Miracle

[Valkas Ur bets 37 contribution points] [VS] [Yaxiu Heath bets 2 contribution points] For a newcomer to arrive at the "cesspool" (the death row convicts' affectionate nickname for the prison) and participate in death matches two days in a row was already an exceedingly rare event, not to mention that his opponent was none other than the "aristocrat" Valkas. Naturally, it drew countless eyes. Quite a few people who weren't even members of the Death Match Club had rushed over to watch. The spectator stands were packed to the brim, and a large crowd even stood gathered around the entrance. "Both using swords... Is this a swordsmanship duel? It's been a long time since I've seen sword sorcerers tear each other apart. After every sword duel, the entire ring smells of fragrant blood..." "Human! Hack that elf to death!" "What kind of grip is that? He's never learned swordsmanship, has he? Don't tell me he got scared seeing the aristocrat take a sword and picked one up just to copy him?" "If you don't know how to use a sword, don't use one! Wouldn't a spear be much better? Simple, straightforward, easy to pick up." "An axe is clearly better! One swing down, and no matter what weapon you have, it'll smash everything to pieces." "What... what nonsense are you spewing?! A spear is clearly better suited for beginners!" "I... I'm not spewing nonsense! An axe is the best weapon for a newbie!" Yaxiu found yet another reason to break out of prison: he would rather listen to people curse up a storm than hear two burly men with voices like the Black Whirlwind bicker like tsundere girls in refined phrasing. It clashed as jarringly as tom yum soup over tofu pudding. "They're quite noisy." "That's how the cesspool is. Flies buzzing all over the place." Valkas looked down at the iron sword in his hand and flicked it lightly with a finger, producing a crisp, ringing chime. "Maggots cannot turn into butterflies. And even a real butterfly is nothing more than an oversized fly in a cesspool." Yaxiu smiled. "Sounds like you have plenty of thoughts about prison life. Interested in publishing a book?" Valkas brushed his finger gently along the blade, settling into a textbook swordsmanship stance. "Yaxiu Heath, I apologize." The instant the barriers on the four sides of the ring rose, Valkas transformed into a blur of speed. The longsword in his hand seemed to extend dozens of meters, piercing through the air in a flash! Even though Yaxiu had remained on high alert, he still couldn't raise his sword in time to parry. He could only dodge desperately to the right to protect his vitals, but Valkas's blade still sliced off a sliver of flesh from his shoulder! The searing pain made Yaxiu gasp sharply, but he had no room to catch his breath, for Valkas was already right upon him! Clang! Clang! Clang! Yaxiu did not flee. Instead, he did the opposite, plunging forward directly into Valkas's chest to drag the fight into the deadliest possible distance! His reason hadn't been swallowed by the pain. Valkas was ten centimeters taller than him, long-limbed, with an immense wingspan and reach. At mid-to-close range, Yaxiu had virtually no room to fight back. Only by closing the distance to point-blank could he turn Valkas's advantage into a liability, making it impossible for him to swing his sword! "Have you truly never learned swordsmanship?" A sudden chill ran down Yaxiu's spine. From the corner of his eye, he caught Valkas twisting his wrist, shifting from a forehand grip to a reverse grip! Clang! Valkas's sword parried Yaxiu's thrust. Leveraging his height advantage, the elf drove a brutal horizontal elbow straight into Yaxiu's forehead! Fall back! Fall back! Fall back! The force of the elbow strike nearly knocked Yaxiu unconscious. Just then, the sorcery power that had lain dormant in his mind began to stir, radiating a cool, refreshing breath that snapped him back to his senses. Moving on sheer combat instinct, his body beat a decisive retreat! As Yaxiu's vision cleared, a flash of cold light came hurtling right at him! Boom! Scrambling and tumbling, Yaxiu clawed back onto his feet, refusing to let his back touch the ground for even a fraction of a second. Looking at the wall shattered by a single sword strike from Valkas, lingering dread washed over his face, followed immediately by sheer terror. Their swords were unsharpened! The prison hadn't gone mad enough to hand live blades to death row inmates for their brawls! Just now, Valkas slicing off a chunk of shoulder flesh with a blunt blade had already been outrageous—Yaxiu had simply rationalized it as Valkas's strike being so fast that his shoulder flesh hadn't even had time to react. But that was a stone wall! Solid stone! Stop it! That isn't swordsmanship! This is completely outside the jurisdiction of swordsmanship! "A... a sorcery spirit?" "Why do you look so surprised?" Valkas smiled. "Isn't it completely natural for a sorcerer to use sorcery spirits in battle?" "But the prison hasn't lifted the restrictions on sorcery power—" "Some things cannot be locked away. Even if you bind their limbs, they will still sprout wings and take flight. Sorcery spirits born from knowledge I have thoroughly mastered remain my power even without a supply of sorcery power. They can still turn my every ordinary move into a moment of miracle." Yaxiu let out a long, heavy breath. His clothes felt heavy where blood from his wounded shoulder soaked the fabric. He could feel his strength seeping away strand by strand; as blood fled his body, it drained his stamina along with it. Unlike bare-knuckle boxing matches, a cold-steel sword duel offered no flashy, turn-based trades of blows—only the split-second breath between life and death. The strong live; the weak die. Yet for some reason, he felt invigorated. The sorcery power in his mind had grown even more active, and the pain in his shoulder had faded considerably. "If I take a critical hit from an attack like that, there's no saving me, is there?" "I don't know. I have never gone all out against anyone in a death match." "Am I the first?" "And the last." Boom! With a gentle upward flick from Valkas, the floor—durable as tempered steel—began to fissure and burst apart, surging toward Yaxiu like a giant serpent tunneling underground! "The elven swordsmanship miracle: Mountain Collapse Earth Split?!" "He actually pulled off a miracle!" "How is that possible?!" Uproar broke out in the spectator stands. Death row convicts pressed their faces nearly flat against the invisible barrier, desperate to catch every detail of Valkas's technique. Igola was no exception. Having witnessed Valkas's death matches before, he had anticipated that Valkas could employ sorcery spirits. But using a sorcery spirit and using a miracle were two entirely different realms! Every miracle required the concerted coordination of multiple compound sorcery spirits to cast. Yet possessing several compound sorcery spirits hardly guaranteed one could cast a miracle. It was like how ordinary people and stunning beauties both had one mouth, one nose, and two eyes, yet the assembled result was an angelic face in one case and an angelic face that landed face-first at birth in the other. Casting a miracle was astronomically difficult—so difficult that the act of "casting a miracle" was part of the miracle itself. To become a sorcerer in the first place required exceptional talent; otherwise, one could never hone an art to the level of "sorcery" and thereby summon a sorcery spirit. Yet among this very crowd of heaven's chosen, most could only dare to dream of mastering one or two miracles in an entire lifetime, which was already the average standard for sorcerers—and below-average sorcerers hadn't even mastered a single one. Miracles were so rare that their payoffs were naturally proportional to their difficulty. Compared to the straightforward effects of sorcery spirits, a miracle's power was far more intricate, grandiose, and difficult to counter, sometimes even producing incredible effects that bridged the divide between different arts. For instance, a sword sorcerer's miracle could carry healing effects; a water sorcerer's miracle could vaporize an enemy; a gun sorcerer's miracle could cause an enemy to reach out and catch bullets voluntarily... There was a saying popular among sorcerers: "Sorcery spirits are merely an extension of our arts, but miracles are true wonder!" Igola had also mastered a miracle, and he had completely mastered the sorcery spirits required for it. In theory, he was fully qualified to cast a miracle. Yet he had never once managed to cast a miracle inside the prison. Not a single time! If activating a sorcery spirit inside the prison was like picking your nose with your foot—difficult, but manageable with enough practice— then casting a miracle in prison was like doing your makeup with your foot! And you had to make it look gorgeous, or it wouldn't count as a miracle! Yaxiu was finished now. Watching the earth-shattering cataclysm inside the death match ring, Igola felt a surge of pity for Yaxiu. Valkas was clearly out to kill. Crushed beneath a miracle, Yaxiu wouldn't even leave behind an intact corpse. Whether anyone could scrape together every bit of minced meat from the rubble was doubtful. The healers in the prison infirmary couldn't possibly handle injuries that severe; in the end, Yaxiu's remains would inevitably be carted away by the ogres. This was the reality of the Blood Moon Country: beneath the tablecloth of "racial equality," "supremacy of law," and "harmonious coexistence," the predators still lived by the brutal law of the jungle. Once their interests were touched, even hiding in Shattered Lake Prison wouldn't stop those at the top from crushing you beneath their thumb. What a pity. He was quite an interesting man... After the earth-shattering din inside the ring went on for quite some time, someone finally couldn't sit still. "Why isn't he dead yet?" "Even if the miracle is weakened to less than a tenth of its power, it shouldn't fail to kill a weakling who can barely hold a sword!" Right—why wasn't Yaxiu dead yet? Only now did the death row convicts, whose attention had been completely monopolized by the miracle, focus their gaze on Yaxiu. Not a single intact patch of ground remained in the ring. Faced with Valkas's seemingly effortless, earth-splitting miracle, Yaxiu darted left and right like a frantic hamster, covered in dirt and soot. Several times he had nearly been ground into mincemeat by Mountain Collapse Earth Split. Yet every single time, he dodged it! Every single time! Though his movements looked thoroughly battered, in the eyes of these death row convicts, his actions were growing crisper and cleaner, without wasting an ounce of stamina! Even Yaxiu's sword grew steadier, to the point where he could actually parry Valkas's slashes! It was... it was almost like... "Just like yesterday's death match against Fair Beast," someone muttered under their breath. As the first victim, Igola naturally felt this keenly. He had watched with his own eyes during their fight as Yaxiu grew stronger step by step, his skill improving by leaps and bounds, morphing from a hothouse flower who couldn't even roll into an animal pulsing with combat instinct in just a few minutes. And now, a second victim had appeared. That monster Yaxiu was actually monstrous enough to learn swordsmanship right in the middle of a fight?! This is a prison, not some damn talent incubator, you bastard! Yet many others recalled Yaxiu's charges, connecting his current genius performance to his background. "The Four Pillar Gods..." In the dim spectator stands, Langna draped an arm around his boyfriend's neck, his eyes fixed on the two fighters in the ring, an eerie glint flickering in his pupils.