"" On the mark of 3 both the contestant get ready "" the refree said in a stone cold voice
As he said that talia looked towards rudra as stated there silently looking around the arena as lot's of people were booking him, as she saw that he isn't responding she got into her battle stance but rudra just stood there not saying anything and closed his eyes and taking deep breath he finally opened his eyes and stood quietly observing talia to this she found funny and told him
"" Why are you starring at me like that ? ""
"" No just got some dust in my eyes. "" Rudra replied too quickly.
"" Are you hiding something from us ? "" Talia asked suspiciously
"" N..no "" rudra replied
"" Rudra yo- ""
"" We shall now start the match now "" the refree urged for both of them to get ready.
"" We will talk about this after the match so don't try run away "" talia said angrily.
""
1
2
3
""
The whistle had barely finished its shrill cry before Talia's hands slammed together.
The ground responded to her .
the stone erupted and three boulders the size of a house tearing free from the earth and furiously went toward toward Rudra with a speed that made the crowd flinch back in their seats. Dust spread all over the arena and blocked vision of all the people. The arena shook as people in the front rows shielded their faces from the debris.
Finally Rudra moved.
He ducked the first boulder by dropping his shoulder and letting it pass so close above his head that it shaved the top of his hair, the rush of displaced air loud as a slap. The second he sidestepped his coat snapping behind him. The third caught him.
Not fully only the edge of it but the speed of it clipped his left shoulder and sent him spinning sideways. He hit the ground rolling, absorbing the momentum across his back and coming up in a crouch with his sword drawn at last, the blade catching the pale arena light.
The crowd roared.
Talia didn't give them time to enjoy it.
She had already pulled her hands apart, fingers spread, and the ground in front of her answered with a grinding crack as a long ridge of rock shot forward as a wave of jagged stone teeth rising from the floor, racing toward Rudra like the spine of something buried. He read it a half second before it reached him and threw himself sideways, but the ridge caught the flat of his boot and the force launched him upward. He twisted in the air with an almost animal grace and landed a little too hard on one knee.
The crack of impact was audible.
He didn't make a sound.
But his jaw tightened and his hand went briefly white around the hilt.
Talia watched him stand. She watched the way he shifted his weight fractionally to the right, keeping pressure off the left knee. She could already tell by the way he held his sword, the angle of his shoulders, the rhythm of his breathing. She was thorough and that was what made her dangerous beyond her mana
"You're already limping," she said trying to taunt him .
Rudra didn't respond. He rolled his neck once, slow, and looked at her from across the gap of shattered stone that now separated them. His eyes had changed. Whatever quiet, closed-off blankness had been on his face during the staredown before the match was gone. He looked focused. Precisely, quietly focused, the way a blade is focused: a single edge, a single purpose.
He came at her.
He came without mana. He was just a body moving across broken ground, and something about the nakedness of it made several people in the crowd go quiet.
He was fast. Not as fast other academy student , but still very fast. He closed the gap between them in a burst and swung a diagonal cut aimed at her face, clean and hard. Talia stepped back and threw up a stone slab from the floor between them. The sword hit it and the slab cracked clean through.
He had swung that sword with his entire body.
Every ounce of weight, every inch of leverage, everything transferred from his feet through his hips through his shoulders through his arms all of it at once.
She pulled the broken slab pieces back into the ground and remade them into something new a wall, broad and thick, three meters high, erupting between them. She heard him hit it his fist, not the sword — testing its thickness.
She was already moving, circling, pulling the earth up around his feet to grab at his ankles.
He felt it and jumped but the stone hands couldn't catch him
She brought them higher.
This time they caught him mid-air wrapped around his right ankle and yanked, and the sudden reversal of his trajectory was violent. He came down headfirst and only barely got his arm up in time to break the fall, the impact rolling up through his forearm with a sickening force. He came up with a cut across his temple from a loose chip of stone — a thin red line that began bleeding immediately, running down the side of his face in a slow dark thread.
The crowd noise was enormous now. Half booing at rudra , the other half were cheering for talia.
Talia pulled more of the floor to her, already building, already preparing the next wave.
Rudra wiped the blood from his temple with the back of his hand and looked at it. Then he looked at her.
He smiled and said
"My turn "