Way of the Knights

Chapter 147 - Capabilities

---

While Luna, Mark and Ellen were oushed back by Raven's retaliation. Paul immediately moved forward to intercept Raven.

His charge was stopped by Raven on time but Paul didn't let up went ahead to stab him multiple times using his spear.  Raven nimbly dodged his every attack, making sure to move just a smidge away from being hit to reduce his energy consumption.

Sensing another arrow from Anne, Raven did a backflip. After landing on his feet his was then greeted with Ellen's glowing sword. Her relentless attacks were staggering, due to her having a very high affinity towards fire, her attacks are already carrying heat which made Raven feel terrible even though he was dodging her attack.

Raven watched and waited until Ellen revealed a gap on her attacks, as soon as she made a punishable move, Raven ceased the moment and sent a punch to her. Ellen almost failed to block the attack but managed to during the last second, however the weight of Raven's attack still forced her insides to churn violently. Fortunately, she managed to suppress this feeling and get back to her feet. When she looked up, she found out that Raven was already being harassed by Mark and Luna.

Mark consistently brandished his swords at Raven. Due to him dual wielding, dodging all of his attacks became very challenging for Raven. Most of the times, Raven was forced to parry his attacks, good thing that he was always wearing the Flexible Metal Set, which enabled him to efficiently parry his attacks without doing any damage to his hands.

While Mark was trying to land an attack at him, Luna came with him as well and went ahead to raise the pressure. Luna's blessed with a good fighting instinct, she could see when there's a gap in Mark's attacks, she knew that Raven is fishing for this opening to retaliate so instead of giving him those chances, she will attack to cover those gaps not only preventing Raven from fighting back but also pressuring him even further.

Mark swiped his swords in horizontal way, trying to sever Raven's head from his shoulders. At the same time, Luna performed a low sweep of her spear, greatly minimizing Raven's mobility. But they knew that this isn't enough to lock down Raven completely.

Just as expected, Raven hurriedly jumped back and sent compressed air spheres towards them. Mark and Luna managed to dodge, Raven was about to attack some more but he once again sensed Anne's arrows causing him to move away.

Upon his retreat, Paul once again charged towards him using his shield, Raven planned on receiving this again using his hand but he saw Ellen hot on his trails. 

He decided to jump up and kick the shield of the charging Paul. 

Paul staggered and halted his charge, he could feel his arm shaking due to the sheer weight of Raven's attack. He gritted his teeth and sent his energy towards his throat.

Raven saw his throat trembling and immediately knew what Paul was trying to do. He immediately gathered a decent amount of energy on his palms.

"AHHHHHH!!!!"

There it comes, Paul's Demoralizing Shout. His shout shook the entire training field, the students nearby unconsciously placed their hands on their ears to protect their eardrums. If Raven was hit by this Demoralizing Shout, then he will experience a great headache causing his to be paralyzed for a solid minute. In a fast-paced fight like this, one minute is more than enough for someone to get crippled.

Good thing Raven could counter this, with the energies he gathered in his palms, he placed his palms together and clapped.

*Pa!!*

The energy on his palms were fused with the sound, it clashed with Paul's demoralizing shout and neutralized it.

Paul's eyes constricted, this was the first time that his demoralizing shout failed him. Nevertheless, it wasn't like he was expecting it to fully work against Raven anyway so he managed to get over it in a split second and charged with Ellen once more.

Raven dodged another arrow from Anne, then he tangled himself with Paul and Ellen along the continuous harassment of Anne.

***

"Wow."

This is what Rupert could only say as he watched the fight between these people.

In fact, it wasn't only him. The rest of their classmates were also speechless from what they're witnessing.

Everyone previously thought that they could meddle with this fight but nope. The pace was frightening, their attacks are ferocious, like they were truly trying to kill each other. 

Even Victor could only smile wryly as he saw this. Aren't these kids a little too freakish? From a certain perspective, he already thought that they are nothing short of impressive because he did a background check each of them, but who knew that he was actually still underestimating them?

These kids are way too ahead of their league. He couldn't help but feel that they are the only people who deserved to be called as geniuses.

There are a couple of supporting ideas on this claim of his. First and foremost, their foundations. Victor had already checked their cultivation foundations on multiple occasions and he had nothing to say about it. All of their foundations are as solid as it could get. This is also could be said when it comes to their foundations when it comes to fighting. 

Victor could tell that this isn't the first time that they did something like this. He knew that someone should've trained them to become this splendid warriors.

Even if he gave the rest of his students some high-ranking gear and weapons, he's afraid that it won't be enough to close the gap between their capabilities. These kids don't even have any high quality gear nor have any fancy techniques and battle arts, even so, these kids reached a high level mastery of their weapons and battle arts, which is only possible through ceaseless training. 

The scariest of these kids would undoubtedly the son of Hawk, Raven.

Any one on their group could manage to take down half of his original class with their capabilities alone, but to see them struggling to land a proper hit on one person was not something one could see everyday.

***

The fight between the six continued to escalate. Move after move were exhausted, all of them are dripping with sweat and breathing heavily.

Compared to what was expected though, Raven actually have the upper hand. The girls aren't used to prolonged fights just yet and already close to fainting.

Ellen was the first one to get tagged, it was carelessness on her part. Fatigued caught up with her causing her to drop her guard for a second, Raven used this chance to grab her hand and leave an energy signature in it. 

With Ellen gone, the pressure lessened. Raven's next target was Anne.

Raven gritted his teeth and pushed his speed to the greatest to catch her off guard, Anne was already exhausted from all the running and calculating where she should shoot to get as much benefit against Raven. Raven caught up with Anne, the latter was started with his sudden appearance and tried to retaliate, but it's obvious that she isn't as inclined compared to Raven when it comes to close combat. Raven grabbed both of her arms to prevent her from shooting and left an energy signature on her left wrist before leaving her alone.

The next to be eliminated was Mark, compared to the rest of the team, he was the one who used up his energy the most. Raven was actually impressed that he managed to last this long, he could remember Mark sending one sword waves after another towards his direction. He thought that Mark must be training to increase his endurance, after all he was planning to become a Lair Hunter.

Raven caught Mark when he failed on conjuring his last attack. The sword wave that he sent dissipated like ash before it could even reach it, because it was severely weakened, Raven's bodily defences allows him to ignore this attack, allowing him to caught up and leave an energy signature with him.

Three down, two to go.

Raven knew that these two won't give up that easily. Their harsh training ingrained a deep stubbornness in their mentality, they won't allow him to have this win without giving it their all.

After a brief stare down, Raven ran towards the two and they did the same. Paul leaped and struck his spear down, Raven slid to the side only to see Luna trying to stab him. Borrowing her momentum, he grabbed the tip of her spear with his bare hands and twisted it to the side, causing her to stagger. Paul recovered and tried to slam his shield towards Raven only to get kicked. Luna tried punching Raven but the latter ducked and avoided her. Raven tried to grasping Luna's wrist but she hurriedly moved away.

Paul performed a thrust, Raven lifted his feet and slammed it on the his spear. Paul felt his whole body shook causing him to freeze in place, Raven used this chance to grab him but Luna tried to interfere with another thrust as well but Raven avoided with gracefully while also managing to tag Paul.

Without letting up, Raven leaped forward and landed behind Luna. She hurriedly tried to face him but Raven ducked and ran erratically around her, due to exhaustion this erratic movements caused her to stumble only to land on Raven's grip. Luna saw him smile and said:

"Tagged."