"What is the advantage of blood magic?" That was the question that Ray had asked himself many times over the years.
The answer was simple: "It was good on everything but not great in anything!"
Combining his magic with the strengths of his own body, Rya had created his fighting style, but the problem was he didn't have many people to try it with; the words of him training in that direction could have leaked easily.
Standing there, with cold blue eyes and his long black hair dancing in the wind, he was like an arrow in a bow ready to be fired.
10...
9...
Ray closed his eyes, letting his magic flow throughout his body, embracing it to the fullest.
3...
2...
1...
In a mere second, wings grew on his back, and he was flying toward Marcus. The soul magic had one weakness: until it reached the perfect form, it had no defense.
Marcus was surprised by the speed of Ray; to counter him, he changed the shape of his soul beast into a tiger.
The tiger and the Ray collided together; dust and stone rose from the ground upon their impact. He dodged the claws easily, but the spiky tail was another matter.
"Not bad..." He dodged another claw, followed by a swish of its tail, but this time, he took the hit with his hand, holding the tail, and blood flowed from his hands on the ground.
The tiger felt the danger and jumped back, but it was too late; the blood from Ray's body rose from the ground, shaping a thousand of small needles.
It rushed toward Ray again. These small attacks had no effect on it; however, Ray's target was someone else all along.
All the needles attacked Marcus at the same time; his armor destroyed most of them, but very few were able to make cuts on his body.
Marcus faced another wave of attacks; he took a glance at Ray's situation. Unlike his expectations, he was fighting the tiger at the same time as controlling his magic.
Cold sweat covered his whole body. "If this continues, he will defeat me before the tiger!"
The tiger tried to jump on Ray, but it fell into the opening that Ray had made for it. Before it reached the ground, Ray's hand was in its head, taking out anything he could.
Marcus dismissed his soul beast; if this continued, nothing would have been left out of it, and growing a new one was going to be hard and time-consuming.
"Would you surrender?" Ray smirked at his face.
"Nev ... Never!" A simulated rifle appeared in Marcus's hand. Trying his last shot, he fired, but all of its bullets hit a blood wall created in front of Ray.
Ray slowly walked toward him, making sure that he sensed his killing intent: "What happened to your speech? Being in such a miserable state makes all of your nonsense wrong."
Marcus was furious, and all he could do was to fire his gun at him, but even that had no effect anymore.
"The reason I agreed to be in the top eight was I was sure that only wasted my time. Even you wasted it so much, but it's so fun looking at your face." His smile widened as their distance was less than ten steps.
Marcus threw his gun, but it was deflected by the blood shield too; the feeling of being helpless and the anger pushed his mind to its limit. He charged toward Ray with a sword appearing in his hand.
Ray waited for his sword strike to come; for him it was an easy task as he dodged it and punched his face through his armor. The field armor around his face completely collapsed while drops of blood started to fall from his hand.
"This is how society works; the stronger takes it all." Ray kicked his face, breaking a few bones alongside it.
"Did I go onboard?" He saw the broken face and thought that he had lost any chance he had with Kaine, but as his eyes found her in the sidelines, she showed him a thumbs up.
Among the cheerings of the crowd, Ray waved hands for everyone.
The fight was good but didn't satisfy his needs the way he wanted. The good thing was that there were more needs that needed to be satisfied.
He picked up his shirt and watch from the ground when he heard a sweet voice: "Those injuries—follow me, I have some bandages in my office. I don't want your mom to see you like that in her after-party." Ray saw Kaine standing in front of her.
"Umm…" His mother was used for Ray to be injured all the time. "Oh, thanks."
She didn't wait and moved through the halls of the academy with Ray following behind her, watching her ass and legs.
"Just so you know, you are not upset, right?"
She took a glance at him. "Why should I be?"
"Wasn't he your son?" Ray had only guessed about it.
"It's ok; due to his A rank, this is not the first time that something like this has happened."
"This world is cruel, isn't it?" Ray had a vague guess that she was at least an SS rank, but her son was in one of the middle stages.
"It is." She opened a door into a room big enough for ten people to live in. "This is my office, and from now on, you work here too!"