Scarlet

The very first thing I do in this battle after finding the Conductor is switch to my human ears. Because me fighting a sound based magic using Guardian while using my blood lycan ears is a very bad idea.

And the second thing I do is rush at her as fast as I possibly can to make sure she doesn’t have time to launch a mental attack on me with her Guided Song magic. A very annoying magic that combines mind control and a much more brute force attack magic.

But it can only work if she’s given time to conduct the song, and only at further distances.

The moment the girl sees me, she immediately begins conducting, an intense and yet eerie sounding harmony echoing around her as I rush in. A harmony that would likely be too loud for my blood lycan hearing. But my speed seems to surprise her, especially when I proceed to burn even more blood while also using blood boil and life drain on her to distract her, speeding up and making her mess up in her conducting. So she seems to just give up on the mind control entirely, instead changing her rhythm and the song itself to be purely intense, like a song that someone would hear in a battlefield scene of a movie.

Here it comes.

Right when the song hits its peak, visible soundwaves of varying colors suddenly materialize in beat with the song, flying straight towards me. And I immediately begin to counter them with blades of blood, only for the soundwaves to overpower my blood weapons.

I grimace at that before burning even more of my blood to cross the rest of the distance to her even faster, making the soundwaves miss me in the process. The Conductor’s eyes then widen in surprise and fear at that, and she immediately backs up. But it’s too late as I make various daggers of blood between my fingers before throwing them in the middle of my lunge, making the daggers cut into her suit a little, drawing blood. Which is all I need to use blood siphon from here – a strategy I’ve worked on since the team tournament.

The girl winces as I yank out a much larger amount of their blood than their wound would normally lose before drawing it towards my claws to empower them. All while I continue to press forward myself.

Throughout all of this though, the girl continues her song, waving her baton around through sheer willpower and making the music hit another crescendo as even more soundwaves begin chasing after me from all sides. And this time, a red mass of soundwaves slam into my side, making me cough out a mouthful of blood while sending me flying a few meters. But it’s not enough to keep me down as I quickly push through the pain of what I’m pretty sure is a couple broken ribs thanks to pain diffusion to climb back to my feet and then launch myself straight at the girl again.

She openly gapes at me, almost pausing in her song due to her surprise at my blatant ignoring of my own injury. But I ignore her surprise as I take a more dangerous route this time of using blood diffusion, making a glowing red barrier appear above my body all over. And the barrier immediately flashes when another soundwave strikes me in my approach, sending a wave of pain in the form of a pins and needles feeling all over my body from the rapid and sudden blood loss.

I ignore this too though, as my blood diffusion skill diffused the impact itself, letting me continue pushing forward until I finally make contact with my shifted arm, tearing a large gash from her shoulder down to her waist, not having the time in this battle to care about any modesty at all. And to follow it up, I spin around while dodging another soundwave before kicking out at her leg and knocking her feet out from under her. Then I duck down under another soundwave and swipe my claws straight downwards, cutting open her windpipe entirely.

Just seconds later, the fog on the borders of the arena vanishes to reveal the audience of the stadium going wild, along with various screens above us, some of which are showing replays of the match. So I do the first thing that comes to mind.

I raise my shifted hand up into the air, my claws spread outwards in an intimidating display before I clench my fist, causing the crowd to go even wilder in their roaring applause and cheers.

“And there we have it! The young pup managed to win in an incredible display of both intelligence and brawn!” Black shouts, his voice echoing over the loud audience as the Conductor’s corpse vanishes and she most likely reappears somewhere in a private booth or a waiting room. Wherever the losers go. “She first started out by locating the Conductor through her amazing senses before switching her ears and immediately trying to get close once she reached her! Then she began distracting her from her harmony with her various skills and finished things off by tanking a blow with her damage diffusion skill to get in close! Absolutely outstanding, and just what you’d expect of our young pup!”

I can’t help but frown up at the commentator’s booth at his constant use of the term ‘young pup’ when referring to me.

It’s annoying.

“I wonder if his choice of phrase to call you has anything to do with him knowing what you are?” Tar mutters, and I can’t help but wordlessly nod my head at that right before I find myself being teleported back to my private booth. The Knight then immediately moves onto commentating on the next battle that starts up afterwards.

My frown grows as I narrow my eyes at the stadium for a few seconds before shrugging and exiting the magical reality for now. Because I need to eat. And the first day is only for the first round of the tournament. A round I just finished my part of.

I can come back later to check out the rest of the competition. But I’m not gonna sit there through over a hundred matches back to back. That’d just grow boring fast.

And my stomach is starting to growl.