A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 69: Battle of the Finest!

Here are the pairings that were decided by a lottery draw, with eight and a half hours of daylight left and thirty-six battle proficient employees on the field and the rest as my family:

Father vs. Adri

Mother vs. Soldier

Thérèse vs. Soldier

Hera vs. Anthem

Blondie and Brownie were unluckily forced together since no one could keep up with them...actually, no one wanted to keep up with them from the normal part of the fighters, and the lottery just kind of...yeah. I wouldn't doubt it if they'd been together in past lives, they had this uncanny knack at being drawn together in a spar under even the most off circumstances.

Me vs. Soldier

The rest of them were paired together.

The fights were in a little arena I made in the backyard, where they trained everyday. There was a large clearing, where I summoned bleachers of earth and a barrier for fighters to be. There was a forest arena, but that was for the second round of matches.

The soldiers looked confused when they saw all of this, until they heard I made it.

"Will you have enough mana to fight?" I was asked.

"Don't worry," I smiled while tilting my head, grateful for their concern. "I have plenty left."

That person understood then, for what was probably the thousandth time in both their life and my life, The Libellules are like no other family...

They nodded and went away to join the line of waiting people.

We had all the soldier fights first to watch a good show and let them continue training, and they were over in three hours after they did group mock battles and the like. Magicians were flinging spells, weapons were clashing, a bit of blood was drawn because this was pretty serious for a mock match, and those that weren't participating were cheering.

The aforementioned pairings fought as well, Father throwing the fight so Adri could advance and have fun. That is, after making his son work really hard for it. I would be surprised if he could even fight again after that beating-I mean lesson. No CPS thanks.

My lesson with the soldier, I dragged out because I wanted a bit of real battle experience from someone who had been fighting with Demons in a war.

It was highly worth it. I didn't use that much magic, just put our fight under a barrier that concealed from the outside. After that, I transformed into the adult version I had with Adoray, not the teenage one from when I was with Kitri and family. The soldier was shocked, but that quickly melted away when I smiled and begged him to not tell anyone about this form.

It was my trump card.

I only used it because I couldn't fight with a soldier while in the form of a toddler, so I changed. My clothes were that of Mother's, since she wore the same thing everyday as usual.

From there, I used what little knowledge I had to fight with a straight sword and got beaten. I was completely hopeless with it because I had only watched the sword fights, never practiced the moves because I didn't want to ingrain them wrongly in my head without a proper instructor. I still had yet to ask Thérèse to teach me, which I would have to do after the tournament. I'll probably forget.