Rise Of The Lesser-Blood

The elimination round was over, and tomorrow the quarter-finals and the semi-finals were all taking place.

Thomas, Ryan, and the two girls were in Unit 112, with gloomy expressions on their faces. The single mana stone sitting on the centre table cast long, flickering shadows across the small room, the weight of the afternoon’s Grade S display still hanging like lead in the air.

Ryan broke the silence.

”What in the actual f**k was that?” Ryan asked, his hands running frantically through his hair as he leaned over his knees. ”Those two did not move like freshmen at all. Especially that Karen how could he have such a degree of control over his newly awakened talent like that?”

”I’m more worried about Tom,” Lina spoke with a shaky voice, her eyes completely glued to the wooden floorboards. ”Imagine if he were to get Julian or the other Grade S monster still left in the tournament. I heard rumours about how the gap between Grade S and any other grade below it was insurmountable, but this is in another realm. And what scares me is that these monsters are all still freshmen who have had their talents for less than a month. Imagine what they will be able to do three years from now?”

Thomas agreed with all of them, keeping his face masked in his usual unreadable calm even though he knew the real grade of his talent. Unlike the others, his Endless Adaptation started off weak, and it quietly turned him into a different beast. Yet, he silently admitted to himself that if it had been him paired with Karen on the sand, he would have surely died from that first lightning bolt before his body even got the chance to map the threat and adapt to it. Yet, even with all that raw destruction ability Karen possessed, he still failed to win. In Thomas’s eyes, that reality slowly transformed Julian from a threat into an existential threat.

Even after watching him fight, he did not fully know how the young High-blood’s talent worked, and with a talent like that, he wondered how the hell he was going to adapt to it if they met on the field. How could a farm boy adapt to a void that simply erased the space he was standing in?

...

The next morning arrived with a brutal, relentless intensity. The atmosphere surrounding the Arena had shifted completely. The crowds were no longer laughing; they were ravenous, waiting to see who would fall at the threshold of the academy’s elite.

Thomas’s quarter-final match was positioned right at the opening bell of the morning block. His opponent was a massive High-blood combatant named Gerald, who carried a Grade A talent called Diamond Skin.

The fight was a grueling, grinding slog that pushed Thomas’s physical threshold to its absolute limits. The moment the flag dropped, Gerald didn’t cast magic from afar; he stepped forward, his entire epidermis instantly crystallizing into a hyper-dense, multi-layered reflective diamond armor that caught the morning light like a prism. It was a terrifying Talent that completely neutralized raw kinetic impact.

When Thomas tried to close the distance with a standard farm-boy tackle, he felt like he had slammed directly into a mountain of solid quartz. Gerald didn’t stumble. With a cruel, heavy smirk, the High-blood swung a massive diamond-encrusted fist straight into Thomas’s ribs.

CRACK!

The impact was sickening. The sheer density of the diamond armor bypassed Thomas’s current bone density, fracturing two of his ribs and sending a jagged wave of agony straight through his torso. Thomas slid ten meters back across the black sand, coughing up a spatter of dark blood as the High-blood crowd roared in approval.

But Thomas didn’t back down. He maintained his unreadable, smooth mask, deliberately drawing out the fight. He forced his clumsy form to absorb three more devastating, bone-rattling punches to his forearms and shoulders, treating his own body as a pure data sponge while his internal system methodically mapped the structural density of the crystal.

Once his Endless Adaptation finally hit peak alignment, his internal bone density permanently reinforced itself, hardening to match the compression variables of the diamond armor. With his physical frame stabilized against the blunt trauma, Thomas didn’t flinch when Gerald lunged in for a final, finishing overhead smash. Thomas stepped inside the guard, twisted his wrists precisely according to the reverse-engineered blueprints he had extracted from Victor the day before, and violently slammed his palms against the earth.

Clack-clack-clack!

A localized grid of crushing stone teeth erupted directly beneath Gerald’s heels. The mechanical torque didn’t try to pierce the diamond; it violently twisted the noble’s ankle joint against his own rigid armor, shattering the structural balance of the crystal. Gerald let out a sharp cry, collapsing face-first into the black sand, completely unconscious.

”Winner: Thomas!” Cross’s voice boomed.

But there was no immediate promotion to the next stage.

The gap between his quarter-final match and his semi-final match was massive, spanning several hours as the tournament blocks for the other classes ran their grueling courses. Thomas spent the entire afternoon sitting silently in the dark recovery alcoves beneath the Arena, his body slow to heal as his system prioritized integrating the density parameters of the diamond skin rather than fast cellular regeneration. His ribs still throbbed with a dull, heavy ache beneath his linen wraps, and his uniform was thoroughly stained with dried crimson by the time his name was finally called back onto the sand for the semi-finals.

The afternoon sun was already dipping below the western spires, casting long, blood-red shadows across the black sand floor as Thomas walked back out into the open arena.

”Semi-final match!” Instructor Cross’s amplified voice echoed off the vaulted walls, cutting cleanly through the heavy silence of the stadium. ”Thomas of Class 1-A versus Sabrina of House Somerset Class 1-B!”

The crowd fell into a deep, breathless hush. Sabrina was the other remaining Grade S prodigy left in the tournament block a dark-skinned young girl with long, heavy dreadlocks who looked incredibly regal yet very attractive. Her violet eyes gleamed with a sharp, piercing intelligence that seemed completely detached from the typical arrogance of the other High-bloods.

Defying the strict dress codes of the academy, she wasn’t wearing her full uniform, opting instead to drape her gold-trimmed academy jacket loosely over her shoulders while wearing a pair of casual, ripped jeans.

She got up from her bench, her movements carrying a fluid, commanding grace that demanded absolute attention as she walked down the stone steps and stepped fully onto the black sand.

Sabrina stopped exactly ten paces away from Thomas. She didn’t raise her hands into a martial guard, nor did she channel an explosive aura. She simply stood beneath the open sky, her striking violet eyes staring intensely at Thomas. She inspected his tattered clothing, his blood-stained linen wraps, and his unrefined posture, looking at him as if she could read the exact, hidden architecture of his soul.

The silence stretched for a long, grueling moment, the tension between them thick enough to cut with a knife.

Then, without a single flicker of emotion on her face, Sabrina calmly raised her right hand straight into the air, looking directly at the elevated platform.

”I forfeit the match,” Sabrina announced clearly, her beautiful, smooth voice easily carrying across the wind-swept coliseum.

A collective wave of absolute, stunned disbelief violently rippled through the thousands of stadium benches. Instructor Cross paused on his platform, his starting flag frozen mid-air as the spectator rows gaped. A Grade S national treasure, an elite powerhouse of House Somerset, was voluntarily stepping down from the semi-finals before a single blow was struck.

Sabrina slowly lowered her hand, her violet eyes locking back onto Thomas. A knowing, dangerous smirk broke across her attractive features, her dreadlocks swaying in the high-altitude wind as she looked at him with an expression that carried a profound, unread secret.

”We will meet again, Thomas,” Sabrina murmured softly, her tone dripping with a quiet certainty.

Without another word, she casually turned on her heel and walked off the arena floor, her fluid stride taking her seamlessly into the shadows of the exit tunnels. Thomas stood entirely alone in the center of the black sand, his mask cracking slightly..