Amelia gulped, as she saw the levitating sword.
Slowly, she reached out her hand towards the pile of swords on the ground.
She focused intently on one of them, and the sword began to shake and rattle.
Instantly, the sword shot towards, being attracted to her hand.
Her eyes widened, and she instantly applied a repulsive force to the sword, sending it flying backwards.
He collided with the pile, sending a few of the swords spinning across the floor.
The three of them looked down at the pile for a moment.
Amelia then let out a groan.
"This is hard." She muttered, her shoulders slumping.
She then felt a hand on her shoulder.
Looking up, she saw Layla smiling gently at her.
"Here, let me help." She replied.
Layla stretched out her hand towards the pile.
Instantly, one of the swords began to levitate.
Amelia watched in amazement, as Layla made the sword glide across the air by moving her hand back and forth.
"Think of it as an extension of your own body." She replied. "As if you're controlling one of your own limbs."
Amelia gulped, and nodded, a now somewhat confident look on her face.
"Right." She replied. "Here goes."
***
Back in Power Fighters, Quinn was still standing in the white room.
He hadn't looked for a new opponent yet.
Before Quinn did any more matches, there was one thing he wanted to do.
Now that Quinn had learned how to perform the Hammer Strike, he decided to take a break to learn what he assumed would be the far easier move, the Flash Step.
He opened up the "Tutorial" Tab in his System, and selected the video for the Flash Step.
Like he had assumed, the Flash Step was far easier to understand.
Unlike with the Hammer Strike,where he had to watch the video multiple times and was unable to do everything, Quinn found himself easily being able to follow the blonde-haired Vampire step-by-step.
After only a few minutes of practice, Quinn was able to perform the move.
"Yes!" Quinn shouted excitedly, as he continued repeatedly Flash Stepping around the white space.
As Quinn moved from place to place, he found himself wondering if this is how Tsukuru felt each time he used that "teleportation" Skill of his.
A few minutes later, Quinn stood in the center of the right room, him feeling very proud of himself.
He was now able to use both of the moves from the tutorial: The Flash Step and the Hammer Strike.
This meant that his number of usable moves in battle had increased from one to three.
He now had the Blood Swipe, the Hammer Strike, and the Flash Step.
Quinn then noticed that while he was in the white room on his own, his body wouldn't grow tired.
He was able to perform the Flash Step as he wanted to without feeling tired.
However, this didn't apply to when he was in a fight in the "arena".
During his previous fights, Quinn had noticed that using his Blood Swipe did take a toll on stamina, as he felt himself getting winded after sending out Blood Swipe after Blood Swipe.
This meant that the white room acted like some sort of "training room", where he would be unaffected by the physical limitations of his natural body.
With both his Flash Step and his Hammer Strike moves learned, Quinn finally decided that he wanted to experience a fight with a tougher opponent.
Instead of selecting an Ability Level, Quinn hit the "Quick Match" option, and let fate decide the Ability Level of his opponent.
In the real world, you wouldn't be able to choose who you went up against, so it was important that Quinn had experience fighting in all sorts of situations.
A few moments later, a match was found.
As Quinn entered the arena, he saw that his opponent was wearing a long, red cape, and had two daggers by his side.
However, unlike with Tsukuru, these daggers were normal size, not the oversized daggers Tsukuru would use, that were borderline shortswords.
Quinn also noticed that for the first time, the stands surrounding the fighting area weren't completely empty, as he saw a person sitting in the stands watching them.
"Oh, don't mind him." The man in the cape replied. "He's just my senior. He's here to watch my fight so he can give me tips."
When both of them were ready, the system's usual countdown appeared over their heads.
"3…2…1…Fight!" The System's voice announced, and an electronic noise was heard.
As soon as the sound indicating the start of the match was heard, the caped man took out his daggers, and swung them fast.
Two wind blades followed.
Seeing the blades of wind, Quinn noted how they looked similar to his Blood Swipes.
Only they were faster, and had a longer distance.
Quinn then decided to attack with a long-ranged attack of his own.
He swung his hand down, activating his Blood Swipe Skill.
The lines of red aura clashed with the blades of wind, canceling each other out.
Instantly, the eyes of Quinn's opponent widened.
'A red color…what Ability is that?' The caped man thought.
The man up in the stands watching the match had the same thought as his "junior".
Quinn rushed forward, as all his Skills required him to be in close range.
Seeing this, the caped man swung his daggers, sending out more wind blades.
Quinn responded by shooting out more Blood Swipes, this time, sending out four of them.
The first two cancelled out the wind blades, and the second two carried on moving forward towards the man in the cape.
While Quinn was expecting the man to dodge, or even bring up his hands to block like Kyle had, he did something…unexpected.
The man lifted up his cape, and spun around.
The Blood Swipes impacted with the cape, but there was no effect.
The Blood Swipes didn't even scratch the cape, let alone tear it.
'Beast Gear!' Quinn thought, as he just now realized what the cape was. 'And High-Level gear, at that…'
Quinn and the caped man were now in close range of each other.
The caped man swung out his daggers fast, but Quinn lifted his hands covered in the Black-Horned Gauntlets, and managed to grab the daggers.
Suddenly, an aura of razor-sharp wind enveloped the daggers, extending out from the end of the daggers, and making them appear as swords.
Quinn winced in pain, as he felt the wind blades pierce his shoulders.
The caped man smirked, and pulled back his daggers.
He then went in for another strike.
"I don't know what your Ability is, but this match is over." He replied.
Suddenly, his daggers hit nothing but air, as the spot that Quinn had been just a moment ago was completely empty.
On instinct, the caped man whirled around.
That was when he felt a sharp claw peirce through his stomach.
Then again, and again.
Quinn released attack after attack, tearing the caped man's stomach apart, like a Beast tearing through its quarry.
Finally, Quinn finished him off with two Blood Swipes.
As the man collapsed to the ground, a System message appeared in front of Quinn.
[25 Exp received. Exp: 105/800]
The man watching in the stands instantly stood up to his feet as he saw his friend collapse.
So far, the two of them had been on a winning streak, taking turns defeating opponents.
As such, the sudden loss had been a shock to both of them.
"That Skill at the end." The man in the stands muttered to himself. "What was that?"
Back in the arena, Quinn was just about to log out and find another match, when he heard someone call out to him.
"Hey, wait!" The main in the stands shouted, waving his arms to try and get Quinn's attention. "Please, fight me next!"
While Quinn had no problem with this, and had accepted the man's request, unknown to him, the man he was about to fight was one of the strongest students from another military base.
The student who had been sitting up in the stands and watching the fight between Quinn and his friend was named Nate Snell.
And in his academy, he was a second-year.
Not only that, but he had a reputation in his base for being one of the strongest among its second-years.
But unlike Mono and his gang, this second-year was actually a good person.
This was due to the fact that, unknown to Quinn, Military Base 2 was somewhat…infamous among the other bases.
It had a bad reputation for churning out some of the absolute worst piece-of-shit humans the world had ever seen.
And its second-year students were viewed by the rest of the bases as no more than delinquents.
And this was all due to the man in charge of them.
Duke King, an arrogant, narcissistic, greedy man who ran Military Base 2 as his own personal extortion racket right underneath everyone's noses.
Nate often played in the game to improve his fighting skills.
This was important to him, as his fighting skills went hand-in-hand with his Ability, which made him a melee fighter like Quinn.
He was obsessed with learning all sorts of different types of martial arts skills.
However, there was onearea that the game wouldn't let you improve.
Just as the VR Pods couldn't scan your body's actual Mutant Cells, it also couldn't scan your Soul Weapon.
As a person's Soul Weapon was completely unique to them, as no two Soul Weapons were the same, even if those two people possessed the same Ability, it was impossible to implement a work-around like Logan had done with Abilities.
With his keen eye for martial arts, the second Nate had seen Quinn perform his Flash Step to appear behind Sam, he instantly decided that he needed to know who this person was.
The footwork in the Skill was so beautiful, so quick, that even he wasn't able to keep track of where Quinn had gone before he appeared behind his friend.
After asking Quinn for a battle, he was so overjoyed that Quinn had accepted.
For the two of them to start their match, they needed to add each other to their respective "Friends" list first.
A holographic screen appeared in front of Quinn.
[User ID Hardsteely has sent you a Friend Request.]