He will find out soon enough.

Aura stopped talking after she was done with the important stuff, shifting her attention back to the arena. They were now waiting for Kalix to return after paying for the challenge. And he did soon enough.

He gave a thumbs up before sitting back down with them. Ragnar simply nodded and waited for his turn to descend into the arena again. It didn’t take long. Within not even 5 minutes, his name was called out again, causing the attention of most people in the arena to shift towards the platform he was assigned to. They were eager to see what this dark horse had in store for them. They wouldn’t be disappointed.

Ragnar stood on his side of the platform, matching the gaze of a dark-skinned man who was literally half naked waist up. This was his next opponent. The person who still dared to fight him after seeing his previous performance. That gave him a few points in Ragnar’s books since he at least had some guts, so to speak. But those points weren’t a lot.

As Ragnar was further observing this guy and waiting for the referee to announce the start of this fight, the half-naked man spoke up.

“I saw your last fight, and I’ll admit you are quite strong. Especially for an Arcane. But isn’t using Lord in your name a bit too much, even for you?”

Ragnar smirked devilishly, since he had thought of the perfect response for this question.

“I don’t use it because I’m too strong. I use it because everyone else is too weak.”

The smirk had vanished by the end of that sentence. It was only after saying it that Ragnar realised how cheesy that sounded. He won’t ever be using ‘that’ again, that’s for sure. Even though that was exactly the reason for him using it.

But it seemed to have worked wonders since the naked guy also appeared to lose his ever-present grin. That got him serious for some reason. Well, it wasn’t actually the words that had gotten him worked up, rather it was more the look in Ragnar’s eyes as he said it which forced him to tread with more caution here. Like he was not being viewed as a human.

Their weird interaction was interrupted by the referee as he announced the start of this fight. He seemed to have had enough of this, even though they only shared two sentences.

This time, the action started as soon as the ‘start’ was heard, as Ragnar watched the half-naked man phase into two. Yes, now there were two half naked men before him. And it didn’t stay on that number for more than a second as they again, separated to form 4… and then 8… eventually one half of platform was filled with half-naked men.

Ragnar just watched with his eyes wide open in surprise. So, this is what Aura meant by illusions. That’s quite cool actually. But he wouldn’t really want that ability, it couldn’t compare with his own.

Soon enough, they stopped multiplying and all focused their gazes on Ragnar. It felt weird having so many of the same person looking him in the eyes at once. The stare down lasted a few seconds before, the man finally couldn’t resist speaking up.

“Are you gonna do something or not?”

The sound came from every single body without any differences in their pitch or frequencies. Ragnar was sensitive to these things because of his ability.

“I could say the same to you.”, he replied calmly.

Ragnar actually wanted to end this one quickly as well since this opponent also turned out to not be worth his time, shock. But he was dragging it out in order to find out if his mental resistance will help him locate the real one among them, which it didn’t.

It turns out, ultimately it was his echolocation which could be trusted in every situation. Since it allowed him to locate exactly where the real body was. The rest of the bodies seem to exist but at the same time… not. They were only projections with nothing inside while the real body was clearly solid. At least it seemed that way to him.

Now that he figured all that out, he could finally get to dealing with this guy. Was this all he could do. That shouldn’t be the case if we go by his rank. Since just hiding himself and tiring out the opponent couldn’t possibly get him this high up. So, there was probably something else that Ragnar needed to look out for. Eh.. he will find out eventually… probably.

Ragnar decided to go straight in without any forewarning. He was planning to end it in one strike if possible. He used waves from his back, boosting his body towards the real target. He decided to not use his weapon for this one as he smashed the dark-skinned guy’s face with his fist.

Though the outcome of that didn’t garner Ragnar’s fancy in the slightest. The body had blasted into pieces, however, the pieces instantly turned to sparkling dust, disappearing in the next second. But it wasn’t all bad, at least.

“What the-”, echoed out from every single projection remaining, before he stopped himself to appear calm again. He had no idea how that guy came straight for his real body, but in this case, he needed to change his plans. He really wasn’t expecting this much speed either.

Ragnar was mildly confused by this result. He could now sense that there was another projection among the hollow ones that appeared solid. What exactly happened here?

But before he could deduce any further, the projections sparked into action all at once as they stretched out their hands along with getting into a graceful stance. At the same time, a glistening rapier materialized into the hands of every single projection. That explained the weird stance.

But Ragnar was having none of it. He just raised his hand forming his reliable hand gun, and aimed it at the real projection. Following it up with a boom in the next instant. He had no plans of waiting around to find out what else his opponent had in store for him. Another thing that was hammered into his brain while his training to be an assassin. The longer a battle is stretched out, the more chances there were for a variable to appear. Although Ragnar wasn’t happy with the way these things were taught to him, they were still pretty useful and he wasn’t just going to ignore them to prove a point or something. In his mind, what matters most is the outcome, the means taken to get there are insignificant in comparison.

The projection that had appeared to be solid in his echolocation, dispersed into sparkling dust within an instant. BOOM, the next projection that turned solid was also turned into dust.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Another three fell within that very second. Ragnar was starting to have fun with this.

But his opponent didn’t share his sentiments in the slightest. He hadn’t even gotten to use his Spectral weapon. He tried to take the initiative by moving all the projections forward at once, but what happened next will haunt him for years to come.

A barrage of BOOMs echoes through the Arena as the audience was awed into silence. The spectacle going on stage wasn’t like any other they had witnessed.

Ragnar had decided to turn his hand gun into an automatic one instead, firing a barrage of waves at whichever projection turned solid. Eventually, he got bored of finding out which the real one was and just started decimating every single projection starting from the ones near him. They were also trying to rush at him to try and get in an attack, but it wasn’t working out for them.

Even though Ragnar was clearing them out at breakneck speed, the dark-skinned guy didn’t seem completely hopeless. He was managing to maintain the number of projections on the platform to more than 50 at all times despite the speed at which they were getting destroyed. He had decided to turn this into a battle of attrition. He wasn’t even able to use the most important part of his ability in this battle. He was simply surviving out here.

Ragnar had no plans on stopping anytime soon as the whole arena had been covered with sparkling dust. The audience was having a tough time seeing what was going on. Although the resounding echoes of a gun being fired told them everything they needed to know.

Honestly, they couldn’t be more confused. This was vastly different than what this Arcane had done in the previous battle. And it honestly didn’t seem like he was still putting any effort into this battle at all. He was fighting against the 77^th most powerful Spectral Ranked human for fuck’s sake. While being an Arcane. The least he could do is appear like he’s struggling.

Many people in the seats were veterans in the arena, hence, they had a good idea about the abilities of the dark-skinned man. He was a feared opponent even for those 10 or 20 ranks above him. But his speciality which was close combat paired with his fake projections was completely shut off by this guy with an automatic rifle… that he was firing out of his hands.