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For the Princess’s Hand (3)
“Start!” The voice of the emperor signaled the start of the battle.
But surprisingly, nobody took the initiative to move.
Instead, the more than two hundred young men looked at each other warily, seizing their opponents and trying to find who to attack.
Thirty seconds passed like that, with each second increasing the tension and killing intent inside the arena.
Until suddenly–
“AAAAHHHHH!!!”
Someone was unable to endure the tension.
With a cry of bravery, a young man raised his sword and swung it down towards an enemy in front of him.
That sword attack marked the start of the battle.
Almost instantly, the place exploded. All the young men that were looking at each other brandished their weapons and charged towards their rivals.
Fighting intent and killing intent mixed on the battlefield, creating a powerful pressure that filled the combatants with bloodthirst.
In the middle of that, I stood silently, calmly looking at the tens of battles that erupted around me.
All around me, there was only chaos. One fighting against one, one fighting against two, and two fighting against two.
The battlefield quickly turned chaotic, with people being stabbed from their backs without previous warning. In a matter of seconds, the arena was filled with the rusty smell of blood.
However, not everybody was fighting.
Through the arena, you could see several clearings where others did not dare to approach.
One of them was around me. Although I did not emit any kind of powerful aura, the smile on my face and my relaxed posture intimidated the people around me, making them think twice before attacking me.
Something similar was happening around Louis, but it was due to the sharp sword intent coming out of his body. That sharp sword intent created a domain around him that none of the warriors nearby dared to invade.
Besides the two of us, there were four or five clearings like that around the arena. With a glance, I could see that they belonged to the true powerhouses of the young generation, the weakest being an eighth-layer practitioner.
However, no matter how strong we are, the others were not idiots.
They quickly became aware that if things continued like this, they would only tire themselves and would not have any opportunity to defeat the strongest combatants during the second part of the tournament.
If they want to have an opportunity to win the tournament, they needed to defeat us right now.
Thus, the other contestants looked at each other before nodding as though coming to an agreement.
Then, they joined hands and rushed towards one of the clearings!
The first one they attacked was the ‘strongest’, Louis. In one second, seven or eight practitioners rushed towards him.
Louis frowned. He unsheathed his sword calmly and looked at the enemies charging towards him before unleashing a sword slash.
The sword slash was so powerful that it pushed back three of the enemies immediately.
However, the other four managed to make use of that to rush towards Louis and attack him in unison.
Louis’s frown became deeper. Although he was not afraid of the enemies, he did not dare to take them lightly either.
The reason was that the group attacking him was made of fifth-layer, sixth-layer, and seventh-layer practitioners.
Even if they were much weaker than Louise, their combined strength was more than enough to make him cautious. If he was not careful, he could be injured
Soon, however, I stopped caring about his battle.
The reason? A different group was attacking me.
And surprisingly, they were even more than the ones attacking Louis!
A total of ten enemies rushed towards me with their swords and spears cutting the air from different directions.
I smiled softly and took a step forward. My right hand took the shape of a punch and closed towards one of the weapons.
At the same time, my second hand moved in a circle, gathering mana and twisting space around me, stopping the rest of the weapons with a seemingly gentle movement.
Of course, none of the people fighting me or watching the battle could see how I twisted space. For them, it was as though my hand had predicted the movements of the weapons and used soft force to stop the combined attack.
Many of the people observing the battlefield could not help but gasp in admiration.
But while my left hand stopped the combined attack, the punch I unleashed with my right hand clashed with a sword.
Instantly–
*Boom!!!*
A powerful explosion resounded in the arena, and the weapon that clashed against my punch shattered!
At the same time, the young man wielding the weapon was flung away, vomiting several mouthfuls of blood before falling on the ground, unconscious.
That scene stunned the other nine young men attacking me. For an instant, their movements became slightly stiff.
Making use of that opportunity, my second hand gathered the mana on the air, creating a whirlpool of energy that quickly grew bigger, turning into a human-sized spiral of energy.
The young men immediately realized I was preparing a powerful attack. Moreover, judging from the mana I had gathered, they knew it was dangerous to receive it head-on.
Panicking, they hurriedly put as much mana as they could into their weapons and swung them towards me.
However, it was too late.
Seeing the weapons coming towards me, I smiled.
Then, my left hand formed a hand blade. In the next instant, I swung my hand, releasing a half-moon shaped slash of energy that clashed against the young men’s attacks!
Then–
*BOOM!!!*
A powerful explosion ensued. Raising a cloud of dust and shaking the entire arena as the people watching the spectacle opened their eyes wide in astonishment.
When the cloud of dust finally disappeared, nine young men more were lying on the ground with their bodies covered in injuries and unconscious.
I smiled and dusted my hands off, once more returning to my previous relaxed posture and watching the remaining battles lazily.
By this point, most of the other battles had already finished.
Louis was holding a sword in his hand, looking coldly at the seven bodies below his feet, not at all caring about the fact he killed them.
He was not the only one. Of the five people that were attacked by several enemies, only one of them, the weakest one, was defeated.
As for the rest of them, they managed to repel their enemies with just a few injuries.
That is normal, though. After all, although a difference in mana layer is not unsurmountable, very few people had enough talent to make up for the lack of mana and power it entails.
Thus, generally, a higher mana-layer means a higher combat strength, sometimes even several times higher than the layer below.
At that moment, I felt a pair of eyes fixed on me.
Curious, I looked in the direction of the pair of eyes, only to find Louis looking at me coldly.
And judging by the way he was holding his sword tightly, he was probably considering if he should attack me right now or not.
I nodded at him and gave him a mischievous smile, making him frown and look away.
Almost at the same time, the emperor’s voice once more sounded.
“There are only sixteen contestants remaining already. The first round ends now!”
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