blood of royalty • svt

vii

"and for our next competitors," minghao looked up from pulling up his pants on. "lee jihoon and kwon soonyoung." the queen called and the short guy and slant-eyed bloke walked to the front. soonyoung rolled his shoulders, chuckling to the smaller one.

"may the best man win, right?" jihoon hummed. "yeah, may the best one win." jihoon rolled up his sleeves with one thought in mind. i'm going to make this quick and easy.

soonyoung took in a deep breath before exhaling, looking at jihoon and that's when jihoon noticed that soonyoung was fidgety. is he nervous? scared? jihoon doesn't know himself. jihoon doesn't care. all jihoon wants was for the match to begin and end it just as quickly or else he might as well have to repeat history again.

"begin."

soonyoung disappeared. jihoon's eyes bulged out in shock and watched as the articles of clothing soonyoung had worn earlier dropped down on the terrain ungracefully.

"where'd he go?"

jihoon creased his eyebrows in concentration as he listened to his surroundings. soonyoung must have had invisibility as a gift as well. but if he has invisibility, then why'd he lose his clothes in the process of going invisible?

perhaps he has... teleportation?

he felt a presence looming behind him and he turned in time to hear the lion roar and pounced at him, slamming his body on the ground and growling at him. jihoon groaned, grimacing as the lion's face hovered over his.

"no offense but your breath stinks!" jihoon conjured enough ice to wrap around his fist and landed an uppercut up his ribs of the lion, praying to the gods that he had not broken a bone.

the lion roared, dropping down on his side. jihoon sat up. now's my chance!

jihoon placed his palms on the soil and felt his ice zooming out of his body, icing the ground and racing towards lion, freezing the green grass and covering them with glistening frost.

the lion quickly jumped out of the path but was still grazed by the foot, chilling ice enveloping his whole right foot. the lion shifted into an eagle in an instant as jihoon tried to charge him with hail.

the eagle flew away from the rain of ice and dove in for jihoon, but jihoon was quick enough to create a shield made out of ice. the bird flew away.

jihoon tried to fire him with another hail of ice and cursed when the bird flew away from the danger. jihoon gritted his teeth. "can you stay still for a second?" the ice raining down almost hit chan in the process and he had quickly run away from the scene.

jihoon felt the familiar tingling chill creeping up his fingertips. jihoon hissed. at this rate, he wouldn't be able to win this match. not if he was planning to ice himself as well.

jihoon conjured a bow and an arrow with his ice and aimed for the flying bird. he was not one to be best of archery, but he just hopes that this one time would work. just this once...

he let go of the arrow and it went flying to the sky and fruitfully hit the animal, covering his entire body in ice and the bird came falling down to the ground. jihoon rushed over to the iced eagle with a huge grin on his face.

but the grin turned upside down when all of a sudden, the ice burst open, the small shards flying around carelessly and jihoon covered his face with his arms, groaning. he looked over where the once ice-covered eagle lied now stood a giant polar bear, growling at him threateningly.

jihoon grunted. "can you stop moving for one minute?" the chill was creeping further up, covering his whole fingers. he was using too much of his gift. he had to stop. but for some unknown reason, he was blinded for victory, unconsciously creating a ball of ice and pitching it towards the bear, where it covered its whole right eye.