More than human

Sarissa doesn't take it well being told by Drew of their rankings that it causes him to blow another fuse. He runs towards him with red in his eyes and begins throwing a flurry of attacks that Drew effortlessly parries with his sword.

In contrast to Sarissa's mad scowl, Andrew has a calm and focused glare that he has shown before towards Melissa. It's the cold expression he wears in battle when he's confronting someone that has stoked the anger in his heart.

That icy glare that brings a new shade to his eyes is what gets on Sarissa's nerves. It doesn't just annoy him but it also makes him question what kind of person Andrew is.

'I've always hated that look in his eyes, that condescending glare that he has while casually walking among us like he's not looking down on us!' Sarissa thought as he continues to lay on a barrage of attacks that seems to put Drew into the defensive.

In reality, Drew is observing Sarissa's attack patterns and with absolute confidence, he parries Sarissa's halberd midway into its strike. With Drew canceling Sarissa's attack, it leaves a huge opening for an attack that Drew takes. Holding his glowing tattooed arm forward, cerulean flames begin to gather around his palm.

Drew closes his palm, crushing the ball of blue flames into nothing, but with a snap of his fingers, the blue flames suddenly come back in a form of a barreling inferno that swallows up Sarissa. It sweeps the halberd-user off his feet, sending him flying into the row of tower shields held by the knights.

"Ready to throw in the towel? Or do I have to cut your fingers?" Andrew walks towards Sarissa while sharply glaring at him with his sapphire-blue eyes. He stands over the halberd-user and the knights behind him.

A new reason to hate Andrew's eyes begins to grow in the back of Sarissa's mind. Right now, he's unaware of it but as the blood in his body runs cold and the muscles in his joints lock up, he subconsciously accepts the fact that Andrew's eyes are-

-Frightening.

Although, even with fear festering in the back of his mind, Sarissa still grabs a hold of his halberd and stands back up to continue the fight.

He runs up with the same pattern that it made Drew furrow his brows in a mix of confusion and disappointment.

Waffenreichweite erhohen!

"Increase weapon's reach!"

Sarissa swiftly chants and once again Drew parries the halberd blade with his sword. However, just as he's about to move in to attack Sarissa, he hears a sharp ringing coming from Sarissa's halberd that alarms him. He immediately backsteps, avoiding the sharp gusts of wind that shoot out from the halberd.

Drew narrowly avoids having his head completely taken off, leaving alive with only a cut across his cheek.

"So that's what that sound was. I didn't expect you to use air like that." Drew wipes the blood off his cheek with his thumb and shoots a glare at Sarissa. "Do you think copying the way Cecil fights is going to give you an edge against me?"

Knowing the meaning behind Drew's glare gets Sarissa ego going that his cocky smirk comes back.

"That's not the only thing I got up my sleeve~ Why don't I test that out on you!" Ecstatically Sarissa shouts as he hurls sharp wind blades at Andrew by simply swinging his halberd.

Drew does his best to parry what are essentially invisible strikes. He pinpoints them using sound alone as the wind razors create a high-pitched whistle as they travel. However, even if Drew perfectly parries the wind blades, he's just cutting it in two so he's still receiving slashes across his body.

He tries to create a barrier of blue flames by swinging his black sword across the air, but that didn't do anything as the wind blades still cut through the flames.

"A, -Andrew!" Basil shouts but as he's about to run into the fight, Caron stops him by grabbing his collar.

"Nope, you stay there. If you get involved you'll only get diced and roasted. Besides, I got something to ask you~" Caron asks politely while giving Basil a cutesy smile that immediately charms the squire.

"What's the matter!? Weren't you saying something about you being the strongest among us?! Why don't you put me in my place then!" Sarissa haughtily taunts Drew as he continues to lay on the wind blades on him.

'A lot can happen in three months apparently. He's seriously gotten craftier, but definitely not any stronger. He should be running out of vis at least.' Drew acknowledges that Sarissa right now has a chance to beat him. So he takes him seriously and is now waiting for the halberd-user to exhaust his vis.

"You're probably thinking that you can win if you just exhaust me, right!?~" Sarissa sees through Drew's ploy and shatters that plan of his by opening his uniform's blazer to show phials of liquid vis dangling inside his blazer. There's a total of five, more than enough to keep his vis up.

"I can keep this up for as long as I want, but I wonder if you can do the same! I guess there's a limit to what even the best can do!" Sarissa finds fulfillment as he believes he'll be taking down the man he's hated since college. 'After him, I'm going to challenge that purple-haired noble girl and that red-haired slave. The three of you shouldn't have even been accepted.'

While he's busy with his thoughts, Sarissa doesn't see Andrew walking towards him with blood dripping from all the cuts on his body. Even with all those wounds on his body, Andrew is walking without a limp.

"Did you lose your mind? Alright then, let's finish you- Eh?" The halberd-user stares blankly at Drew who has his arm up, gesturing Sarissa to come at him.

Drew continues egging Sarissa on by looking at him with that glare that gets on his nerves. Sarissa wasn't going to fall for it until Drew grins at him as if to say he's a coward for being so cautious.

"You little! THE LAST THING I AM IS AFRAID OF YOU," he roars out and charges towards Andrew, his halberd billowing out red flames fueled by his anger and frustrations.

Brennen per ma befehl!

"Burn by my command!"

Sarissa chants the exact runes written on Erize's sword, Dyrnwyn. He then spins his halberd around and lunges towards Andrew while carrying an inferno in his halberd.

As he's about to bring down his flaming halberd on Andrew, Sarissa sees Drew's expression change. Like a flipping a switch, he goes from grinning to wearing his usual impassive expression.

With that flat expression on his face, Andrew swings his sword to not just parry Sarissa's attack but completely rend his halberd apart. The runes on his arm and his sword glow in contrast to the red flames enveloping him, but not for long as they change into the same color. The shade of blue that will soon haunt Sarissa's mind.

Eutychianes freeze fire

'Eutychianes Einfrieren Feu'

Erstellen sie ein iodernde feuer quod fallen und friert ein tous in leitung

'Create a roaring inferno that swallows and freezes everything in its wake'

Not only did Andrew reverse the direction of Sarissa's inferno but he also doubles it in strength. The barreling inferno with Sarissa tossing around in it also swallows up the knights guarding the exit. The aftermath wasn't pretty either to say the least, no one is injured but everyone is left with a layer of ice covering some parts of their body.

Sarissa is particularly awful as he has frostbite burns on his face and fingers. His body temperature is alarmingly low that hypothermia will set in if he doesn't warm up soon.

Unfortunately, he's still conscious despite all that, and he sees Andrew approaching him with his face completely darkened out, leaving only a pair of dark blue eyes peering at him with unknown intent.

"D, -Don't come near me! Don't look at me like that!" Sarissa demands as he tries to crawl away but the speed of his crawling didn't outpace Drew, and he finds himself staring down what he sees as something inhuman.

Drew reaches for Sarissa's chest and he believes that Drew plans to tear his heart out, but really what he's after are the phials of vis in his blazer. Drew tears the phials out from the blazer and stands back up.

Looking at the phials, he sees that three have become crystallized because of his attack. It's still viable, but for a different purpose. Drew does drink one of the phials and regains much of the vis he's lost, but it doesn't heal the wounds he's sustained.

"Basil, let's go. We need to hurry, we wasted enough time here," Andrew calls out to the squire who worriedly runs up to him and sees that fresh blood is still dripping from the cuts across his body.