Shades of the New World

Chapter 143: Very violent hero

His punches became faster and sharper at the price of some strength. Thanks to this, Evin was finally forced to act a bit more seriously, and Arza began to face a fierce counterattack. The latter's uncanny precision started to show, as every one of his punches and jabs would focus on Arza's weak points without mercy. Eyes, ears, throat, solar plexus, and ribs. For better or worse, Evin knew exactly how sturdy Arza was. He wasn't like Ellar, who fought Arza like he was handling a glass sculpture.

And Arza couldn't just tank it like he would do so usually, since Evin's mastery of the Heavy World allowed him to muster out some seriously hard-hitting blows at times. If Arza fought in melee range using his muscles and energy, Evin fought in melee range using the laws of the World, as Evin himself liked to boast. 

Arza's hot-headedness dissipated, as he focused on defending his vitals. He then noticed that Evin was fighting a bit weirdly as well. Although, his attacks were precise, they could still be called sloppy, by Evin's standards. There was a slight delay, or some kind of brief slow-motion-like movement in his attacks. Usually, Arza wouldn't care much about such details, but he felt like he could grasp the methods behind Evin's martial art from those movements. 

His mind went full throttle as he intently observed Evin's movements. Evin himself didn't seem to mind as much as he patiently performed his moves in front of Arza. Like this, the crowd was forced to watch the two children exchange countless blows for half an hour. Usually they would be bored, but they could see that the repressed Arza was slowly but surely getting stronger and more adept after each blow. Something about this fact excited the crowd greatly, as they loudly cheered from the sidelines every time Arza looked to have won a series of exchanges.

At this point, Arza had all but forgotten why they began to fight in the first place. His mind was as calm as the skies and was singularly focused on studying Evin's fighting style. But, unfortunately, good things had to end eventually.

"It's time to get a bit serious," Evin muttered indistinctly. No one in the crowd could hear it, but Arza, who was near him certainly could. 

'Dammit,' A bad feeling arose in his heart.

Evin's attacks increased in intensity once more and Arza found himself in a reactive situation. While before, Evin would mainly throw out punches and jabs, this time, he unreservedly used kicks, feints, leg sweeps, shoving moves, and tackles on top of the punches. There was none of the wonderful delay, or slow-motion-like movement that Arza could see before. Only brutal efficiency was apparent from Evin's movements.

Of Evin's new move set, Arza had the most trouble dealing with the feints, since he had just spent 30 minutes reacting to Evin's small movements which were always followed by either a jab or a punch. 

Inevitably, Arza's attention slipped and it created an opportunity for Evin to perform a series of attacks. Arza fell for one of Evin's feints to his eyes and tried to swat it down with his left hand. Evin caught this loose hand, pulled it down and performed a brutal knee into Arza's gut. Arza tried to stabilize himself, but suddenly, he felt himself lightly floating on the air, unable to feel the constant pressure that Evin's Heavy spell emitted. The sudden change of weight made it ten times harder for Arza to find top from bottom, but Evin's attack wasn't over yet. 

A feathery, almost carefree punch landed on Arza's chest, but the recipient of the punch knew what would follow afterwards.

'Shit!' Arza wasn't even able to finish his thought, as the air shimmered and he felt a huge force of concentrated air particles hitting him square in the chest. This attack was at least three times stronger than the ones that Evin threw out previously. Arza hurriedly canceled the weight-reducing Heavy World spell to not fly away too fast, but Evin seemed to know exactly what he was thinking, as Arza could feel himself becoming almost weightless instantly. 

'Fuc-!' 

Arza couldn't even finish swearing in his head, as his body flew away like a bullet and violently crashed into the arena's barrier. A crack also resounded from his body, but Arza wasn't quite able to focus on it, as he readied his mind to fight against the pain. He didn't regret this small decision of his, as waves of throbbing pain began to assault his mind incessantly. Just a slip of his mind, and he might've fallen unconscious. Almost automatically, his subconscious began to fix his battered body under the occasional static from the barrier surrounding him.

The fuss from the crowd instantly died out as an eerie silence filled the arena. 

Arza groaned painfully as he judged the damage done. His right hand and right side rib was fractured, but that was a good outcome in Arza's eyes. Thankfully, he managed to tilt slightly during the flight and not hit the barrier with his back like Ellar. He also managed to cushion the impact greatly with his strengthened skin and muscles, so the only thing that was really getting him was the pain from the broken bones.

'This is why it's such a pain to fight against Evin. One moment you're relaxed, exchanging blows lightheartedly, and the next moment you find yourself half-dying with your whole body smashed to pulp. Ugh, right after I declared that he was my hero, as well... ' Arza desperately tried thinking of something humorous to ignore the pain as the currents of Life energy fixed his broken bones.

'Speaking of fighting against Evin, this shouldn't be the end of it, right?' Arza grimaced and looked towards Evin with some dread. Sure enough, the other had taken a pose like he was about throw out another punch and was seemingly expecting something.

'He's waiting for me to surrender,' Arza realized. Part of him wanted to continue to struggle, but he couldn't quite willingly force his body to get pommeled. The self-proclaimed fearless Arza had lost this particular trait after the fight with the four mages. He knew that the reason they managed to stay alive, was mostly due to luck and coincidence not to mention their enemies underestimating them substantially.

Arza then looked at the crowd around. Everyone looked at his sorry figure with worry. There were even some that looked at him with anticipation and expectation. They've seen how strong and domineering Arza was usually, but they couldn't quite feel it in this fight, so they still thought that Arza had something in store for them.

'I'm sorry to disappoint, but I can only look domineering against weaker opponents,' Arza sighed in his heart. Every one of his attacks against Evin were comparable to his last punch against Ellar, but in the end, he could only move some air with them. 

He then looked at Evin and wondered why he wasn't attacking. Arza saw a weird set of emotions in Evin's eyes: disappointment and encouragement. Maybe Arza was reading wrongly, but perhaps Evin wanted him to struggle more? But why? 

Again, Arza fell into the World of Thoughts and began to brainstorm.