The first 3 matches were over, and it was Ning's turn to fight. He walked away, drowning in the cheers of his peers who were all still in the match.
As he walked out, he saw another person walk out with him, a girl from the Peace World Academy. She had frisky hair and a pair of braids that fell down her chest. She was slightly taller than Ning, but quite thin.
And the aura that came from her, was definitely the Low Essence Soul rank. She was one step stronger than Ning when it came to Essence ranking.
Ning walked onto the side of the arena where he stood and looked toward the girl as he waited for the battle to begin. He took a deep breath, conditioning himself for the battle as he remembered what his teacher had told him just minutes ago.
Low Essence Soul rank was an improvement to one's rank certainly. Even ignoring the Essence soul itself, a person's physical capabilities, all 6 senses, and the amount of Essence in one's core all improved by a vast amount when one reached the Low Essence Soul.
And the Essence Soul itself made them a monster in its own right.
"Begin!"
The fight began before Ning could collect all of his thoughts.
He pulled the sword out with the sheath still in it. He was using the Wind sheath as a decoy for as long as he could so that his opponent didn't realize that he had an Earth sword hidden inside of it.
The girl started with a simple fireball to test Ning out. She didn't even use any conduits when she threw it out.
Ning dodged the attack, sending a wind attack of his own at the girl. 'She didn't touch her weapons, could it be that she had a Fire Essence Core?' he wondered. 'No, she might be wearing a Fire armor underneath. I can't scratch out that possibility yet."
Ning wondered what his approach should be in this fight. Should he stay back and dish out attacks? But the girl was bound to have a stronger Essence than him. He might be closer in physical strength, but then getting in close combat against someone who had an Essence Soul didn't feel right.
The girl naturally dodged Ning's wind blade, rather easily as well. Then, she dashed forward coming into close combat herself, letting Ning no choice but to fight.
She pulled out a sword from her hip, a light sword, and struck at him. Ning used his own sword, with the shield to stop the attack.
The girl kicked at his stomach, which Ning took, and then grabbed her leg while he was at it. He was about to throw her away when the girl jumped, spinning with her caught foot as the axis and kicked Ning in the head.
Ning barely dodged the leg by ducking in time, but suddenly something hit him from the corner of his vision.
He was kicked away to the edge of the stage, barely managing to keep himself from getting kicked out. He quickly got up and saw the girl.
Her leg hadn't touched him, but rather her Essence soul and come out and kicked him. It was just receding back into her body, feet that was made up of fire, and almost looked like a human foot that had met up with a bird's talons.
She jumped back at him, her light sword ready to stab. Ning parried the sword easily and stabbed back himself.
The girl suddenly burst into flames, but Ning's sword still made contact as he hit her right in the stomach.
At the same time, air gathered around him and moved in a circle so that the fire that came out of her didn't touch him too much.
Ning jumped away and collected himself, while the girl looked in his direction in anger. Two brilliant red wings appeared from her back, each of which spread nearly 5 meters away from her back.
The wings were many times larger than what a normal wing was supposed to be like, but Ning understood what was going on.
That was another property of an Essence Soul. Essence souls were usually many times larger than their physical bodies. As the Essence rank grew, their soul's size grew as well.
As such, one had control over how large one could make it. The only trouble was that the smaller the soul was, the more compact it was and had more offensive and defensive physical capabilities.
However, when it came to Defensive Essence capabilities, it was still better if the soul was small, considering you only had yourself to defend. However, when it came to Offensive Essence power, an Essence Soul had no problem in any form.
In fact, sometimes larger sizes even gave greater opportunities as it would hit a lot of things at once if that was what they were planning.
Ning looked at the fiery wing of the girl and was scared for a moment. He wasn't sure what she was going to do.
It was going to be a Fire skill for sure, as the Essence soul itself was of Fire Element, which took after the Essence core of a person.
The girl flapped her flaming wings just once and many fiery feathers fell in Ning's direction swiftly.
Ning couldn't play around right now. He used his Earth sword and suddenly created a massive rock in front of him that took all the damage.
He waited for a while for the explosions to end while constantly keeping track of where the girl was. When he sensed her move to the other side, he would move as well.
He circled around the massive rock, using it as a defense from anything the girl attacked. It went on for a dozen or so seconds before the girl realized what was happening.
Her wings came out once again and she flapped, suddenly taking to the air where she was high above the rock.
Ning look above with an absolute shock and frowned. What should he do now?
