After Micro’s awkward introduction to the other contestants, Kel finally had a moment to take him aside and explain the event in more detail, as he had planned to do on the journey there. He guided Micro to a waiting area while a large number of workers continued to clean the arena.

  “As you can see, the five sects in our alliance send potential heirs to compete,” Kel explained, his enthusiasm quickly returning to him. “The number of representatives varies from sect to sect and changes every year, but it’s rare to see more than four representatives from a sect at one tournament. The audience is filled mostly with cultivators from other regions who have business here, though many come just to place bets… Most of them are likely seeking dungeons in the region, but a good number are likely visiting a certain district nearby…”

  “Why not send the whole sect?” Micro asked as a mundane worker offered them both a cup of tea. They gladly accepted, then Kel waved the worker away and continued.

  “How pathetic would it look if a sect sent an army to defeat a single opponent?” Kel scoffed, though he quickly bowed in apology for his tone. “Excuse me, but they might as well announce that a single disciple from a neighbouring sect is equal to several of their own in strength. It has become tradition over the years to keep numbers minimal to ensure a fair and exciting tournament.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” Micro agreed.

  “That’s why no spectators from participants’ sects are allowed, you see? They were allowed before, but the fights that broke out in the stands grew more interesting to watch than the tournament itself…” Kel explained with a solemn tone. “Though my grandfather’s uncle did make a name for himself back then—”

  “That sounds terrible!” Micro gasped. “Why do you all fight so much?”

  “I appreciate your sense of humour as always, master!” Kel answered, shaking his head with a stifled laugh. “But I must warn you, please don’t go easy on the rest of us today.”

  “What do you mean?” Micro asked.

  “I know we must look like petty children to one as great as you, but you must remember your current position,” Kel replied seriously. “You are trapped in an unfortunate vessel, and you must prove the innocence of your soul with the actions of your body. You must be sincere in your interactions in order to be accepted by the residents of this world. To disrespect them by taking them lightly would only invite further prejudice.”

  “I have to fight them seriously to make friends with them,” Micro said soberly as he began to understand. “Strange, but I understand…”

  “Fight with the intent to win, master,” Kel reiterated, then he smiled. “You are also representing the Fire Mountain Turtle Sect, so take pride in your training!”

  “I—I see…” Micro replied, trying to take a mental note of the advice.

  “Of course, Vera was profoundly correct, and you should be true to yourself in all that you do.” Kel continued. “Do what you must do, but do it in the way that feels most natural to you.”

  “Use the Turtle Art… do what feels natural… be myself…” Micro repeated as his expression grew distant.

  “That’s right,” Kel reassured him. “Word will spread of your origins in time, but those who come to know you through your great deeds, as I have time and time again, will forever know you as the master you are, regardless of their hatred of heroes and magicians.”

  Micro was about to ask Kel to repeat everything he just said when the announcer suddenly raised his booming voice once again.

  “Honourable guests from across the Beryl Kingdom and beyond! The annual tournament of the local Jade Sects’ heirs shall now resume!” he cried out in excitement as the cultivators returned to their seats and the mundane workers returned to their normal cleaning duties with urgency. “Would the representative of the Dark Thunder Sect please return to the stage and declare his intentions for the following battle! Will you fight again, or will you nominate another?!”

  The spectators and other contestants all talked amongst themselves as they wondered whether or not Yin would attempt to win a fourth match, a rare occurrence at the tournament. Having jumped up onto the stage, Yin once again addressed the announcer.

  “I nominate Kel, honoured representative of the Fire Mountain Turtle Sect, to lead the next battle!” Yin looked at Kel, who stood proudly by the other contestants, and nodded.

  “Well, that’s disappointing!” a man shouted from the audience, initiating a stream of jeers and taunts as Kel stood up straight and began to circulate his energy. He looked anxious at first, but his aura calmed as he began to walk. Many of the spectators continued to laugh at Yin’s announcement as he left the platform, but Kel looked back at Micro with a confident smile.

  “I’ll be leading the way for you this time, master,” he said with a quick bow before running to the stage without any fear or hesitation. He exchanged another quick bow with Yin on the way, and the audience finally settled down as they became eager to hear who he would nominate.

  “Kel, of the Fire Mountain Turtle Sect!” The announcer began. “Who will you fight?”

  “With my honour on the line, I shall challenge,” Kel announced with a look of conviction. He stood in silence for a moment, then he cast his eyes to one contestant with bloodlust in his eyes. “Lana of the Sparrow Sect, I challenge you!”

  The crowd was divided in its cheering and laughing, but Kel was unshaken by the noise. Micro recognized the look in his eyes from their time in the Turtle Art Dungeon not long ago. He stood there looking at Lana with nothing in his mind but the fight ahead. Still, many of the spectators laughed.

  “Excuse me, Thea,” Micro shouted to the archer beside him, barely able to hear his own voice above the noisy crowd. “I missed the joke!”

  “It’s only gossip now, but you may as well know,” she replied with a sigh. “It was Lana who defeated Kel last year.”

  “Why is that funny?” Micro asked. “She’s strong!”

  “If only it was so simple,” Thea continued. “It was her first time participating in the tournament, while it was Kel’s fifth. The newest contestants typically challenge each other out of courtesy, but Kel hadn’t won a single fight in five years of challenges.

  “That’s a shame,” Micro said. “Was he embarrassed about that?”

  “Losing a fight is hardly dishonourable, but he was frustrated. It was truly shameful of him to challenge the cultivator he thought to be the weakest of the new contestants, but his honour was only hurt more by the way he lost.”

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  “There are different ways to lose?” Micro asked.

  “He lost in the truest sense,” Thea replied with a sad look. “He quickly tried to intimidate and overpower her. He clearly underestimated her. He himself had a reputation for losing, so when she completely broke through his shield with a single arrow and nearly killed him with a second, there was no honour to be found in his loss. It was hard to watch, but it is hard to forget.”

  “Kel said not to take the fights lightly!” Micro recalled. “Live and learn, huh?”

  “Indeed, it was a lesson he learned in the worst way,” she answered, then looked at Micro with a curious gaze. “But he seems different now. Since he met you, that is…”

  “Oh look, it’s starting!” Micro’s attention was quickly drawn to the stone arena where Kel stood silently before Lana, who looked uncomfortable to be sharing the stage with him.

  “You sure you want to do this again?” Lana asked with her eyebrows furrowed.

  “Through this fight, I hope that we might both be forgiven, Lana of the Sparrow Sect,” Kel declared with conviction. “I cast aside my shame and anger, and I seek only to fight for the honour of the Fire Mountain Turtle Sect.”

  “Big talk for a little turtle,” Lana replied, rolling her eyes. “Well, it’s not like I won’t enjoy this.”

  Before the announcer could say another word, the audience was bombarded by the explosive aura of Lana’s first attack. A powerful arrow of energy flew across the arena before most people had seen her draw it, and it was clear to most that Kel was about to lose his second consecutive match against the girl.

  “It would honour me if you enjoyed this fight, Lana,” Kel replied from within a cloud of smoke. As it cleared, the audience gasped at the sight of his brilliantly shining armour. Micro was surprised by its density after having witnessed its earlier renditions. It was only slightly transparent now, resembling a real suit of armour. Kel snapped the energy arrow he held in front of him with one hand, and nodded at Lana.

  “Just another turtle, after all!” Lana mocked him. “I’ll crack that shell for you!”

  Without losing a beat, she began firing arrow after arrow at Kel. At first, Kel remained stationary as he caught and deflected the arrows, but they only grew in power as Lana increased her energy output. Each arrow crashed into him with a heavy sound and exploded with a brilliant display of light and sparks, and Kel’s armour soon began to show signs of damage.

  “I can do this all day!” Lana shouted as she paused to draw a particularly powerful arrow. “Keep hiding in that armour like the coward you are!”

  “There’s no end to the chirping of a small bird, is there?” Kel replied with a smirk. “Will you be singing after this?”

  Lana’s face twisted in displeasure as she poured just a little more energy into the arrow she had drawn, and she let it loose with spite. However, in the moment it left her bow, her target suddenly moved for the first time, though not in any direction that would make sense to her.

  Kel didn’t dodge to the left or right, nor did he attempt to duck beneath the projectile. Instead, he lowered his head and jumped straight toward Lana. She stood in shocked silence for a moment as the arrow crashed against his ethereal helmet, producing a blinding flash that caught the audience off guard. The cheers and laughter of the audiences gave way to a momentary grim silence as the spectators assumed, as Lana did, that Kel’s decision may have cost him his life along with the battle, but the next sound to echo through the stadium was a loud footstep, and then another.

  Lana noticed too late that Kel hadn’t lost any momentum as the ghostly image of his damaged helmet appeared in the smoke several paces from her. She hesitated for only a moment as she wondered which way to escape, but she was too late. In the last moment, she attempted to swat him away with her bow, and she succeeded in adding one small crack to the helmet he wore, but she could do nothing but brace herself by raising her leg to absorb the impact.

  Kel finally slowed to a halt as Lana tumbled away, grasping her shin in pain. The cracks in his helmet multiplied as he collected himself with a deep breath, and then his helmet shattered, evaporating away like sand in the wind. As Kel’s face was revealed once again, the crowd gasped at the amount of blood flowing down his face, but the intense look in his eyes soon made them cheer.

  “I’m not hiding, Lana,” Kel mumbled stoically as Lana picked herself up and drew an arrow with one hand, holding it like a dagger. The spectators all leaned forward in their seats as the tension between Kel and Lana grew, cheering with wide eyes as the contestants’ auras began to burn even brighter. Kel suddenly grinned through the dense fog of aura. “I’m just waiting—”

  Lana simply screamed in reply as she jumped forward with the arrow in her hand pointed at his exposed neck. Kel managed to deflect it with a swift block, the force of which sent Lana flying away, but she jumped straight back at him the moment her feet touched the ground. He blocked again, and she attacked again. Each attack seemed to get closer to reaching his neck than the last, but Kel’s armoured hands never failed to deflect the arrow before it could make contact.

  The sound of Lana’s arm being deflected by Kel’s armoured hand filled the arena with one loud crack after another, but one attack suddenly produced a different sound. The stoic Kel began to falter as the armour on one of his hands shattered with the force of Lana’s arrow, creating a long gash down his arm before she tumbled away. Kel winced as he held placed a hand over the wound on his arm, but Lana’s own arm appeared to be broken, hanging limply by her side.

  They both paused, looking at each other from across the stone platform, each of them gasping for air and doing their best to ignore the growing pain their injuries were causing them. For the first time, the audience was neither laughing nor cheering, but staring intensely at the pair of cultivators, longing to know the next move either would make.

  “A sparrow with one wing and a turtle with a broken shell,” Kel called out to her. “How poetic…”

  “It would seem so,” she replied with a grimace. “But I’m still faster!”

  In the silence of that moment, she jumped to one side so quickly that Kel thought she had disappeared. The blurry trail she left behind her as she ran in a circle around him was all he could grasp, but her one limp arm gave her away at the last second as she appeared in front of him before he could take a single step back.

  She crouched down and jumped straight up with an arrow in her hand pointing straight at his head. His arms reacted instinctively to block the attack, but he realized they would never come between the point of the arrow and his face in time. Hoping to increase the speed of his defence even slightly, he dispersed his armour at once to allow his hands to intercept the attack, but he was too late to deflect it completely.

  The arrow passed through one hand, and then it passed through the other, only slowing it slightly on its path to his face, but with both hands now firmly attached to the weapon, he was able to yank it to one side as Lana continued toward him.

  CRACK

  The audience cringed as Kel resorted to an unarmoured headbutt that split the tension of the battle like a lightning bolt. Kel stumbled backwards, his hands attached by the arrow which had pierced them, and Lana fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Kel rolled onto his side as he faded in and out of consciousness, wincing as he tried to pull his hands apart. The head of the arrow made it impossible to remove completely, so he had to snap it in half over his knee before he could free it from his hands. As he rose to his feet, his balance almost impossible to find, he watched Lana stand up, her own eyes closed as she swayed back and forth.

  “Are you…” Kel mumbled, but he soon realized he had no time to talk. With her eyes still closed, the audience was shocked to see her summon a faintly flickering arrow of energy in one hand, though she no longer had a bow with which to fire it. Kel watched warily as she stopped moving abruptly, standing motionless, not even breathing. A fleeting feeling of concern for his opponent came and went before a shiver crawled up his back.

  She launched herself forward, her eyes still closed, thrusting the arrow in front of her like a dagger. Kel had no thought of stepping out of the way of the bold attack, nor did he have the energy left to defend himself. He did the only thing he could physically do in that moment before she reached him.

  THUD

  He fell forward and hit the floor just in time to avoid the attack. Lana had no way of knowing what action he had taken with her eyes still shut, and she tripped over his shoulder. She silently tumbled away, carried by her momentum, straight off the edge of the platform, landing directly in the arms of a healer in dark red robes.

  The healer immediately turned to the announcer and nodded, but the announcer wasn’t able to say a single word before the crowd erupted in celebration of the battle’s conclusion. Cultivators jumped out of their seats in excitement as Kel rolled slowly on to his back to look at the sky with a look of relief on his face.

  “Kel of the Jade Fire Mountain Turtle Sect,” the announcer said, his voice finally audible above the noise in the arena. “Kel is victorious!”