Fates Parallel Chapter 119 - Magma (Patreon)

Unsurprisingly, the very first match of the second round was Hayakawa’s. She was the first seed, and the overall favorite to win the singles division. It wasn’t hard to see why when she launched across the ring in an instant and knocked out her opponent with a single strike. It wasn’t even a fight—just a sacrifice of the poor, unlucky disciple that ended up matched against her. The swiftness of that match gave Jia time to pay closer attention to the other second round match happening at the same time.

Ishihara Nao had advanced to the second round, finding himself matched up against his own teammate Izumi Makoto. Like Ishihara’s first opponent, Izumi went with an aggressive offense in order to try to break Ishihara’s turtle strategy head on. The fighting style she had developed was inspired by Rika’s old style of using doppelgangers that could deliver blows, but with her own twist. Izumi’s form flickered and shimmered as she seemed to jump instantly from place to place in the ring. Sometimes there would be two or more images of her, but they constantly fluctuated. The images would appear, deliver a strike, and then disappear just as fast without any indication of where Izumi actually was.

Ishihara struggled against Izumi’s strategy, but Jia quickly realized that it wasn’t because he couldn’t keep track of her chaotic offence. He was getting overwhelmed by the pressure of her constant attacks. Where his previous opponent had demonstrated an impressive variety of attacks that Ishihara had been able to match with his equally varied defensive abilities and surface mindreading, Izumi only had two kinds of attacks—her qi based force projections, and her actual physical strikes. The optimal way to defend against each was different, and while Ishihara always knew which kind of attack was coming from where, there were just too many for him to defend against everything.

He was forced to change his methods, casting attack spells and trying to create distance between himself and Izumi, but though his body had been enhanced by his unified cultivation, it was obvious that his actual martial arts practice was rather lacking. Izumi’s ceaseless offense, much greater speed, and seemingly boundless energy eventually proved too much for Ishihara to handle, and Yue cried out in frustration when he finally yielded—apparently she had been rooting for him. Izumi jumped for joy at her victory, though her face fell pretty quickly when she realized that her next opponent would be Hayakawa Kaede.

The rest of the day was a bit of a bore as Dae, Guan Yi, and Xin Wei all won swift and decisive victories against their opponents. Xin Wei’s fight was a bit of a surprise to Lee Jia, since she’d always considered him to be more of a supporter, but a combination of his gravity-element spiritual arts and offensive spells was quite impressive—locking down his opponents movement while he blasted them at range. Seeing it in action—and suffering its effects herself during the qualifiers—renewed Jia’s interest in the Domain of the Earthen Realm technique, which she knew was the technique that both Zheng Long and Xin Wei were using. It was one of the manuals she’d won from Yan Zhihao.

---

Lee Jia stood nervously at the edge of the training field along with the other participants for the fifth day of the singles tournament. She’d known that there were people watching the qualifiers, but somehow having actual stands filled with cheering crowds made her a thousand times more anxious—she felt like she was going to throw up.

“Are you okay, Jia? You look pale.”

Jia smiled gratefully at Eunae and shook her head.

“I’ll be fine. Just a bit nervous of the crowd.”

On her other side, Yue snorted in disbelief.

“After everything you’ve been through, it’s a crowd that bothers you?”

Jia shrugged.

“I was a thief growing up, so yeah. The attention makes me really anxious.”

Eunae and Yue would be fighting their second round bouts at the same time as Jia, along with Kim Yongsun, who had been matched against Miyata Toshiharu. Jia was a little bit disappointed that she wouldn’t get to watch Kim wipe the floor with Miyata, but she had her own fight to worry about. Her opponent was Harada Jun—one of Yuuko’s teammates. She recalled that his elemental affinity had been Corrosion, which was the exact opposite of her own Lightning. He had rejected the idea of balancing it out with a Lightning-element spiritual art for some reason, and now he was scowling at her.

Jia edged away from him, frowning. He’d been acting a bit weird around her for the last few months, but she had no idea what she’d done to upset him. She had tried asking his teammates, but none of them seemed to know except for Izumi—who’d refused to elaborate beyond the fact that telling Jia would ‘violate the sanctity of the chart’ and that she was ‘strictly a neutral observer’. Izumi was a very strange girl.

Soon, their names were being called and they were ushered out into the rings where Jia found herself standing across from Harada, waiting for the signal to begin. In order to calm her nerves, Lee Jia went over everything she knew about Harada Jun. Last she remembered, he had been a first stage mage, second stage martial artist, and recently awakened spiritual artist. He still had the body enhancement spells that his team had pioneered to enhance the abilities of martial artists, but he was otherwise...unremarkable. He’d always seemed to kind of blend in among his eccentric group of teammates, and Jia didn’t really know what to expect from him. If nothing else, his corrosion affinity would be bad news for her Lightning God Transformation technique—he’d be naturally resistant to her ki intrusion attacks.

Elder Qin’s voice broke Jia from her thoughts.

“Fighters, prepare yourselves.”

Jia lowered herself into a fighting stance.

“Begin!”

She sprung forward towards Harada, prepared to test his defenses and see what he could do, but she was brought up short by his first technique. Within her domain, she sensed his qi condensing around him, forming into a bright red cloak of magma that covered his entire upper body without harming him at all. It dripped onto the ground below him, leaving sizzling pockmarks in the ring. Jia didn’t sense a spell being activated, and there was no way that a martial art would be able to create a sustained technique like that—there was no question, he was using a magma-element spiritual art. Not only that, but a powerful one. The sheer power behind it, and the ‘liquid’ qi he had used to form it were both indicative of a second stage cultivator.

“Wow! You never told me you were so talented with spiritual arts!”

Harada grinned wryly at her.

“Surprise!”

He punctuated his exclamation by extending an arm and firing a cloud of ash towards her. Jia yelped as she felt herself get singed by the superheated cloud of ash, even after dodging it by a wide margin. The attack was slow moving, but it had a deceptively wide area of effect from the sheer heat that it generated. Jia activated her noxious aura, but Harada didn’t even flinch—either neutralizing the attack with another technique or just resisting it outright.

She dashed out of the way of another pyroclastic burst, feeling the heat against her skin even from over a meter away. The molten cloak made Jia a bit nervous about trying to take the fight into close quarters, so she tried attacking from a distance with one of her lightning bolt spells. Harada responded with a spell of his own, and as her attack arced towards him, she saw the tell-tale sign of a metal-element mana shield diffusing her lightning bolt harmlessly around him.

She was certain that he wasn’t a second stage mage yet—she could sense it in his aura. That had to mean that he’d specifically prepared metal-element mana shield spells just for her, which would have taken weeks of preparation at least. Jia was a little bit annoyed about being singled out like that, but resigned herself to the idea that her lightning spells would not be effective for this fight. That only left her Awakening of the Dragon’s Heart—which didn’t seem well matched here—or her good old fashioned martial arts. It was pretty clear that Harada had put a lot of thought into countering her, and Jia was forced to admit that he’d done a great job of it—she was at a loss to figure out how to combat him.

If she hadn’t been weakened by Eui’s missing presence, she might have been confident in just fighting him head on. Instead, she fell back to the same strategy she had used against powerful spiritual artists in the past—forcing them to waste resources and attempt to outlast their qi reserves. It had worked against Yan Zhihao, it had sort of worked on Zheng Long, and she was confident enough in her speed to make it work against Harada Jun.

She spent the next few minutes frantically lightning stepping away from his deadly, pyroclastic clouds, dodging them with as wide a berth as she possibly could. She was starting to sweat as she dashed from one end of the ring to the other and back again, and she realized that it wasn’t from the exertion. The air was starting to get uncomfortably hot from the repeated blasts of superheated ash, even for her third-stage constitution. Harada seemed completely unbothered, as he slowly advanced on her, protected from the heat by his molten mantle.

Jia rolled out of the way of another blast to find that she’d been cornered. She started to get a bit worried as the sweat dripped from her brow. A lightning step could get her out of the corner, but the air was getting dangerously hot, and she still hadn’t figured out a way to fight back. Meanwhile, not only had Harada not shown any sign of slowing down, but she could feel his aura expanding outward to encompass the entire corner of the ring between them. With a pulse of power, the floor of the ring began to melt, and Jia’s wooden sandals instantly caught fire.

“Ancestors!”

She cursed as the flames licked painfully at her ankles. Jia mentally moved Harada up a few notches in her mind—he wasn’t just talented with spiritual arts, he was extremely talented. Probably on the level of Yan Zhihao, Yue, or Zheng Long—as strong as any spiritual artist she’d faced, in other words. The soft ground would slow her down, and the heat was swiftly becoming unbearable. Lee Jia grimaced as she realized that the battle of attrition was not going in her favor at this rate.

“Harada, I’m really sorry.”

Her opponent raised a curious eyebrow.

“What for? I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. Do you ever think about how the people around you feel when you throw them away once they’re no longer of any use to you?”

“I...have no idea what you’re talking about! I meant that I’m sorry for underestimating you. I shouldn’t have been holding back—that wasn’t fair to you.”

“What do you—”

Jia didn’t wait for him to finish before activating Absolute Awareness. She used her moment of accelerated thought to focus as much water mana as she could muster into the tip of her finger and quickly air-scribe a simple bolt spell. It was a technique she had learned how to do during her breakthrough, and it let her improvise extremely simple spells from nothing, but only while using Absolute Awareness—otherwise she was just too slow. She activated the spell as her concentration ended and a ball of water shot forward, instantly exploding into a massive cloud of steam as it struck Harada’s cloak of magma.

Lee Jia used the distraction to escape his molten aura, already beginning to charge her martial art’s eponymous technique. It was apparently a fairly common theme among martial arts to name the entire style after its most powerful move—it was at least true of Hayakawa’s Weightless Fist technique, and it definitely applied to Lightning God Transformation. Jia mentally berated herself for not beginning to charge the technique sooner.

The Lightning God Transformation required her to gather up an enormous amount of lightning essence within her body—more than she was capable of at the second stage, which was why it was a third stage technique. That took time, and had she been taking the fight seriously from the beginning, she would have started preparing the technique as soon as it had started, rather than when things got difficult. Thinking back on it, she was certain that Hayakawa’s technique was the same, and she had always used it against Lee Jia the very moment things seemed to be turning in her favor. Hayakawa Kaede had never once underestimated Lee Jia—she’d charged her most powerful attack from the very beginning.

This fight might have been over already if Jia had just shown Harada that same respect instead of just assuming she’d have no trouble against him. Instead, she was forced to try to buy more time as he rallied from the cloud of steam and returned to his assault. The air was burning her lungs now, and the ashen clouds didn’t even have to come close to burn her. She casted a mana shield and shifted its element to ice, but it was only a small stop-gap. She tried harassing Harada with her own offensive, but as she had feared, his molten cloak not only reduced the impact of her attacks, but also reacted with a little eruption of lava that threatened to burn much more than just whatever limb she had struck with.

Finally, he cornered her again, and this time the fight was clearly in his favor. Jia was panting for breath, but each inhalation felt like fire in her lungs. She was covered in scorch marks from near misses, and nasty red burns all over her skin. Harada approached slowly, imposing his aura on the ring once again to create another field of lava between the two of them.

“No more tricks this time, Miss Lee! If that was your idea of not holding back, then I think you should worry about overestimating yourself before you underestimate others.”

Jia bit her lip—she didn’t have a retort. He was right, this had been an utter failure on her part, and if not for the gap between the second and third stage, he would have definitely defeated her. As it was, though—she began to glow as she finished gathering her ki, arcs of lightning grounding themselves around her where the power was too much to hold onto.

“You’re absolutely right, Harada. So again, I’m sorry.”

Jia focused her domain, suddenly slamming it down around them and effortlessly suppressing his aura technique. He took a step back, startled by the sudden change and she used that moment to unleash the power of lightning within her body. As before, the initial surge was too much to bear—a force of nature vibrating within her body, demanding to release its energy. Activating Absolute Awareness to give her a bit more control over the erratic technique, she pointed it in the right direction, and gave that energy an outlet.

For the barest instant, her entire body transformed into a living bolt of lightning and arced across the ring. Even with Absolute Awareness, she moved faster than she could comprehend, and it took all of her focus to control the force of her blow. A punch or spear hand at that speed was likely to punch straight through or sever limbs against lower stage cultivators, so she had to spread the force out as much as possible. Jia’s bodycheck struck Harada with the force of a thunderbolt, sending him careening all the way across and out of the square ring—corner to corner.

Jia felt her ribs cracking and her shoulder pop out of its socket from the force of the blow, and her eardrums were blown out by the explosion of sound that accompanied her own movement. She had also shoulder-checked the magma surrounding Harada straight on, and her arm was charred a very worrying black color. It didn’t matter right now—as long as she had the power of lightning coursing through her veins, she was nearly unstoppable. The price of that power was that she would be completely exhausted once it was spent, leaving her extremely vulnerable.

She’d already won, though. Harada was knocked out of the ring. Jia focused internally, and took deep breaths to recoup the power flowing through her. She would still be tired, but ending it early like this would mitigate the exhaustion somewhat—at least enough to stay conscious, she hoped. She felt the wave of lethargy sweep over her, but managed to keep herself standing.

“Harada Jun has been eliminated! Lee Jia will proceed to the next round!”

Do Hye’s voice felt like permission to finally leave the ring, and the first thing Jia did was check on the condition of her opponent. To her surprise, he was already getting back on his feet, though he coughed up a few mouthfuls of blood, indicating he’d need medical attention.

“I—cough—I think I see your point about holding back, now.”

Jia winced.

“Yeah...sorry. What was that you said before about throwing people away?”

Harada grimaced before shaking his head.

“Ugh, I shouldn’t have said that. It was the heat of the moment, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I just want to know what you were talking about. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that, and certainly not to you.”

He let out a rattling sigh and ran his hand through his hair roughly.

“Aaargh, no you haven’t. Can we not talk about this? It’s really embarrassing.”

Jia frowned.

“You’re the one who brought it up, I’m just trying to make sure I haven’t wronged you in some way without realizing it.”

“I was jealous! Senior Dae doesn’t notice me, no matter how I try—he only has eyes for you, and you take him for granted! Or—that’s what it felt like, anyway. I know that’s not fair to you, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you recently. He seems so sad, and even if I can’t be the one to make him happy, I still want him to be happy!”

Oh. Well, that was...unexpected. Jia squirmed awkwardly as she tried to come up with a response. It didn’t help that she felt her own irrational pang of jealousy at the idea of Dae being with someone else. What was wrong with her? She already had Eui, and she’d turned Dae down.

“Have you told him how you feel?”

Harada looked down at her with an expression of terror.

“What!? No, of course not! What if he rejected me?”

Jia scratched the back of her head and averted her eyes, blushing slightly.

“Well, then how do you know you can’t be the one to make him happy? I know that he—that he likes me, but I already rejected him. I’m the last person to be giving romantic advice, but if you don’t try, you’ll never succeed.”

Harada winced and hung his head for a moment, but then nodded slowly.

“Yeah...you’re right. Ugh, you’re really rubbing this loss in—you’ve got me beat on everything.”

Jia blushed and waved her hands in protest.

“No no no! I just—even if we don’t know each other that well, you’re still a friend, you know? I don’t like seeing my friends hurt.”

Harada chuckled sardonically, coughing up another small mouthful of blood.

“You’ve got—cough—an interesting way of showing it.”

“Oh, shut up! That’s different! Come on, let’s get you to the medical pavilion—maybe Eui can patch you up before her match later today.”

As Lee Jia supported Harada on her shoulder, she desperately tried to crush the small part of herself that felt like she’d made a terrible mistake by helping Harada. He and Dae were her friends, and she wanted them to be happy. She kept repeating that to herself, but the little spark of jealousy never quite seemed to go away completely.