Second Blood 8 : Fight

"I don't really know how to control my aura."

These words seemed to be hard for her to say as her face darkened slightly with an air of hesitation and slight embarrassment that stunned Jyro.

Not knowing how to control your aura? It's normally an expression used to describe someone's mediocrity, no ?

"Begin."

Without giving Jyro time to ask another question, the teacher interrupted them with a simple word.

"Be careful."

The girl, still looking anxious, raised her wooden sword slightly in the air and ran towards Jyro at full

A thick green aura bursts from Fukushima Enri's body when she is barely a metre away from him, making Jyro's heart skip a beat.

He threw himself to the ground, his body covered in a thin layer of red aura, and rolled, narrowly avoiding Enri's wooden sword, which struck the ground, shattering the concrete of the ring before the stunned eyes of the students.

"What the fuck is that?!"

"Rank D! What the fuck is a D Rank doing here!"

Jyro stood up quickly, narrowly avoiding his opponent's attack, which followed one after the other without interruption.

Seeing Jyro retreat and avoid her attacks, Enri stopped and gripped her sword tightly, making it glow a dark green, but before she could launch her new attack, Jyro took a quick step towards her.

"Inner paralysis of the soul."

Jyro's words momentarily broke his opponent's concentration, but without giving her time to recover he bent down and swept her away with a swift movement.

Enri fell to the ground and tried to get up, but Jyro caught her arm and wrapped his legs around her, holding her down.

"Get off !!"

Enri gritted her teeth, the aura around her body exploding and drastically increasing her physical strength as she dropped her wooden sword and used her two arms to push her opponent back, Jyro feeling her gradually freeing herself from his grip had no choice but to free her and quickly got up from the ground at the same time as her opponent who hurried to pick up her sword and get back into fighting stance.

"I'm going to have to give it my all more seriously."

Jyro's fists glowed a dark red and he walked slowly towards Enri, maintaining his aura evenly around his body.

Inner paralysis of the soul, a rare disease which allows its victim to possess an above-average reserve of aura but prevents the synchronisation of mind and body, rendering him incapable of using aura control or at least perfect aura control.

Those suffering from this disease easily reach rank B sometimes even rank A in terms of aura quantity, but when this happens they usually die early, never reaching rank D and never awakening their arcane because of their lack of control.

Aura Control was more important than quantity.

Jyro went to demonstrate.

Enri launched another attack in his direction, her sword charged with an enormous aura, and Jyro, without backing down this time, struck the sword with his fist before the eyes of the students, who almost jumped at this rash decision.

"He's going to break his fist!"

Concentration.

Amplification.

Projection.

Despite his low E-rank reserve, he concentrated all his aura into his fists, whose dark red glow turned scarlet.

*Bam*

Jyro's sword and fist met, and at the same time he shifted his body to the left, deflecting the sword to the right in a fluid movement that dispersed the force of the impact and created a thud that echoed across the training ground.

"He deflected it!"

"How did he do it with so little aura?"

"I think he used amplification at the last moment."

"Are they really class D students?"

"Hum.."

Shen Zhou suddenly looked at Jyro with interest and perplexity; he was the only one who understood the feat he had just achieved.

He used Concentration on his fists, putting all his aura into them and abandoning his defences to improve their resistance, then he amplified the strength of his fists with the concentrated aura using Amplification.

It was a basic series of actions, but at the last moment he projected his aura out of his fists in the opposite direction to the way his body was moving so as not to be affected by the terrifyingly disproportionate amount of aura contained in Enri's sword.

"Interesting for a piece of trash and this girl..."

Shen Zhou's gaze turned to Enri as he lightly licked his chapped lips.

Enri was surprised by Jyro's actions and tried to launch a new attack, but before she could act he came towards her and threw a punch emitting a scarlet glow at such speed that it was impossible for her to dodge.

She unconsciously closed her eyes, preparing herself for the pain that would follow.

1s 2s 3s

Not feeling the fist, she opened her eyes and saw Jyro walking out of the circle with a slight smile.

"I give up."

Shen Zhou gave him an unpleasant look and shook his head, writing something down in his electronic notebook. He walked through the crowd of students, some of whom looked at him with respect, some with jealousy, some with a wary look, but he paid them no mind and just returned to his original place.

The fights continued and the attention he was getting quickly diminished, but one look continued to bother him, that of his opponent.

He turned his head towards her and, when their eyes met, he was surprised by the furious face she was giving him.

"Is this kid bipolar?