Armad and Kiru faced each other, each with his blade drawn.

A few minutes earlier, Hasanu, who was the head of the team, untied Armad and gave him his sword. Kiru would show him the new Bend he had learned.

Armad's face didn't change at all, as if he wasn't bothered by any of it.

Kiru lunged forward, and as soon as he was within range, he raised his sword so that the tip was just above Armad's left clavicle and he slashed diagonally with his full strength.

Armad swung his blade and blocked it. A loud bang rang as their swords clashed, startling the birds flying over them and the animals lurking around the area.

The energy from their clash blew the wind and hit the great northern wall, which was not far from them.

Kiru looked at Armad's sword with narrowed eyes. His face changed and he looked at Armad with a little less contempt than a minute earlier.

Although he was using just a fraction of his pol in that last strike, the fact that Armad blocked it seamlessly had surprised him.

Not just him, even Hassan had to narrow his eyes a little.

Armad looked Kiru in the eye, causing the young prince to harrumph as if telling him that blocking one strike was nothing. He slashed again. Armad blocked it, but he slashed again, and again. Each time Armad blocking the sword with the same ease.

They exchanged multiple attacks in just a little over a minute.

Whenever their swords clashed, the deafening sound would ring and the dust would rise, but they would continue slashing at each other nonstop.

About sixty seconds later, they stopped attacking each other and pulled back, looking at each other from a distance and gasping for breath.

Hasanu and Nostalgia watched from the side, and for the time being, Armad noticed, there was no sign of them getting involved in the fight.

Kiru was a prince. He had a vast collection of training materials at his disposal and many great professors who all wanted to accept him as their student. In the course of his history, he had never been defeated on the battlefield by his mate.

So, although they were surprised, both Nostalgia and Hasanu expected Kiru to beat Armad with relative ease. They saw the current exchange between the two as a warm-up for the young prince.

Armad, on the other hand, wasn't chosen from any empire or any village for that matter, but as he faced Kiru, he told himself that this was just the beginning of his journey, and he was a Bender as well. This fight was like a god-given chance for him to get out of his current predicament. So, instead of focusing completely on the fight, he focused on how to escape from them.

Armad knew his limits, and from the first time he saw the trio, he knew he couldn't win against all three even at his maximum strength. But one shouldn't be a problem. However...

As he was thought about it, his eyes fell on Hasanu.

Suddenly his hair stood on end and he trembled in fear, the same fear he experienced whenever he faced death. Even without seeing it, the gap between his pol and Hasanu's was obvious. He felt it in his body like a lion's stare.

Hasanu was out of his league.

But just when his heart was telling him, 'Kiru is not a big deal, Hasanu is the one to focus on', Kiru was enraged. He saw how Armad looked at his brother and how frightened he was, and he realized Armad was looking down on him.

What an unspeakable crime! He stood in front of Armad with his blade unsheathed, but Armad didn't think he was a threat. He was so angry that he raised his head and cried at the skies and the worlds above, his eyes red with fury.

He returned the sword in his hand back to its sheath and pulled out another sword from the same sheath.

This new blade had white steel that shone even in the dark, and when the sun shone on it, the steel would flash like lightning.

In a fit of rage, he attacked Armad.

At first, Armad wasn't bothered, but when his eyes fell on the white blade and the glitter in it hit his eyes, he felt a tremor pass through his body. All the muscles in his body tensed up. His heart was suddenly filled with a feeling of danger.

He quickly took a step back and drew his sword.

"Lightning Blade."

He recited the incantation in his mind and released lightning into his blade to counter the young prince.

<Lightning blade activated>

<You have charged the blade in your hands with lightning, enhancing both its speed and cutting ability. Guarding against it with steel is useless>

<cost: 0.75 years>

<Core-collapse: 3.5%>

<Core regeneration: 92% per minute>

But despite this, the feeling of danger coming from the white blade didn't lessen.

A dazzling white light gathered on the edge of the white blade and the feeling of danger in his heart reached a new peak.

As he lunged, the white light shone increasingly brighter until it gave off flashes of lightning, and he struck.

Armad was barely able to reach with his sword and blocked the white blade. A loud bang rang in the air.

The energy in Armad's sword, which was now booming with lightning, struck Kiru's white blade. Small lightning bolts passed through the white blade and into the young prince's body like arrows.

A searing pain passed through the young prince's body and every inch of his body felt like it was burning. His vision blurred. He coughed, which he tried to hold in, but he couldn't. Following the cough, blood came out of his mouth and nose, indicating internal injuries.

But at the same time, Armad was being overpowered by the white blade. Its pol slammed into his body like a war hammer.

Armad was blinded by a bright light, which resembled the light he had seen earlier around the white blade, but this one was much brighter. It looked more like his lightning.

After a while, the light disappeared. But it was replaced by pain. He had no word to describe the intensity of the pain, so he called it 'agonizing' for a lack of a better word.

Every inch of his body ached with the same pain, and it felt like he was exploding from inside. He closed his eyes out of desperation to lessen the pain, forgetting he was in the middle of a fight, but that didn't help.

After what felt like an eternity, his body and soul crumbled to dust like dry sand, flying in the air with great force that steered the dust.

Armad knew the feeling wasn't real, but that didn't make the pain any lesser. And it didn't stop the lightning-like flashes, and the feeling of explosions inside his body, and the crumbling sensation that turned him to dust.

He stumbled, taking unstable steps back like a drunkard, and after about three steps he started falling to his knees.

He managed to force his eyes open at the last second, whereupon he stabbed his sword in the ground, supporting himself with it and stopping himself from kneeling.

He vomited mouthful blood. He seemed to have received the short end of the stick in the last exchange.

After getting to his feet, he looked at Kiru, who had also pulled back and was watching him at a distance, gauging the young prince's strength.

At that moment, Armad realized the whole place was covered in dust and he could barely see his opponent because of it. He couldn't remember when (or how) the dust had gathered. It couldn't have been from that last exchange, could it?

''You have done well to survive my white blade," Kiru said, interrupting his thoughts. "You are one of the few who deserves to know the secret of the white blade. The name of this blade is Lightning-Explosion-Dust - LED."

"What you feel and what you see around you... it's all real." He paused and took a step closer to Armad. "Every slash from my blade carried a white light which is often described by the victims as 'lightning'. And when I cut, it explodes, which in turn explains the word 'explosion'." He took another step toward Armad and then paused to look at the ground around him, at which point the dust began to settle.

As Armad listened to his opponent, his eyes darted to the ground to see the same place Kiru was looking at. The ground there had been carved out to create a sizeable hole and the dust was coming from there.

He then understood what the last word in the sword's name meant - 'dust'.

As he thought about it, he heard Kiru's voice in his head. "By now, you must have understood the meaning of the last word in my sword's name. And how lucky you are to have survived it." He laughed wickedly with the side of his mouth and then added, "but luck is a full moon. It doesn't come twice in a month."

Armad looked behind him and saw the same hole blocking him; he'd nowhere left to run.

But, he might not withstand another attack from the white blade.