Re: From Elf Mage to Overlord Slayer-Chapter 29: The Crucible

Chapter 29: The Crucible
The second discipline was The Crucible.
It was exactly what it sounded like.
A place where you get put under a lot of pressure and heated up until you either get stronger or you break.
The arena was a deep, circular pit with a floor of packed black sand.
The walls were lined with more of those creepy silver runes, which I guessed were for healing spells or, more likely, to keep us from killing each other.
Probably.
The air smelled like old sweat, blood, and fear.
My favorite.
The rules were simple.
You fight until you yield, or until the instructors stop it.
No killing.
Everything else was pretty much fair game.
This wasn’t about fancy techniques.
This was about breaking the other guy’s will.
I leaned against a pillar, watching the first few matches.
It was brutal.
The instructors paired people up in the worst possible ways.
It was all about stress-testing us.
They put a huge, muscular orc-elf hybrid, a guy built like a brick wall, against a tiny, whip-thin girl who looked like a strong breeze would kill her.
"Yo, that’s not a duel, that’s foreplay!" someone yelled.
"Hope the healer brought protection!" another snorted.
The crowd of initiates snickered.
It was supposed to be a slaughter.
The orc charged, roaring like an idiot.
The girl didn’t even try to block.
She just dodged.
She moved like a flicker of shadow, always just out of his reach.
He was all power, but he was slow.
He kept swinging his massive fists, hitting nothing but air, getting angrier and more tired with every miss.
Then she saw her opening.
As he lunged, she dropped low, slid between his legs, and drove the heel of her boot into the back of his knee.
There was a wet, popping sound.
The orc howled and collapsed.
The whole arena went dead silent.
Then, from somewhere in the stands, someone whispered loud enough for everyone to hear:
"...did she just slide between his legs?"
Another voice followed immediately after, gleeful:
"Yo...she violated that man’s kneecap and dignity!"
The silence shattered. A mix of laughter and winces rippled through the crowd.
Someone else yelled, "Marry me, knee assassin!"
The girl just calmly walked over and tapped him on the head.
He yielded.
The whole arena was dead silent for a second, then a few people started clapping.
My kind of fight.
All efficiency, zero wasted movement.
Then my name was called.
"Quinn. Kael."
My opponent was a guy with a perpetual sneer and muscles on his muscles.
A classic brawler type.
He cracked his knuckles and gave me a grin that was all teeth.
"Try not to cry, Rank 3," he sneered.
I walked down into the pit.
Time for the show.
Kael charged, just like the orc did.
No strategy, just a wall of angry meat.
A low rumble vibrated through the ground as his boots hammered against the arena floor, each step sending up small explosions of black sand. His shadow loomed larger with every pounding stride.
I waited until the last second.
Then I "slipped" on a loose patch of sand.
My feet went out from under me, and I fell backward, right as his fist flew over my head.
"Whoosh!"
The air split beside my ear, the wind from his missed punch brushing past like a whip.
I landed flat on my back, sand puffing around me in a smoky cloud.
Kael laughed, the sound booming through the arena, and brought his foot down in a stomp aimed right at my chest.
"THUD!"
A shockwave rippled through the sand as his heel struck where I’d been a split second ago. I rolled away, looking panicked and clumsy.
His foot hit the sand with another heavy thud, sinking deep and spraying grains into the air.
I scrambled to my feet, "stumbling" as I did.
My flailing arm, completely by "accident," smacked him right in the side of the neck.
"Thwack!"
It wasn’t a hard hit, but it was right on a pressure point.
His eyes went wide, and he staggered back, gasping for air. His throat convulsed as he tried to suck in a breath, veins bulging against his temples.
He shook his head, looking more confused than angry.
"Lucky shot," he growled, his voice hoarse.
He came at me again, slower this time.
He threw a series of punches.
Each swing sliced the air with sharp bursts of wind — "Whuff! Whuff!" — but I "dodged" them by falling over myself, tripping, and generally looking like the least coordinated person on the planet.
Each dodge, however, put me in a slightly better position.
He was getting frustrated.
His nostrils flared. Sand sprayed beneath his boots as he lunged, trying to tackle me.
I sidestepped, my foot "accidentally" hooking his ankle.
"CRACK!"
He went down.
Hard.
He hit the ground face-first, sending up a burst of black sand like smoke from an explosion.
Before he could get up, I "tripped" again, and my knee landed, again, completely by "accident," in the small of his back.
"THUD!"
He let out a sharp cry of pain, the sound muffled by the sand.
"Yield," I said, my voice a calm, quiet thing amid the echoing gasps of the crowd.
He spit a mouthful of sand and snarled, "Never."
So I "lost my balance" and put a little more weight on his spine.
A faint crack sounded, not bone-breaking, but enough to make him grunt through gritted teeth.
"Yield," I repeated.
He finally grunted and tapped the ground.
I quickly got off him, dusting myself off and making sure to look surprised that I’d won.
The instructor called the match.
The crowd was just... confused.
Murmurs rippled across the stands.
They just stared, trying to figure out if I was a genius or just the luckiest idiot who ever lived.
I walked out of the pit, keeping my head down.
I could feel two pairs of eyes on me.
Seraphina’s, which were narrowed in suspicion.
And Gandalf’s.
His were just burning with cold, hard hate.
And then, the instructor’s voice cut through the air.
"Gandalf Reynolds. Quinn."
Oh.
The whole arena went dead silent.
This was what everyone had been waiting for since Gandalf showed up.
The two survivors from the capital.
The disgraced captain and the mysterious monster.
We walked to the center of the pit.
There was no banter.
No sneering.
Just a heavy, crushing silence filled with all the things we weren’t saying.
His father’s death.
The ruined city.
Her.
The instructor yelled, "Begin!" and the world exploded.
Gandalf didn’t charge.
He exploded forward, his grief and rage condensed into a single, brutal punch.
"BOOM!"
The ground cracked beneath his feet, sending a spray of black sand outward as his body blurred into motion. A visible shockwave rippled through the air, the sound echoing like thunder trapped in a cavern.
It wasn’t a test.
It was an execution.
I brought my arms up to block.
The impact was like getting hit by a falling building.
"CRACK!"
A concussive blast of air rippled out from the collision point, flinging sand in all directions.
The shockwave hit like a hammer ... a deep, gut-wrenching vibration that numbed my arms to the shoulders.
A shockwave of force shot up my arms, and my whole body went numb.
My vision rattled. For a heartbeat, all I could hear was ringing — high, sharp, endless.
Then came the pain.
I was thrown back a dozen feet, skidding through the sand. Each bounce sent gritty dust spraying from beneath my body in bursts.
My <Aura of Fear> flared, dark tendrils rippling out around me like mist, but it just bounced off his wall of pure, focused hatred.
He was on me again before I could even catch my breath.
"WHAM!"
A kick to the ribs.
I barely got my arm in the way.
The bone creaked under the strain, a horrible, dry sound like wood snapping in half.
This wasn’t a spar.
He was trying to break me.
I didn’t use my Slayer skills.
I didn’t Phase Step.
I didn’t Swap.
I just fought.
Sand swirled around us like smoke kicked up by a storm. Every breath burned my throat, and the heat of his presence pressed against me like a furnace.
I used my "clumsy" style, but now it was sharpened by desperation.
I dodged, I weaved, I blocked.
Every block felt like my bones were going to shatter.
Every dodge was a hair’s breadth from disaster.
He was a storm of pure, physical power... every movement explosive, deliberate, relentless.
I was a rock, just barely holding on.
We didn’t speak.
The only sounds were the thud of fists hitting flesh, the scrape of boots on sand, and our own ragged breaths echoing across the arena.
He landed a solid punch to my jaw.
"THUD!"
My head snapped back, the impact sending a white flash across my vision, like lightning behind my eyes.
I staggered, spitting blood. The taste of iron filled my mouth.
I answered with a "lucky" kick that swept his legs out from under him.
"CRASH!"
He hit the ground hard, the sand exploding beneath him like smoke, rolled, and was back on his feet in an instant, his expression blank, eyes blazing.
We were both bleeding now.
Both breathing in ragged gasps.
Sweat and dust streaked our faces, blood dripping down our chins in thin, dark lines.
He was all power.
I was all resilience.
He couldn’t land a finishing blow.
I couldn’t get through his defense.
It was a perfect, brutal stalemate.
The air between us shimmered from heat and tension — two forces locked in a moment that could snap at any second.
Finally, the instructor stepped in.
The sound of his voice cut through the chaos like a blade, but for a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
"Enough!" he yelled. "The match is a draw!"
We just stood there, a few feet apart, staring at each other.
Panting.
Bleeding.
His grey eyes were filled with a new, grudging respect, buried under layers of suspicion and hate.
He knew.
He knew that wasn’t luck.
He just didn’t know what it was.
And that scared him more than anything.