Ancient Pasts - Tbate

First Fight

Cathan Leywin Pov

"Tch! You're going to be sorry." The dwarf that was a head shorter than his opponent with a bulky build looked awkward wearing the blazer uniform, but the way he carried his giant battle-ax with ease told me he was more than what the single stripe on his tie told us.

The metal badge on both the human and dwarf glowed brightly as the dwarf placed a hand on his badge and started chanting. "I declare a duel between me, Broznean Boor, and Nicolas Dreyl!"

"I accept the duel!" The two badges glowed different colors until they synced together, producing a loud 'ping' sound.

The badge on the battle mage uniform and the pocket watch on the scholar mage uniform acted as artifacts for the dueling system, creating a barrier around the users that could take a certain amount of force.

When the barrier broke, the duel was over, and the other party was the winner. It took around 24 hours for the artifact to charge another, where, during that time, dueling wasn't allowed. Mages of a higher level weren't allowed to issue a duel with lower levels to keep it fair, which was why the human had to taunt the dwarf to start.

The human mage took out dual swords from his dimension ring and got into a stance as the people around started backing up to avoid getting caught up in the fight.

I studied the two augmenters and saw that the level two human was a dark red stage mage while the dwarf was still at the black stage. That should be interesting.

"HAAP!" The human student roared as his two broadswords started glowing yellow, and the earth surrounding him started trembling.

"JAH!" The dwarf leaped up and propelled himself forward by pushing off of a nearby tree, charging his battle-ax as well with earth attribute mana.

"Tremor Smash!" the dwarf shouted, placing his left palm on the head of his ax and making the dull glow condense.

With a resounding boom, the power of the blow from the dwarf forced the human to skid back. Even when he blocked with both swords, I could see his arms shaking as he grimaced.

The human boy lowered his two swords and dashed towards the dwarf, who had already gotten into a stance. The dual swords scraped along the ground. As he got into range, he swung up, a trail of the earth followed along, creating twin blades of stone after each sword.

Not bad. While it wasn't surprising that the dwarf could already use his earth attribute element, it surprised me that a human in the red stage could already augment his earth attribute to that degree. He was talented in that sense.

"Shatter!" The dwarf's body glowed yellow as he stomped his right foot hard onto the ground, creating a ripple around him that broke the earth blade approaching him into fragments. The dwarf blocked the human's two actual blades with his ax but got a scrape on his arm from the upward swing.

"Earth Pillar!" Nick exclaimed. Following the upward swipe, he stomped hard with his leading foot directly in front of the dwarf, creating a pretty fragile column of rock from the ground that hit the dwarf squarely in the stomach.

"Oof!" The dwarf's body lifted into the air from the force of the blow, and his shield broke with a loud shattering sound, signaling that the duel was over.

Cheers went off from the humans that gathered, but the dwarves amongst the audience groaned in embarrassment. Arthur just sighed and started to leave, but before I turned to follow him, I saw a slight smirk on the human's face as he once again imbued mana into his two blades.