Chapter 151. There’s More Than One
Rhys would have liked to keep the banter up for a little while longer, personally, but there was no time. The other high-Tier signatures were rapidly approaching. If he waited any longer, he’d be fighting not one, but three Tier 3 fighters. It looked like two at once was inevitable, but if he and Landon fought now, three on one should be preventable. So he charged, closing the gap between him and Landon as fast as possible.
Landon was huge. Enormous. Eight-foot-nothing and at least six hundred pounds of pure muscle. He didn’t carry a weapon. It was quite transparently obvious that he didn’t need to. He saw Rhys coming and didn’t budge, except to smile.
Oh, fuck.
Rhys’s sword, Trash Intent and all, struck the man in the shoulder and bounced off. The blade didn’t so much as scratch the man’s skin, not even the Intent part. Rhys stumbled backward, shocked. No one had ever shrugged off Trash Intent like that. Just tanked the hit like it was nothing.
Landon was a Tier 3, just like him, but it didn’t feel like they were the same tier. Not the way Landon could totally ignore his hits.
Rhys whirled his blade and stepped back, eyes narrowing. He sheathed the sword and bared his hands, flexing his fingers. Looked like pretending to be a swordsman was over. It was time to get dirty.
“Giving up?” Landon mocked him.
“Not at all. I’m just getting started.”
“Wonderful. Because I haven’t started yet either.”
Rhys bit back the urge to shout no shit, Sherlock; Landon hadn’t moved at all yet. Still, it seemed like a waste of effort and breath, especially when the man was clearly winding up for a strike. Rhys jumped back, throwing his mana toward Blow Mitigation for the incoming hit. This was going to be a big one.
He realized, fractions of a second later as he was flying backward through the air, that he had under- and overestimated several things.
One, he’d thought Landon was strong and big, but that was it. That was wrong. There was no ‘it’ about being strong and big. Landon was strong and big, and holy fuck, was he in trouble.