Chapter 51: Battle Of The Fittest: Next Game

Kai quickly raised his hands again, deflecting another kick from Jimmy, who had clearly lost himself somewhere in the emotion of the match by this point. It showed plainly in his heavy, ragged breathing and his relentless, almost desperate attempts to finally bring Kai down.

Kai leapt backward, putting distance between them to line up his own counter, only to watch Jimmy lunge forward without so much as a beat of hesitation, swinging a heavy blow with both fists. Caught momentarily unguarded, Kai turned and took the hit squarely across his shoulder instead, the force of it rattling straight through his entire frame.

The blow carried real weight behind it, no question, but Kai only gritted his teeth at his opponent’s stubborn, grating persistence. It wasn’t as though he himself held back much affection for those he considered beneath him, someone exactly like the boy standing in front of him now.

That was simply his nature, the same quiet instinct shared by anyone born into a higher rank, the reflex to view those standing lower as fundamentally inferior, barely worth the effort. It was a belief he’d never once bothered questioning, the kind of certainty that came from never having been proven wrong badly enough to doubt it.

His eyes flicked briefly toward his wyvern, still locked in a tight, ongoing struggle against the Ichneumon, which kept lunging for a solid bite out of its long, exposed neck, its jaws snapping shut on empty air time and again as the wyvern twisted and wheeled just out of reach.

With that, he shoved Jimmy back hard with a sudden burst of force, growling low with irritation.

Stepping backward quickly, his gaze locked onto Jimmy’s, which burned with real, seething intensity. "I’ll admit, you’re a genuine surprise to my pride here. Honestly didn’t think I’d need to change my approach for someone like you. I’ll make this quick," Kai muttered with a tired sigh before sending a sharp, focused mental command down to his summon.

The wyvern broke away from the Ichneumon, which had been mere moments away from finally sinking its jaws into that exposed neck and ending the fight outright.

It surged upward instead, climbing well past twenty meters before drawing in a deep, heavy breath, its throat and cheeks swelling visibly with the sheer volume of air it had gathered.

Then it dove, plunging downward like a crashing aircraft before banking hard into a wide, sweeping arc across the platform, its enormous shadow trailing beneath it like some looming, living cloud.

Thick, misty flame billowed outward from both its nose and open mouth as it finally released everything it had been holding. The mist rolled forward low and heavy, clinging to the ground like a living fog, catching the afternoon light in a dull, sickly shimmer as it spread.

The attack swept across a massive stretch of the platform, deliberately aimed at ground still occupied by its opponent, while its own summoner had already repositioned himself well clear of the blast radius, careful never to become a casualty of his own planned strike.

Jimmy’s expression twisted sharply, eyes widening in alarm. Nearly half the platform vanished beneath the rolling, foggy flame, consuming everything in its path like fire eating through dry paper.

A faint hiss rose from the stone as it hardened, the sound almost like breath being slowly forced out of something enormous and unseen. When the haze finally cleared, the entire area had been transformed into hardened gray stone, Jimmy and his summon both frozen solid in place, caught mid motion, utterly still, down to the last strand of hair and the last fold of armor.

The reveal drew a fresh wave of reaction from the crowd, some students gasping aloud, others murmuring quickly among themselves, a few simply watching in stunned, silent observation, eyes fixed on the smooth, unnatural stone where a living opponent had been standing only seconds earlier.

This was something genuinely unexpected from a wyvern summoner specifically, since wyverns typically weren’t known for wielding true elemental attacks at all.

This particular technique, though, ranked as a considerably advanced skill, something reaching far beyond a wyvern’s usual innate toolkit, carrying a rarity all its own.

It allowed the creature to draw in raw air and convert it into a dense mist laced with corrosive, calcium rich agents, trapping anything caught within it inside a shell of hardened stone.

The effect carried the same diabolical edge associated with its distant, related kin, the basilisks, minus the reliance on any kind of petrifying gaze.

The referee carefully examined the frozen condition of the defeated party before confirming the result, raising his whistle and calling it out clearly. "Kai Drakon, the prestigious sophomore and potential dragon blooded talent, wins the match!"

The announcement sparked chants and enthusiastic celebration through the crowd, Roman and Max easily the loudest among them. A handful of freshmen who clearly admired the young wyvern summoner joined the celebration as well, adding their own excited voices to the noise.

With that, Kai directed his wyvern to reverse the effect, releasing a second, gentler stream of flame that dissolved the petrification holding his opponent in place. The instant Jimmy felt himself released, he surged forward immediately, closing the distance toward Kai in a burst of fresh fury.

"You devious cheater!"

But before he could close the gap fully, the match’s built in safety system activated, a quick transfer spell yanking him away before things could spiral into unnecessary violence.

He reappeared abruptly beside one of the stands instead, seething all over again the moment his eyes landed back on Kai’s calm, unreadable face.

Back in the headmaster’s office, Mary turned toward Williams, who glanced at her from the corner of his eye, a small smile forming.

"See? Told you there wasn’t anything to worry about, not really. We’ve got other rising stars beyond just the Amazon summoner, plenty more where that came from," she said.

"Right, fair point. I probably shouldn’t have let myself overthink it so much." Williams’s gaze drifted back toward the window. "Let’s keep watching, then, and see what else turns up."

In the secluded section reserved for school staff, the combat instructor leaned back in his seat, expression notably unsurprised compared to the mix of shock and fascination playing across several of his colleagues’ faces nearby, a few of them still leaning forward with their drinks forgotten in hand.

His attention soon drifted toward Carlo instead, who somehow looked even more composed than he did, unbothered as ever amid the scattered murmurs still rippling through the staff section.

"I think I’m ready to put some real weight behind that dark horse theory of yours," the combat instructor said, a challenging edge in his tone.

Carlo glanced up at him briefly.

"I do appreciate that kind of confidence. Speaks for itself, really. I’ll take the bet." Carlo allowed himself a small, knowing smile.

Olivia narrowed her eyes as the next pair of randomly assigned opponents stepped forward.

The matches rolled steadily onward, competitors cycling through the platform one after another, some delivering genuinely impressive performances, others stumbling through careless mistakes, before she finally turned toward the combat instructor with a question in mind.

"So how exactly are these matches structured heading into the knockout rounds, and which stages are we expecting to hit soon?" she asked, assuming correctly that he’d likely had a hand in organizing the overall match sequence.

"Right, so the knockout stage officially kicks off once the preliminary matches wrap up completely. With just over a hundred competitors total, the preliminary round narrows that field down to sixty four. From there, we move through the Round of 64, then 32, then 16, followed by the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finally the championship match itself. Whoever’s still standing at the very end takes the title," the combat instructor explained, ticking each stage off on his fingers as he spoke.

The competition’s pace had already begun accelerating rapidly by this point.

After several more rounds cycled through, opponents shuffling past one another almost like a stacked deck of cards, it finally came around to Mark’s turn again, having already worked his way past four separate opponents earlier in the day.

As he climbed back onto the platform, his eyes landed immediately on the first familiar face waiting for him there, Roman, radiating an unmistakably unsettling presence.

Their gazes held a beat longer than felt entirely comfortable before Roman spread his arms wide, almost inviting an embrace, the earlier tension from Amelia’s match still simmering plainly behind his eyes.

"Let’s settle this right here, right now. Who’s really on top, and who’s underneath? Go ahead, call out that warrior lady of yours. Let’s see exactly what she’s got against my weapon this time."

A portal tore open before him, and the AirBoxer MantisShrimp scuttled out onto the platform, its club shaped fists already raised and ready for combat.

Mark’s expression didn’t waver, not even slightly. He simply slid his hands free from his pockets.

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A/N: I hope that you’re enjoying it so far. If you’ve reached this point, I would already appreciate you to do me a favor of giving your reviews. It helps a lot to motivate. Let’s go further together!

And also comment your thoughts and opinions. It would be helpful guys.

About our discord, I’ll try and let’s hope soon enough