Chapter 65: The Duel

For all its modern buildings, Lombard Row had plenty of ancient-style ones too. The Far West Ascendant Academy was a grand complex that nearly rivaled the Old Palace itself, thick with magus flavor—every single building ten times the size of an ordinary magus abbey or temple hall. Walking in, you felt your own smallness and the vastness of heaven and earth, and a solemn hush came over you quite naturally.

At the Far West Ascendant Academy's main gate, Nathan and Wren booked a practice hall. The rental rate was actually pretty reasonable—ten starlings an hour, maybe one or two thousand dollars. At that price you couldn't even rent an office villa in downtown Greyhaven.

Especially when a young acolyte of the hall led Nathan and Wren to their rented practice hall—every cent over-delivered, instantly.

The hall wasn't huge, but it ran eight hundred square meters with a ceiling over seven meters high—plenty of room to leap and roll. The floor was laid with tatami-like straw mats, firm yet springy underfoot. When Nathan stamped down hard and crushed one mat, the soft grass in it immediately regrew and rewove itself, back to original in seconds.

Wren ditched Nathan and headed alone into the changing room on the hall's right side. A few minutes later she came out in a suit of light armor. Her personality was lively and her everyday dress leaned quiet and elegant—but with this armor on, she was suddenly Joan of Arc reborn, Boudica come back to life: dashing, valiant, yielding nothing to any man.

Wren set her stance; Nathan, testing the waters, opened his Comet-Gem Mantis Style frame. But the very next instant, Wren smiled faintly, flicked her ten fingers, and burst out countless five-colored petals—blossoms raining across the practice hall, honestly gorgeous to watch.

Nathan had been through plenty of real enemies by now, and alarm bells went off at once. He dropped the Comet-Gem Mantis Style immediately and drove the Adamantine Body.

Since assimilating the Comet-Gem Mantis, he'd quickly pushed the Comet-Gem Mantis Style to the peak of its fourth layer—but the art really was entry-level through and through, its power nowhere near the Nine Shadowlashes or the Adamantine Body. It couldn't handle a scene like this.

Those five-colored petals flew razor-sharp as blades—had he kept to the Comet-Gem Mantis Style, he'd have been carved up head to toe within a few moves. Nor did he dare use the Nine Shadowlashes: its Transform-Erode change was far too dark and vicious. He didn't want to get hurt, but he didn't want to hurt Wren either. The Adamantine Body alone was attack and defense in one, easy to control—hard for Wren to hurt him, and not likely to hurt the bloodborn girl. Perfect for an occasion like this.

Nathan drove the Adamantine Body; his skin gave off a faint Mystic-Gold sheen, and the five-colored petals bounced off the slightest touch.

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Wren was mildly startled. She had watched with her own eyes as Nathan swallowed the Starfall Dew and awakened his bloodline; she had personally taken him to the Greyhaven Wardens' Office for the bloodline test. As his mentor, she'd considered this boy an open book—and now she was struggling to read him.

This spell of hers was half inborn lineage inheritance, half the fruit of merging another spell into it through bitter training. In ordinary combat, petals filled the sky in riotous color, sharpness hidden within the blossoms—attack and defense in one. Even enemies stronger than her had a brutal time breaking this Falling-Petal Sword Array!

The spell wasn't without weaknesses: it was over-elaborate, with too many moving parts. Against an enemy with weak defense, the petals flying in from every direction forced pure scramble—but against someone like Nathan, whose the Adamantine Body simply didn't fear the petals' edges, the Falling-Petal Sword Array was next to useless.

Wren reckoned that if she brought out that trump-card move she'd used to beat Lysander that day, she might well crack Nathan's Adamantine Body—but this was a spar, not a battle. That move left neither side any room to maneuver; someone was guaranteed to get hurt.

Nathan didn't want to hurt her; naturally Wren didn't want to hurt Nathan. The bloodborn girl smiled faintly, gave her hands a light pull, and the five-colored petals converged into her palms, becoming a long sword blazing with fine light.

Apart from the Comet-Gem Mantis Style, Nathan had no real grounding in the fist arts; all he could do was square up with bare hands.

In a split second the two of them were locked in forty or fifty brutal exchanges.

Wren's footwork was light, her body shifts endlessly varied, the five-colored longsword in her hand exquisite in its changes—Nathan couldn't get a fix on her shadow at all. Hard as the Adamantine Body was, unmatched even, he simply shrugged off every sword strike that landed—but he was thoroughly on the back foot, and over those forty-odd or fifty exchanges, who knew how many cuts he'd taken.

Killing Sebastian had come down to the Drunken Saint's Draught and the Quakefist Strike; beating Lysander had come down to fast reactions and the Adamantine Body's toughness. Both fights were special cases that barely called for technique, and the boy had never felt any deficiency in his moves. This duel with Wren, though, exposed Nathan's greatest weakness: the one art he'd truly mastered, the Comet-Gem Mantis Style, was just too weak, its moves too ordinary—there was simply no way to integrate it with the rest of his power.

Time and again Nathan tried to force a head-on clash—but he couldn't even catch the bloodborn girl's shadow.

Wren flitted in and out, ragging Nathan into a total scramble—then abruptly sheathed her sword, backed off a dozen-odd paces, and watched him with a smile. Nathan, thoroughly deflated, finally said: "Wren, you're really good. I can't beat you."

Wren shook her head, her bright eyes carrying a glint of delight: "Me not being able to beat you—that's the truth of it. I'm only a Rank-Five bloodborn warrior with a rating under a thousand. You're Rank Eight, past eight thousand. In real strength, you're far beyond me. The only reason you looked so roughed-up just now is you've never had proper training. Bring even thirty percent of your strength to bear, and all I'd get to do is get knocked flat."

Nathan knew his own weakness. He said, glum: "Where would I ever get the chance to learn ascendant-path martial arts?"

Wren snorted a laugh and tugged Nathan's sleeve: "I'd figured you'd also run into the ten-percent Lysander—but now it looks like you won that one on real skill. The Bureau's testing rig wasn't broken at all. You really are a Rank-Eight bloodborn warrior. With bond-power this deep, learning any ascendant-path martial art, or bloodborn-kindred martial art, is easy—just sign up for a training class."

Only then did it click: Wren's insistence on this duel had been a test of his strength. He raised his own hands and murmured: "Wait... am I actually strong?"

Nathan had killed Sebastian and beaten Lysander, but he'd never felt strong—both fights had extenuating circumstances, neither a fair contest. But in this moment, the boy suddenly discovered that he was, in fact, strong. Very strong. Very, very strong...