Markus' perception of time started to slow down as the referee brought their hand down to initiate the fight. His eyes darted for one last time around the arena, observing and deconstructing the minute movements of his opponents.
The moment the fight began, five pairs of feet left the ground all at once. As Markus anticipated, everyone started to dogpile on the girl oozing with arrogance. Two girls bounded in with a sword and a sabre respectively, the third girl had a fist coated in purple flames, the boy rocketed forward with a meteor-like dropkick, while the girl with the whip tied around her hips faltered and stumbled as she prepared to defend herself against her attackers.
Markus flicked his wand to his right and an intricate mandala of spell circles formed around him and his wand in an instant. The second the spell circles solidified a massive ball of semi-molten rock, like an asteroid breaching the atmosphere, collided against him.
While most expected to see the boy expelled from the stage in a spectacularly ragdoll-like manner, to their shock, the ball started to warp, bend, and get siphoned into a tiny circle of nothingness at the tip of Markus' wand. The entire fiery rock was deleted within two seconds, at which point the circle of nothingness started to fluctuate unstably. Markus didn't waste another moment and jerked his wand towards the beatdown occurring on the far side of the arena.
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An inhuman shriek followed as the circle of nothingness hurtled at the speed of sound, gaining a third dimension as it approached the youths. Those at the receiving end of the attack were frozen in place as something incomprehensible entered their mana senses rendering the control over their mana domains obsolete. A few tried to quickly put up some warding spells through pure instinct, but the ball drilled through it all without any opposition. They could barely make it out of the way before an explosion followed by a crushing shockwave caught them. Five bodies were flung from the arena, unconscious and battered. The arena itself did not fare any better and over three-quarters of it had turned into rubble.
The distracted audience paused and rubbed their eyes in disbelief. An unusual silence hung in the air, almost as though the ball of nothingness had taken all sound with it.
Markus turned to his right and narrowed his attention on the boy who had been quaking in his boots at the start of the fight, though this time the quaking was genuine and not just a facade to get others to lower their guards.
This was the third breed of fighters Markus was on the lookout for, the under-sellers. The kind of people that, as an elaborate strategy, outwardly diminished their skill to lull their opponents into a false sense of security. Upon witnessing the exaggerated signs of weakness, the opponent often grows arrogant and takes the conflict on a lighter note.
From the start, Markus knew that the fearful boy was a deceiver and that his aura of vulnerability was all fake. This was because the boy could not keep his persona consistent. There were a few times when Markus tracked his opponents outside the arena. While one of the fights was taking place on stage, Markus happened to notice this same boy showing a disdainful expression that also reeked of smugness. If that was the boy's baseline, why would he suddenly freeze over and shiver in fear upon meeting a fresh and unknown group of mages that he has never even faced before? This was all a plot, a ruse, a grift - Markus could sense it.
Just as Markus had predicted, when the fight began, he was one of two on stage that did not pile up on one person into a stressful melee. Instead, he prepared for the anticipated attack from his opponent who, on cue, sent a damaging attack to the only other person not engaged in combat. The deceptive boy hoped to pick off stragglers or overreaching idiots who underestimated him. Unfortunately for him his opponent had seen through his strategy, prepared a counter for it and even capitalised on it by using the counter to take out the rest of the competition.
The fear that the boy was feeling right now was genuine. Many queries ran through his mind: 'What was that? Where did my attack disappear to? Why couldn't the others defend themselves against the attack even after witnessing its approach?'
But the more pressing question at the present moment was 'What the fuck am I going to do now?' His position was equivalent to someone bluffing in a card game with the confidence of being able to get away with it, but then getting called out on the bluff almost immediately.
At least before, the destructive attack was distributed between five other people. Now, though, he would have to field an attack that managed to demolish reinforced materials meant to withstand violent combat through its shockwave from the aftermath alone.
When Markus put one step forward, the boy took two back. Markus tilted his head in confusion. "If you don't wish to continue this fight, I suggest you step down now," Markus warned.
"W-Who says I'm giving up?!" The boy shot back, but with a stutter that drowned the challenging tone in his voice.
Markus nodded briefly as confirmation and flourished his wand once again. The mandala rotating behind him shifted its form, turning less intricate. Then, from his extended wand's tip, a large |Fireball| shot out. The boy at the receiving end, to his credit, quickly caught his apprehension and countered by splitting the ball in two.
Markus took a step forward and brought his wand backwards while spinning it. In response, the dissipating fire started to form a vortex and gushed in his direction. Markus redirected it and threw it towards the boy as a |Fire Lance|. The boy could do little but dodge, but at that moment he found his body growing heavier. The split-second stumble was enough for the lance to collide with his shoulder leaving a barely visible scorch mark as the boy's instinctive decision to coat his skin with mana armour absorbed some of the damage.
While this was happening, Markus had closed the distance to just five metres. The boy realised this and coiled his legs to strafe sideways. His body lowered, his muscles compressed in anticipation... then he released!
However, contrary to his expectations, his body did not move back up but went lower and lower, until he was completely prone on the ground. The boy felt himself being crushed by his own body!
Within an approximate five-metre radius around Markus, everything apart from the boy started to float. Seconds passed and suddenly, Markus' feet lifted off from the ground - he was floating too!
The eyes of many audience members nearly burst out of their sockets upon witnessing this.
"The boy can fly? But he is only in the Foundation Establishment realm!" Someone blurted out.
"He isn't flying, you idiot! He's floating," the person next to him chided.
"What's the difference?" The first man shot back with a sarcastic tone and a disdainful expression.
"To fly or levitate is to oppose the natural behaviour of falling," a demure voice intervened, cutting through the din like a hot knife through butter. Guy followed the sound and saw the same woman who'd registered his sect!
"That boy, however... It's almost like the world just doesn't want him to fall down," she said with an amused chuckle. "I would do something about his opponent, though. It looks like he cannot continue."
All eyes darted towards the suppressed boy whose consciousness was teetering. The immense pressure acting on him had shattered a few bones, and they were poking into his organs, he was finding it hard to breathe with his lungs struggling to oppose the crushing weight, the pain and the oxygen deprivation had pushed him to the edge.
The person refereeing the fights sputtered and reddened in embarrassment for getting distracted like that.
"Stall number 23 goes to the True World Sect," the referee called out, and just like that the weight lifted off of the boy. The boy deflated and lost consciousness as his body rebounded with the sudden decrease in the crushing force. Markus bowed and started to walk out of the arena.
Jean rushed forward and caught Markus as he stumbled over the last step. He was breathing heavily, sweating, and pale all over. Jean immediately reached into her satchel and retrieved a phial. She undid the stopper and immediately jabbed it into Markus' lips.
"Senior Brother, drink it quickly! You are suffering from mana exhaustion!" She demanded worriedly. Markus hummed and started to gulp down the liquid.
"What was that attack?" Guy asked with a stern whisper. It was a rhetorical question, since he immediately followed it up with, "What were you thinking? Look at what you did to yourself!"
"I-It was necessary, Master," Markus responded. The colour was returning to his cheeks, though his breath was still staggered. "We need to show our strength. People will remember this display and will approach our stand over the recruitment period. This will also stop others from looking down on us."
Guy agreed with this statement, but couldn't help but mutter, "But at what cost?"
Markus was right about one thing. The display did attract the attention of a lot of people. For one, the way Markus utterly dominated the field had shaken the attitudes of a lot of sects.
With strength came freedom. Those with power had the liberty to choose and take what they wanted, that was the law that governed this world. Markus had shown that the True World Sect was formidable. He proved that he could have competed for any stand, even the heavily contested ones in the more prominent locations. But the True World Sect chose one that was in a moderately traversed area. This behaviour had earned the acknowledgement of many sects present.
A barracuda is a formidable predator. It is ferocious and fearsome, and highly proficient in hunting. However, if a barracuda chooses to compete amongst sharks, it will only get eaten instead. Yet, this did not mean that a shark could treat the barracuda as a joke since, at its core, the barracuda was still a predator.
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