After getting equipment from his room, Uru made his own way to the dueling ground. When he arrived, however, he was baffled to find a huge crowd waiting for him.
“Wh-Why are all these people here?” he asked.
“Ah, yes—sorry about that!” Zelos said. “A lot of residents recognized me from last time, when I dealt with that whole faerie business. They got curious about what we were up to, and, well...”
“Still—this many?”
Villagers Uru knew well lined the field. Small villages like Hasam had little in the way of entertainment. Naturally, the neighbors had overheard all the commotion that morning. Rumors spread like wildfire in the country, and it had taken no time at all for everyone to gather, eager to see what happened next. They’d even brought food.
“Well, if it ain’t li’l mister Uru! So you’re really ’boutta duel, eh? Go get ’em, lad!”
“Now, look ’ere, li’l Uru... Don’t you think it’s a bit mean to try takin’ someone else’s girl? I know it can be hard for you youngsters to control your emotions, but granny ’ere doesn’t think that’s very nice of you...”
“Yui’s a real beauty, ain’t she, Uru? I can see why you’d fall for ’er! If only I was ten years younger, I’d be... Gah hah hah!”
“What was that, dear? Come over ’ere—sounds like someone needs an earful!”
“Ah, I remember those days...”
“Makin’ the most of their youth, ain’t they?”
Uru had intended it to be a serious affair, but at some point, his duel had basically become a public humiliation ritual.
“You’re doing this to throw me off, aren’t you?! You coward!” he spat at Ado.
“How is this my fault?!” Ado cried. “You’re the one who spent the morning shouting loud enough for the whole village to hear! You don’t get to pin this on me!”
“Ahem—attention, please!” Zelos said. “How about we get this duel on the road? I’ll be your referee for today. Any objections?”
“Hang on—why’d you make yourself the ref, Zelos?” Ado asked. “Whatever... I guess it’s fine.”
“I have a lot of objections, but...I’ll allow it,” Uru said.
With no objection from the others, he raised his megaphone to his mouth and grinned. He was clearly having fun acting as both referee and emcee. He’d even changed into his Black Destroyer outfit.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen! Looks like both these sacks of shit are raring to go. One final check to make sure they’re ready, then how about we get ’em into position? What do you say, folks—ready for some mage-on-mage action?”
The crowd erupted in a cheer.
“That’s how you describe us? Prick...” Ado muttered.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have let him referee,” Uru said.
The villagers were fired up, making for quite the rowdy crowd around the two duelists. And it seemed like there’d be a flood of booing if the match ended in a single attack.
The spectators were obviously hoping for an intense battle, which only made things more awkward for the duelists.
By this point, Shakti, Lisa, and even Yui, the duel’s “prize,” were surprised by how much Zelos was hamming this up.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, Zelos? You’ve even changed your outfit,” Lisa noted.
“I think he just likes stirring up chaos,” Shakti said. “He probably lives for this kind of drama.”
“Hmm... But like, I’d think Toshi would be the same, though. If he wasn’t one of the contestants, I mean,” Yui said. “I get the feeling those two are cut from the same cloth.”
Maybe one stalker had been drawn to another, and one destruction-loving Sage to another.
“Right, then—let’s go over the rules!” Zelos said.
“Wait, wait, wait! ‘Rules’? Aren’t we just gonna fight?” Ado replied.
“Why do you get to decide how we fight?” Uru said. “I never agreed to that!”
“Mmm... Are you two sure that’s how you want to play things? Everything needs rules, my dear contestants! You thought this duel would be a simple slugfest? Nonsense! If you two just fought, what chance would widdle Uru stand against Addy-Addy? It’d be completely one-sided, and who wants to watch that?”
“Don’t call me ‘Addy-Addy’!”
“I don’t care what’s entertaining! This is a duel, not a show! And why are you calling me ‘widdle’?!”
“Hmph... Neither of you gets it. See, this is why I have to treat you like children.”
The duelists were dissatisfied, but Zelos was right: Duels had rules. Typically, duels between knights or nobles were fought with swords, with both contestants’ honor on the line. Spells and magic tools were usually prohibited, except in rare cases where it was permitted to level the playing field between two obviously mismatched duelists.
“Uru, I’ll be frank: You’ve got no chance of beating Ado,” Zelos said. “The difference between you is as vast as the distance between heaven and earth. One basic Fire spell and you’re charcoal—that’s how staggering the disparity is. Trying to strategize would be meaningless, and charging head-on is a death sentence. You’d be utterly helpless against his firepower. Even if he did his very best to hold back, you’d still wind up bedridden from injuries. There’s no getting around that.”
“What kind of nonsense—”
“Sorry to tell you, but it’s not nonsense. It’s a fact. You’re the one who made the stupid decision to challenge such a high-level mage to a duel. I can envision how embarrassing a no-holds-barred fight would be for you—an instantaneous loss, with a huge crowd watching. Plus, wouldn’t that be such a boring end to all this?”
“This madman...” both duelists muttered.
“Oh, and I’m not about to listen to you prattle on about wanting to test his strength yourself,” Zelos continued. “Ado isn’t just a mage—he’s an obscenely powerful mage. You were never going to stand a chance against him in a contest of magic.”
Uru had graduated from the Istol Academy of Magic and was stronger than your average mage. He had a reasonable deal of combat experience too, so he was confident he could wallop almost anyone in a fight.
But today, he was far outclassed.
The gap between a Sage and a regular high-ranking mage was simply overwhelming, and that was before you factored in the bonus each would get from their respective job skill.
Case in point, Ado was fully intending to end the duel with a single hit.
It wasn’t fair by any measure.
“Stop fooling around!” Uru shouted. “If he were such a powerful mage, he’d be famous. I’ve had enough of your cheap attempts to trick me!”
“I know you should never say a match is decided before it’s even happened, but some odds are just too great to overcome,” Zelos said. “Why are you so confident you can win? It isn’t like you’ve studied every person in the world, is it? There’ll be plenty of people out there stronger than you. If I were to face you, for example, you’d be dead in an instant. Without a handicap, this won’t even be a contest. You’re a mage, aren’t you? Use your head. Put your emotions aside for a moment.”
“Fine—for the sake of argument, let’s say a mage like that does exist,” Uru said. “Even so, they wouldn’t be traveling in broad daylight, would they? Someone that strong would almost certainly be working for the state, and they wouldn’t be as young as him!”
“What makes you so confident he can’t be powerful at his age? What do you even know about us? Nothing—am I right? You don’t even know where Yui grew up, do you?”
Silence.
Zelos was right: Uru didn’t know the first thing about Ado and his companions, let alone the woman he loved. But that ignorance had only fueled his frustration, which had festered into jealousy, and then anger, and then his ill-informed decision to challenge Ado to a duel.
“And so, here are the rules,” Zelos continued in the same measured, indifferent tone. “Uru will be permitted to use magic items and potions to increase the potency of his magic. Meanwhile, Ado must fight with nothing but an iron sword—he will be prohibited from using any magic. Oh—and this isn’t up for debate. Duels have to be fair. I don’t want anyone having grounds to complain about the outcome later.”
That, of course, was a massive lie.
It was true that if Ado and Uru had to duel, Zelos thought it’d be best if they had a fair fight that both would be satisfied with. But Zelos was mostly motivated by something far simpler: He just didn’t want this to be boring. He had no moral high ground here at all.
“Anyway, Uru, if you’re going to use magic tools, prepare them now,” Zelos said.
“And I’m only allowed to use a sword, right?” Ado confirmed.
“Hmm. I still feel like we might need a bigger handicap, actually... Ah! Of course! Rock Pillar!”
Zelos’s spell was earth magic that was usually used to impale large monsters. It created stone pillars beneath its target, which then plunged up into their bellies.
As Zelos cast the spell, two huge pillars formed on the field, stretching into the sky.
“Each of you must protect your pillar while destroying your opponent’s. That’s the win condition. You’ve got until the spell’s effect runs out and the pillars disappear to do so. You’re allowed to attack and disrupt your opponent, but you’re not allowed to kill them. You can set traps if you’d like. The duel will begin when you’re both standing by your pillars and you’ve finished preparing. You get all that?”
“So we try to knock their pillar down, and we’re allowed to attack them or disrupt them? Simple enough,” Ado said.
“I’m not happy about all of this, but fine,” Uru said. “I still don’t believe you about how strong he is, but if you insist that these rules will make it a fair contest, I’ll allow it.”
“Oh—just to be clear, while Ado can’t use any magic during the duel, he can use it during the preparation phase to set traps. Absolutely no lethal traps, though, Ado—and none based on any crazy-powerful magic. Before you start preparing, I’ll create a wall between you two so you can’t see what the other’s doing.”
“You’re just throwing on more rules whenever you feel like it, aren’t you?” Ado said.
Ado didn’t really care about the details, though. Uru, meanwhile, wasn’t happy with them, but he begrudgingly agreed.
Even though Zelos had made these rules more for his own entertainment than out of the kindness of his heart, he gave an exasperated sigh at Uru. The young man was clearly too stubborn to listen to reason.
He was an oblivious fool, and his ignorance was the only thing propping up his hope.
Soon, though, this duel would show him the cold, hard reality.
Grinning wildly, Zelos used Gaia Control to create a wall that would hide each duelist’s side of the field from the other. He was obviously itching to watch this play out.