Chapter 351: The Draconian Might
"I am feeling the excitement, I can’t wait... Up next is, Hitachi and Honky!!" Davy yelled, his charismatic voice echoing across the sweeping architectures of the arena. Almost instantly, a heavy, suffocating silence descended.
Hitachi, the proud, enigmatic young master of the legendary Azul clan, and its last living survivor—who in the three high empires doesn’t know of him? His bloodline carried the catastrophic weight of a slaughtered lineage, making him a figure of both immense tragedy and absolute terror.
The millions in the stands watched with bated breath as Hitachi stepped forward, his boots clicking cleanly against the restored stone before he took his place at the center of the Arena. He stood there with absolute, aristocratic poise, silently hugging his sheathed sword to his chest, his eyes closed as he waited.
Everyone simultaneously turned their heads toward the Sword Academy’s pavilion, and blinked in collective surprise.
Honky, the massive, heavily armored juggernaut, was casually sitting down in his stone bench with his eyes completely closed, making absolutely no effort to move toward the ring.
"Honky? Can you please get on the stage." Davy asked in genuine confusion, checking the screen to ensure there wasn’t a systemic error.
"There is no need to fight, I admit defeat." Honky said lazily, not even bothering to uncross his massive arms as he dismissively waved his hand at Davy:
"I surrender."
".....?!"
The entire stadium stared at him, completely dumbfounded. A high-ranking elite of the Sword Empire, surrendering without a single clash of steel? It was an unprecedented blow to their pride.
"Hmph!"
Hitachi scoffed coldly, his crimson eyes opening for a fraction of a second to flash with deep disdain. He didn’t waste a single word on a coward; he simply turned around and walked calmly back to his spot, leaving a completely dumbfounded audience murmuring in disbelief behind him.
"Hmm... Okay." Davy nodded his head, clearing his throat to smooth over the awkward anti-climax as he turned his head back to the runic screen:
"Hitachi won this round, let’s see the next competitors." He said, signaling the system to roll the dice once more.
_
Back in the Sword Academy’s staging deck, the atmosphere was thick with irritation.
"Hey! I didn’t know you’re such a scary cat!" Nirvana snapped fiercely, aggressively hitting Honky’s big arm with her fist.
"I am a Lv250 Knight, he is a Lv400 All-bloodlines... Not only that, he also has the Celestial eye which he had upgraded to the second stage... There is no way I can win him." Honky explained with a perfectly flat, logical expression, closing his eyes again to lean back against the wall.
"So instead to waste my strength, I will persevere it." He added.
Nirvana stared at his massive frame, completely speechless. No matter how aggressively she thought about his words, the blunt math of his explanation indeed made perfect sense.
"You’re just lazy." She muttered with a sharp eye roll, turning her back on him.
"Next!! Nirvana from the sword academy, and Austin from the Dragon academy!" Davy’s booming voice suddenly sounded, the syllables instantly stunning Nirvana in her tracks.
"Haha! You’re up. Will you surrender too?" Honky teased from behind, opening one single, mocking eye to look at her.
"TSK! I am not you." Nirvana spat out defiantly, and walked confidently forward, stepping past the shimmering barrier and getting onto the grand stage, her sharp gaze staring directly at Austin, who stood a considerable distance before her.
"Okay! Start!" Davy yelled, bringing his hand down before swiftly retreating.
"I am not that lazy guy who Surrender--"
Nirvana violently froze mid-sentence, her spatial perception short-circuiting as Austin completely vanished from her line of sight. In a microsecond, the space distorted, and he appeared directly behind her, his heavy, energy-wrapped fist heading straight to her head with the force of a meteor.
’That fast?’ She was completely stunned.
BOOOOM!!!!
Austin’s devastating fist smashed violently into a glowing, hyper-dense golden ring that manifested around her neck at the absolute last millisecond. The sheer backlash of the protective ward exploded outward, sending him flying backward through the air. Austin gracefully controlled his body midair, flipping backwards twice before landing firmly on his feet.
"You’re fast, But too bad you met me." Nirvana said with a brilliant, predatory smile. The massive, intricate golden bangle floating right behind her shoulders glowed blindingly, and with a series of metallic cracks, it shattered into ten different, independently floating rings.
"You are fighting against Nirvana Bauhinia!!!" She yelled, her voice filled with imperial pride, as her rings shot forward through the air, spinning towards Austin with deadly, high-velocity speed.
"This?!"
Austin aggressively leaped out of the way, his body blurring as the heavy bangles smashed brutally into the stone ground right where he had stood, instantly pulverizing the rock and creating a deep, smoking crater.
’She is exceptionally strong.’ He thought, his expression turning serious as a heavy, pitch-black legendary class armor materialized over his body.
’As a pure physical warrior, I can’t gain any magical attributes or hidden spells from standard skill scrolls... But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own absolute cards.’ He thought, standing upright as his energy began to violently boil. He unleashed it, and right before everyone’s eyes, his red turned a pure, radiant white, signifying his transformation.
"What if you’re a princess of the sword empire?! I am not scared of you!" He shot forward like a railgun shell, the stone beneath his boots shattering as his white hair trailed behind him.
"Presumptuous!!"
Nirvana pointed a commanding finger at his advancing form: "I am the daughter of a Master teacher, an All-bloodlines cultivator... What gives a mere warrior the right to stand before me?!"
BOOOOM!!
The energy superheated. Fifty massive, interlocking bangles suddenly appeared in a massive circular array all behind her, spinning violently like a meat grinder: "You are not my opponent!!"
WHOOSH!!
The entire fifty-piece construct shot forward, tearing the atmosphere to shreds as the rings kept spinning towards Austin with deadly, inescapable speed.
"You speak too much!!!"
Austin tightly clenched his right fist, his white hair standing on end as his lineage reached its peak: "Warrior Punch!"
He channeled every single ounce of his dense, physical life energy into his gauntlet and sent it roaring forward, unleashing a massive, towering white phantom dragon that materialized from his force, charging directly towards Nirvana.
"This?"
BOOOOM!!!!
The phantom dragon roared, its dense physical mass instantly shattering all fifty bangles into absolute nothingness, and smashed right into Nirvana, sending her flying violently backward across the arena.
BAM!
She smashed heavily into the far stone ground, her body rolling through the dirt, rising a massive, obscuring cloud of dust and thick grey smoke over her side of the platform.
"Hmph!"
Austin landed perfectly on his feet, his heavy black gauntlet tightly clenched as the white flames of his transformation continued to dance along both his arms, reaching all the way up to his broad shoulders.
"Don’t think because you are Master Teacher Nadia’s only daughter, I will go easy on you." He said coldly, his voice echoing through the arena.
"I should show you the true, unyielding strength of my Draconian family!" He yelled into the sky, and a massive, blinding wave of pure white light violently burst out from his body, smashing heavily into the transparent barrier high above the arena, making the array flicker.
"Hahahaha... Hahahaha!"
".....?!"
Everyone in the stadium was instantly stunned, their cheers dying out as they stared through the clearing smoke. Nirvana was laughing out loud, a strange, unhinged sound, as she slowly got back to her feet, wiping a trail of blood from her lip.
"Show me the power of your family!! I want to experience every single ounce of it!!" She yelled across the cratered field, a dark, devilish smirk twisting her face as her energy began to uncharacteristically mutate.
__
[Sword Empire Royal’s Room.]
"Aunty Nadia?" Princess Carolina said, her voice laced with sudden anxiety as she turned her head to look at the Master Teacher sitting beside them.
"Don’t worry, she just unlocked the first seal..." Nadia said with a small, deeply troubled frown, her eyes locked onto her daughter’s erratic energy signature.
"Huh? But why give her the key to such a forbidden restriction?" Prince Scott asked in deep confusion.
Nadia turned and fiercely glared at him, her intense aura causing the young Prince to instantly swallow his words and quickly look away in fear.
’After what happened on Earth... if she had possessed the ancestral key back then, she wouldn’t have suffered so much helplessness at the hands of those monsters,’ Nadia thought, her fingers tightly curling into her robes as a rare hint of maternal worry flashed deep within her eyes. ’I gave her the key strictly to protect her own life in this brutal crucible... I just hope she doesn’t completely go crazy under its influence.’
