The days went by quickly and eventually, Kane's match rolled up. Ten days passed by very quickly.
"Relax, you'll do just fine," Rui reassured him. "Your plan is solid."
"Fuuu…" He exhaled deeply as he tried relaxing his nerves.
It wasn't every day that he was to compete in a death match where only one person was allowed to come out alive. This was not the same as risking his life on a mission or on the battlefield.
As an evasive maneuverer, he had great confidence in his ability to evade danger and death by simply removing himself from a given circumstance or situation. He was extremely fast and nimble, and it was difficult for people to tag him.
This gave him comfort and reassurance at the back of his mind.
However, in this particular circumstance, he could not run away and remove himself from this particular circumstance. Once he stepped into it, it was already too late. He would need to kill his opponent.
"It's time," Rui mentioned.
Kane nodded wordlessly as he loosened his joints, heading out of his quarters and towards the dueling colosseum.
"Good luck," Rui wished him one last time as the two of them split up
The spectators watched as he entered the arena, heading towards the arbiter of the match. Rui was quite nervous, but the rest of the colosseum did not echo his emotions, this was just another ordinary match to them.
Soon enough, Squire Heviluo also arrived.
He stepped up before Kane, locking eyes with him with a cold stare.
It couldn't be helped. Challenges from initiates were no different from a declaration of the intent to kill. The man was not going to interact with someone who had expressed the desire to kill him.
"Initiate Nake has challenged the nine-hundred and seventy-ninth guardian Heviluo," The arbiter announced. "Starting distance has been deemed to be fifty meters."
The Floating Sect handled the starting conditions of the duels in an interesting fashion. The Martial Squires were to give the range at which they would want the battle to begin, and the average distance of the distance that they stated would be used as the range at which the battle would begin, in order to give both combatants as close to an equal starting as possible.
The average of their starting distances had come out to be fifty, which was not ideal, but not too bad for either side.
"Take your stances," The arbiter instructed.
Kane lightly hopped on his feet while his arms were loosely at his side, the man, on the other hand, inhaled deeply as he prepared a powerful punch with his right arm curled and wound back with his fist balled.
"Begin!"
Kane disappeared into thin air.
Void Step had been activated, and no one could sense Kane anymore. It was at times like this that Rui was reminded of the true power of the Void Step technique. Because of how useless it was against him, it was easy to forget it. But, when he looked at the reactions that the others had, it was a good reminder that the technique truly was grade-ten.
POW!
The confused man felt an impact on his body that didn't even hurt, it felt like a child hitting him. Yet his body shivered as he felt a deep sense of danger. He immediately cocked his head back.
SCRATCH
Kane's piercing technique just barely missed his eyes, instead causing him to have a skin cut above his forehead.
('Remarkable instincts to recognize the danger despite his consciousness being unable to detect pain,') Rui raised an eyebrow.
The subconscious sense of self-preservation was the strongest, and it certainly was true even for the Martial body. It was easy for Kane to fool the ordinary senses of Martial Squires and even many of the techniques that they had to run circles around them, but when it came to more abstract senses like that it was much harder.
In the Shionel Dungeon, Kane had been able to get away with it because the Shionel Dungeon greatly hampered all senses even further, but Martial Squires was not to be trifled with when the sense of self-preservation was triggered. It was not something that could be misdirected entirely.
The man immediately leaped back as he covered his vitals, making sure that Kane couldn't hurt them. The previous two attacks had shown him that Kane's offense was not impressive. It was actually startlingly weak, he hadn't even been able to make him bleed with a piercing technique while his strikes felt like those of an infant to the grade-nine Martial Squire.
Squire Heviluo immediately realized that meant that there were a limited number of ways in which Kane could possibly take him down. As long as he covered for those ways well enough, it would be truly difficult for Kane to inflict much meaningful damage.
However, just sitting passively would not get him to victory, it would only significantly delay defeat.
And he was not interested in delaying it, he was interested in preventing it from ever happening.
There were a few ways he could go about that.
He leaped back as he exhaled deeply activating a breathing technique as he began spinning at incredible speeds.
WHOOOOOSH!
Rui's eyes widened as an enormous tornado erupted from his body, expanding widely in all directions. It was an incredibly powerful attack that attacked any and everything within the colosseum.
"Rgh!" Kane groaned as the whirlwind struck him. He had managed to dilute the impact by running to the very edge of the arena, but the attack had struck him nonetheless, dispelling the Void Step technique for a brief moment.
Rui narrowed his eyes, he had run into a similar technique in his time in Crexeet town, except that technique was purely defensive, while this technique was offensive.
The man began firing wide-range blasts in the broad direction of Kane.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!!
The powerful attacks crashed into a wide amount of area, yet Kane was nowhere to be seen.
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