บท 37: Angus versus Hawley
As for the two opponents who were facing each other in the arena ground –
Firstly, talking about Hawley.
He came from a rather famous family named Quincey, so everyone was more or less aware of him. The Quincey clan consisted of a large number of members belonging to the Flame race and some small branches belonging to the Torch race. The Quincey family widely announced that Hawley belonged to the Flame race, but in fact, the proportion of Hawley's gene lay somewhere around ninety to ninety-five percent of Flame, and five to ten percent of Torch.
If only assessing the spreading range and speed of the flame in fighting, usually Flame was higher than Torch by one level, and less than Blaze one level.
Class K Hudson was also a Flame, the same race as Hawley.
The situation was contrary for the person standing opposite Hawley, Class Leader K Angus.
All the information about Angus Farley was limited at: He came from an ordinary family in a remote area, setting the record of first time transformation at the age of ten. Apart from that, there was no information about his race or genome. Ask Eugene? Eugene did not answer. Secretly inquire Class K students? They all said that they did not know. In addition to that, Angus had not performed many fighting skills in the previous rounds, so in the end what people could do was relying on his appearance to speculate whether he belonged to the Rain or Stream race.
In theory, both Rain and Stream of Water style were supposed to be inferior when facing with Flame of Fire style. So Angus seemed to be in the weaker position. But through his performance in the previous round, people did not dare to despise this pale-looking ordinary boy any more.
Hawley stood opposite Angus, smiled and started the conversation: "Can't believe that finally I have a chance to face you here."
To those who was polite to him, Angus always used polite attitude in response. He also smiled, his face showing an agreement expression with a nod to Hawley.
Hawley said, "Hope that today I can make you show full of your strength."
The smile on Angus face got deepened: "This is up to you."
Recalling that in the eighth match of team competition category in the Military course, Angus and Hawley had a very "flashing" fight. It was also the day that the news Angus' first time of transformation at the age of ten had spread throughout Base Five.
After that, the curriculum came to the phase of teaching students controlling internal power. Students were required to use internal power in the team battles. From then until the end of the course, Angus and Hawley had a few more confrontations in the team battles. However, because it was team battles, those confrontations involved other teammates rather than a one-on-one fight. Therefore, it could be said that today's semi-final was their second official confrontation.
As two Class Leaders of two classes from the same base, Angus and Hawley understood each other better than the other opponents. Hawley no longer despised Angus as he used to in the first few months of admission. Or even said, he admired Angus, he often silently observed and learned the way Angus lead Class K and then applied to his class. On the contrary, Angus also appreciated the attitude of self-discipline and self-learning of Hawley.
"Fire ball!"
"Water sphere!"
"Great fire ball!"
"Water wall!"
Without any sign of warning, the two teenagers quickly performed two skills in succession. The two skill "Fire Ball" and "Great Fire Ball" were from Hawley, and "Water Sphere" and "Water Wall" were from Angus.
Water and fire collided, creating a significantly large flow of pressure throughout the arena. However, these were just skills opening the fight, in addition to helping to uplift the atmosphere of the match, they did not created any great dangers.
As soon as the smoke and dust from those moves cleared, the two teenagers rushed to a duel fight. The limb movements of the two were very good, constantly attacked the opponent and dodged opponent's attacks.
After about five minutes of close combat, Hawley realized that he was gradually at a disadvantage. Because Angus' speed was faster than him, Angus could both flexibly dodging the attack and quickly giving out a counterattack, he basically could not keep up with Angus. The longer he maintained close combat, the more he was at a disadvantage, so he tried to find a time to break away from Angus.
"Fire whip!"
Hawley slammed his right hand to the ground. From the ground, a fire whip burst, flying towards Angus. Angus quickly backed away, then jumped to the left. The whip immediately turned to the left to approach Angus, Angus then jumped to the right. Just like that, Angus only focused on dodging the fire whip of Hawley and did not make any counter.
After nearly three minutes of trying to capture Angus but not success, Hawley shouted: "Angus Farley! You only know to dodge?"
Angus kept on dodging the fire whip while smiled in response, "And you, you only know this skill?"
Hawley seemed to get angry. He suddenly took back the fire whip. About six meters from Angus, Hawley adjusted his breathing and condensed his internal power.
About three seconds later, he shouted, "Multi fire whips!"
A flash of surprise appeared in Angus' eyes. His nature was careful, of course he would not underestimate his opponent no matter who was that one. Soon he prepared in his mind that Hawley was still hiding a wild card. It was just... He didn't expect that Hawley would show this wild card so soon like this.
From the basic skill "Fire Whip", it could be developed into two intermediate skills which were "Multi Fire Whips" and "Great Fire Whip", then from those two, it could be developed to a high level skill which was "Multi Great Fire Whips". The names were a little different, but all in all were fire whips, differing only in size and quantity.
Currently, this "Multi Fire Whips" skill could be seen as Hawley's "trump card". This was the highest skill that he could perform at this point of time. During the last month at the training base, he had spent a lot, a lot of time practicing this skill.
Hawley slammed his hand to the ground once more time, then from the ground, five whips of fire bursted out and rushed towards Angus like five aggressive fire dragons.
At the age of twenty, Hawley made people surprised when he could be able to successfully perform an intermediate-level skill that required a skillful control and consumed large amount of internal power like Multi Fire Whips. Without the comparison with two heavy contenders Drake and Cheryl, he could be qualified as a rare talent of the Flame race.
As stated earlier, Pacific's hierarchy of skills into "Basic", "Intermediate", "Advanced/ High level" did not mean that the higher level skill would be more powerful, but just meant that it was harder to perform. As for the range and attacking or defensive power of the skill, those depended on the racial and natural characteristics of each individual. So, although Multi Fire Whips was an intermediate skill, the quality and quantity of fire whips in this technique had a great impact on its attacking power. Most of the members of the Quincey clan who were elite students from the age of twenty-one to twenty-five years old could only perform the Multi Fire Whips with two or three fire whips. However, Hawley at twenty could perform five fire whips at the same time. By this skill, he had completely proved to everyone that his presence in this round was not due to fortune!
Hawley tried to control the five fire whips towards Angus. He knew that Angus' speed was faster than that of Fire dragons in general, so he needed to use a lot of fire whips to attack at the same time, creating the opportunity to approach and catch Angus. However, this skill consumed a lot of internal power, which would make him quickly exhausted.
But Hawley did not care.
He had known Angus for not a day or two. He had a vague feeling that Angus was really stronger than him. Therefore, the kind of step-by-step fighting to probe the opponent was not appropriate in this situation. Instead, he wanted to put all of his strength into this move, to see if he could really overcome Angus.
Hawley's calculation seemed to work, because Angus was having a hard time dodging five fire whips. Finally, Hawley's effort made sense when one of the fire whips approached and circled the Angus.
"Water wall!"
By the time the whip of fire was about to tighten, Angus promptly broke it with a wall of water.
But when the water receded, Angus discovered that Hawley had controlled the remaining four whips of fire into a square to surround him.
"Water wall!"
The audience winced in confusion.
According to the current situation, what Angus needed was a large amount of water to break Hawley's siege. If he used "Water Wall", he would need twice the amount of water he had used before. But looked at what he just did, the current water wall was a bit small, smaller than the previous water wall.
This boy came to his limit?
Right now, on the arena ground, Angus touched the water wall that he had just created. Two seconds later, he took a breath, releasing a powerful internal force: "Water rampart!"
The wall of water in Angus' hand suddenly exploded, a tremendous amount of water rushed out, just like a flood sweeping across the entire arena ground.
Now everyone understood the intention of the blue-hair boy. He wanted to use the Water Wall skill as a "conductor" to perform the high-level skill Water Rampart!
Very smart! Very excellent as well!
Among the three natural elements of the Dragon races, Water was an element with a relatively special mode of deployment compared to the other two elements.
The same skill, but if it was deployed in a desert environment with little water vapor in the air, its power was not as powerful as to be deployed in environments with high humidity such as the tropics. Especially if there was a water source such as rivers, lakes, streams, or falls nearby, the power of the skill was even more powerful.
Water wildly burst out in the area ground, extinguishing all the fire whips of Hawley. It even spilled toward Hawley, making him almost swept away. Having spent so much internal power on the recent Multi Fire Whips skill, Hawley was now exhausted. He let the water sweep him away, and lay on his back on the ground.
Seeing Angus leisurely approach him with his usual calm face, Hawley suddenly laughed.
"You win." Hawley said freely.
Angus did not answer, just silently looked at him.
Hawley was not angry either. He had gotten used to Angus' usual calm expression since they were at the training base. But the moment he tried to crawl up, a hand suddenly reached out before his eyes.
Hawley smiled. He grabbed that hand, and got pulled up by Angus.
In the moment of pulling Hawley up, Angus suddenly spoke up: "Do you know where you're wrong?"
A question came unexpectedly, making Hawley stunned a bit. He frowned and thought seriously, then it seemed like he was unable to find out the answer, he looked at Angus with a quite doubtful face.
Angus let go of Hawley's hand, indicating: "When the four fire whips have surrounded me, you should attack immediately. From the time I performed "Water Wall" to "Water Rampart", it took about three seconds. In those three seconds, if you tightened the fire whips immediately, and if your opponent was not me, you would win. But you kept standing and watching like that, even if your opponent cannot perform Water Rampart, he or she could still use Water Wall to eliminate one fire whip and get a chance to escape."
Hawley frowned. It was true at that time he was just standing still waiting for Angus to counterattack. When the four fire whips successfully surrounded Angus, he thought that there was no way for Angus to dodge, so Angus must perform a counterattack. Then if Angus had a stronger skill, Angus would win, otherwise, he would win. It was probably because he always thought that Angus was stronger than him, he unconsciously let Angus' counterattack decide the result of the match, let that skill decide the result of the match.
Hawley looked straight at Angus, then he slightly bowed his head: "Thank you."
He knew Angus said those words to remind him that even if he was facing an opponent stronger than himself, he should try his best, take all chances to fight, and never give up.
"The winner is: Angus Farley, from Class K, Base Five."
The announcement sounded out, accompanied by applause spreading throughout the arena.
It could be seen that the second semi-final didn't had such sensational situation as the appearance of legendary skill from Cheryl in team battles, or specialized skill from Drake in the recent match. However, it was still exciting enough for everyone when both Angus and Hawley showed their gift.
As for Angus, there was no doubt that being able to perform a high-level skill at twenty was another powerful evidence to prove his strength, making people all convinced before this performance.
***
Individuals who won the Semifinals each would receive twelve points, losers got no points.
Update the scores of the Leaders after the Semifinals (The points in the brackets are in order: Score before the Semifinals + Semifinals score = Current total score):
#1. Class K Leader - Angus Farley (66 + 12 = 78).
#2. Class F Leader - Drake Atticus (61 + 12 = 73).
#3. Class A Leader - Cheryl Maximus (63 + 0 = 63).
#4. Class I Leader - Hawley Quincey (48 + 0 = 48).
#5. Class C Leader - Kristena Ellis (36 + 0 = 36).
#6. Class B Leader - Patrick Kang (27 + 0 = 27).
#7. Class D Leader - Stella Wagner (24 + 0 = 24).
#8. Class H Leader - James Petrov (21 + 0 = 21).
#9. Class E Leader - Samuel Meyer (12 + 0 = 12).
#10. Class G Leader - Martin Blanc (10 + 0 = 10).
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