As soon as the match began, Sal thrust his hands into the ground. Particles of sand shot up into the air like spurting jets of water as his forearms penetrated the rocky earth below. "Heheh." He snickered as two giant arms erupted from the ground beside him.
The arms were each six meters tall—made of crumbling sandstone held together by some invisible force. Sand fell from between the cracks like miniature waterfalls as Sal gestured for Eyra to approach with one rocky hand.
Eyra's expression didn't waver. She had seen Sal's ability during the entrance examination, so she had been fully prepared for the fight since the moment Edward had read out the fixtures. "Try your hardest," Eyra exhaled, lowering her stance, "…but you will never win against me."
Her ability activated—and the world itself began to rotate. Eyra personally manipulated the local direction of gravitational force around her body. Propelled by sideways gravity, she extended a leg as she flew toward the giant hand on Sal's left.
To onlookers, it appeared as if she were flying in a perfectly diagonal line. But to Eyra, it was as if she were falling down the side of a building—the rocky texture of Sal's giant hand serving as the landing platform. She lifted her elbow to cover her mouth as she finally made impact.
BAM! Eyra's foot hit the stone hand with astonishing force, creating a circular dent that thinned the rocky coating by a substantial amount. For a few ephemeral seconds, Eyra crouched perpendicular on the hand's surface, staying still before dropping to the ground and casting a sidelong glance in Sal's direction.
"Show off…" Sal gritted his teeth, regenerating the injured stone arm. "Just stay right there!" Then the left arm began to sweep across the arena floor toward Eyra, a wave of sand coasting behind it.
Seeing this, Eyra spontaneously adjusted her gravity, floating into the air and arching her back as if falling into the sky as the stone arm slid past the empty spot where she had been. She fell to the ground again, resetting her gravity, and avoided any injury with a well-timed roll.
Ansel watched with his jaw hanging open. The sheer scale of Sal's attacks was terrifying, yet Eyra was masterfully dodging blow after blow. She danced through the air like a marionette on strings, avoiding the blades of a blender.
"Graah!" Sal yelled, a bitter sense of defeat numbing his senses. He clenched his teeth as tightly as possible, an infuriated sound escaping the gap between his lips. "…annoying bitch."
Both stone hands swept across the ground with abnormal speed, attempting to squash Eyra between them like a mere fly. Edward finally started paying attention to the spar, straightening his posture. "Sal! That—"
Then, at the very last moment—the hands smashed together. The onlookers went silent, and Ansel jerked upright, leaning against the empty seat in front of him as he desperately scanned the battleground, now coated in a heavy cloud of dust. "Eyra!" he called out, his pupils frantically shifting back and forth.
Sal panted heavily, lifting his arms out of the ground. The thick blanket of dust was accompanied by the rubble left by the giant stone arms, which had collided during his final attack and shattered on the spot. He was still mentally reeling from the sensory overload as he walked back toward Instructor Hargrove.
"I did it, Instructor… I won." His voice sounded quiet, tinged with exhaustion.
However, Edward wasn't looking at Sal. In fact, he couldn't even hear a word that came out of Sal's mouth. Students directed their gazes upward, their mouths opening with expressions that ranged from indignation to joy.
Color returned to Ansel's cheeks as he spotted a figure hurtling toward the ground—Eyra. At the very last possible moment of Sal's attack, she had adjusted her personal gravity to an immense degree, flinging herself dozens of meters into the air to avoid the impact.
'I gotta slow down… slow down, SLOW DOWN!' Eyra thought, her pink hair fluttering in the breeze as she accelerated toward the ground. As she drew closer, she re-adjusted her gravity and landed perfectly on the soles of her feet—a perfect landing that even surprised Eyra herself.
"Woooh! Eyra, that was insane!" a student called out. "How did you land so perfectly as well?" Then another, and another. Before Eyra could react, the entire crowd was cheering for her—even those who had supported Sal earlier on.
Sal, seeing this, was overcome by a sense of fury that bubbled over his exhaustion. "HEY!" he yelled, pointing a finger at Eyra. "We're not done here!" Taking a few steps back into the main arena from the sidelines, Sal planted his fists into the ground once again. "If you give up right now, I promise I'll make it quick."
"Shut up," Eyra groaned, sticking her tongue out with a playful wink. "I'm not even breaking a sweat! While you're…" she giggled to herself, "…squatting over there, already looking half-dead."
"Stop mocking me, you wench!" Sal shouted with all his might. From the ground erupted a series of giant arms, arranged into two distinct straight lines that extended to the left and right of Eyra. There were forty arms in total—twenty on either side—and they were all similar in stature to the previous pair of stone arms Sal had wielded.
"Kid, that's enough," Edward loomed over his exhausted student. "…you keep going like this, and you might knock yourself out—or even cause permanent brain damage. You've crossed the line with this duel." Edward patted Sal's shoulder. '…and did you seriously call her a wench? In this day and age?'
"I-it's not over!" Sal retorted. "It's not over… until I win! I'm going to beat her! Y-yeah, I'm gonna embarrass her in front of everyone… hehe, who does she even think she is?!" He wiggled his fingers beneath the ground, sending a chain reaction of jazz-hands across the hallway of arms.
The students went quiet once more, and Ansel froze in place. "This… this shouldn't be allowed." Memories of Samson's brutal defeat came flooding back. 'Please… come back alright, Eyra.'
Eyra stood in the middle of the arena, stuck between two arm pillars. In front of and behind her stretched the rows of arms, essentially trapping her. 'Shit… I can't move backward or I'll smash into the rafters…' Turning her gaze forward, she locked eyes with Sal. 'It's a gamble… but it's all I've got. Sal, sorry if I break your nose.'
Sal let out an animalistic exhale as he readied his finishing move. "You're done!" The giant stone arms began to close in from behind Eyra at an intense speed, with opposite pairs slamming into the ground at quarter-second intervals.
BAM!..... BAM! ..... BAM!..... BAM!..... BAM!
The sounds of their impacts echoed across the arena like the rhythmic marching of an army. Ansel's fists clenched as he watched Eyra's movements with hopeful eyes. Then he heard a sound to his left—Sven had decided to sit next to him. "Sven?" Ansel's voice could barely be heard over the slamming hands.
"I know you're worried," Sven crossed one leg over the other, casually pointing at Eyra on the battlefield. "…but I don't think she'll lose. Just by looking at her—"
"You know she's strong."
Eyra bit her lip, closing her eyes as the sounds of her impending defeat drew closer. "Hah!" She laughed—a sharp sound that cut through the din. "…fuck it." An onlooker in the front row fainted from the profanity. Eyra brushed the dust from her shoulders, assuming as low a position as she could as she stared Sal down. "Sorry, Sal. But you lose."
Her feet dug into the ground as the slamming hands closed in.
The third pair behind Eyra slammed down, sending tremors through the ground.
The second pair behind Eyra slammed down. The tremors shook her bones.
The first pair behind Eyra slammed down. Her feet broke off from the ground.
The hallway of hands became a blur of stone as she shot toward Sal with incomprehensible speed. It felt as if she had pushed off the Denneb Layer, speeding across the entire sky—toward the Forever Storm—at terminal velocity.
"What the hell?!" Sal gasped, not having expected Eyra to use such a tactic. The front pair of stone arms—the pair directly closest to him—closed in and interlocked fingers, forming a solid shield.
Edward involuntarily stepped back, shocked by Eyra's speed. "At this rate, she'll—" His back bumped into the arena wall. He had nowhere else to go. 'This training ground might be cursed…'
Eyra noticed the shield formed in front of Sal and adjusted her speed accordingly. Her momentum slowed at a staggering rate, making her muscles feel like jelly under the strain. She halted midair just as she approached the shield.
The third-last pair of hands slammed down. Eyra had to break through the shield—it was her only hope of winning the match. She drew all the breath from her lungs and closed her eyes. The entire world—aside from her—faded into black. She floated alone in an infinite void.
Eyra extended a flattened palm, reaching out to touch an invisible barrier in her personal void. "Lotus Style: Resonant Strike." Her palm struck the invisible barrier, sending white ripples through the space. She felt it in her very soul—her attack had worked.
Eyra's palm came into contact with the stone shield. It wasn't a punch or a slam. It was just a touch. Sal's eyes lit up with joy, his face breaking into an exhausted grin, before he felt a strange rumbling sensation digging up into his arms. The second-last pair hadn't fallen yet.
The stone arms began to violently shake, and then—like burnt cookies crumbling into chocolatey ash—they began to fall apart. Chunks of stone shattered and became dislodged; the arms' structural integrity diminished with a single touch.
"H-how…" Sal shivered as he slowly pulled his arms from the ground. His shield was falling apart, a circular hole formed in the middle where Eyra's palm had made contact. On the other side of that hole stood Eyra, silhouetted in the blazing sunlight.
"I told you." She clenched her fist. "I win." Her hand slammed into Sal's face, sending a thin stream of blood shooting from the boy's nostril. Sal was flung from the ground, his body colliding with Edward's and flattening them both against the arena wall.
Edward clutched his student's shoulders, coughing from the impact. He couldn't even be mad at Eyra. 'She's exceptional…'
"Sorry about that. I should've been more careful when punching his face," Eyra said bluntly, not bothering to disguise the fact that she had intended to pummel Sal toward her instructor.
She walked back into the arena, where the entire class applauded her. Cheers and whistles poured from the students. "That was amazing!" "That move was amazing! How did you break his shield with just a touch?" "Eyra, Eyra! Can you train me, please?"
Ansel didn't speak. Instead, he smiled. The memory of Eyra's cold shoulder still lingered fresh in his mind, but he couldn't help but feel proud in a moment like this.
Eyra stepped into the limelight and scanned the crowd. Her gaze eventually fell on Ansel, and a grin spread across her face. She placed a hand on her hip and playfully stuck out her tongue. "What did you think, Ansel?"