Divine Beast Ascension

542 Hiztor vs Karos

The moment the fight began, the two combatants lunged for each other. Neither of them ran or tried to create some space between them.

Wielding his spear, the Permafrost Team captain parried and tested the footwork of his opponent.

The beast from Team Sardin was some kind of bobcat, wielding lightning essence. But the lightning struggled to breach the icy defenses of the Permafrost Team leader. Where ever a bolt of lightning was launched, a pillar of ice appeared to deflect it. And since the Permafrost captain was conjuring the ice from essence instead of using naturally occurring water filled with minerals and salts, it also made the ice a much poorer conductor.

With each passing second, ice spread out from the Permafrost Team leader’s feet. It was only a matter of time until most of the arena was covered in ice, speeding up the Permafrost captain and slowly the bobcat.

“... I yield,” the bobcat admitted with the spear pointed at his throat. There were also cuts all over his sides and shoulder.

The Permafrost captain smiled and retrieved his spear. He also had some gashes from a few glancing blows of an electrified claw. “That was a great fight.”

With the match over, the candidates bowed once more before heading back to their seats.

The second match involved Team Sardin’s captain. Oli recognized the beast’s species right away and fought his angry impulse.

It was a Saber-tooth Baboon. It stood proudly before its opponent but didn’t seem to ridicule or look down on the human it was about to fight.

.....

Despite the human’s confidence, the match was completely one-sided. From how the baboon fought, it was easy to see that the Sardin Team captain was nothing like the baboons Oli had run into years prior. The baboon captain was proud and strong but never held back or underestimated their opponent. Also, the baboon bowed in respect to their easily defeated opponent.

While the Sardin Team leader kept to themselves and hurried back to their team, the next two stones lit up.

“Huuuh… This was the one match-up I didn’t want to see,” Vloz sighed from the stands, getting ribbed by Bradok. “What? We’ve already seen them fight, and I don’t think Karos is ready for this particular challenge just yet.”

But Karos didn’t seem to mind. The Long-tailed Lynx boldly leaped into the arena, glaring at his opponent.

Hiztor jumped down and slowly yet confidently walked to Kelna at the arena’s center. When both candidates arrived, she didn’t even say a word before Hiztor reintroduced himself, “I’M HIZTOR GLADO!! Son of Heuzon Galdo, representing Galdo Territory, within Rhyner Region!”

“Karos of the Long-tailed Lynxes, representing Iron Academy within Iron Territory of Rhyner Region!”

The crowd instantly realized that the two candidates were rivals in some way. Not only did they come from the same region, but their tone and stares were enough for anyone to sense the malice that existed between them.

“... FIGHT!”

Both of them rocketed forward. Hiztor bounded as fast as he could while covering himself in his sturdy essence armor.

Karos moved forward but suddenly changed directions. He leaped to the left before springing toward Hiztor’s side, clad in lightning from head to tail.

Crzz…

The lightning fizzled when clashing with Hiztor’s earthen defenses. It didn’t even cause Hiztor to stumble or flinch. But Karos was still fast enough to dart away from the charging boulder of a man.

When Hiztor dove forward, he missed the lynx. But that was to be expected. Hiztor used the leap to generate momentum, creating a wall of earth to bounce him back and redirect him to the sprinting cat. Hiztor laughed, speaking only because the fight felt like a personal attack, “Come here, pussy cat!”

However, no amount of taunting would be enough to faze Karos. After training with both Rathe and Bradok, a smack talk rookie like Hiztor would never be able to breach Karos’s defenses against verbal abuse.

Unlike Trenk, Karos’s speed and dexterity made it much easier for the lynx to evade the pinballing Hiztor.

But with every miss, Hiztor would rebound even faster. And Karos already knew that thanks to losing against Hiztor during the Rhyner Region Qualifier. Yet there was one huge difference between their previous fight and the current match. Avalanche Colosseum’s arena was much larger than the fighting platform of the regional qualifier.

With that in mind, Karos decided to make a gamble. He dodged the bounding man over and over again without worrying about Hiztor’s growing speed. Since Karos knew his own strength and had already tested himself against Hiztor’s defenses, Karos wanted to test a new strategy. But for that, Karos needed to see just how fast Hiztor could move.

“Ha! Idiot!” Hiztor cackled between his many leaps.

After six rebounds, Hiztor’s speed was getting much more difficult to dodge. Karos still managed to remain safe, but things were getting close. And the faster Hiztor moved, the fewer hits Hiztor needed to bring down the lynx.

Eventually, it looked like Karos was surrounded by a ring of unattached stone walls that Hiztor was repeatedly bouncing off of.

With Karos in the center of so many walls, Hiztor’s cheeky grin took a wicked twist. Even though Hiztor was moving faster than ever, he decided to start creating a smaller ring of walls in order to go even faster and give Karos even less time to react to every leaping tackle.

Hiztor rebounded from the newest wall and zipped by Karos. His outreached arm was not even half a krin from taking off Karos’s head.

But Karos kept calm. He let his mind keep calculating what he could do, never letting the bouncing Hiztor slow him down. While Hiztor started getting even faster, Karos got to the point that he could never stop moving. They had started a dance of bloodlust and the tempo could only climb higher by the second. Whoever couldn’t keep up and misstepped first would be the loser.

“KAROS!! COME ON, KAROS!!” Yeter cheered with all his might.

Along with Yeter, the thousands of spectators were in awe of the delicate battle that amped up more and more with every passing moment.

From the reserved section, most everyone was eyeing the battle with a curious stare. After Hiztor’s match with Trenk, showing off his unusual battle tactics, they were all curious how someone with lightning essence would try to bring down Hiztor. Now, they were enthused to the point of silently rooting for their favorite. It was the first fight to fully snatch the interest of the kings and territory leaders.

“Not bad…” Vloz mumbled under his breath. But his face wasn’t relaxed. It was tense from thought after thought of what Karos might be able to do. “But whose speed will fail first? That’s the question.”

While leaping back and forth to evade the forever-moving cannonball that was Hiztor, Karos created a web of lightning to try and slow Hiztor. It wasn’t that effective thanks to Hiztor’s essence nature repelling most of it, but a minimal effect was better than no effect. And Karos would’ve needed to move while evading anyway. That lightning web was his way to maximize all the effort he already needed to put into mobility.

It was only when Hiztor was about to create the final wall of his inner ring that Karos finally struck.

The lynx bounded forward to the open spot. The one downside to Hiztor getting faster and faster was how hard it was to control such speed. That forced Hiztor to have fewer options for what direction he wanted to rebound toward. It was how Karos predicted Hiztor finally aiming for the last open spot.

As the stone wall began to rise from the ground, Karos had already arrived and Hiztor had reached the wall opposite the open space, preparing for his unstoppable launch.

Karos’s claws lit up as he tore through the wall in the middle of its construction, when it was at its weakest. It was still far harder to break than Karos had hoped, but at least he got the job done. Only then did Karos jump into the gap between the inner and outer rings of walls.

However, a second and third wall were already popping out of the ground before Karos could look up at his new destination. His claw lashed out at one wall but that time he could only leave deep scratches and claw marks instead of breaking through. And that split second was what Hiztor needed to reach the lynx during his newest rebound.

CRUNCH! C-CRACK!

Giving it everything he had, Karos lacerated the damaged wall again. So long as Karos could escape a clean hit, he was confident that there was still a chance to keep turning the tide of battle. But just as Karos ripped through the stone wall, he realized something.

There was a second wall directly behind it, so close that the wall faces were touching. Unable to fully escape, the lynx felt a rampaging boulder of a man barrel into its side, cracking at least half a dozen ribs on impact.