A New Star Chapter 44

"An impressive show!" a voice boomed out right before Reginald could say something that he would probably live to regret, or maybe die regretting. I don't know, I was feeling less and less generous by the minute. I had just provided his students with an excellent lesson, in more senses than one, and he was clearly a fool if he thought he could do anything, including even giving a stern reprimand, to me without consequence. 

The man who had spoken was one of the observers that had been standing on the roof and watching the duel. It wasn't hard to tell he was someone important, and powerful, as he descended from the roof using some affinity I wasn't familiar with to slowly levitate down onto the arena. He wore rich purples and blues, the dyes themselves likely costing a veritable fortune, not to mention the very fine cloth that was expertly tailored. Another sign of his importance was the crown he wore on his head; unless I missed my guess, he was the king of this country. Notice I did not say he was my king; I bowed to no one.  

"What would you say, young lady, to an early letter of recommendation to the royal guard for when you graduate the academy?" the king asked. 

"That sounds nice," I said. When the king opened his mouth to continue, I spoke before he could, saying, "But I have no interest in the Guard." 

"Well, interests can change over time," the king said, smiling with only his mouth. "Just keep it in mind." 

"Tell you what," I said, which surprised him a little, if the quirk of a brow were anything to go by. "You find somebody here tonight who is a current academy student, not a graduate or an instructor, who can beat me in a duel, and I'll take the letter of recommendation." 

"I would hate to put upon a young lady of your standing," the king said, but I could see the big grin, which now reached his eye. "Those you fought were merely freshmen who have just enrolled; fighting a senior would be a far different experience." 

"Trust me, I understand," I said, giving the king a calm look that bothered him for some reason. 

"Well, remember your word, young lady," the king said before turning and striding off the stage. 

"Not a great idea," the Count said, frowning at me.  

I rolled my head a little, cocking it to the side as I glared at him, saying, "Unless you know something I don't, there is no way he finds someone who can beat me among this riffraff." 

"He could always find someone very strong and say there are a student," Emmanuel replied, giving me a skeptical look. "The royal academy in your country exists at the king's good grace, after all." 

"If he did such a thing, he would break the spirit of the deal at a minimum, if not the letter of the deal as well," I said. "Such a man, lacking honor, is not someone I would deal with. Besides, I really do not fear whatever ringer or shaved knuckle he tries to pull out of his sleeve. I'll beat anybody that steps on this stage, no problem." 

""Sometimes, I think your arrogance is only matched by your sheer skill," the Count muttered darkly, tapping his walking stick on the stage before striding off.  

Shrugging, I headed in a different direction, intending to get at least a little food in me, as I had not eaten in several hours and was getting rather hungry. I would say the duels had worked up quite an appetite, but that would be a bald-faced lie; the duels had taken barely any energy or effort on my part. I had certainly had harder training sessions where I was instructing a rookie or novice warrior, though those I recalled were all from my last life. Either way, there was quite a spread prepared for the occasion, including tables groaning with roasted and braised and stewed and grilled beast meat. I had always found it strange that many formal functions would provide such food but not as a meal and one was expected to stand with a plate in one hand and fork in the other eating while trying not to spray crumbs and sauce everywhere when still speaking with other guests. It was all a tedious bit of custom that I didn't care for, assuming my usual place in the kitchen after I had secured two plates of food.  

I had barely finished eating when the Count found me, as he was the only one who would have a good idea of where I was. Well, some of the other very high rankers would be able to track me quite easily as long as I wasn't sitting in The Dark, but the Count was my tutor, so it was only right that he was the one who fetched me. It turns out, out of the many people I had not yet met or interacted with this weekend, there were several juniors and seniors of multiple academies present. The king had found a senior from the royal academy to duel against me and I had to clamp down on my instincts hard not to roll my eyes at the choice. The senior was tall, handsome in a rugged sort of way, with a square jaw and light blue eyes, it looked like the king was trying to showboat a little in his selection. The young man was slightly on the tall side, not a giant, but above average height, and the academy had clearly whipped him into shape, compact muscle highlighting his broad shoulders and strong.  

I leapt into the ring across from him after giving him a quick examination, noting that he used a sword, the same as very many of the people I had encountered. The sword was by far the most popular weapon on the continent, which had its advantages, but it had one glaring flaw, at least in this case; I was a Sword Transcendent. In my last life, I had broken through the barriers of the mortal and stepped into the realm of the supernatural, of the extraordinary, with the sword. I had not replicated the feat in this life, but my present skill level did not at all reflect my actual skill, and my current level was still quite formidable. Not only that, I could read the young man like an open book; before he even drew his blade, I knew the strikes and slashes he would favor, the weaknesses in his positioning and footwork, and even the openings he would leave. Were he far more skilled, or using a weapon other than the sword (or the spear), I would have had a much more difficult time in assessing him, even after we had started fighting, but he was absolutely playing my game, on my field, in my arena, in front of my home crowd. Poor boy didn't stand a chance. 

The Count was once again, disgruntledly, administrating the duel, though this time he was perked up a bit more, as this would not be like the last fights. No, this time they wanted affinities to be used, which I thought was a poor decision on the king's part, but a classical rule of strategy was to never correct the enemy when they were in the middle of making a costly blunder. I simply smiled at the young man as he was introduced, grinning deeper as he proudly declared his name, house, and powers, a proper and formal noble introduction. Why you would explicitly tell your opponent what affinities you were best with, I didn't have the faintest idea, but people here loved to do it. It could, of course, be a deception, but it was a common practice, and, to be brutally honest, I didn't think the boy had the wit to lie, certainly not in a convincing way. Announcing fire as one of his primary three when he had ice instead was pretty easy to see through for anyone with sufficient strength, let alone anyone who had either an affinity, artifact, or special power that could pierce through the fog and identify others.  

When the Count then asked me to introduce myself, I bowed the exact correct amount, which wasn't much, and said, "Alex." 

The introduction did incense the young man, not that that wasn't calculated on my part, and he drew his blade with a flourish and assumed a dueling posture as the Count readied us. I assumed a deliberately slovenly stance and laced my fingers together behind my head, watching the boy's face turn a bright red at the insult. It was just another reminder that not only were the nobility pampered and a shade isolated from reality, in many cases, they were also raised to be duelists and, at times, fencers. Their fighting style was pretty and elegant, but they weren't used to real battlefields. Any one of my boys or girls could tear a hundred of these chumps apart with breaking a sweat. What I was trying to say was that these kids were trained to look pretty and fight elegantly, but they weren't soldiers. Warriors. 

No, that was pretty obvious with the kid's first attack, a fast lunge that was executed moderately well and let him retain his balance and pull back rather quickly. I waited for the blade to near before increasing my time scale, though only slightly, just enough that I lazily slid around his blade, the edge just missing my dress. I also made sure he wasn't using one of his three affinities, or a hidden one, to add in any extra oomph to the attack, but it appeared he was sticking to his story and plan. He tried for a few slashes after that, not engaging his powers much as he tested the waters, but I barely needed to do anything to avoid the strikes. It was another problem with these kids, one I had commented on before, but they were too sheltered. They were taught out of a textbook and by instructors who hadn't seen field work in decades; everything they did was rigid and formulaic. They wouldn't survive an hour on a real battlefield like this, and that was a damn shame, as some of them would definitely wind up on battlefields, whether they wanted to be there or not.  

Every strike the boy made was predictable, safe, and utterly boring. I slide around one slash after another, only quirking an eyebrow when he starting employing his fire affinity. He was rather proud of his ability to fling out fireballs in-between his swings, which looked rather impressive, and had the audience gasping, but was useless. He was still far too rote and predictable and, well, I was getting bored. I had a decent gauge of his skill, at least with the blade, and of his overall combat ability. I decided to test the waters a little, stopping my dodging and going on the attack. I was curious to see how the kid would respond to a little bit of in-your-face fisticuffs, and if the instructors were training these louts what to do if they encountered somebody who was really good close-in.  

I spun around a thrust, a silly thing to do on an actual battlefield, but I was both making a point and showing off, and I brought my elbow around into his upper arm, a painful but not really damaging blow. The kid staggered two steps to the side before correcting himself only to find me right there, throwing out a dozen jabs, though I wasn't blending in any affinities just yet. I hammered away at his defense, seeing his eyes widen in shock that I was able to either deflect or redirect his sword with my bare hands to not take damage from the blade. I stepped back and then stepped forward again, stepping through The Dark to arrive behind him, completing the kicking motion I had started with the step. My shin dug into his side right below his short ribs, lifting him off the ground and causing him to explosively cough out the breath in his lungs. He landed unsteadily several paces away and took a second to get his bearings.  

I was right there as he did so, throwing out punches and kicks, pushing him back, and he desperately fought with all his skills, throwing all three affinities at me as well. The fire I batted away, the bits of stone I punched into rubble, and the illusions of extra swords, or extra copies of himself, that he created were easy enough to differentiate. A minute had his heels over the edge of the ring, and ring outs did count as losses, so he was now fighting a bit desperately. It was the first real spark I had seen from him, and he was throwing out enough stone that I needed to counter with ice or lightning to block some of it off. I let us stalemate for a minute, watching the boy sweat, but this fight had long been boring. I had gotten a good measure of his skills and, suffice it to say, I was not much impressed.  

I ended the duel by having The Dark wrap his legs from toe to knee, holding in place as I darted forward and chained a rapid series of light, sharp jabs from both hands together into a blurring combination. His sword was batted aside and quick strikes hit his stomach, chest, and face, causing him to sway like a drunk in high winds, unable to fall out of the ring due to my affinity binding his legs. I gave him another several quick, sharp, short punches before suddenly releasing the binding, twirling a full circle on my left heel to slam my right heel into his stomach, lifting him off the ground and sending him tumbling through the air and into knee-wall in front of the bleachers.  

The poor boy was both ringed-out and knocked out, though I hadn't really hit him that hard, or intended to, at any rate. I dusted my hands off, glancing around to see everyone staring at me with varying degrees of interest, shock, awe, worry, and fear. Well, I suppose that had been just a bit excessive, but I didn't rough the boy up too badly, and it was a sanctioned duel after one. One with, lest I and the rest forget, a Y-ranker as the ref, a person who could have easily stepped in and stopped the violence if he had any thought that it was at all excessive. Clearly, it was pretty standard stuff, and the Count seemed perfectly content to let me continue handing out lessons left and right today, though even he did have a strange look on his face. Oh well, you can't win them all, as they say, and I wasn't interested in many of the gathered peoples' opinions. Not to be too arrogant, but lions rarely concerned themselves with the opinions of sheep. 

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