The princess returned to her place with the rest of the Blackhawk Academy members. As soon as she arrived there, she was congratulated by everyone around her as her performance on the stage was more than incredible.
"You were amazing, princess," Yorsha shouted. She had forgotten all about her own loss and was reveling in the princess's victory. "Why did you not tell us that you have Dual cores?"
"Oh, you guys realized," Alena said. "Did you tell them?"
The prince shrugged. "She asked a lot," he said, pointing toward Yorsha.
"That came off as quite a surprise," Ning told her. "You hit it all rather well. That made for a nice match to watch, princess."
"Thank you," the princess said. She sat next to her brother and acknowledged the congratulations from the others before looking at the stage.
"Huh? I messed it up quite a bit, didn't I?" she asked.
"No more than usual when you use that core," the princes said.
The teacher turned his head toward the brackets and spoke. "Ning, it's your turn next."
Ning nodded. His eyes shifted to a guy that stood in the distance, wearing a set of purple uniforms. He was an Earth Essence user and he was his next opponent.
There was still a bit of time as the stage had to be fixed before they went.
"Well, I am right after Ning," the prince said. "How do you want our fight to go, Hyan?"
Hyandus cringed a little from the side. "I have no chance of winning against you, prince. I will instead just give up when it starts."
"What? Come on! You need to fight a little," the prince said. "Sure I'll win, but don't you want to see how far you can push me?"
"No," Hyandus said. "I refuse to fight because I don't want to see how far I can push you. You will use the fight as evidence that you don't need any guard and start running around alone without any protection."
"True," Alena said. "Absolutely do not fight with him."
"Tsk!" the prince clicked his tongue. "And here I had such a great plan."
The stage was fixed and the host came to the stage to announce the final match of the Top 16. When it was over, he came over once again to announce that the Quarterfinals were going to begin. The one who won everything would be one of these 8.
Ning stood up from his seat and so did the purple-clothed man. They both walked out onto the stage and felt the lingering heat from the princess's battle. While the stage was fixed, it seemed they couldn't clear away the heat just yet.
It wasn't hot enough to bother either of them, so no one found any problems with it.
Ning stood on one side and looked at his opponent. The young man had an Earth Essence core, but he wondered what else he had. Did he have any weapons on him?
Ning brought out his own weapon. The Earth Sword.
It was so much more convenient to have somewhere to store the sword. He no longer had to worry about accidentally cutting someone or something because of how large the sword was.
Ning's opponent brought out his weapon as well, a Wind sword.
Ning didn't find that as threatening as any other sword could have been. They waited for the referee to announce the start and began fighting.
As soon as the announcement came, Ning throughout multiple rocks at the man, each flying at an incredible speed.
The young man slammed his feet on the ground, causing a crack to form, from which grew a single pillar of earth that stopped all the attacks.
Then, he took a second step and another crack grew from where he stepped, growing toward Ning in the distance. When it arrived next to Ning, it grew out as another pillar of rock again.
Ning stepped aside at the last moment and cut through the rock with his sword. He then used Essence on his sword to create a similar rock pillar, but at a slanted angle to toss the remainder toward the young man at the edge of the stage.
The young man easily warded it off and took another step, using the same attack once more. Ning was a little confused, but he let it happen. He easily dodged it once again, but he wondered why he wasn't using any more attacks.
Some sort of bait? Was he trying to lure him in? Or was he trying to bait him into thinking that was all he could do?
Ning did not expect the young man to just be cautious of him.
While the young man was theoretically the stronger one in this fight, he had seen many stronger people fall to Ning's immense variety of techniques that were seemingly endless.
Not only were they endless, but they were also rather unique, with none being used before at any point in most of the fights.
Lightning, Space… these weren't the types of Essence that were easily found, and as such many weren't used to this sort of technique.
Ning's opponent was just afraid of what else he could use.
In the tower, Saburn Foreman rested his head on his palm as he leaned to the side. He watched the match from far away, looking for anything special about the sword in Ning's hands.
He mostly believed that his son was simply trying to get back at Ning for the humiliation he received a few days ago, but on the smaller off-chance that he was correct, he wanted to not miss it.
While he believed his son was lying, he knew there could be an essence of truth hidden in that lie somewhere. And so, he watched.
The rest of the people on the tower were also quite enjoying the match. Someone in the Essence Manifestation realm defeating multiple Low Essence Soul realm fighters was something unheard of.
They hadn't watched the previous matches but wanted to see if they could figure out how he could win this time.
The Emperor especially watched him with keen eyes. However, his eyes didn't seem to be on the person at all, but on his sword.
"Could it be…?"
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