I knew that it wouldn't matter, but I still dove to the side to avoid the noble's charge. I even lashed out with my gladius, hitting nothing but air, but hopefully adding another obstacle to the mix. Flopping into a roll from my ungainly fall, I tumbled over the ground, coming to a stop with a face full of dust and surprised that I didn't have a stripe of fire running across my back.

There should have been. I knew that, regardless of my desperate actions, they would fail. The attempt was still worth it, as giving up wasn't in me, but desperate actions did not succeed nine times out of ten. That was why they were desperate.

Rolling over, I found the noble standing over me, the point of his sword inches from my nose, quivering violently. Eyes flicking up the blade, I saw the indecision of rage and pride warring on the noble's face. As we locked eyes, I grinned, knowing that I had won.

I didn't win the fight. Realistically, I had no chance. But not winning a battle didn't necessarily exclude you from winning the war. Each side in every conflict had its own terms for victory. Sure, winning the battle was often the default baseline for victory, but it didn't have to be that way. And I had achieved my goal. I forced him to win with raw power, and he, and everyone else, knew it.

His body and weapon, reinforced and enveloped in mental energy, should not so much as allow the blade to quiver even after hours of holding the weapon out. The fact that his sword shook displayed the full extent of the mental turbulence raging through the man, to the extent that he was struggling to maintain his castings.

Suddenly, his sword stilled, and his face went blank as my spikes rose up behind the noble and flashed forward. Flinching, I expected my body to be pinned to the ground, but I felt nothing as thunks sounded all around me.

Glancing to the side, I saw the spikes driven into the ground. "Get up." The noble commanded, lowering his sword to his side and turning his back to me as he strode away. For a moment, I thought of grabbing a spike and launching a surprise attack, but I suppressed the impulse.

It was a trap. Not only because I could feel the young nobles' attention entirely focused on me and coming from all sides, but also because such an dishonorable action would disgrace me. Or that would be the case in the eyes of the nobles watching this mock battle. In a real fight to the death, I wouldn't care in the slightest, but here, there were rules and expectations. And an attack from the back would mitigate, or completely overwrite, my victory in their eyes.

As I got to my feet, clearly not taking the bait, the noble turned, clicking his tongue in annoyance, his face twisting with momentary irritation before he regained his composure. Lifting his blade, he got into a fighting stance, and three daggers lifted up around his body. This time, instead of his careless and lackadaisical attitude, he radiated a sense of focus.

Extending new tendrils from my body to scoop up my spikes, I felt a resistance. A foreign willpower that sought to suppress and oppress my actions. I had never experienced it firsthand, but I instantly knew what it was.

The noble had extended his sphere of perception from himself and around me. Meaning he flooded the surroundings with his mental energy and willpower. If his intentions were friendly and he didn't intend to oppress my castings, it wouldn't have had much, if any, of an effect on me, but that was the opposite of what this man intended.

Every inch that my tendril extended, I was fighting against his will and energy. It was a dispersed and ambient thing, and you know what, I found it nostalgic. Nearly the same as the pressure I had spent every day of my life until recently living under, and it reminded me that everyone else still did. However, as a side effect of his action, I also came to a chilling realization.

Something that I was positive the young noble hadn't intended, but was helping his cause far more than his mild impediment of my castings. He was suppressing the rapid regeneration of my mental energy. True, it was still more than what I had been used to most of my life, but it was a fraction of what I had become used to.

Really, I had to admit I had become spoiled. Still, the restriction would be a far greater hindrance to me the longer the fight dragged on, and effectively sealed my fate. Not that it changed anything.

Rolling my shoulders, I all but emptied my reservoir of mental energy and reformed my tendrils, scooping up the weapons and positioning them around me. At the auxiliary weapons movement, I saw another flicker of irritation pass over my opponent's face, but I didn't waste the time to revel in it, as I was now on the clock.

Dashing forward, I moved to close the distance between us. The moment I moved, Victorak responded by propelling his own daggers at me. Not to attack me, no, his auxiliary weapons were intercepting my own, or so it would appear to the onlookers.

The weapons did make contact with a clang of steel, and mine were immediately blasted backward. Except it wasn't because my tendrils were being overpowered, but because Victorak was releasing strong blasts of mental energy at my tendrils, wiping them away. Before I could take two steps, all of my tendrils were gone, and I could be attacked from four directions at any moment.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Except he didn't. No, a bit of his arrogance had come back, but a simmering rage was underlying the emotion. He wanted, needed, to put me in my place, and this fight would not be allowed to end in such a simple way.

Putting my entire weight and momentum into the swing, I slashed at the noble, intending to open his chest from shoulder to hip. The man didn't move until the last possible moment, and even then, only his arm blurred, stopping my attack cold with the clang of steel. With a dismissive flick of his wrist, he threw my gladius to the side, causing me to stumble.

Again and again, I launched attacks at the noble, but I couldn't get him to do anything but move his arm as he stood rooted in place. The longer we fought, if you could call it that, the more his face fell into a sneer as he became flushed with annoyance.

He wasn't the only one becoming frustrated. I knew I was outmatched, at least intellectually. I knew my attack had only come so close to succeeding in the first moments of the fight because he underestimated me. Still, it was another matter to have everything I had developed over my entire life so casually dismantled.

In the midst of my attacks, I tried forming another tendril to pick up one of my spikes and launch it at the noble, but he deflected it without ever looking. I attempted to bash into him like a bull, only to be knocked to the side by the flat of his blade. I swung my blade until I ran out of mental energy to reinforce my swings, and was heaving from the exertion, sweat dripping down my face. Everything I attempted was countered with overwhelming speed and power. Even my attempts at surprise attacks by sharply turning and throwing my palmed dagger failed, probably because they were never a surprise.

His perception sphere was all around me, and even if I could block out some small area with my own mental energy, that just meant he had to pay attention to that spot. Finally, after giving it my all and being completely hollowed out after minutes, I staggered backward, dropping my arm. "Are you finally giving up?" The noble sneered, his voice mocking. "Do you see the heights you can never reach? Do you understand that your place is to scrabble in the dirt?"

I couldn't help but start laughing. The noble's response was to appear in front of me, his sword pressed against the hollow of my throat. "What do you find so funny?" The Victorak hissed, releasing his blade's handle with his hand to lean forward and hiss in my face.

I could say that he was nothing. That if he gave me a few hours, I could gather enough mental energy to flatten him like a bug, but I doubted he would believe me. No, not with his pride. So I went with what I thought would hit him harder. "Look around." I gasped between my heaving breaths. "Do you really think they believe you won this? You are only a disgrace in their eyes, and the longer you draw this out, the worse it becomes."

The man flinched like my words were a physical blow, and his eyes darted to the side. Even now, after minutes of him casually bashing my attacks away, the jovial mood that existed at the start of the duel was gone. Most of the men looked disgusted, and they weren't looking at me. Some looked angry, and a minority that had a smug, condescending pleasure as they watched Victorak, but no one cheered for his obvious victory.

No matter how much it hurt my pride, I knew the outcome was never in doubt. At least not unless I had most of a day to prepare, but they didn't know that. All they saw was that he was a fraction of a second from losing, and he had to rely on raw power to prevent it. The woman in the crowd couldn't even look at the young man, as they were either embarrassed on his behalf or were attempting to prevent themselves from bursting out into laughter with me.

"You made a fool of yourself, and everyone knows it." At my comment, the noble's face flushed a deep red, and veins began throbbing in his neck and head. In that moment, I realized I had pushed him too far. The hot emotions burning behind his brown eyes vanished as cold decisiveness swallowed the feelings when the idea of killing me solidified within his mind.

Before either of us could move, Senator Ponpti appeared next to the younger noble, his right hand clenched around the sword's blade. "Victorak, did we not establish that this duel was to first blood?"

"What is this!?" Spluttered the younger noble, attempting to pull back his sword, but found it locked within the iron grip of the senator. "How dare you interfere in a duel of honor that you yourself sanctioned! This is unconscionable! What right do you have to do such a thing?"

Tilting his head to the side, a perplexed look on his face, Ponpti snorted in a mixture of derision and disgust. "Are you truly that incompetent? Do you not understand the stakes that you are playing at?"

"What did you say to me? I am Victorak Sathrin, heir to House Sathrin. My family outright owns or has a stake in half the merchant ships from here to the Free City! I demand that you release my blade and let me finish the duel. Afterwards, I will think of whether or not I will see you in the senate and have you stripped of your position for unlawfully interfering with this duel."

Ponpti's expression had shifted to disgust as he weathered the rant, then, in a frosty voice, he responded, "That will, of course, be completely reasonable." The younger man's chest puffed out, a smirk appearing on his face. Then his expression became brittle, as the senator continued speaking, "So long as you can pass an inquisition under the supervision of Reaper Keeper, that you did not have the intention to kill Scout Green in the final moments of this… duel."

An explosion of voices filled the clearing at the demand, and the boy's face paled as all the blood drained from his face. Stumbling backward, his daggers falling to the ground, along with his sword after Senator Ponpti released it, the young man spluttered, sounding desperate, "You don't have the authority to demand that! You are overstepping, Senator Ponpti!"

"I told you," And he swept his arms wide, gesturing to everyone present, "Told everyone that this man is under the protection of the senate. As such, I have the right to request an inquisition. Now, if you wish to continue this duel, you must acquiesce to my demands… or you may forfeit, as the outcome has yet to be decided." A hush fell over the area, and everyone turned to look at the young noble, anticipation evident as they waited to see what would happen next.

"Enough of this farce, Victorus!" Boomed a deep, thrumming voice, drawing everyone's attention away from us.

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