Kalon Bloodborn's POV
The atmosphere within the octagon had shifted. The lightheartedness I had felt in the previous skirmish evaporated, replaced by a dense tension that made the hair on my arms stand up. I stood in the center of the granite floor, the weight of Bane gone.
Across from me, Ariadne looked more than prepared. I had to wave off the feeling of her looking as me as prey.
The heat in the court dropped by the second as her frost aura began to fill the air.
I didn't reach for a weapon from the Vulcan cabinet. My hands remained open, fingers twitching in preparation. I had no elixir or pull to rely on. My mana pool would have to serve its best.
I began to circulate my blood mana, which ran frantically in my vessels, forcing my heart to act as a bellows that fanned it through my body.
"Don't hold back, Kalon," Ariadne warned, her voice.
"I won't." I responded.
The duel didn't begin with a roar of ice spikes. Ariadne rushed in with enhanced speed. Her first strike was a barrage of pressurized water needles, launched with enough force, I sensed could pierce my coat of mana.
I didn't move my feet. Instead, I reached out with my mind, extending my mana into barely visible tendrils in the air around me. This was the technique I had theorized. Interference.
To most Celestials, magic was about summoning and shaping. To me, it was about the variable. I touched the ambient mana she was trying to mold, injecting my own discordant mana form into her flow.
The water needles didn't hit me; they simply dissolved back into mist a few inches from my chest. This interference resulting in magic jamming that appeared to the opponent as a mental denial of the element. By touching the ambient mana she was utilizing, I was essentially cutting off her spell before it could achieve the caster's preferred physical state.
Taking advantage of the moment, I casted thirty blood spikes. Blood gathering around me and hardening as steel. They trusted forward fiercely towards Ariadne.
Ariadne's eyes widened in confusion, but she didn't slow down. She swung her axe in a wide, circular arc, parrying the flurry blood spikes I had conjured with a single thought. The clatter of ice against hardened blood filled the court with a cacophony of sharp, metallic cracks.
'I'll need to do more to bring her down.' I thought.
For the first time in an actual combat scenario, I unleashed my manifestation. A technique I had acquired from the hall of knowledge and had trained in secret. It required vast knowledge of how the body worked but it was worth it.
Blood gathered behind me, it cells expanded and divided at a speed beyond my thoughts, sucking ambient mana as fuel. Blood became flesh and flesh molded into beast of my imagination.
This was a blood puppet. Mana beyond mere physical form. This beast stitched together from my own mana and nightmare wasn't a simple as the giants golem that was merely control. Though insignificant I can sense a will other than mine. It was a body's already working, I simply led it.
The beast had eyes. Large pupils that glowed that made the world appeared in shades of red. As the blood puppet stood tall, its vision flooded my mind and I watched her through a dual perspective. I was no longer seeing Ariadne from just my own position; I was seeing her from the side, from above, and from the perspective of my own. It was an extra vision, just one ability this blood puppet could give and I had practiced in the quiet of my room. The tactical advantage thrilling me.
I could see it in Ariadne's eyes. The look of shock mixed with disdain at the sight of my manifestation.
"What is that thing?" Jared shouted from the sidelines, but I didn't answer.
The blood puppet lunged, its colossal arm arcing toward Ariadne like a falling tree. Its movements were sluggish compared to her, but its weight was immense. I let its muscles tensed releasing a mighty roar that shook the court and made disoriented Ariadne's movements .
Ariadne slid beneath the beast's swing, her axes glowing with a blinding blue light. She was trying to close the distance, to get me, the heart of this storm. She knew that the beast albeit profound, was still a construct. If she took me down, this nightmare would crumble.
I triggered the second phase of my trap. The blood spikes I had launched earlier pooled around her feet. I changed their phase with a flick of my hand, turning the liquid pool into a thickened, adhesive form that snagged her boots.
"Held in place," I whispered.
The blood pool began to extend, segments of it snaking up her limbs and hardening into hardened shackles. I could see the panic in her eyes through my second vision. She was a Noden. She was meant to be the one giving the assault, not the one caught in it.
"Ice mana... pulse!" Ariadne roared, her voice strained.
A massive burst of frost erupted from her. The heat of the court collapsed immediately. The ambient mana converged into a pillar of pressurized water that slammed down directly onto my position.
I didn't defend. I didn't attempt to move. Through my dual vision, I saw the flaw in her strike. The gap where her mana was thinnest.
The water landed with a bone-shaking collision, sending vibrations across the granite, forming a crater and even rattling the Vulcan cabinet in the distance. A heavy mist obscured the center of the octagon.
"Kalon!" Nora cried out, her voice filled with a sudden, sharp fear.
The mist began to settle. Ariadne stood panting, her axes lowered, her eyes searching the mist for my injured form.
I was still standing. I was completely unharmed, not a single drop of water on me. I had intervened with the formation of her pillar by blocking the flow of mana at the exact moment of impact.
Ariadne's cheek was twitching. She realized now that she couldn't win from a distance. I had jammed her magic, countered her elements, and watched her from angles she couldn't protect.
She gripped her axes tighter, the blue light in the carvings shimmering.
"Fine," she hissed. "If I can't break your magic, I'll just have to break you."
She began to run in a full charge.
I watched her approach through the blood puppet's eyes. I saw the way her mana was splintering from her axes, freezing the very air she breathed.
I let go of my magic, the blood puppet becoming undone. I wasn't ready to die here.
The air between us became chilling, just as her axe was inches from my throat.