Six days later, when Zalanir was on the way to the training area, one of the bookmakers approached and told him to be ready for another fighter battle later in the day. A piece of news that Zalanir welcomed with open arms, because the last two fights with a wolf monster and a salamander had been lackluster. Well, the salamander did give him an interesting battle of range magic, but Energy Barrier tilted the fight too much in his favor.

  Ever since the fight with Lithma, he had been kinda looking forward to his next 1-on-1 fight. The monster battles had become really dull now.

  Talking about the Mohawk, he had become rather confident in his fighting capabilities now after the sparring yesterday. Thanks to the man’s ridiculous reach with his spear, Zalanir had adapted and refined his approach to avoid being skewered alive. As a result, his movement and precision thus had seen major improvements.

  He did want to have more training with Lithma, but the man was just really reluctant and only agreed to about one training per week. Except for the time talking about Shinnya, where he was easy-going and cheerful, Zalanir had only managed to squeeze out of the Mohawk the list of strong fighters on the first day.

  It might be him being overthinking, since they had only known each other for a couple of days at best, but there was definitely something that prevented Lithma from being opened up more. Perhaps with time, things would change.

  Zalanir got to the area brimming with confidence. Lithma was one of the better fighters in the area for sure, which meant that he was also there. Even with all the disadvantages and gaps in knowledge, seemed like he was still doing great.

  That was why when the announcer gave the signal to start the fight, Zalanir went right in with a two-pronged attack, firing an air bolt up in the sky with his left hand while also letting loose an earth variant from his other hand. With Energy Barrier, he could make a pseudo-shield any time he wanted, so the shield had become redundant. Perhaps a better or specialized shield would do, but as of now, the skill just outshone the need for a shield in every aspect.

  Especially now that he had learned to gather two distinct affinities at the same time, thanks to the training with Lithma, he had even more reason to stop taking it to free his left hand.

  The process wasn’t as smooth and synchronized yet, but what was better than doing it in the heat of a battle? He had seen many of his students hit down the line in practice but couldn’t recreate that same shot in an official match. It took time to get used to and adjust accordingly to the extra stiffness and extra mental pressure one faced in the real situation. He wasn’t so delusional as to think he could pull it off right away. That was a trait that belonged only to some of the best in the business. So, for him, he would be better off starting as soon as he could.

  The opening of the battle provided him with such an opportunity. While waiting for the announcer to finish the usual hyped presentation, Zalanir had already made the preparations for the opening attack.

  His opponent this time wasn’t one of Shinnya’s simps, as he couldn’t sense any hostility. The man standing there couldn’t look more … normal to Zalanir. No special equipment, no weapons, just all common gear taken from the barracks. Clean-shaved. Short back-combed hair. An occasional yawn and the puffy circles beneath his eyes even radiated a didn’t-want-to-be-here attitude.

  Reacting to Zalanir’s opening salvo, his opponent took a step back and tilted to the right. A series of minimal movements, but somehow enough to avoid any contact with the bolts. Zalanir fired three other air bolts, but the result remained the same.

  An agility-based mastery? Let’s see how you dodge this.

  Zalanir ran forward to reduce the distance. Despite being a mage, with Energy Barrier at his disposal, he wasn’t afraid to go in either. Sometimes to finish a point, he needed to approach the net if the opponent was too good and stable in defense. Heated baseline rallies were all good, but they could get bored quickly if that was all to a match. Rushing the net in that situation could throw the opponent off their balance. Taking time away from the opponent was one of the fundamentals in tennis, and a major pillar of his attacking game, after all.

  Zalanir rushed in with confidence, but his bolts still kept missing. Or rather, his opponent was just too good to dodge. It was as if he saw through all of his intentions.

  Frustration piled up. Not only hadn’t he landed any of his attacks, the carefree man also didn’t do anything either. He was just dodging all day. Sometimes with a twitch to the side, other times with a jump over the incoming bolts, but mostly just a step here and there in all kinds of directions, and those were enough for the man to avoid all the projectiles.

  This was his first time experiencing a fight as weird and irritating as this. Pre-emptively conjuring a shield, Zalanir continued to press on to reduce the distance further. He was reluctant at first, but then still stepped into the dangerous zone where the distance between him and the opponent was about two arm spans.

  Such was a move that Zalanir wished he hadn’t made, because right at that moment, the man’s demeanor evolved into that of a ferocious beast.

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  The carefree man burst in and closed the gap in no time while pulling out two knives that he tucked somewhere on his back. One bolt finally hit the man in the chest, but Zalanir had no time to celebrate, as he was under rapid assault. His shield held for five slashes before being destroyed and released a wave of energy, which Zalanir had hoped would be enough to buy him time, but the attacks just kept coming. Two cuts on his right thigh made him lose his foothold. Zalanir responded by erecting a barrier covering his front, but only to be marveled at the man’s speed in sliding to the side to outmaneuver his guard.

  Panicking, Zalanir just grabbed whatever affinities to power his Adaptability Bolt and threw them out like fireworks. Among those, a particular traceless variant was super effective, as bolts of that variant managed to stagger the man whenever they hit. However, the gap was just too short, and the man flung the knife in his left hand after tanking a bolt with his right elbow.

  When it left the man’s hand, Zalanir twitched his body to the side, hoping to dodge the incoming weapon. However, like a slow motion in a movie, the knife just cut through the air and pierced his left flank. How did that happen? He had no idea. The only thing he knew was that a sharp pain shooting straight up into his mind, prompting him to let out a scream.

  But the scream never left his mouth. A cold knife was just millimeters away from his cheek. Its edge was dancing on his skin each time Zalanir breathed. He still couldn’t believe this. A moment ago he was bombarding the man with magical bolts, but now, his life was hanging on a single thin thread.

  The air became suffocating and stressful as both fighters and the whole audience seemed to agree to an unwritten rule of staying silent for as long as possible.

  “My win then,” the man whispered.

  He let go of the knife pressing on Zalanir’s face and jerked out the other one down on Zalanir’s rib. Blood was oozing out of the hole in his side, but somehow, Zalanir stayed conscious. He felt the paralysis and agony in every tendon and muscle. Even his mind was no exception. Goosebumps visibly lined up on his arms, reminding him of a gecko’s soft scales.

  Right when the man turned around, the spectators broke the silence with round after round of loud cheering. In contrast to that craze, his opponent just sauntered toward the exit with both hands swinging back and forth like a pendulum inside a grandfather clock.

  “Thank you!” Except for these two words, Zalanir couldn’t find anything better to say at the moment. He wasn’t even sure if the man could hear it. But still, he had to say that. The fact that he was still breathing was enough of a reason. He had lost through and through, after all.

  Meditating on top of his ground cloth, aka his bed, Zalanir could feel the flesh moving around the hole in the left side of his body. After sitting still for three hours, it was the only wound left. The tingling and itching sensation urged Zalanir more than once to stop the process, but he soldiered on and released a deep breath after soft scales wiggled to cover up the wound. The rest should heal over the course of the night.

  The first loss wasn’t as bad as he thought it could be, mostly because of how outplayed he got from his opponent. When it was too one-sided, often the defeated just shrugged it off and carried on.

  Zalanir had tasted this feeling before, back when he moved onto the pro scene and got double bageled in his first match. He remembered his coach just laughing out loud about how terrible he was, with him even bet on how long it could go on before Zalanir scored his first set. He wasn’t able to laugh it off back then, but now, he saw the loss as free coaching on how bad he was in reading the situation.

  He had been too careless. All the wins against monsters and especially his triumph over Lithma had made him conceited. The act of dropping the shield could be one, but that wasn’t the reason for his loss. It was the confidence in his bolts that planted the bombs. And then, he just blindly and willingly walked into the explosion radius. Once again, confidence was the cause, since he was so sure that Energy Barrier could handle everything. The trigger for the bombs to go off and blow him apart was that sudden change of behavior. Was the man coating that, or was it something he activated when Zalanir came into range?

  Come to think of it, it had to be something that his opponent could only maintain for a short duration; otherwise, against that burst of speed, Zalanir could have been taken out in five seconds after the battle started already. That distance of around two arm spans had to be the “effective radius” for whatever the man had employed.

  Zalanir felt like he was close to the truth here. Even if his take was wrong, he had to be close and not that far off. But still, he wasn’t sure he would win at the end. In the case he avoided all the mistakes, the trouble of hitting the man was still there. He only managed to hit him because the man decided to tank it to close the gap. No, not totally accurate. He did hit him in that short window near the end. What was that attack again?

  Pushing his mind into overdrive to recreate the situation, Zalanir managed to narrow it down to light, sound, or a third affinity that he somehow grabbed in the heat of the moment. The bolt hit the man without a trace after all, so it couldn’t be metal or earth. Air was also out of the consideration because the man dodged one easily at the beginning.

  Talking about dodge, yeah, this was the main culprit. How could he dodge so easily? How much Dexterity did the man have? Pulling out the General tab, Zalanir saw his Dexterity sitting at 9, the second lowest attribute, with two points higher than Strength. All because of the fact that he gained no stat on those when leveling up.

  On level-up: +3 Intelligence, +3 Mystique, +2 Spirit, +1 Constitution, +1 Awareness, +1 Free Point.

  His mastery, perhaps due to being a mage, gave nothing to Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. Maybe being too specialized wasn’t good because of the potential of encountering these bad matchups, where he could have no chance of winning.

  Hopefully, he didn’t overthink here, because for sure there were others out there who countered him. Perhaps his opponent just got lucky and was offered a rare mastery with overpowered skills. Any mastery had to be at least equal to or better than his common Magical Apprentice. A rare or even higher-rarity mastery could have given so many more stats per level compared to his total of 11 attributes. An opponent with one of those could very well stat-checked Zalanir (if that was a thing), and the man’s skills did give off that vibe.

  Feeling like he had no other things to review, Zalanir decided to go to sleep early. This loss sucked, but agonizing over it would hinder him even more. Training. More training. He had to be harsher on himself.