"Congratulations, Ollie! You won first place!"
An excited voice welcomed a ten year old boy, congratulating him on what he had achieved.
Under the awe of many, the young boy had won the Sword Tournament dedicated to the juniors of his faction, claiming the championship after beating hundreds of other kids three to five years older than him. Moreover, this was the third time the boy had achieved this.
A protege, with both extraordinary talent and a hard-working personality; that's what everyone saw in his small figure.
For him, he did all those to bring honor to his family, to his clan and to his faction.
However, it was as if fate no longer smiled at him. As he was on his way back from the tournament, he found out his home was gone. In that instant, all thoughts of his proud achievement disappeared.
His entire clan along with half of the continent disappeared without trace, as if the god took one big chunk of it away.
The only thing that proved his family and clan had existed were the thousand mile wide crater that occupied the place where they had been before.
That day, the day he should have been filled with happiness, became a very bleak memory in the young boy's mind. He had lost all the people he cared about as well as his home.
More than ten thousand people disappeared from his life, leaving only dozens who luckily survived as they were away at that time.
It didn't take long for the faction behind the boy to launch a full investigation about this disastrous incident.
After scouring and following through countless clues, the investigation came to suspect another clan, a special one which was a rival to the boy's clan as the culprit behind the incident.
"This place has signatures of gravity spells all over! The Juryoku Clan! They must be the ones who did this!" Said the elders of his clan who survived the disasters.
Unfortunately, with minimal proof and inconclusive evidence, the case was quickly put to a close by the higher-ups of the faction to prevent it from spiraling into further conflict and disgrace to the faction as a whole.
Since that tragedy, the young boy vowed to never fight for anyone else, but for himself.
Years passed and the tragedy swiftly buried amidst the annals of time. Meanwhile, the young boy had become even more brilliant, growing into the young rising star of his faction.
He entered the renowned Magus Academy's privileged class and swiftly cemented his number one position, as he went undefeated against the other talented young generations.
The series of victories over his so-called talented peers made him lose interest in anyone within his year, until finally things got interesting again as new bloods arrived into the prestigious class.
Mahinder, who was known as the Divine Monk due to his origin, was such a unique individual beyond comprehension.
However, the person who drew his interest the most was actually one young man of lowly origin.
Emery Ambrose, that was the name of that interesting young man who caught his attention. Not only had the young man managed to comprehend space and gravity, he was also an adept in the art of the Sword.
Defeating him would be a good end for his time in the Academy.
He even ignored his faction's wish and conceded defeat to the Dragon Prince to enable the match between the two of them to happen. Now with the way his opponent fought, he was extremely glad. His decision had been the right one.
For this fight, he was willing to show his greatest spell, one he had never shown before.
[Temporal Shift]
It was a divine area spell that would affect the movement of time for him and his opponent.
"All of you gravity users will fall under my sword."
****
Despite the bizarreness of the situation, Emery maintained his composure as he quickly analyzed the situation he was in. It took him a second to notice the spell his opponent used affected the flow of time within a specific area. And naturally, the first thing he did upon this realization was to try and get out of its range.
He stomped the ground with his feet and shot in the opposite direction of Olivier, mustering his all to pass through the thin golden mist that covered the area around them.
However, when he reached its edge, just as he was about to step out of it, Emery's eyes constricted in disbelief as he found himself back where he was before, facing Olivier who was saying the words he had heard once again.
"Are you ready?"
This time, however, he had no time to use his gravity spell. Left with no other choice, he was forced to stop the incoming attack with his sword alone.
SPLLAAATTTT!
With the opportunity given by his gravity spells, Emery was only able to parry Olivier's first strike. He had to receive three slashes that cut deep into his arm and feet before he managed to cast [Blink] and escape from his opponent.
"Urgghhh!"
Once again, he tried to run out of the golden mist. He even tried to cast [Blink] and escaped directly out. However, each attempt netted him the same result as the time anomaly kept playing tricks on him.
It was after several tries that Emery realized that although there were still some restrictions, only his space and gravity spell worked in this golden mist. Everything else would be deemed useless as they were stuck in the anomaly.
Whenever he tried to exit and was about to succeed, Olivier quickly took action to put him back into the area of the spell, and being the faster one between them, he always succeeded.
With this match taking place in a limited arena, Emery was simply trapped and had no choice but to fight within the area created by his opponent.
"Why the hell didn't he use this spell to fight Mahinder or Zach? Dammit!" He said his irritation to himself.
Once again, Olivier stared at Emery with that calm gaze of his, "Stop running. Let's finish this."
Hearing such words and feeling the overwhelming aura his opponent exuded, the Fey Wolf savage nature within Emery couldn't help but to be stirred.
As if he was a volcano ready to erupt, Emery turned his gaze back to his opponent and glared at him as his grip on the Savage Sword tightened, brandishing it for a final exchange.
"Alright! Last round!"
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