A loud crack rang out across the arena, and one of the other men was blasted backwards. What on earth was that? My ears hurt a little, and there was a spiderweb of cracks on the arena now. Viktor hadn't moved his feet, but the other two men immediately moved theirs, bringing themselves back to their side to reconsider their approach.

The man who'd been hit was able to regain his footing but looked shocked.

"What happened?" The one farther from the stands said, sparing a glance towards towards his companion.

"I… I… I don't know," stammered the one who'd been hit. "I didn't see anything at all."

"What?" Said the far one. "That's ridiculous. It's not like he hit you just standing there."

Viktor had started walking towards them as they talked, a saunter if I'd ever seen one. He was flexing his hands into and out of fists.

His opponents went into motion again, the three of them zipping around towards him at high speed. I was having trouble following them with my eyes, and Viktor wasn't really bothering to do so, he just kept walking forward as if him reaching the center of the platform was the only goal in the spar.

It was almost amusing how despite all their speed, none of them seemed to be quite willing to close the distance, so it looked like he was a big cat walking through a cloud of mosquitoes. Annoyed, but content to just let them buzz around until they tried to bite.

Finally, they seemed to have reached some sort of agreement to do so, and all three closed in to his position in almost an instant. I saw them preparing various strikes, including one that looked to be used at range, similar to how I'd attempted to fire Artifacts using my power back in the desert.

All three unleashed their blows together.

A huge arm swung through the location of the two who'd attempted physical attacks, brushing away their Nebula-imbued power as easily as ripping paper.

For others watching the strike, it looked almost like Viktor had waved away the Nebula like it was smoke, using pure physicality. In my eyes, though, I could see that he'd brought some power of his to bear at the very last second, as I was used to. It looked odd on his arm, almost like quilting.

I added it to my list of things to ask about - something which was growing quite long, much to my annoyance.

"Enough of that nonsense," Viktor said, leaping towards the man who had released the distance attack in almost the same moment. He'd done something at the instant he jumped, and the ground by his feet cracked further as he was propelled towards the last man.

His fist came up, shattering the incoming attack on the face of it with a strange sizzling sound. It continued in its arc, closing the distance in moments before it connected with the unfortunate soul who'd made the mistake of pissing Viktor off, assumedly by not punching enough.

I heard the sound of his chest bones cracking as he was bodily knocked through the air, landing in a heap, with some red crackles of power still flickering across his torso. Ouch.

I'd have been upset about this normally, since this was theoretically supposed to be a spar, but the intentions of this other group didn't exactly seem above-board, so I wasn't about to worry too much about it. Presumably they could heal this back up too.

The two he'd brushed off hadn't faired much better. They'd landed awkwardly, both nursing different shattered limbs, assumably from running themselves into some kind of immovable object.

"We yield," said Elder Junior, likely trying to head off Viktor going there to finish the job.

The moment I heard him say this, I started to circulate my streams. I had an audacious idea, that I was going to try use to intimidate him when it came time for our fight. My worry was that I could barely keep up with a lot of these people with my eyes, and as such I wasn't sure that I could prevent this supposed 'master' from getting in a powerful first strike before I could properly prepare. Viktor and István had done very well with their bouts, but I didn't have nearly the fighting acumen they had.

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So instead, I was going to do something a little different. Something you might think of as cheating.

I ramped up my internal circulation to maximum power, then carefully manipulated my Nebula to lift me into the air. The long robes hit it well, but I was essentially picking myself up under the shoulders, allowing my legs to hang loosely below, and the robes to flutter around me as I soared through the air towards the arena.

I kept releasing more and more Nebula as I went, and before long a bright golden-white cloud of the stuff had formed around me, trailing away behind like a comet. I was assuming it looked either beautiful or properly intimidating from the ground, because I saw Alessa slapping her hand over Liam's mouth as he tried to shout something, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Gran had stayed back, saying something to the effect of "you kids have fun". Which was about as close to an expression of absolute faith in us that one could wish to hear. Evidently she was working on supper or something with the cooks and found the new recipes far more interesting than the combat.

It was all very on-brand. This was, after all, the same lovely lady who had been quietly knitting while the world very literally ended around her.

"I look forward what you can teach me, Junior." I said as I landed. Without needing the focus I'd been expending on my travels through the air, I was free to use it to commandeer every scrap of Nebula I could reach for, sucking it out of the very air as everything rushed towards me.

A bubbling cauldron of roiling power formed around me, stretching up into the air as I sought to compress the power into an almost tangible substance.

My 'cheat', in this case, was by starting the fight ahead of time, while simultaneously seeking to try to intimidate my opponent. It wasn't exactly 'might makes right', but over the past few weeks Celistar and I had come to realize that my Nebula had the odd property of trying to assimilate all of the other Wills it came in contact with, while simultaneously being completely immune to the control of anyone but myself.

Normally, similarly Aligned cultivators could have some sort of effect on the power used by their opponents, something I'd actually witnessed a few times during our streak of defeat, although it was always fairly subtle, as our Alignments had very little overlap to the ones used by the Iron Veil Order.

I was hoping to 'misuse' this feature of my power to compensate for my lacking skill in other areas, by creating an almost solid 'wall' of Nebula I could use to restrict and attack opponents. A waterfall might not have great aim, but it was still going to knock you flat on your butt if you came too close to the roaring water.

Elder Junior eyed me warily, as he settled into his position opposite me. He hadn't flown into place, like I had, so he was already down a point in the eyes of the spectators. Or so my inner calculus went. Liam would agree, I was sure.

My growing storm of Nebula had encompassed nearly half the stage by now, and I had so much close to me I could see stray ripples - nodes and antinodes - of it escaping my control and lashing out against the arena, breaking down its already damaged surface.

Sorry, Celistar, I mentally apologized to the Moon Fairy.

Not a problem, I heard the reply, almost startling myself before I remembered that she could hear my inner thoughts if they were directed at her. Just make sure you kick that guy's ass.

The reply caught me off guard as Elder Junior made his move, just straight up disappearing like I'd seen (not seen?) Qīwù do before. Fun. Hopefully my trick would work. I closed my eyes, sensing the wide field of my domain that the arena had become. I could almost feel small disturbances where the wind brushed against the edges of my control.

Bringing my focus down to on every tiny change would just wear me out faster, so I tried to keep my mind on the larger picture, watching for the intrusion that I knew would come.

There, I thought at first, as I saw first one, then two intrusions in front of me to my left. Then I realized they were too small, and I could see my Nebula eating into them already, passively converting them into more of itself. I opened up two channels in it, subtly steering the ranged blows away from both myself and the audience. They cut past me on either side.

Could I absorb them? Well, probably… but then I'd be giving away a lot of information I didn't really want to. I could tell that a lot of what Celistar did was more politicking than just punching problems like Viktor, and I was starting to get a little smarter about it.

So I let the first two attacks go, and held out my hand to disperse a third, more concentrated blast, letting it dash itself on an almost solid collection of Nebula I gathered in when I first saw it coming.

After a fifth and sixth different ranged attack flew at me, I was worried I'd get bored, when suddenly a chunk of the arena almost below me aggressively rose up, driven by Elder Junior's strong Alignments towards both Earth and Stone, something I'd long ago noticed. He was a bit unique among the cultivators by having two.

That said, he'd had to manipulate the Nebula there prior to doing so, so it wasn't as if I hadn't noticed.

We'll just ignore the fact I didn't notice very quickly, so I had to head off the blow by stomping down with my foot, blasting out a crater in the ground as I forcefully reversed his efforts.

This poor arena wasn't having a good day, was it?

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