"Are you ready?" Keira asked, stepping outside and looking at Silas, who was stretching his limbs. "Always." Silas grinned with confidence.

The walk to the town felt long, partly because his family was trying to hype him up, which was annoying. But Silas dealt with it the same way he dealt with most noise: by tuning them out until they reached their destination.

When they finally arrived at the town square, the crowd parted before them as Silas walked towards the small arena they had created for the battle between him and Nymira.

The spectacle had created enough excitement that people decided to invest in the battle by building an arena. Bets had been flying around for the last month, and the odds were in Nymira's favor, 60/40.

Silas couldn't help but notice the abundance of food stands and merchants, creating a carnival-like atmosphere. The smell of food was everywhere, and while some of it disgusted him, some of it looked mildly appetizing.

As he walked past a few of the white knights, Silas stepped up and placed his foot on the inch-high platform. He looked forward to seeing Nymira, a young girl with cherry-pink hair and piercing aqua-blue eyes, standing on the other end of the platform.

She had a serious expression on her face, making her look more cute than threatening. In a way, she resembled an angry puppy.

Silas smiled at her, unaware of his good looks and popularity with girls his age. Although Nymira didn't have a crush on him, many parents could tell their daughters did.

"We're fighting first, then?" Silas asked with a smile, but Nymira smiled back. She just replied-

"You've gotten stronger..." with a grimace...

The priest suddenly stepped onto the platform, looking at the two with a fatherly smile.

It sent a shiver down Silas' spine, and even Nymira frowned and scrunched up her nose as if she smelled something horrible.

'There's something off about him... He was fine before, but why does he feel different today?' Silas narrowed his eyes.

As everyone else smiled at the elderly man, he began to announce the rules of the duel. "Both fighters shall wear leather armor and carry a weapon of their choosing.

The fight shall stop immediately when the opponent sheds blood, is incapacitated, or admits defeat. Do not aim for lethal blows on your opponent. Do not attack after your opponent is down. Being knocked down three times means you've been defeated. Is that understood?" he explained, making the two nod.

"Then..." He raised his hand into the air and created a bubble around them before disappearing into thin air.

"Let the battle BEGIN!" He spoke from wherever he disappeared to.

In an instant, they both lowered themselves to the ground; it felt like time had momentarily stopped.

Nymira lunged forward, her steel sword aimed at Silas's chest with lightning-fast reflexes. Her movements were graceful yet filled with so much power.

It actually felt like she was trying to kill him, but Silas knew that it wasn't the case.

Silas quickly sidestepped the attack, causing Nymira to overextend herself.

At that moment, Silas saw his opening and took it. Sure, he would go easy on her for now, but if she proved to be trouble, he might have to use his body to beat her. She was a kid, but she was also his opponent.

Everyone knew he was a mage anyway, so why not use magic?

With a flick of his wrist, Silas summoned a large boulder from the ground with his earth magic and sent it hurtling toward Nymira.

She deftly dodged it, but Silas was already on the move. He quickly created a wall of water in front of Nymira, obscuring her vision, and followed up with a powerful water blast that shot through the wall of water.

However, to his surprise, she immediately moved out of the way... As if she could see him?

'Crap... Her blessing probably tells her how I'm feeling all the time. If trained right, no one on her level would be capable of hitting her, especially since she can detect that attack from a mile away.' Silas grit his teeth.

Silas knew that he had to keep his distance from her in order to use his magic effectively. He saw Nymira training once... She was monster. A monster beyond anything he had seen before.

Her ability to dodge and sense everything coming at her made her close to untouchable, even for adults.

He summoned another boulder and hurled it at Nymira, but she expertly parried it with her sword that was covered with an expertly amount of toki.

Toki worked like a muscle. Actually, it worked close to how learning to throw worked. At first, you're really bad at it. However, over time, you get better at throwing. Not only that, but you also get better at aiming. The more you try it, the more you improve.

That was the trick to toki.

One just had to do it repeatedly to get better at it. It's not like they're actively doing the calculations in their head to improve their accuracy. It's essentially an instinct.

And for someone to have such perfect control over their toki to deflect a boulder with so much ease.

Yet, even though that was the thing that surprised Silas, the crowd was surprised by something else.

Surprised was describing it lightly.

They were shocked into silence. They had never seen someone cast a magic circle silently, and even though most of them wouldn't want to admit it, non of them had actually seen Silas use magic before.

Even the priest was looking at Silas with an agape expression. However, Silas could see traces of envy and even anger in his expression.

Even Nymira seemed to smell it since she glanced at the priest momentarily before returning to the battle and jumping a few meters back.

"You're not that strong..." She snarled

"Am I not?" Silas smiled, but she didn't retort directly. Instead, she blitzed through the arena and appeared before Silas in a second, though, this does not mean that Silas didn't see it coming, or that he could not react.

Suddenly, a wall of earth appeared before the two of them, yet the moment Nymira began to carve through the wall, Silas had already spun on his heel and appeared to at her side with his palm pointed directly toward her face.

"Water bolt," Silas called out loud. Sure, using tier-1 spells so far without saying a word was cool, but if he were to use a tier-2 spell without saying a word, the people of the town would most likely sh*t themselves out of shock,

Or at least that's how Silas thought of it.

Saying two words weren't nearly good enough either, but at that moment, he realized that he didn't actually know the incantation for a water bolt spell. He could have just faked it by muttering under his breath, but he was pretty sure he saw one or two water mages in the area.

He didn't want to take the chance.

'Wait... Water mages? There aren't any water mages in this town. Maybe it's a merchant?' Silas narrowed his eyes and released the water bolt, yet it was instantly sliced in half and turned into a puddle of water.The debut release occurred at N-ov3l-Bin.

Having had his spell cleaved in half by Nymira's blade, Silas jumped back a meter or two to maintain the distance between them, yet what he saw next shocked him to the core.

He had never seen anything like it before... Wait, no... He had seen something like it before, but he always assumed that the light affinity changed the flow of the toki, but apparently, that wasn't the case?

In an instant, the flow of her attacks changed. The flow of her body synchronized with another melody... Another symphony.

Her breathing changed, and the flow of her toki was shifting.

It was somehow sharper, yet for some reason, Silas felt like whatever was about to come out of her attacks was going to somehow be amazing.

A symphony of melodies hitting off each other in a perfect sequence.

...

'Is this what they call a martial style?'

------------------

[If you have enjoyed this chapter and would like to support the author, please vote using your power stones or golden tickets. Also, you can join my discord server today to see illustrations or to converse about the latest chapters.]