Devoured Eccentric - 38 Natural Selection VI

No defence is better than offence.

Especially when it is unexpected, like throwing your melee weapons, your only way to fight back.

‘Not what I expected, but cool!’ Nero exclaimed.

‘Humph, being predictable is booooring.’ Nova said playfully. ‘I am a part of you, the user… how could I become boring? That’s a big no-no.’

‘To be fair, I’m not so much of an amusing guy, am I?’ Nero didn’t know himself very well yet.

‘Well… don’t worry! I’ll be amusing in place of you, easy!’ Nova gave a solution.

‘That… works for me, cool.’ Nero didn’t know what else to say, he didn’t see much use of being entertaining.

‘I mean, sure, it’s a useful social skill… but do I really need it?’ Nero’s thought process was quite simple, he looked for use.

‘Welp, we were given two hours to understand and practise using the weapon, let’s get on with it.’

Nero had an internal clock handled by Nova, he had only taken a few minutes to understand how to efficiently use the weapon he was given.

Now, only practise was left.

‘Don’t worry, already ahead of you! I’ve already revamped the stance and created guidelines for movement. I’ll display them now.’ Nova was sentient, knowing what was next was something easy to predict in this situation, thus making preparations possible beforehand.

According to his vision and memory, Nero moved with a slow yet precise pace.

The Katars were versatile. Up close, they could be used as mini swords or as daggers with high penetration power, whichever style suited to the situation really.

Nero practised the basics slowly at first, gradually picking up the pace and becoming increasingly proficient.

With his strength, each slash moved at high speed and carried great strength.

With his control, every move was filled with masterful precision.

With his understanding, every attack naturally provided defence for where he was left open.

It took no more than an hour for Nero to become flawless at performing every move with ease.

After that, he worked on perfecting the flow between one move to another for half an hour.

for the remaining time, he practised the three modules from Nova. In the end, he could, with the help of Nova, throw his dagger with the wanted trajectory.

This rocket-boosted speed of learning was all due to Nova.

After his time was up, a horn was blown outside the tents, after which, all the candidates scurried out of their tents.

Outside, three relatively large circles of land had been grazed dry, marking out the rings where the tournament will take place.

Each of the rings was made for tournament purposes only, with a flag next to each ring indicating which group was to use which ring.

Next to each ring was a board, explaining the rules and the randomly chosen order of battle between randomly chosen melee fighters or ranged fighters.

The rules were simple and direct: no major harm was to be done on purpose, if the opponent does not defend, the clear victor would be decided by the referee.

There was no rule against staying in the ring but if someone were to intentionally step out to gain space between their opponent, it would be counted as a loss. Being pushed out was not a loss.

The number of melee fighters and ranged fighters was equal, the choice they were given was a preferable one, some had not got what they wanted.

Nero, looking up to the board, saw his opponents name, Wes Felicia.

‘Wes’ was the family of aristocrats Felicia belonged to, coming before the first name to signify the importance of the aristocrat name.

Nero didn’t have a clue who the other person was, nor did he know anybody else. He couldn’t care less honestly.

There were 18 junior candidates, meaning the preliminary round contained a total of 9 duels, out of which, 4 were melee.

Most candidates preferred ranged combat because their chance for injury was quite low, they were given with enough armour with the ability to let an arrow leave not more than possibly a fractured bone.

All the weapons were blunt, chopping someone’s head with the Katars Nero had was hard, even for him… but not impossible.

The first round of duels began with another honk of a horn.

Nero carefully stared at the expected fighting skill of the Junior ranged fighters.

‘Oh wow…’ Nero was impressed at the candidates’ speed at releasing projectiles and dodging.

because the duel was aimed at checking the candidates’ use of a weapon, the referee would judge the winner. If one had a heavy weapon, the referee would look at their space management between them and the opponent and etc.

Though the exchanges were plain, the bout was quite entertaining to watch.

A few minutes later, one of the ranged fighters shot the deciding shot of the match that collided at the armoured space between the shoulder and the hand.

The match was over, The boy name Collins advanced.

The sequence of battles hadn’t been announced, so Nero was surprised to be called up next.

On the opposite end, a young girl with features of a growing teenager also entered the ring.

She had a short, slightly wide frame but her clothes displayed her slim thin waist. It was a clear sign of heavy daily exercise. Her strength could clearly be seen from the small halberd in her hands.

Nova also noticed how relaxed the girl seemed to be and how natural the Halberd seemed in her hands.

‘This will be a fun challenge!’ Nero gave a minute unnoticeable grin.

“I would like to kindly remind you that surrendering ahead of time is always an option.” the girl said in a slightly monotonous way, it was something she had definitely rehearsed before.

“You too!” Nero said as he gave the biggest smile, pure enthusiasm flowed from his body.

The young girl, although short, was much taller than Nero. One could easily tell she was just barely under the junior category.

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The girl didn’t expect such a cute boy as her first opponent, she was a little hesitant to go soft on him but quickly made her mind to fight with all she had. The boy was a royal after all!

With each’s preparation completed, the referee gave the go-ahead.

“Let the Duel begin!”