects that allowed a cultivator to be considered at the top of their ranks compared to others their age or even older, and one of those aspects that made a big difference was one's ability to not use an unnecessary amount of strength while using their abilities or techniques. In Timothy's case, he was in the top percentile concerning his battle qi, but his opponent without a doubt was in the top percentile concerning her mana.

The match raged on and Timothy had no choice but to begin using his battle qi and his movement technique to avoid the girl's fireballs. But every time he tried to close the gap between them, she would in response use her mana infused bracelets to unleash a flame wall high enough to startle Timothy and cause him to change directions which in turn, gave her enough time to widen the distance between them. Still, her fireballs were only able to slow Timothy down since his own flame created armor around his body did not tire him out in the slightest and made it so that her attacks had no real effect on him.

For the first time since the tournament had begun, the girl withdrew her weapon which was an ordinary whip and using her battle qi, she used her whip to launch another offensive barrage against Timothy. It was difficult, but Timothy saw this as an opportunity and allowed her whip to land several blows all over his body until he was close enough to unleash a technique that his master had bestowed onto him as he was preparing earlier for the match in his bath. With a single swing of his sword, by mixing both his battle qi and mana, his ordinary sword no longer seemed so ordinary as a large flame covered in sword ki was launched directly towards his opponent.

With nowhere to run since Timothy cornered her in exchange for taking so many terrible blows, his opponent had no choice but to take the hit directly! Once the flame and sword ki landed on her body, Timothy's opponent flew backwards hitting the wall outside of the stage as she spit out large amounts of blood as her face began to go pale before fainting on the spot. The crowd went wild not just because the match had ended and Timothy was obviously the winner, but because his opponent realized her impending doom and chose to launch her own flame towards his face in an attempt to remove his mask, and she was successful!