What a headache! He was clearly a master, yet he refused to play fair. Didn't that make him even harder to deal with? Viscount Shameen felt as though some terrifying memories he'd tried to forget were coming back to haunt him.
But before that thought could fully form, his body had already moved, guided by skills honed through countless trials. He held his single-handed broadsword across his chest, and with one move seemed to block every avenue of attack. The weapon in his other hand, which looked like a rapier, began to extend. In an instant, it transformed from a sharp rapier into a cunning, vicious whip.
The two balls of spirit light clashed without warning. The roar of metal striking metal and the flickering friction of spiritual energy intertwined into a deadly vortex.
The soldiers on both sides instinctively took another step back, as though living creatures shrinking away from their natural predators. In truth, though, the clash between the two psychics stirred ripples like the pressure of wind through the vacuum, yet no one felt any actual impact.
An expert would have known that this was a sign of how highly both sides controlled their psychic powers.
The ordinary soldiers present were no experts in psychic powers, of course, but they instinctively sensed a threat from a higher dimension and wanted to scatter. If there hadn't been so many friendly and enemy troops staring each other down, the fainthearted might already have turned and run.
The Starrealm Knights watching from the sidelines had mixed feelings. The duel unfolding before them was nothing like the master-versus-master battles they'd heard about at the academy. It had none of the ceremony they expected—no elegance, no etiquette, and no heroic ideal.
But they had to admit that if their own performance just