"Woah! Woah!" Lucas raised his hands slightly. "How about we talk like two civilized people and NOT try to kill each other, yeah?"
"Will you tell me how you acquired the knowledge about the future?" Kai arched his eyebrows in a questioning manner.
"As I said, I won't tell you anything until you tell me about yourself," Lucas decided to stick to his demands.
His decision wasn't wrong. In this world filled with war, two things are absolutely necessary.
If you have these two things, you must never lose them. If you don't have them, then you must strive to find them.
What are these two things, one might wonder? Well, they are Comrades and Information.
The more you have these two things in abundance, the more would be the chances of your survival.
So naturally, Lucas didn't want to give up what he knew without getting something first.
After all, he didn't know how much he should tell Kai. He didn't know the extent of knowledge Kai had about the future.
What if he accidentally reveals something he shouldn't?
In this world, against a person of Kai's caliber, that would be a blunder that Lucas just can't afford to make.
And it is, as they say, great minds think alike because Kai was also thinking the same thing as Lucas.
He didn't want to reveal what he knew first.
Since both of them were strategists by nature, they wanted to be in control of the situation as much as possible.
And in this case, the one who'll make the other reveal their cards first will be able to take charge of the situation and devise a plan of action accordingly.
However, since they both wanted control, they would get nowhere by just talking about it.
Or maybe they would? If they were to find a way to verbally outsmart each other, one of them would eventually end up losing and revealing their cards.
They both were definitely smart enough to pull that off and they both knew that.
However, that would take a lot of time, patience, mind games, psychological traps, and effort.
While Lucas was ready to do that, Kai wasn't. He wanted to resolve this matter as soon as possible so that he could move on to focus on the Vampire Attack that'll happen in two days.
And since the fastest way to resolve this was with their fists, Kai opted for it without any hesitation whatsoever.
He raised his greatsword slightly and shook his head in disapproval.
"No," he said. "I don't have enough mind cells left to waste on you."
"So your original plan was asking me to reveal my knowledge to you politely, and your alternate plan is to beat me up until I do?!" Lucas snapped.
"Well, yeah," Kai nodded. "Don't you remember, you also agreed that simple plans like beating someone until they surrender are the most effective ones?"
"It is a good plan but when it's not being used against me!" Lucas barked before trying to get Kai to reason with him.
"Listen, you should know what's going to happen on the seventh day of the King's Tournament, right?!" Lucas asked. "We should work together to stop that first, shouldn't we?"
"No," Kai shook his head again. "You have already created enough of a mess. Because of you, I'll have to change the course of my plan. My priority here is to get you under control before you do something that even I won't be able to undo. So, for the very last time, will you tell me how you got to know about this timeline's future?"
"Kai, listen to me–" Before Lucas could complete his sentence, Kai interjected.
"Yes or no?" He asked. "Answer with either yes or no."
"...No, but listen to me–" Lucas wasn't even done answering him before Kai willed mana into his legs and shot at him like an arrow.
Fwish—!
Kai covered the distance between him and the silver-haired boy in an instant.
"....!!" Lucas could only widen his eyes at Kai's display of speed when he appeared in front of him in the blink of an eye.
Step—! Swish—!!
Kai stepped in and swung his giant sword at Lucas. However, his greatsword passed right through Lucas' body as the spearman disappeared like a mirage.
He was talking to an illusion until now.
"Fuck this technique of yours!" Kai cursed out in frustration before fluttering his eyes across the terrace, in search of Lucas.
And he found him almost immediately.
Lucas was standing a few steps behind him at the edge of the terrace. In his hands, he was tightly gripping a Yumi Bow with an arrow knocked on its taught bowstring.
Particles of glowing azure mana were clustering at the tip of his arrow, causing a halo to appear around Lucas.
As soon as Kai's eyes met with him, Lucas let go of the bowstring and his arrow shot forward at the Wiseman.
Swish—!!
"Come on!" Kai yelled and raised the flat side of his giant sword as a shield to block the incoming arrow.
Kwish, Kwish, Kwish—!!
However, suddenly the glowing azure arrow looked as if it was multiplied into ten more arrows and raised down on Kai like nano missiles.
Thwosh, Thwosh, Thwosh—!!
Each time, an azure arrow collided with Kai's greatsword, it exploded and pushed him a few steps back.
Since he had a big mana pool to draw power from right now, Lucas was leniently putting a crushing amount of mana into his arrows.
Kai knew that since Lucas was well above his rank, he can't just try to overpower him as he did during the Flag game.
Well, that's not a problem for him. Since if he can't beat Lucas by overpowering him, he would do so with his technique.
After all the arrows rained down on him, Kai lowered his sword and looked at where Lucas had shot the arrow from.
Unfortunately for him, Lucas had already moved from that spot.
He was right above his head, descending on him with his spear poised forward to strike.
"....!" At the very last moment, Kai sensed a presence over his head and swung his huge sword in an arc over his head.
Cling—!!
Lucas managed to block Kai's blade with his spear, but the force of the slash flung him in the air until he landed a few meters to the side.
Without wasting a breath, Lucas gripped his spear tightly, engulfing it in scarlet red flames as he pointed it at Kai.
In response, Kai raised his greatsword once again and yelled, "Come!"
