'Fighting a Rank 1. This is a very important opportunity to know how strong the people of this world are.'

  "Shut it. This will be my fight and mine alone, and tell the others the same. I don't care about any of their opinions. If someone talks with me while fighting, things won't be happy for any of us," Roy said under his breath to the black ghost while they waited for the energy barrier to be fixed.

  Omar put a hand on Roy's shoulder, and before he could talk, a voice came from above.

  "Your teaching methods are really weird, you know that?" The voice got carried by the wind to reach everyone at its max volume.

  Everyone looked up except for Darius, who looked at the ground and sighed. "What are you doing here, Anton?"

  "Anton?" Vivienne said with disbelief.

  "Yes, it's me," he said while he slowly got closer to the ground.

  "You haven't answered my question, Anton," Darius said, forcing his voice to be quiet.

  "Na Darius, immer locker bleiben! Wie l?uft's denn so bei dir?" Anton threw a glass with white liquid in it.

  "English, you fuck." He easily caught it.

  Anton landed on the platform, standing in front of Darius. Their height difference was comical. "I am just here to watch the last fight from first row seats," Anton looked at Darius from below with eyes that were trying to be annoying, "the fight between you and the student you personally chose."

  "And who said I would allow it?"

  "That bottle has the new healing drink. Your healing girl is exhausted, and I know you won't like to fight your last fight with an injury, am I right?"

  Darius's grip hardened on the bottle. "You are a bitch."

  "I will take that as a yes." Anton moved with the air to the seat beside Valeria.

  Darius drank the bottle and then threw it on the ground. His injuries got completely healed.

  "Oh right, I forgot. I fixed the barrier before I came. You can start your fight early," Anton said with an annoying tone, just to annoy Darius.

  Darius teleported out, got a new shirt, and was back to the platform. "You heard him. Come here, Roy. Let's get this finished with."

  Roy stood up and began walking to the platform.

  "Who would you root for?"

  "You talking to me?" Valeria said, confused.

  "Ja, who else would I be talking to? So now, would you be with your teacher or your future boyfriend?"

  "Boyfriend? What are you talking about?" Valeria physically leaned away from Anton.

  "They say I am good at predicting the future."

  "Then why don't you predict the fight?"

  "It is simple. A fight between two unpredictable humans can't be predictable."

  Valeria looked at him, confused.

  "You better watch the fight or you won't understand anything."

  Valeria put her focus back on Roy's and Darius's fight. To her luck, it had't started yet.

  The barrier was already up.

  "You won't get a weapon?" Darius asked.

  Roy was stretching. "I don't like using them."

  "I have a bad feeling about this." Omar's legs kept shaking.

  "I too don't feel too good," Marie added. 'Roy, what will you do this time?'

  Roy cracked his neck. "You know something, Teach?"

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  "What?"

  "Even though I try not to fight, I really, really..." As Roy continued saying "really," his shadow kept getting bigger and bigger until it went up the barrier behind him, cutting the view for the watchers. "...really love it."

  "Can't say the same." Darius's eyes glowed.

  "What is happening?" Omar began biting on his fingernails.

  "I knew he was holding back against me, but I didn't think it was to that degree," Valeria said.

  The shadow slowly disappeared. Clones of Roy came from it as it was disappearing. When Roy's shadow returned to his normal length, hundreds of clones were surrounding him.

  Darius looked at the huge number of clones and smiled. "If that is your strategy, then you already lost."

  The clones threw themselves toward Darius.

  Darius shot arrows at the incoming clones, destroying them, but one got through.

  The moment the clone landed beside Darius, it opened its hand and shot Darius with fire.

  Darius teleported up.

  The clones looked up to see a rain of lightning arrows coming at them.

  Some dodged while others ran on the barrier up toward Darius.

  "Is that all you got?" Darius said as he shot lightning out of his body, destroying the two clones that were close to him.

  Roy's smirk went from ear to ear. "You haven't seen anything yet."

  Two clones, one on the right and the other on the left, continued running after passing Darius's level, while the remaining clones used themselves as weapons to make sure Darius wouldn't stop them.

  The two clones reached the end of the barrier.

  They opened their hands, aiming at the ground.

  "Let the dark absorb you."

  From one of the clones, dark fire came out. From the other, pure darkness.

  The whole arena became a mix between dark flame and shadow, but one thing was certain: that place had no kind of light in it.

  Anton whistled.

  'Did he even try in our fight? Or even training?' Valeria began doubting herself.

  "Is that the end of the fight?" Jax asked, not finding any logical way for Darius to survive with no serious injuries.

  "I knew it. There is no good that can come from this." Omar was inches away from slapping his own face.

  While everyone was distracted by their own thoughts, a light appeared in the arena of darkness.

  A purple lightning that traveled all the way to the top and destroyed the two clones of Roy.

  The mix of darkness began to disappear, revealing Darius in the middle of the arena, floating in the air, his shirt completely burned down. "Let that be a lesson for all of you: always wear a shield."

  A clapping sound echoed in the place. Everyone looked at where it came from.

  Roy was on the ground, smiling while clapping. "You really are something else." Roy's eyes became a darker shade of brown than their normal one.

  "Done playing?" Darius asked.

  "That was playing?" Ren's face became sweaty. "What is serious?"

  "Yes, let's do it for real." Clones came out of Roy, but they didn't attack. They stayed on the end of the platform, and some stood on the energy barrier.

  Roy jumped directly at Darius, attacking him with a punch.

  Darius teleported to the side, trying to return the attack, but was attacked by a fireball from one of the clones, so he blocked it and destroyed the clone with lightning, which gave Roy enough time to attack again.

  They followed that rhythm for a while: Darius fighting Roy while dodging his clones' attacks and destroying them, all while still holding his bow.

  But even though he needed to put a lot of things in his mind to not get hit with one of Roy's clones' attacks, Darius was still holding his ground in the close fight.

  Darius teleported away from Roy's attack, but this time he didn't need to block any clone's attack. They all got destroyed.

  He kicked Roy to the ground.

  Before Roy could get up, Darius started teleporting and shooting arrows at him from all different angles.

  Dark fire came out of Roy's back, creating a sphere of fire around him, burning the arrows.

  But Roy knew that it wasn't really a solution.

  The fire sphere fell on the ground, creating a fire circle on the ground, with Roy in the middle of it, eyes closed.

  "Will he dodge them like the first evolution?" Elise wondered, and the answer came fast.

  No, it wasn't the same.

  Four arms made of shadows appeared from Roy's back, burning with his dark flames.

  He used the extra arms to burn the arrows and redirect them by making a smooth air current that carried them.

  "What the fuck." Elise swearing wasn't something you heard a lot.

  The arrows kept coming, and Roy kept burning and deflecting.

  After a minute, the arrows stopped.

  Roy didn't waste any time. The four arms turned into two full clones, then he flew by shooting fire from his legs to the end of the hundred-meter-long barrier.

  Darius was floating somewhere in the middle, but he didn't need to know where he was.

  The moment he reached the end, he turned around. Roy and his two clones started shooting fire, making everything inside the barrier into a piece of hell.

  But before the fire from the ground could reach the end of the barrier, Darius teleported to Roy and punched him to the ground again, and shot an arrow right behind him.

  The moment Roy touched the ground, he shot fire from one hand and threw himself out of the arrow's way.

  'This is going to a dangerous place,' a thought ran through Roy's mind before he lit his two arms with fire and jumped back at Darius to continue fighting.