Turns out that the man I am supposed to be dueling today is the very soldier who has been standing guard outside of our room until now. He is known as Eric Starfall (I only learned his name due to the duel. I am sure the scholars must have already known that though. They always have their methods.) And he is supposed to be the strongest mage of the nobles at my level.

  Now to those that do not know of the power system of the draconions (which is the arts practiced by the snowwinders.), I will have to ask you to wait for a bit. The only thing to know is that the other side has more mana. His reserves are at least a third more than my present reserves.

  Every being in the continent has a magic core. This magic core holds the ability to store mana and give your mana a specific attribute. To most people, this attribute is called vital mana, like mine. With magical techniques you can change the nature of your mana core, making it stronger and able to hold more mana. Certain techniques can even change the mana attribute of your mana.

  Thankfully, the Snowwinders are not supposed to have any techniques like that. At least for somebody at the level of Eric. That means the abilities of our vital mana will be similar. Pure vital mana has only two functions, the first is to enhance a cultivator's body if vital mana is cycled inside the body. If the same vital mana is cycled outside the body it can enhance the strength of any materials. (Such as a sword or armor.)

  I guess that I should plan how to fight Eric, but at the moment I have nothing. In a duel, I will not be allowed to use all of my usual tricks. That includes my vine Armor too. Anyways, the vine armor is too untested for me to use it in a battle. Fuck, I wasn't even supposed to bring the damn thing with me here.

  I don't even have my sword with me. That means that I am borrowing a sword from the snowwinders. Well, I don't expect that they will be playing any tricks with the way that they give importance to this duel. The sword is pretty nice if I have to say so. It is made from steel, but it is good solid steel. It will be enough to wound the enemy but not kill him. It will snap like a twig if it is faced with a sword of mithril. Especially if somebody is channeling into it.

  Well, I am not as helpless as I must be making myself sound. A duel (or any close combat between mages) at its core is a battle of where you are putting mana. You could use it to boost the strength of your body. Enhancing yourself with mana feels like your body is becoming lighter. Your senses grow sharper and you can move faster. Your flesh becomes stronger and at the same time harder to pierce by weapons.

  At the same time, you could use it to strengthen your weapons. Then your sword becomes stronger and more durable. At the higher levels, I have heard of men who can change the very nature of their weapons just with their vital mana. I can't tell you how true this is but we can make our weapons stronger and capable of piercing mana strengthened flesh.

  It might sound simple, with only two things to worry about in the fight but this can become more complicated very quickly. If you sword doesn't have more mana supporting it than the other side has managed to support their flesh then you can't pierce them and vice versa.

  It then becomes a fight of the minds. You either have to figure out how much mana the other side is using or confuse the other side about how much mana you are using. A game of two moves as they say.

  That is what I am preparing for. I can never say that I was the best at this game, but I certainly was not the worst. I know of some monsters who are geniuses at this. While I am not as skilled as them, I will be able to defeat Eric, even with the mana benefit that the man has.

  (After about a couple of hours.)

  Today is going to be interesting. I want to try something new today. I want to see how it feels to record in the middle of a fight. Everybody says that it is supposed to be easy, but everybody is wrong. The damn thought logger is annoying sometimes.

  Finally, I am at the location of our duel. It is a circle that has been built in the middle of a pretty massive room in the frozen peak. The circle itself is pretty big, big enough that It will take me a minute to move from one edge to the other. That is surprising, as I had expected a smaller circle. Duels are fought in much smaller circles. It makes for a more bloody fight.

  I am surprised at just how much they must spend to maintain such a place. Such a massive room could fit in a hundred more mages and I would think that this fort would have quite a limited amount of space. After all, a ridiculous amount of mana is being spent each second to keep the entire fort powered up.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Well, it is not my place to worry about these things. I am right now standing inside this circle at the same time as Eric, who is wielding the same sword that I am wielding at this moment. They are taking this seriously it seems like. Well, this is going to be an interesting duel at the very least.

  "Shall we begin the duel, captain? We cannot keep the soldiers waiting now, can we?", Eric speaks looking at me. This is the most words I have heard him speak.

  "Certainly.", I reply in one word entering into a defensive stance.

  The instant that I do so, the enemy is by my side striking me right on the throat. I block the strike barely. Well, the other side seems to be focusing his mana into his body for the moment to be able to achieve such a speed. Gambling a bit, I focus my mana on my sword and enter for a strike. (With my sword I would have killed him this instant.) The enemy might be a bit faster than me, but in such a close range it does not matter. I almost succeed too as the other side ducks at the last second.

  Redirecting my sword downwards, I barely manage to catch the other side's strike at the last second. The force of the strike is enough to force our both swords away from each other. I take this moment to retreat backward. I risk a glance at my surroundings to get my bearings. Focussing exclusively on the man opposite is the quickest way for me to be tricked out of the ring.

  For now, I am still decently far away from the ring. Well, looks like I will be playing this match a bit more defensively. Thinking this, I begin to push the mana in my body. I feel the mana strengthen my body as I begin to feel lighter. I take care not to push too much mana into myself as it would have drained my reserves completely. The goal is to just make myself fast enough to block anything that the other side might throw at me. Any more is a waste.

  As I think this, I have to block two more strikes from the enemy. One to the head, the other to the knee. I blocked both of them, though that was close. The other side is faster than me. Even then he will struggle to strike me.

  He tries another attack, which is a bit more successful. The end of the sword ends up with a nick on my arms. Thankfully the match was not to first blood or I would have lost right here. Still, this duel will end with two more such strikes. (Or if I am knocked out of the circle.)

  Not that things are going particularly well though. While Eric might be spending more mana than me, he still has more mana than me. While I am bleeding less vital mana than him, it is still pretty significant. I am still more skilled than him at controlling mana.

  "You certainly fight well, my friend.", I speak.

  "Meanwhile, you stand there waiting for me to strike.", he replies. "One would think that you were scared."

  "Well, what can one do? You seem to be a mighty soldier that might claim my head.", I reply, with my most taunting voice. "Maybe if you got a bit closer, you could finally end the match."

  He doesn't reply to this, other than stepping away from me. I am sure that the man does not want to risk getting too close to the line. After all, a sudden attack might result in him being out of the duel circle.

  Waiting would be beneficial to him. After all, I have to keep channeling my mana unless I want to give this duel to him and the other side has more mana than me. He can afford to wait.

  I have done nothing but buy myself a few moments. In these few moments, I will have to make a plan on how to win this fight. If the others were here, I am sure that they would have something unique to win this fight. Me, I will stick to the old tricks.

  Well, this is going to be quick at the very least. I can feel my body heat up as I begin to push all of my mana into my body. For the next few moments, my body will be about as light as a feather. The trick is now to make use of these few moments to win this duel. I begin by charging towards my enemy. He reacts about how I expect him to. He begins by pushing more mana into his body.

  I do not give him the time to react though as I strike him. He barely manages to block it but the force of the block is enough to push him backwards and it is enough to leave him out of balance. I strike again and get my first blood. I press in for a second attack but the other side ends up blocking me. The strike is enough to push the man backward.

  In this little while, though I have burnt through roughly a third of my remaining reserves. I won't be maintaining it for much longer. Even as he gets up the man has already increased his mana output, though he is not as wild about it as me. The other side is taking the more careful option of burning only enough mana to ensure that he would be able to survive my assault. That is sad, it would have made things easy for me.

  I continue my assault while having this thought. He barely manages to block each strike. Damn, this man is more skilled at this than I had assumed him to be. Still, he is not as careful as he thinks he is. I jump back, pointing my sword just a bit below the usual. This leaves my throat exposed which is exactly where the other side strikes. I take a sidestep back and strike into man's right arm. That is second blood.

  It is a simple trap, what I have done. A careful man would never have been fooled by such an obvious trap. When I am burning so much mana, people seem to think that I am incapable of making use of basic traps like this. I am not a berserker, you know.

  I keep pushing my attack, feeling the man slowly retreat under my attack. He maintains a solid defense in which I would not be able to get the final strike for victory. I can see in my enemy's eyes his confidence. Well, with my mana so dangerously near exhaustion, I make my final move.

  It is a stupid plan, that would have never worked if the enemy had even a bit of caution. Throwing my sword to the ground I duck down. As the enemy stands there paralyzed by inaction, I charge towards his legs. The force of our collision is enough to cause him to trip right out of the boundary of the duel circle.

  It happened at the correct time too, as my reserves finally got exhausted.