249 Chapter 249: One versus Ten

Crashing through the smoke, I began laughing gleefully.

"This is more like it! It would be boring and stupid to kick all your asses when you don't use magic. This isn't a martial arts story, after all. It's a fantasy story! It makes no sense if you guys don't use magic!"

Fireballs, lightning bolts and icicles rained down upon me, but I weaved through them effortlessly, using physical reinforcement to increase my speed. Running in a somewhat zigzagged manner across the scorched ground, I ran toward one of them, dodged his close-ranged fireball, and then flipped upward to smash a knee into his nose and breaking it.

While he fell, blood coursing down his face, I flipped my body over and dodged a web of jagged lightning bolt that his comrade sent toward me. Throwing my hands out, I scraped my palms against the ground before cartwheeling away.

Just as I landed on my feet, a barrage of icicles crashed down upon my position. Twisting around, I drew Gan Jiang and Mo Ye before slicing them apart. The icy fragments rained down on me, but none of the sharp pieces could cut through the protective mana aura that shrouded me.

As I burst out of the icicle barrage, I saw the healer mage kneeling by the fire mage I had just kneed. Knowing that he was healing the guy, I immediately kicked off the ground and launched myself at him.

"?!"

He raised his head up in shock when he saw me coming for him. His comrades, knowing that he was the lynchpin of the team and the most important member, quickly moved to cover him. One guy used Iron Spirit or a similar technique to toughen his body, turning his skin silver and metallic, and threw himself in my path.

At my side, boulders materialized in the air as an earth mage hurled them at me, deterring me from my trajectory. The ice and lightning mages were firing off their respective elements at me from my left, the opposite side, and I found myself flanked by the different elemental spells.

And that was just half of their ten-man team.

Unfortunately, these guys were getting in the way of each other. While I evaded the spells, I watched in amusement as the lightning got in the way of the icicles, and the elemental projectiles collided with the boulders, accidentally shattering them into harmless shards of rock before they could hit me. Even though they all had the same goal, there was no real spirit of cooperation. I wasn't very sure, but it appeared to me that they were all trying to defeat me for their own individual purposes.

Rather than working together to eliminate a single enemy, each of them wanted to claim the kill for himself, and thus overtly ignored any real collaboration. They recognized the value of the healer, and thus stepped in to protect him, but the fact that almost half of the team didn't intervene to protect him was an indication of their self-centeredness.

Even at this stage, and despite the reforms in the education system, the students still had no inkling of the importance of teamwork. At least these guys didn't. I recognized it was a drastic change from what they were used to, having been brought up to treat individual rankings as the number one priority, the one versus one tournament format, but even now not many of them ascribed to the new, more realistic and practical system.

Evidently only the person who defeated me would get the points, so the nine non-healer mages were more focused on trying to claim my head for himself rather than working together to ensure my defeat.

As the elemental projectiles clashed against each other and exploded behind me, I surged toward the guy with the Iron Spirit body. He threw a devastating punch and I could actually see the sonic boom get flung off his fist. Twisting to the side, I then dropped downward and slashed him. A chibi Vermillion Phoenix appeared above me as I finished casting the summoning spell, and I effortlessly cleaved through his steel skin to bring him down. Blood would have gushed out of his wound, but the superheated flames on my twin blades had cauterized any bleeding that would have happened. In any event, unless his healer mage got to him, he would be out of the fight.

The healer mage's jaw dropped when he caught sight of me. The other mages were rushing forward now, realizing that their lifeline might hang in the balance, but it was too late. I swung my sword and bathed the healing mage and his charge in a stream of flames. The fire mage had some resistance to fire spells, of course, but he was already injured and my attack just served to put him down for good.

"You bastard!"

One of the earth mages was rushing forward. He completed his advanced spell and he began glowing golden. I watched, fascinated as he conjured a massive rock armor that covered his entire body completely, making him resemble a golem. He threw a massive fist that was almost as large as half of my body, and I was forced to dodge it.

Jumping up, I landed on the rock wrist and slashed at it with my swords, but I barely made a dent on the thick, solid rock armor. The golem-like armor, with the caster controlling it from inside a pseudo cockpit, straightened up and shook its arm to throw me off, but I flipped over and avoided the swat from his other hand. Landing on the other arm, I ran along the length before lunging forward and slashing the front of the golem with my blazing twin swords.

However, his physical armor was too strong. Other than leaving two scorched trails on the rock, I wasn't able to do any real damage other than a couple of deep scratches.

"!!!"

Icicles and lightning crashed onto the chest of the golem, almost catching me off guard. These guys didn't care about friendly fire, or they were confident that their teammate would be able to withstand their elemental attacks. However, considering the curses from the earth mage inside his golem armor, I was pretty sure it wasn't the latter.

Slowly spinning across the air, I swung Gan Jiang and immolated the ice mage just as he was conjuring a new batch of icicles. He shrieked as his uniform combusted and his barrage of ice vaporized into boiling steam. The lightning mage paid his friend no attention and continued sending jagged lightning bolts at me. All the while, the formidable but cumbersome and clumsy golem pursued me, throwing devastating punches from behind.

Weaving through the bombardment, I twisted around and caught sight of a bombardment of boulders from the first earth mage. At first, my initial intention was to cut them apart with my swords, but I realized – with other enemies attacking me from behind – that I could use my enemies' attacks to my advantage.

The golem struck at me again, heedless of the stray boulders that slammed into his armor after I evaded them. He didn't care about the angrily yelling lightning mage and his other teammates when his titanic silhouette blocked out their spells, the electricity dissipating harmlessly against the Rock. No, it had nothing to do with Dwayne Johnson.

Instead of cleaving the incoming boulders apart, I jumped toward them. Landing on the top of one of the nearest boulders, I began nimbly leaping from one boulder to another, almost as if I was playing some kind of platform game. All the while I began drawing near the frantic earth mage, who was glancing at his friends for support.

Behind me, the golem guy bashed through the boulders, flinging them to the side carelessly and not bothering if he accidentally struck his teammates with collateral damage. While dodging, the lightning mage tried to adjust his aim and spray me with lethal lightning. From the opposite side, I could see vines curling out to ensnare me. A wood mage had joined the fray, thinking he could catch me while I was jumping about his friend's boulders. Never mind that the vines and wood spells were destroying the boulders that his teammate was trying to throw at me.

Kicking off one boulder, I abruptly switched direction, much to the surprised relief of the earth mage, and to the dismay of the lightning mage. Before he could weave an electric barrier to protect himself, I swung both swords and unleashed twin streams of raging fire that swallowed him up and almost incinerated him. His charred body struck the ground, unconscious, before I even landed.

That was half of the team eliminated so far.

The golem bore down on me, getting ready to destroy me. The earth mage and the wood mage split up to flank me, and also because their annoying titanic teammate was blocking their line of view and preventing them from hitting me with their spells.

I calmly turned around and nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Thanks, Vermillion Phoenix. Green Dragon and White Tiger, it's your turn."

The chibi Vermillion Phoenix disappeared, only for Green Dragon to appear over my right shoulder and White Tiger to perch on my left shoulder. The flames around my two swords vanished, and were replaced by different elements. A bunch of vividly colored petals danced and coiled around the black blade of Gan Jiang in my right hand while white lightning crackled and wreathed the white blade of Mo Ye in my left.

"?!"

The three mages who were attacking me were taken aback, but it was too late. They continued to plunge toward me.

I still couldn't take the golem head-on yet, since I was still casting a spell for that, so I chose to deal with the first earth mage and the wood mage first. Being smaller in size and a lot faster, they managed to dart past the golem to attack me.

Their mistake. If they had decided to work together with their teammate and use his golem armor as a tank to absorb damage and withstand punishment from my attacks instead of desperately trying to seek glory on their own, they would have made my life a lot more difficult.

As it was, I punished them for their selfishness and arrogance. I sliced through the boulders with my right sword and launched a volley of petals at the earth mage who conjured them. None of his rocks stood a chance. They were all sliced apart by the raging flowers that appeared to blossom in midair. The earth mage then desperately conjured an earth barrier, but the petals easily sliced through the rock and cut into him.

The earth mage toppled over, blood spurting from a hundred different cuts all over his body.

The wood mage didn't hesitate, sending vines and thick, solid branches in my direction. I blasted them apart with a discharge of high-voltage electricity. Before I could counterattack, the golem had reached me, his tremendous fist crashing down upon my position to pulverize me.

Once again, I jumped away, and then landed on his fist. I took a few steps across his arm, and then vaulted away before he could swat me once more. Spinning around, I stretched out my legs and then used the golem's right shoulder as a platform to propel myself in another direction, disappearing just before his armored palm clamped down on that portion with crushing force. Slicing through the network of vines and branches that the wood mage conjured, my two swords easily hacking a path through the dense shrubbery, I stabbed him with my sword.

"Ugh!"

Despite what seemed to be a fatal attack, the wood mage grabbed my sword and grinned. Despite the blood trickling down from his mouth, he finished casting a spell that had huge thorny vines slam down on me like tentacles, the writhing appendages coming from all directions and trapping me completely.

If they hit, I would be punctured by countless thorns and probably ripped into shreds.

Well, I just needed to not get hit then.

Mo Ye glowed and I unleashed a storm of destructive lightning, blasting apart the vines once more and electrocuting the screaming wood mage. Even as I yanked out my sword, his smoldering body fell, smoke fuming from his mouth and blackened skin. He continued to convulse as the deadly currents coursed through him, but I paid him no attention.

The golem had arrived.

Once again, I was forced to evade his slow but overwhelming attacks, each one easily capable of flattening me into a bloody pancakes. Dodging and diving, I rolled across the ground as the golem's huge fists left craters in the coliseum.

Springing to my feet, I tried to duck and avoid more of his attacks for the last few seconds before I could finish casting my spell. The golem tried to stomp on me with his titanic feet, but I managed to clamber over what passed for his toes and avoided being pulverized.

Then I finished casting my spell. Vines and branches traveled out of Gan Jiang and ensnared the golem, wrapping around and immobilizing him. The golem armor flailed and struggled against his bonds, to no avail. The vines held firm, slowly tightening and wrapping around him. flowers began to blossom across the countless vines that tangled around him, and leaves sprouted, a clear sign of the wood spell absorbing mana and vitality from the golem armor.

"You…what did you do?!" the earth mage within the golem armor shouted in panic. I didn't bother to answer. Instead, I turned away as his armor crumbled completely, the vines sinking in and slicing through the rock like razor-sharp garrote wires. The vines then wrapped around the now vulnerable earth mage and completely drained him of mana.

"!!!"

Someone sprang from the shadows, aiming right for my back. The shadow mage had hung back in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to strike, and now he believed that I had just let my guard down after defeating the person who seemed to be the biggest and strongest enemy, and he capitalized on that moment to plant a dagger in my back.

"Ugh!"

Blood spurted into the air.

The shadow mage stared dumbly at the sword impaling his chest. Lightning crackled around the blade and began to fry him, causing his body to convulse uncontrollably. I had reversed my grip on Mo Ye and stabbed him the moment he emerged from the shadows. He thought I wouldn't notice his scheme, but I had detected the flow of his mana moving through the shadows long before I completed the destruction of the golem and the defeat of its caster.

Calmly pulling Mo Ye out of the falling shadow mage, I turned to face the last, remaining mage. He was trembling fearfully, probably realizing how pitifully outmatched he was. He gulped in dread, but to his credit, he maintained his combative stance. Yelling to improve his own morale, he charged forward. Wind began blowing around him and he used his air element to speed up his body to incredible velocities, shooting across the arena in zigzagged patterns. The guy probably was trying to hit me from an unexpected angle, taking me out by surprise.

I understood why he didn't attack until now. With that sort of technique, he would just as likely end up colliding into a teammate and take the both of them out instead of defeating me. Furthermore, it was hard for him to control himself to avoid friendly fire, especially if the battlefield was filled with too many people – most of them his allies.

Right now, he seemed to be trying to generate a hurricane. But I had no intention of allowing him to finish his spell. Raising my left hand, I then stabbed the white blade of Mo Ye into the ground. Lightning erupted from the ground, turning the entire coliseum into an enclosed electric cage. No, it's not a Faraday cage – rather than block electromagnetic forces, it amplified my electricity.

"UGH!"

The guy screamed as all the lightning was drawn to him and struck his speeding body, much like a lightning rod catching every single electric current in the surroundings. He crashed onto the ground, his fuming body skidding for a few moments.

Then…silence.

I stood there alone, righting the grip on Mo Ye and holding both of my swords up. Then I slowly sheathed them. As I did so, there was a huge yell from the remaining students who were kneeling around the arena. All of them rose up in perfect synchronization and immediately surrounded me, assuming combative stances and getting ready to beat me. This time there was fifteen…no, twenty mages.

Even though my face was outwardly a cold mask, inwardly I was smiling.