Wish upon the Stars chapter 372

Finding a seat at the arena the next day was harder than expected. I  don't know why I hadn't assumed it would be packed, maybe because it had  been so sparsely populated all the other matches. People had watched  from home or just ignored most of the lead up fights, since there were  so many happening. Even last round, the top twenty, hadn't really been a  concern for most.

This one was different though. This  match was one of the ten semi-finals, and everyone wanted to be here. I  don't think it even mattered to them who was fighting, one of the  matches being as good as the next, they just wanted to be part of the  spectacle. Which made finding a seat annoying and difficult.

Luckily,  Rime was with us, which made it at least possible, as after thirty  minutes of looking she finally approached a group of locals she knew and  just literally kicked them out of their seats. They whined about it a  bit, but she was annoyed at the wait, and once they knew she was being  serious they lost most of their momentum, just quietly vacating, to join  the throng of searchers.

Zeke had come along directly,  and brought Cass with him. She wanted to see her new teacher fight, and  Zeke was the only person she really felt safe with in a place like this.  I wasn't sure the little girl KNEW how scary her 'Uncle Zeke' was, but  some part of her recognized that he was at least competent. Along with  them was Callie and I, of course, Cark, Jessie, Benny, and Mel.

To  my surprise, we all seemed to be in good moods, almost as excited for  this fight as Abel himself was. Mel was sitting closest to the aisle  between the seats, just so she could reach the pit fastest if she needed  to. I'd never seen anything close to uncertainty from her towards Abel  before, so it was a bit jarring, but even she looked anticipatory.  Still, I decided to at least say something. "Hey, you ok?"

She  jumped slightly, looking up at me. "Yeah, sorry. Just out of it. It's  been years since I've seen him in a really big fight." She coughed  lightly. "Uh, no offense. But this just reminds me of how things used to  be. When we were younger he would challenge anyone except freaks he had  no chance of beating. I just- shit, there he is, time to watch."

Sure  enough, Abel was walking out onto the sand, looking so excited he was  about to vibrate through the ground. On the other side Lament emerged,  hefting her spear over her shoulder and staring intently at me mentor.  They spoke for a minute, not that we could hear them, and then the two  of them started to circle.

Lament lashed out with a spear  thrust, and Abel clapped his hands together, massive manifestations  halting the thrust of the colossal spear head before it could reach him.  He slapped the blade aside, driving forward with a flurry of punches,  fist manifestations appearing and vanishing as he struck from a new  angle with each blow.

It didn't phase Lament, who started  to spin her spear, the haft manifesting in the air over her head,  creating a whirling defensive manifestation that blocked all the blows.  Shoving the haft forward, the whirling defense drove at Abel, and my  mentor stepped lightly aside, carried on a thin stream of lubricated  space out of the path of the attack, raising his arms, I saw him use  that space warping effect to manifest six afterimages of arms around  him, then condense them and hurl out a barrage of punches with three  times the power.

Using her spear as a pole vault, Lament  shoved herself aside, dodging back and forth to avoid that punches. She  called out for her power, manifesting lightning to her blade, and  flashed forward in a driving charge faster than my eyes could track, a  manifestation of the lightning charged blade heading right for Abel.

My  mentor tossed his jacket to the side, arms clenching as space seemed to  shimmer and warp around them. Manifestations appeared above him, but  these were somehow denser and more intimidating. Raising his arms, he  brought them down, leaving a trail of afterimages, each one following  behind the arms to stack on top of them a dozen times, space behind them  lubricated and creating a sort of dimensional overlap.

There  was a clap of thunder even the wards couldn't keep in as his phantom  hands smashed into the spear, one at the head, and one halfway down the  haft just over where the hand would be. The manifestation snapped, and  with it the actual spear Lament was holding basically exploded in her  hands, the spearwoman dodging back as quickly as possible, but not fast  enough to avoid the shrapnel completely.

Abel shook out  his arms, giving her an easy grin, and I saw the two of them start to  argue. Or rather, Lament was arguing, seeming to get more and more  agitated until...something changed. Literally, the weight of the spear  user on my consciousness was altered as she..."Is she fucking breaking  through?"

My question was answered a moment later as I  felt her stabilize at F-rank. Mel whistled. "Wow, she does NOT want to  lose. They'll disqualify her for this, but I somehow don't think she  cares. Looks like they'll continue the fight though. Probably waiting  for Abel to call it." She was trying to sound casual, but there was an  undercurrent of worry in her tone.

Lament raised a hand  into the air, and another manifestation appeared above her. I stared at  it in shock, how the hell was she doing that without a spear? As I  gaped, lightning condensed on the spear image, coating it completely,  and then she clenched her fist and the manifestation began to CONTRACT.  The huge spear image started shrinking, becoming more solid and more  dense as it did, until a literal lightning spear was sitting in her  hand, visibly physical and deadly.

"What the actual fuck?" I asked Mel, who was staring at the spear in horror. "How did she do that? Some kind of power synergy?"

She  shook her head mutely. "No. That's a physically manifest Skill.  Manifestations are physical, but only for a second or two during  attacks. That's an actual solid object. Different people manifest things  differently, but...I'm pretty sure she just ranked that Skill up to  Expert."

I snapped back to watching the fight, terrified  for my teacher, but to my shock he looked elated. Reaching up, he pulled  off his mask and slipped it into a pocket, cracking his neck.

At the motion, Mel seemed to deflate, the pressure of her worry fading. "Ok, he's going to start taking things seriously."

I  blinked at her. "Ok...but how much can he be holding back really? I've  seen him fight, ans he's scary as he'll, but if she's an F-ranker and an  expert now..."

To my surprise, Mel seemed to actually  calm down at the words, starting to chuckle to herself. At my strange  look, she chucked her chin down at the arena. "Let me ask you a  question. We've talked about Ragam plenty right? Told you it's a  striking art that allows you to condense force with pinpoint accuracy?"

I  nodded, and her chuckle gained a wicked edge as she pointed to the  arena. "Well, at any point during those explanations did we mention that  Ragam only used PUNCHING techniques?"

My head snapped up,  eyes widening as I saw a colossal phantom leg appear and sweep towards  Lament from the side, seeing it, she spun her lightning spear, turning  to intercept. As she did, Abel stepped into the manifestation, which  extended from where he was standing to where she was blocking. The limb  had been coated in his spatial lubrication before manifesting, and Abel  basically vanished at one end, appearing in front of his enemy.

Lament's  eyes widened and she lashed out at Abel, who rolled in midair, leaving  behind a warped space in the shape of his body that seemed to condense  as a manifestation, even as he slipped around behind her, spinning off  his back leg ato scythe a kick at her head from behind as the  manifestation of himself launched a flurry of attacks and faded into  nothingness as it was struck by the spear.

She yanked the  spear out, rolling it up over her arm to place it between her and Abel.  As his foot landed, he pulled back, shedding another blurry  manifestation of himself cobbled together from warped space. He spun on  his toe, whirling around her in a complete circle, leaving copies  behind, and then changed direction as she attacked the spot he'd just  been in.

As he moved back through the warped copies of  himself he absorbed them, seeming to become denser and more powerful,  not quite hitting the next point of Impact, but coming close. After  absorbing ten clones he dashed forward, and engaged her in a direct head  to head fight.

Her spear lashed out like a glowing blue  rainstorm, striking the air and creating explosions of thunder as it  tore through the sound barrier, but Abel was always a step ahead,  twisting and contorting his body in a strange movement style that was  both fluid and ragged, always just an inch from being hit as his blows  smashed into his opponent with brutal and punishing force.

Blow  to the short ribs, downward elbow to the collar bone, uppercut to the  jaw, stomp the knee. Lament was getting frustrated, moving faster,  attacking harder, and she even landed a few hits. Despite that, Abel  didn't stop or slow. I'd see him get stabbed and think he was dead, only  to realize it had been a glancing blow, or landed somewhere less  vulnerable than intended.

Even with the new holes being  poked in him, Abel was clearly in a frenzy of joy. Lament attacked  again, driving the spear into his thigh, and I saw his smile turn feral  as he used the second it was stuck in his leg to slam his head forward  into her nose. Her eyes went hazy, head falling back as her nose  fountained blood, and Abel's hand came up to grab her hair, holding her  hear back as he drove the other into her throat, knuckles first, in a  brutal knife hand.

She doubled over as he backed up  slightly, tearing his ragged and bloody shirt off the tie it around his  thigh in a make shift tourniquet, then stepped in and grabbed her head,  smashing his other, uninjured leg into her bloody face, again, and  again, and again. It took ten blows before she slumped over,  unconscious, and Abel threw a fist up in the air as the crowd erupted in  cheers.

I stared, dumbstruck. Not because he won, but  because of what he'd done to get there. The pain, the blood, the  injuries he just shrugged off. I could see what Abel had wanted us to  see. That fights weren't clean and orderly like the ones we'd been in so  far. Even the bouts with assassins had been neat, tame. We tried not to  get hurt and to take down the bad guys. That was what heroic  cultivators did.

This wasn't that. This was brutal,  bloody, and unfiltered. If we wanted to take down people stronger than  us, we'd need to fight like this when it mattered. I made a mental note  to take all of this to heart as I stood up, following Mel down the steps  to the edge of the pit as I saw Abel keel over, probably from blood  loss.

With both fighters out they dropped the shield and  Mel and I jumped down, bolting for Abel to heal him up. A heal burst and  scan heal just to be safe, later, had him on the mend, and two more  heal bursts sped things up a bit. Then we healed up Lament and carried  them both out. Our team was in the finals for real. Time to celebrate.