Chapter 184: Lynx Silent Anger
Chapter 184: Lynx Silent Anger
She dropped her weight to the balls of her feet, her hands forming a sharp needle point with wind humming at fingertips.
Gale Point!
She drove her fingers straight into the center of James’s core, right where his mana gathers. A concentrated, razor sharp needle of compressed air drove directly through his physical defenses, tearing into his mana circuits and internal organs.
James’s eyes bulged in absolute shock. He froze mid air, a spurt of blood flying from his mouth, before crashing face first onto the hard stone floor, completely unconscious, body twitching.
"MATCH ELEVEN VICTOR: LIRA VERNE FROM AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY!"
The stadium erupted into loud cheers. Down on the floor, Lynx smiled as Lira walked back, stepping up to her to wrap an arm around her small waist, drawing her lush body against his side. "Clean work," he murmured softly into her ear, making her blush deeply and hide face in his chest.
The mood in the stadium shifted instantly as the big floating screen flickered for the next fight.
MATCH TWELVE: KIRA LEWIS - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY VS. DRAVEN - VOID BLESSED ACADEMY
Kira Lewis stepped up to the edge of the stage. Her deep orange eyes burned with fierce intensity, her voluptuous figure standing tall as her deep blue uniform stretched across her heavy chest and wide hips and big round ass.
Her thighs were thick and toned. She cracked her knuckles, her A Rank Fire affinity flaring around her hands in roaring red flames that licked up her arms.
Across the ring, a tall, shadowy Year 4 student from Void Blessed Academy named Draven stepped onto the stone floor.
He wore a dark void uniform, and on his right index finger, a jet black obsidian ring pulsed with a faint, ominous crimson light that made the air feel heavier.
"Be careful, Kira!" Ava called out from where she was in the Aether waiting area, her cold blue eyes fixed on Draven’s ring. "He’s wearing the cheat ring. Don’t trade fists!"
Kira didn’t hesitate. The moment the match began, she activated her blessing, Axus Flame. Roaring red wings of pure fire erupted from her back, lifting her voluptuous body into the air as she launched a torrential rain of fireballs down onto Draven from above.
The heat made front row spectators sweat.
"Begone, you void trash!" Kira shouted, sending wave after wave of scorching heat down to melt the stone stage. Fireballs exploded on stone, turning floor to molten orange spots.
Draven one of the top 5 Void Blessed Academy Students didn’t dodge. He raised his hand, and the obsidian ring on his finger flared with a sickening, dark energy.
His baseline stats, already extremely high at a massive baseline, were instantly multiplied four times by the ring’s external mana stream. His body swelled with dark purple aura.
BOOM!
A terrifying, dark purple energy shield erupted around Draven, completely swallowing Kira’s firestorm without taking a single scratch. The fire died against the shield.
In a fraction of a millisecond, Draven vanished from the ground. His speed was so absurdly boosted by the ring that he appeared directly in the air above Kira before she could even react, his dark aura roaring.
"Too weak, little girl," Draven growled, his face twisted into a vicious sneer.
He brought a heavy, dark infused fist crashing down directly onto Kira’s shoulder.
BANG!
Kira’s fire wings shattered instantly under the four fold physical force. She let out a sharp cry of pain as her body was blasted straight down, slamming violently into the stone arena floor. Stone shattered in every direction as a deep crater opened beneath her, dust cloud rising.
"Kira!" Lira screamed from the Aether enclosure.
Kira fought back with terrifying bravery. For nearly twenty brutal minutes, she refused to stay down.
Blood dripped down her face, her uniform torn and scorched showing skin, but she repeatedly reignited her flames, using high speed aerial feints and close range fire bursts to burn Draven’s skin.
She bloodied him, tearing through his dark uniform and forcing him to bleed heavily from his arms and chest, her fire burning his eyebrows off.
Draven bled but his ring kept his body boosted. He took her burns and kept hitting. He punched her ribs and cracked two ribs. He kicked her thigh and left deep bruise. Kira coughed blood but kept throwing scorching fire point blank into his face.
But the sheer, unnatural stat gap from the obsidian ring was too brutal. Draven’s baseline physical output was multiplied to an insane baseline times four.
No matter how much damage Kira inflicted, Draven’s boosted speed and defense allowed him to overpower her, to tank fire that would have killed normal student.
With a final, merciless dark strike to her stomach, Draven blasted Kira across the stage. She crashed near the edge of the ring, lying drenched in her own blood, her mana pool completely depleted, fire wings gone.
"MATCH TWELVE VICTOR: DRAVEN FROM VOID BLESSED ACADEMY!"
Lynx was at the edge of the ring before the referee even finished calling the match. In a flash of motion, he lifted Kira gently into his arms, ignoring her bloody state as he held her close against his chest. Her big bust pressed against him, blood staining his dark uniform shirt.
Kira coughed softly, her weak hand gripping his collar, tears mixing with the blood on her cheeks. "Lynx... I couldn’t... his strength was too high... I tried..."
"Hush," Lynx said, his voice terrifyingly calm. His heterochromatic eyes turned completely pitch dark, a abyss of absolute void.
He tried, he didn’t release a single drop of his aura, knowing it would crush the hearts of every regular student in the stadium, but the cold, murderous intent locked deep within his soul froze the air around him. "You did amazing, Kira. You bloodied him. Rest now. I’ve got you."
He handed Kira over to the panicked healers, then turned his gaze slowly back toward the stage. His face was ice.
The big screen flickered overhead.
MATCH THIRTEEN: LYNX AZARION - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY VS. JULIAN FROSTBORNE - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY
The stadium fell into a dead silence as Julian Frostborne stepped up onto the stone platform.
Julian drew himself up to his full six foot three height, his ice blue eyes glowing with intense Fire and Ice Affinity. He held his head high, trying to exude the regal, undefeated presence of the King of Aether Academy. His uniform was clean, his hair perfect.
Lynx walked up the stone steps slowly, his dark trousers shifting smoothly, his hands resting casually in his pockets. He stood at six foot two, yet as he faced Julian, his passive, transcendent presence completely dwarfed Julian’s posture.
Julian locked eyes with Lynx, forcing his voice to sound strong and commanding for crowd.
"You think winning a few matches makes you special, Lynx? When we get back to Aether Blessed Academy in the Aether Empire, I am still the undisputed King of the Academy. You are just a Year 2 upstart who doesn’t know his place! You just have good looks and luck!"
Lynx stared at Julian with an expression of mild, complete boredom, like looking at a fly.
"Are you done talking?" Lynx asked softly.
Julian’s face flushed with pure rage. "I’ll freeze your jaw shut!"
Julian slammed his hands together. A massive, dual elemental storm of roaring flames and absolute zero ice erupted from his body, surging across the stage in a terrifying tidal wave aimed straight at Lynx’s face, half red half blue, stone cracking under it.
Lynx didn’t dodge. He didn’t raise a shield. He didn’t even take his hands out of his pockets.
He simply took a single step forward and activated a tiny fraction of his Fire and Ice Affinities. His comprehension was so deep even for that rank, that Julian’s elements recognized him as master.
The moment Julian’s roaring fire and freezing ice reached within three inches of Lynx’s body, the elements instantly neutralized. The flames snuffed out like a tiny candle, and the ice crumbled into harmless white powder, vanishing into thin air with a soft hiss.
Julian’s eyes bulged in sheer horror. "W-What?! How did you... my affinities..."
Before Julian could finish his sentence, Lynx appeared directly in front of him. His speed was so far beyond human comprehension that space itself didn’t even register his movement. Whisper Step erased sound.
Lynx casually reached out a single hand, grabbing Julian by the front of his shiny uniform collar.
"King of the Academy?" Lynx whispered, his voice vibrating directly inside Julian’s skull like a dark bell. "You’re just a child playing with toys."
Lynx didn’t even use a named ability. He simply lifted Julian’s six foot three frame into the air with one hand and slammed him brutally face first into the stone floor.
CRACK!
The stone stage shattered instantly beneath Julian’s face. Julian let out a muffled, agonizing scream as his nose broke flat and teeth flew from his mouth, blood spraying across broken stone.
Lynx didn’t stop there. He raised his foot and pressed his boot lightly onto the back of Julian’s neck, pinning the self proclaimed king to the dirt like an insect.
Julian writhed and thrashed desperately, channeling all his Fire and Ice Affinity to escape, but Lynx’s boot felt like a ten ton mountain resting on his spine, gravity affinity pressing down without anyone knowing. To them it was just his boot crushing him with raw strength.
Lynx leaned down slightly, looking into Julian’s bloody, terrified eye pressed against the shattered rock.
"Listen to me carefully, Julian," Lynx said, his voice cold and devoid of any emotion. "When we go back to Aether Academy... if you or your goons ever look at my women again, I won’t just break your face. I will erase you from the empire."
Lynx lifted his boot and gave a casual, disrespecting kick to Julian’s side, sending the unconscious, bloody body of the ’King’ sliding thirty feet off the stage, coming to a stop directly at the feet of his terrified remaining escort, Mars.
The match had taken under three seconds.
The entire two hundred thousands crowd stood paralyzed in utter shock. No cheers. Just silence and broken stone.
The referee’s jaw hung open, his hands shaking as he raised his arm toward the stage.
"MATCH THIRTEEN VICTOR: LYNX AZARION FROM AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY!"
Lynx turned around without looking back at Julian’s bloody body, he was very angry, but he would take them out on these Void trashs.
His hands slipping casually back into his trousers pockets as he walked down the steps toward his girls, Lira and Ava already running to him.
——-
The fourth and fifth days of the grand tournament passed under a heavy, blood scented haze that never left the arena. Even at night the stone smelled like dried blood. The wind carried the stink of burned flesh and cracked rock.
Across the arena, the Void Blessed Academy continued its brutal, calculated slaughter. Every time their students stepped onto the stone, their obsidian rings glowed red and their bodies swelled with dark energy. They did not fight to win clean. They fought to cripple.
In the higer spectator stands, Isabel, Amira, Eira, and Emily watched in grim silence. Emily clutched Isabel’s arm, her face pale as another student was carried out on a bloody stretcher, his leg bent wrong.
"They aren’t just trying to win," Amira said quietly, her sharp eyes tracking the dark uniformed Void fighters below on the bench, all laughing with rings glowing.
"They are trying to cripple every other academy before the finals even begin. Look at their bench, they are celebrating broken bones."
Down in the Aether enclosure, Lynx stood near the stone railing. His heterochromatic eyes, one piercing blue, one clear silver, were cold as ice, no light in them.
Beside him, Ophelia Dragwyn adjusted her uniform belt. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders, framing her narrow waist, sweeping hips, and long legs.
Her voluptuous frame was tense, her hands clenching into tight fists. Her heavy bust rose and fell fast as she breathed.
"Your opponent is wearing one of the obsidian rings, Ophelia," Lynx said, his voice low and smooth, not loud enough for Void to hear. "His base physical output is already high, around seventy thousand. With that ring active, his physical stats are multiplied by four. Do not play with him. Give him everything from first second."
Ophelia looked up into Lynx’s handsome face, her dark eyes flashing with quiet determination. She held an A Rank Earth Affinity, and her blessing, Gaia’s Aegis, gave her immense physical durability and zero mana earth manipulation on natural ground.
Her thighs were thick and her ass big and round, her uniform tight around curves.
"I won’t lose, Lynx," Ophelia whispered, her voice steady even though her hands shook a little. "I saw what they did to Kira. I saw what they did to Layla and Nadia. I’m going to make him bleed. I swear."
Lynx put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. "I know you will. Just stay on ground. Your earth is strongest when your feet touch stone."
The main arena horn blasted across the stadium, shaking dust off walls. The floating screen overhead flickered into bright lights that burned in the grey sky.
MATCH FOURTEEN: OPHELIA DRAGWYN - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY VS. VALEN - VOID BLESSED ACADEMY
The commentators shouted. The spectator roared, In thos phase, any match between Aether Blessed Academy and Void Blessed Academy, was bloody.