Marlon did not have to fight this day, and he was able to keep himself busy in a variety of ways.

First, he observed a fight between a mage and another archer that ended in a landslide victory for the archer. The arena's terrain had been altered almost identically to Marlon's fight with Nirdan, and the archer took advantage of the opportunity to play a game of cat and mouse with the mage, who was only able to spot his target at the end when several arrows had already pierced his body.

He had wanted to surrender, but a final arrow had gone into his eye as the words began to come out of his mouth. Marlon felt a certain satisfaction in watching this summary execution, and he understood in part why the crowd was so excited about the fights.

Then, he had taken advantage of the night falling on the Arena to ask Jacob to train in hand-to-hand combat, revising his classics if he ever came across an opponent he could not eliminate with his runes.

Exhausted, he had gone to bed without even taking the time to undress or even take a bath. He had simply collapsed into his bunk and slept a dreamless sleep, recovering from the fatigue of the night before, caused by his deadly sleepwalking.

It was with renewed energy that he had woken up, Luna snoring heavily at the foot of his bed. Disgusted by the smell of rancid sweat that he gave off, he had hurried to go and wash himself before revising his runes, recalling to his memory all the different combinations that he knew and the different knowledge that Djilany had inculcated in him during a few weeks.

Only after doing all this did he head to the common room to get something to eat and prepare for another day of waiting, or fighting, depending on how lucky he was.

The atmosphere was less tense than the day before, but one could feel that the fighters were beginning to be less expressive than before. About twenty of them had been eliminated now, reducing their numbers by half, and bringing the possible victory ever closer to their greedy hands.

Even Marlon felt this anticipation, this mirage that was getting closer and closer to his reach, even though he knew that the next fights awaiting him would surely be the most intense. He could certainly be lucky because the drawing of lots did not necessarily eliminate the weakest immediately if they were lucky, but from what he had seen, there were not many left.

Once he had finished eating, the morning was like clockwork. The crowd began to get excited outside, he heard the announcer's voice haranguing them and starting to heat them up to electrify the atmosphere and whet their bloodlust.

He was not part of the first draw, which this time pitted two melee fighters with very different skills against each other. There was Deston, the Pyro-Guerrier who had defeated the Barbarian the day before, a very confident smile on his lips, and another one Marlon had not seen fighting.

Torque, Deston's opponent, had a class called Alterator, which he had never heard of, but which proved to be more than effective in battle.

Torque could transform parts of his body and change the material they were made of. Both of his arms became metal and he simply grabbed Deston's hands, which had been turned into fire swords, regardless of the temperature they were generating, and crushed them between his own, causing the Pyro-Warrior to howl in pain.

Not expecting this turn of events at all, Deston surrendered almost immediately, but not without trying to break free of Torque's grip.

The crowd did not cheer as usual, or at least they were not as loud as usual. The fight had ended too quickly, the show had not been up to par. This fight had left a taste of unfinished business to the crowd, and they let it be known by not applauding, by not making the usual clamor that underlined every victory.

Marlon could even see that the man in red didn't look too happy as he addressed the Alterator and he headed for the arena door with a closed face, Deston following not far behind in a stretcher and moaning in pain as the healer followed close behind muttering.

A few minutes passed and the young man heard the announcer's motivational speech echoing through the stadium as the crowd booed their displeasure loudly and fiercely. It wasn't long before he moved on and pulled the next two opponents.

Marlon's heart skipped a beat when he heard his name announced in the Arena, and a toothy grin spread across his face.

Finally, he could fight again...

He still felt worried when he heard that his opponent for this round was going to be Tekal, the famous Geomancer.

"I hope you found an effective tactic, kid because if you don't, you're in for a rough time."

"Thank you for your support..."

A few eyes scrutinized him as he talked to himself and stood in front of the doors, next to Tekal who looked at him condescendingly. At this smugness, Marlon felt a surge of rage and imagined himself torturing his opponent to death.

A gleam in his eyes must have reflected this desire, for the smile disappeared from Tekal's lips and he merely looked ahead as the announcer called the two contestants to the sand of the arena.

Marlon stepped forward to the cheers of the audience, who were more than happy to see this young warrior who had given them such strong sensations during his last two fights. Perhaps he would be able to quench the bloodlust that had not been satisfied by the previous duel, which had ended on a note with an incomplete taste.

He and Tekal faced each other on the hot sand of the arena, the man in red standing between the two fighters and making his pitch to the thousands of people sitting in the stands shouting their anticipation.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, here is a fight that should give us a lot of sensations! Tekal, the Geomancer who predicts his opponent's moves, and Marlon, the multi-talented runist who knows how to trap his opponents as few others can! What do you think?"

The cacophonous wave coming from the stands was enough to answer this question that was more rhetorical than anything else, and it was with a big smile on his face that the presenter moved back to his protected space from where he could follow the fight without endangering his life.

Marlon and Tekal turned to face each other, and Marlon felt the now-familiar sense of excitement wash over him as adrenaline began to enter his bloodstream. His breath shortened, his perception sharpened, and his right hand unconsciously tightened on the hilt of his sword.

Tekal, on the other hand, had a neutral face, content to observe his opponent with calculating eyes.

The runist had decided to test his opponent's limits, to begin with.

Thus, when the signal declaring the opening of the fight sounded, he did two things almost simultaneously, without thinking so much he had repeated this movement in his mind since the day before.

His left hand pulled a scroll from his leather armor and injected mana into it, casting a [Fire Tracker] on the geomancer. This was the spell he knew best, and its area of effect was quite high, making it very difficult to avoid.

Then, without giving time to the flaming ball to explode on his opponent, he dashed at Tekal, raising his blade above his head, taking advantage of the fact that his spell camouflaged him for a quarter of a second before exploding.

It didn't matter if he got burned by the backlash of the Fire Stalker, he had to take a chance. If he could disrupt the geomancer's predictive ability, the fight would be won easily. If he failed...well, he would simply lose, and that was absolutely out of the question.

But things didn't go at all as he had expected.

Tekal smiled slightly at his opponent's actions, but he merely swept the sand lightly with his foot and his eyes clouded over for a microsecond before regaining their clarity.

Then he plunged forward, brushing the flaming ball by a few millimeters without it inflicting any damage, exploding on the ground behind him and vitrifying the sand that was not thrown into the air by the blast of the impact. No small piece of crystallized glass sand grazed the warrior, seeming to dance around the shards as if it were natural.

His jump took him to the height of Marlon, who had already begun to bring down his sword where Tekal should have been, and in a perfectly executed roll, he found himself at the height of the ribs of the Runist, in which he struck with all his strength, releasing an unsuspected power for the size he possessed.

Marlon felt the shockwave propagate through his abdomen and two of his ribs break under the impact of Tekal's strike. His body was thrown two meters away and he rolled on himself for as many meters before getting up again, taking advantage of the force dispensed to stand up.

The intense, piercing pain he felt in his side made him grit his teeth, but he didn't stop despite what he felt.

He took out another scroll, this time engraved with the runes Earth, Breath, and Vision. It was a sequence he had discovered with Djilany and was getting closer to the Fire Stalker.

As he injected a tenth of his mana into the scroll and it burned in a red and brown glowing inferno, spears of sand rose from the ground.

Tekal simply swept his foot across the floor and moved into a guard position, his eyes clouding over again for a brief moment before regaining clarity.

The spears, a good dozen of them, all darted toward their designated targets. The [Earth Spears] spell took chunks of soil and compressed them with the wind to form high-velocity projectiles that tracked their target. There was no area effect like with the Fire Stalker, as the spears did not explode on impact, but their sheer numbers more than made up for this and could turn anything into a hedgehog.

Marlon smiled again despite the pain in his side, certain he would hit his target with this spell. Before the spears hit Tekal, he activated a healing scroll that immediately burned away.

What happened next defied the conception of physics as Marlon knew it.

The sand spears shot out at incredible speed, and when they were about to pierce Tekal's body, he jumped up, placing his body horizontally to the sand of the stadium and spinning around at incredible speed.

There were ten spears, and he struck exactly ten times with movements that were hardly perceptible to the human eye, each time hitting the center of the spears that passed within a few millimeters of him, again.

He shattered every projectile in less than two seconds, and Marlon found himself speechless, a shiver running down his back. The healing had taken effect, and his broken ribs were a memory. He tightened his grip on his sword and moved toward Tekal, who had placed both hands on the ground and seemed to be invoking a spell, muttering words that were inaudible to the young man.

Sensing the danger approaching, Marlon threw himself to the side, avoiding the sand stalagmites that appeared tearing through the ground where he had just been standing. Tekal got up and resumed a guarded posture when he saw that his attack had failed.

Marlon, on the other hand, was beginning to understand his opponent's tactics, although there was not much he could do about it.

To avoid the blows thanks to the skill which veiled its glance, then to retaliate either by countering physically or by invoking the ground spikes as he had just done it or as he had done it the day before to counter the Barbarian.

He went back to the attack while thinking about what else he could do. He had been convinced that his strategy of masking his blow was the right one, but he had been sorely mistaken.

He attacked by projecting himself in front, pricking with the point of his sword his adversary, but this last seeing him approaching, rubbed his foot on the ground by having the eyes veiling once again, then he avoided absolutely all the attacks that Marlon tried with more and more tiredness to carry to him.

They had been fighting for a good five minutes now, and Marlon decided not to use any more spells so as not to waste his mana. After all, if Tekal could avoid his attacks, there was no point in throwing them around and relying on luck.

But as he attacked physically and dodged the counters Tekal used on him over and over again, Marlon felt intense physical fatigue beginning to take hold of him. He was putting everything he had into each attack, hoping that it would be the right one, and these efforts were beginning to take their toll on the runist's body. If it weren't for the hard training he had been doing every day, if it weren't for the repeated battles with Jacob, he would already be exhausted, but now he was just panting.

Sweat mixed with sand ran down his face and back, his muscles tensed to the point of a grunt of pain as he threw himself to the ground yet again to avoid Tekal's blow.

The latter countered intelligently, using very little of his magic and relying on his physicality to fight Marlon, preserving his stalagmite spell to finish off his target when it was at a very vulnerable and dead point, which would be soon.

The runist stepped back to catch his breath, ignoring the pain of his burning lungs, irritated by the grains of sand he had been breathing in for several minutes now.

"Loki, did you find anything?"

"Maybe, but I still need you to attack it. Don't stop!"

He didn't think twice and threw himself again, but this time he couldn't completely dodge the sand spikes coming out of the ground, one of them sinking into his left shoulder and causing him to cry out in pain as blood gushed out and spilled onto the ground behind him.

He stepped back again, beginning to feel cornered, but on the other hand deeply satisfied to face an opponent of this caliber. The sadistic smile he had been wearing since the beginning of the fight had not weakened one iota, and Tekal wore a stern face, wary of this opponent who did not seem to want to give up.

But his divination magic was powerful, he would not lose.

Exhaustion was also beginning to make itself felt in him too because dodging Marlon's numerous attacks had required energy, his opponent carrying fast and powerful blows that should not touch him in any case.

"I figured out how his skill works. Got a little idea of your own, kid?"

"He sweeps the sand with his foot, which must give him some kind of foreknowledge of what's going to happen next..."

"Exactly! All you have to do is counter that. Either by removing the support or by using an attack so massive that it will prevent him from dodging."

Marlon had no time to wonder, nor to try to understand what magic made Tekal guess each attack. But he had complete confidence in Loki's analysis and an idea sprang to mind.

He withdrew the spike of sand compressed in his shoulder with a shout and threw it towards Tekal, who bent down to avoid it, surprised that his opponent would stoop to this. But it was just a way to gain a little time, however short it was.

Marlon then activated his [Speedy Hand] ability and pulled a blank scroll from one of his pockets. Taking advantage of Tekal's dodge, he then did what he had never attempted before: a Triple Reinforced Rune.

Djilany had taught him the binding runes, and one of them was very special. It could only bind identical runes, but it greatly strengthened the effect of the spell by also exponentially increasing its mana cost.

What Marlon needed was the wind. A lot of wind, enough to clear the sand from Tekal's place and prevent him from using his divination power. Hopefully it would work, of course, because this was all guesswork.

So in less than a second, using his ability and his blood, he drew three Breath runes linked by reinforcing runes, and he projected the most powerful intent he was capable of.

Two things happened then.

The first was Marlon's scroll, which burned up immediately, and his mana bar, which emptied, causing an instant headache for the runist and blurring of vision and nausea that nearly caused him to give up his stomach contents in the Arena. He fell to his knees holding his head in his hands, a cry of pain escaping his lips as he felt as if his brain was being stabbed.

The second was Tekal who reproduced his divination ritual, with a lively gesture and a slightly worried look, to guess Marlon's move, rubbing his foot on the sand and his eyes clouding for a short time.

But that was enough time for the spell to appear.

A thirty-meter high tornado appeared, several meters wide, right where the geomancer was standing. Gusts of wind buffeted Marlon as he stood at the edge of the destructive vortex. The sand was sucked upwards, turning the wind vortex into a deadly scraper.

Tekal, returning from his brief divination absence, had a look of horror painted on his face as his spell just showed him what was about to happen and pieces of his skin began to disappear under the abrasive effect of the tornado.

And apparently, there was nothing he could do about it this time.

The tornado closed in on him completely as he tried to dive out of the way, too late, and a howl of pain struggled to get past the imperious tumult the wind was producing in the stadium. Marlon backed away from his spell, crawling on the ground from the pain in his skull and the insurmountable dizziness caused by the mana abuse.

He ended up rolling into a ball on the ground, breathing hard as the tornado carried much more sand than he expected and seemed to suck the very air out of the stadium.

From where he was, he could even see the presenter holding his red tunic so that it wouldn't flutter in the wind, revealing his skinny body.

Marlon fought to keep himself from losing consciousness, and crossed his fingers that his trick would work.

A cracking sound echoed through the arena, and Marlon saw the green mages shoot red lightning bolts at the wind and sand vortex he had created, annihilating it in mere seconds.

These mages didn't look like much, but they were powerful. First, the flames of a blaze extinguished in a snap, and then this.

When the tornado had finished disappearing, all that was left in its center was Tekal's body. Marlon's opponent was dead, his skin completely gone, sanded away by the abrasion caused by the sand-filled tornado, and some places were just bones with a few bits of eroded flesh hanging on.

The sand had cascaded down around the body when the mages had defused it, and Tekal's blood had soaked the tornado, forming dark, geometric patterns around the corpse, an effect that Marlon, despite the headache ravaging his brain, found most poetic.

He felt a deep and intense satisfaction when he saw the corpse curled up on itself, happy to have beaten this man who had given him a hard time.

"Hell of a tornado you created, kid. Your mana was drained to the last drop, and if you hadn't been thrifty, I think you'd be dead, but well done!"

Marlon stood up heavily, his head still caught in a vice, and the smile he had been wearing since the beginning of the fight had grown even more urgent.

His ears were still slightly plugged from the noise of the tornado, but he could hear the cheers of the audience after his victory, and the announcer seemed to be smiling, happy to have had a worthy and spectacular fight.

He could feel the sand that had seeped into every part of his body, and all he could think about was washing himself. And to think about the fight he had just accomplished. He would enjoy replaying this scene over and over in his head, seeing again the almost artistic scene that his fate had left behind.

A tasty victory, if ever there was one.