Helen Aquabourne V Angel Vinne
"Look at you Acquabourne— coming straight for me." Angel remarked as Helen rushed directly at her like an indomitable mass of water.
Riding the wave, she moved past the other opponents Markus had to face and slammed right into Angel, swiping them away with the tide to to the left side of the colosseum.
"Let's see what you got." Helen said before expanding her wave and turning it into a cold mist which spread around.
Appearing like a cold wraith hunting its prey Helen moved through the foggy mist and struck against her opponent. To her misfortune however— Angel was of the same rank and element.
The cold mists were resisted and she created an ice armour made of hundreds of shards of ice. These were controlled in groups rather than individually however the armour was particularly powerful as it offered her protection and instant counter attack opportunities as she needed only command the shards to shoot forward.
When Helen struck from the mists, shards flew in her direction and her attack would be instantly halted as she needed to avoid the strike. Other times when she did strike and would flee, her path of escape had to be different and unpredictable to avoid being struck.
'If she's controlling the space then I'll control the ground.' Angel schemed as she released essence to create a layer of ice on the ground and used this ice to increase her own mobility whilst disturbing the movement of her opponent.
Helen maneruvred above this ice by releasing massive amounts of essence and riding a pillar of swirling water; however she entered Markus' essence zone.
All of a sudden Helen breathed in and felt herself slip. Instantly she dove deeper in the pillar of swirling water and sealed herself in.
'He must've commanded the oxygen out of the area— dammit Markus you could've warned me—' Helen said, fighting the effects of brief oxygen deprivation
Before she could even think she realised her water tunnel was being influenced. Angel was trying to freeze her in.
Helen moved outside of Markus' essence zone and landed on the ice. She converted her pillar into solid ice before swinging her body around and slammed Angel who was not expecting such a barbaric attack from a refined noble lady.
Angel was slammed into Markus' essence zone and caught her breath after the heavy hit. Only that she was not recovering but growing weak.
'This fucking brat— he did something with the air in this zone!' She cursed at Markus
Angel released massive amounts of essence to engulf her and negate Markus' dominion of the zone, allowing herself to breathe. She and Helen were evenly matched in authority and now in weakness, as they both took in breaths of the oxygen deprived air.
Using the deployed essence, Angel shot forth a myriad of water droplet bullets to which Helen responded in kind. Both ladies took hits from each other and converted the droplets into ice, trying to freeze their opponent from the inside whilst resisting the frost. They were in a perfect stalemate until Angel sensed Markus pulled back his essence zone. She also saw that her own allies were dropping like flies to the lone stage three.
Using the opportunity, she exerted all her authority and surrounded Helen with ice shards.
'I can't strike back against them all—' Helen realised
Instead she released essence and engulfed herself in an enduring ice structure. But she could not endure for long. Strike after strike after strike would weaken and eventually shatter her construct and when it did— she would be in deeper trouble.
Instead she had a crazier idea. She melted her ice structure and created a vortex of water around herself. The motion of the torrents would absorb the shards and throw them back at Angel, effectively defending and attacking simultaneously whilst using the enemy's attack against them. It was not extremely exhausting to do keep this up, however physically it strained the body.
That said— strain was a common occurrence for her. And now Angel and Helen were stuck in a stalemate with no apparent winning party in sight.
Amanda Rilan v Tolla Quen
Not too long ago, Amy also took off from Markus' side and singled out Tolla Quen by bombarding her with wind attacks from above.
Not long before their fight began, Amy leveraged herself away from Markus' deployed essence zone.
'I better not meddle in that zone… for all I know if he loses against them nine he will charge the entire zone with whirlwinds and blow himself up along with all of them. But Tolla doesn't know that— wouldn't it be nice if she were
suppressed by his essence.' She thought
Amy continued to bombard her opponent relentlessly until she was in Markus' essence zone. Then suddenly, Tolla who was hiding underground, found herself dizzy and confused. Worse yet— the bombardment from above was never ceasing.
'It must be his damned authority over the air. I need to get the hell away from his range then—' she thought
She tried to reinforce herself and flee in the quickest direction away from Markus but Amy had began to conjure whirlwinds and sent her flying out of the ground, finally exposing her.
The young woman had brown skin with onyx eyes and hair. With defence no longer being an absolute option, she had no choice but to go on the offence. Erecting a wall to block oncoming attacks, she got ready to shatter the wall into hundreds of fragments which would shoot toward her target.
Tolla succeeded in her attempt but ultimately failed to do any actual damage to her. Amy was far too nimble and accustomed to evasion in the air.
"Then I too need to play my strength." She mumbled
Using her complete authority over stone, fragments of armour attached to her from the ground. These were fragments of enduring stone— a type of stone which was highly resistant to elemental attacks as well as physical attacks. He main drawback was that the armour was incredibly heavy and burdensome on the user's essence. In exchange for these drawbacks, the user essentially became extremely resistant to traditional means of harm.
And up until Markus finished his fight, Amy was stuck trying to breach Tolla's ridiculously resistant armour whilst Tolla was stuck in place trying to strike and ground Amy. They were both equally unsuccessful and were in a stalemate.
Consequently, Markus would now have to face fin by himself… and with what remained of Triss' group.
Markus created two short swords enhanced with whirlwind and approached Fin who had his foot on Triss' neck.
'Dammit walking into his essence zone is suffocating" Markus remarked as he approached
"Oh look who's here." Fin Topher said
"Get off her." Markus commanded sternly
"Make me." Fin taunted
Markus rushed forward and cut the air in front of him, meeting resistance. Just as he had expected, Fin would use his superior command and quick casting to mess with Markus.
Although he did not see the barrier- he cut through it easily due to the whirlwind enhancement. And since it was already formed, Fin couldn't easily meddle with it.
Fin stepped back as Markus closed the gap. Essence coursed through every fiber of his legs and cardiovascular system, enhancing Markus' speed to truly terrifying speed. The ten metre gap between them was closed in a third of a second and Fin had to move away. Creating a rank 4 whirlwind shell, Fin flicked his hand to deflect Markus' sword slashes and within a moment, he caught Markus' left sword as it came down.
A powerful aftershock shook the battleground.
Markus brought his right sword but Fin merely used the sword he grabbed to block the oncoming one.
"Is this all you can do?" Fin asked
Behind him bullets converged and shot at his back but he created his own and intercepted them.
Then exerting authority beyond Markus' capability, he crushed his blade and shattered it. With the wind energy released from within the blade, Fin subdued it and turned it against Markus.
As if hurting himself with whirlwind earlier to destroy the ice was already not bad enough- now he was hit with a far more chaotic and potent attack of whirlwind. Markus was sent flying with supersonic speed into the round wall, sending cracks throughout the entire colosseum.
"Im growing tired of your incompetence and mediocrity. Let's finish this now." Fin said in a deadpan tone
Calling forth a great spear of swirling whirlwind, with several layered conjugations of whirlwind combined, Fin threw it forward straight for Markus who was pinned into the wall.
The spear penetrated his ribcage and chest, tearing through his body and organs like a loose blade. This was a lethal attack used as an execution method.
Blood poured from Markus' body, mouth, eyes, ears and nose. His consciousness was fading. His life was flashing before his very eyes with every blink.
Then he blinked once more and found himself with two wind blades clinched against each other in Fin's hand.
'What— a vision!? Oh no he's going to—' Markus quickly thought
Fin shattered the blades and turned the whirlwind energy to Markus. However unlike in his vision, Markus sidestepped the release.
Fin was surprised for a moment before continuing his attack and creating a swipe attack toward Markus.
Jumping and fleeing, Markus broke out in a cold sweat.
'I… did I die? Or was it a vision of the future— my head hurts…' he said as he retreated.
"I'm honestly surprised you dodged it. I suppose I should take you on more seriously than the other stage threes." Fin said before shifting something in the air
It was fundamentally different from Markus' command over the essence zone. Markus merely excluded oxygen from the zone whereas Fin…
'What the hell did he do— I feel like I'm being crushed and choked from everywhere!?' Markus remarked as he tried to resist
Fin had increased the air resistance in the zone to such a degree that everything became incredibly difficult to perform. For instance, Markus, despite all his enhancements could barely move his swords at the same speed and dexterity as a preteen who had just been given a heavy sword.
Fin cut through the gap between himself and Markus in fragments of a second and grabbed Markus by the throat, lifting him up. With a broad sweep of his sword, Markus tried to fight back but Fin flicked his finger down and his swords were too heavy to hold and his grip gave up, losing his weapons.
"You're too weak. A learner can fight a learned yes— but the gap between a learned and an expert is too vast when the expert is truly an expert. Amanda is a disgrace to the rank— but I suppose I should be grateful. If you did not defeat her, you wouldn't have been so stupidly overconfident you could overpower me. It is your stupidity undoing you— and for the rest of your life at this academy I'll make sure you know that." Fin said as he applied titanic
force to Markus' neck.
In the spectator area.
"DAMMIT CHARLOTTE HES GOING TO KILL HIM!" Bailey shouted
"Look up." Charlotte said
"Huh?" Bailey said, taking her eyes off Markus and looking up at the very top of the barrier.
On the inside of the barrier, at the very tip, there was a mass of whirlwind converging. But it was… completely still. As if it was perfectly lying in wait for the time.
In truth when Markus was caught in the essence zone he knew how doomed he was. So abandoning any form of futile resistance in the essence zone, he decided on a last offensive gamble. He sent out all his essence beyond the enemy essence zone where Fin could not easily sense it and applied what Fin did to him in the vision.
Now he could only hope this desperate gamble would be enough to critically injure Fin.