CH91 (321), Global Competition Day One (5)

I made it to the venue with 10 minutes to spare, and I used that time to check my opponent once more. I was facing Antonio Belucci, a Tier 2 First-Class Dragoon representing the eastern continent.

He was a student at a Martial Academy located in a shared territory between Kalos and Almia. He was a spear user that used draconic energy to boost his body and to utilize draconic fire for all ranges of combat.

He was the first person I came across during any of the competitions that used draconic energy. In fact, he was the only one I heard about so far in this competition which showed how rare they were. I knew for a fact that there were no real regional academies for them since their number was too low for an academy.

They learned from one of the clans/factions that volunteered to the alliance to show the ropes to new blood from their region. From rumors, I heard these guys were set for life since all of them got offers to join the clan/faction. Possibly through the honey trap or by enticing them with resources.

Whichever one it was, they could be considered pretty lucky, especially since the alliance made sure that they could not be forced to join, which meant they could only be tempted not forced.

Anyway, with less than 5 minutes left I made my way to the battlefield, and while I was waiting for the fight to begin, I contemplated whether I should use my psychic abilities during this fight or not. I mean now that I had revealed them, there was no reason to keep it back.

Well, except that they may make it too easy to win the fights. I decided to fight without using my psychic abilities first to see how Antonio fared against my aura and weapons before deciding mid-fight whether I would use them or not.

While I was thinking about that, I and Antonio got into our positions, the host did our introductions, and the referee did his thing, so we were only waiting for the starting signal, which just came.

My first action was to throw a handful of senbons at Antonio to test his reaction. He simply twisted his spear like a propeller and blocked any senbons that came his way.

It was noteworthy that his spear was clad in a film of draconic fire while he did that, probably something he did to counteract the aura I could have potentially used to boost/reinforce the senbons.

We'd have to see if that had the effect he wanted or not, but not now. Right now, I boosted my legs and my back before I began circling Antonio at high speed while throwing senbons at him at random intervals to further test his reaction speed and instinct as well as his visual prowess.

I picked it up a notch, further increasing my speed and applying aura on the senbons before throwing them at him. He successfully blocked the first few, but one managed to slip through and stabbed his left leg. Once that happened he slashed his spear down in my direction and sent a crescent-shaped draconic fire slash at me.

It kinda resembled the flying sword slashes that came up in various works of fiction, but here instead of being the work of high sword or spear mastery, it was mainly an attack made up of dragon fire.

I stopped my senbon throwing for a bit to dodge that fire crescent and looking at the gash it caused on the ground, instead of just melting or crushing it, I had to admit that he might have been able to infuse a bit of the essence of the spear into that slash after all.

Still, impressive display of spear and draconic mastery aside, that attack was neither fast nor wide-reaching enough to pose any danger to me, so I had no problems dodging the follow-up slash as well.

I decided to up the ante a bit and began using aura platforms to add vertical movement to my circling. Now, the senbons did not only come from behind or the side but from above as well as from an angle.

I kept that up for a minute or two and Antonio managed to block most of the senbons with only a few making it through his flaming spear mill, but he managed to ensure that none of those managed to hit something vital.

His occasional counterattacks were all dodged by me, even after he tried directly tossing dragon fireballs at me instead of sending fire slashes with his spear, I smoothly dodged them all.

Still, finally having enough of the long-range approach, I pulled my two blades from my back and rushed at Antonio who stood ready to receive me.

He made the first move by sending a dragon fire slash at me that I side-stepped, but that seemed to be part of his plan since he immediately stabbed at me forcing me to sidestep back to my previous position.

Antonio moved his spear down left, before smoothly flowing into a sweep that aimed at my feet. I jumped above the sweep and saw him releasing a gout of dragon fire from his mouth at me in old-school fashion, making his affinity proud with that one.

Still, I was not helpless despite being in mid-air. I created an aura platform above me and pushed myself back down using my hands. Also instead of landing straight on my feet, I directly went into a forward rolling motion, while making sure I did not accidentally stab myself with my swords, which was a real risk in such a situation.

Doing such a move without prior training was extremely risky and likely to result in self-harm, but thankfully I had in fact trained how to roll with a sword in my hands. Yoruichi had been pretty insistent I master that if I wanted to fight with two swords, so I did.

I sprung to my feet and swung my left sword upward at Antonio's spear, forcing it skyward through the crash. He managed to hold onto his spear, but in return, his arms were pointing upwards as well and he was wide open.

I stabbed my other sword at his unprotected body and I saw his arms bulging from exertion. He managed to brute-force his arms down, barely placing his spear in front of my sword, taking multiple steps back from the clash of the two weapons.

I followed after him and swung my other sword at him, which he blocked with the butt of his spear. I swiftly switched to slashing with the other sword which he once more blocked, this time with the blade upper part of the spear.

That kept repeating for a bit, but I was quickly overwhelming him since such close-range fighting was not a spear's forte. Seeing the situation Antonio released another stream of draconic fire from his mouth, but I simply crouched down to dodge it after reflecting his spear to the side.

Using my crouch I did a leg sweep, reminding Antonio that I could do more than just use swords and throw senbons. My leg sweep succeeded and I managed to unbalance him enough to cause him to fall.

However, he did something while falling that took me completely by surprise. He managed to hurl his spear at me even while he was falling and since we were less than 2 meters apart at that moment I had no time to dodge and even blocking the first seemed unlikely to succeed.

It was undoubtedly lucky and super daring, on Antonio's part to fling his spear, hoping that his desperate throw was aimed true, which it was. His fortunate throw forced me to teleport away or actually risk losing.

Seeing how I was forced to use one of my psychic abilities I decided to just use them all. I teleported behind him just as he landed on the ground, and used my telekinesis to freeze him in place.

Then I placed one of my swords on his outstretched neck while he was still struggling, trying to break free from my telekinetic grip. He was using his draconic energy in his efforts, and he might have succeeded after a few more seconds.

Unfortunately for him, the referee declared me the winner a second after I placed the sword on his neck. Deeming that to be enough to theoretically deal a fatal blow due to him failing to break free fast enough.

I took my sword away as soon as the referee did that, and placed them both back on my back while releasing Antonio from my psychic hold. I stretched my arm out to him in an offer to help him up, and he took it with a smile.

We exchanged pleasantries and I thanked him for the fight before we left the battlefield under the roaring applause of the audience. With this victory, I made it to the round of 16 in both categories, which would be held tomorrow.

It was currently 6:23 p.m, my fight having taken close to 20 minutes, and I now had the rest of the day/evening to me. Seeing have I was free to do what I wanted and that I had an early dinner, I decided to pay the two Pokemon stores another visit.

This time around I was not there to look for new Pokemon, or rather ones I had not seen during my last visit, but to check out the Starly and Bidoof instead.

Well, I was not planning to pay too much on a single one of them since I did not really plan to add them to my team, but to the subspace instead, so I directly chose to check the undetermined ones.

However, before I visited the shops I found myself a place to change clothes. I put on a hoodie with the hood up and also put on one of my half-face masks, a la Kakashi. I knew that this would not fool the high-ranking trainers/humans if they were tracking me, but it was better than nothing.

Besides, it sent the message that I was doing something secret, so they could not talk about it with me without admitting that they have been following me, so I doubted anyone would say anything. Only after that, did I move toward the shops.

The first store had 63 undetermined Bidoof and 49 undetermined Starly, and since I had nothing better to do, I checked them all out. I found 47 Bidoof with light orange potential and above. 11 of those had a yellow shade, while 3 had a green shade potential, with green being the highest potential among them.

On the Starly side, I detected 9 Starly with a yellow shade, 3 with a green shade, and one that actually had light blue potential.I chose to buy only the ones with deep orange potential and above.

I ended up with 28 Bidoof, as well as 25 Starly, and paid 11 million Poke for them in total. The actual price had been 11.85 million Poke, but the shop gave me a mass purchase discount of around 7%.

I did not mind the price, since the light blue Starly on its own was already worth nearly half that amount, so it was not as if I was making a loss or anything. On the contrary, if I was willing to resell them, I could easily earn quadruple or more than that, but I was going to keep them for myself.

Anyway, I moved on to the next shop and did the same there as well. I ended up buying 23 Bidoof and 29 Starly in this one, and I paid 11 million here as well. Coincidentally, the total here ended up being 11.85 million as well, and the shop also gave me a mass purchase discount.

Unfortunately, none among this batch had any shade of blue potential, but 2 of the Bidoof and one of the Starly had deep green potential, which was pretty lucky as well. Especially since all of them were going to live in the subspace and just produce a new generation of Pokemon for me.

By the time I was done with my shopping trip it was close to 9 p.m and I felt a bit peckish, so I decided to eat a second dinner. Leaving all Pokeballs inside Utopia after making sure that they were all in stasis mode. I would take care of them after the competition, so they could remain in stasis until then.

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