Chapter 10: The first bout

I made my way into the battle ring that looked like a modernized colosseum. The stands were packed with crowds of students from other years and there was a large screen which displayed our cumulative points and other statistics. The beginning buzzer went off after the officiator had confirmed our readiness, immediately Chloe started to gather water vapour using her vapour control ability, the temperature around began to drop quickly and I was almost instantly surrounded by a vapour smokescreen.

In this mist that she controlled she could obviously locate me easily and attack from any angle, the best thing to do would be to cover my hundred and eighty degree blind spot. First I activated Pulze-overdrive and bolted towards the borders of the ring, the battle ring is quite big so I should assume her smokescreen hasn't covered the whole ring yet but only a radius of me,if I just move in one direction I should be out of the haze.

"Woah!!, A vapour smokescreen from the start of the match, the whole battle field is covered,what's strider going to do about Chloe's incredible strategy!",the commentator yelled.

If I heard right the commentator just said the whole battle ring is shrouded in mist,that's not good news, from my heightened senses with Pulze-overdrive I could already feel the temperature within the mist rising, this is not an ideal situation since it takes a lot of mental concentration to keep Pulze-overdrive up I can't afford to get lightheaded.

After making it to the border I turned my back to the border wall insuring me from any attack from behind, I could barely see further than my arms length but I had other ways of seeing in this mist, first I can perceive where Chloe would be using her own homing against her, if she already knows where I am then it's obvious she'd be reeling in a close range attack since she doesn't have any long range attacks in the first place, putting her within approximately a ten meter radius of me. But then I also have my heightened senses from Pulze-overdrive, when I activated it earlier I was able to hear her footsteps but they were too faint to pinpoint which direction they came from but now I've solved that problem by narrowing down the possible directions.

Not long after securing my position I heard the sound of her steps coming from my eight o'clock, I opened my arms as wide as I could and brought them together with the swiftness of a bullet, the force created was enough to displace the air around me for quite the distance exposing Chloe who'd stopped in her tracks probably stunned by the force of the wind that just blew past her, capitalizing on the opportunity I closed the distance between us in less than a second and and landed a punch to her mid section deactivating Pulze-overdrive on impact so that I didn't spill her guts. As she collapsed into my arms,the mist around began to clear and the cheers of the crowds began to grow.

"He's done it!!,a flawless victory and he made it look easy, the first match of the first bout has ended in 58.4 seconds!."

A medical team came to take the collapsed Chloe away for treatment,I was happy about winning my match but as I left the ring I felt I had only won by luck, running battle simulations on Saturday allowed me to predict a smokescreen attack but I didn't expect it on such a grand scale if I underestimate any opponent again my luck might not be enough to save me again.

My match was followed by a match between Rex and Ashraf where Ashraf dominated his opponent with his unique Beta class ability, though Rex put up a good fight against Ashraf there was only so much he could do with his elemental Gamma class ability. The next match was between Mavis and Philip,it was a tight match as both had Gamma class abilities and interesting to watch too,after they'd battled for about five minutes till they were fatigued Philip surrendered, a bad idea from my view because it looked like Mavis was suffering more. Anyways the last fight for the first bout was between Francis and Lacey. Lacey brutally crushed him with her evolved Beta class ability and ended the match in 15 seconds.

And thus the first bout ended well but I was starting to feel tensed,after watching the other matches my natural instincts were telling me I was no match for the other candidates, the next fixtures will be posted thirty minutes from now and then we'll be given extra thirty minutes to prepare, a total of an hour before the next bout starts, I should get some juice to calm me down in the mean time...