Demon Legacy

After Kaden had defeated his opponent, the first matches were still in progress on all of the other stages. His match had simply ended too fast compared to the others.

It took a while before all the first matches finished, meaning they had to wait even longer before Chet could go up for his turn. Chet had an easy first fight, facing against a student from the lower half of the martial arts ranking. He ended it quick, but not quite in one move like Kaden had done.

With only one of fight left for each of them, the boys hung around for a while. They watched the various matches while waiting for the last matches of the day to begin. Unfortunately Damien was scheduled among the final fights, or they could've gone home by now.

Of course since Kaden and Chet were done for the day and didn't need to fight anymore, they could've gone home, but they wanted to stay and cheer for their friend.

However, it didn't take long for them to get bored of watching the fights.

As it was right now, most of the fights were quite unbalanced. Common class students were often seen going up against special or elite class students, making for incredibly lopsided fights.

The students from the common classes tried their best to avoid clashing head on, doing everything they could just to hold on for a bit longer. If they could prolong the duration of the fight, they wouldn't be as embarrassed.

The outcome of this was that the matches were boring and drawn out, delaying the progression of the tournament. There was no hope for them to win if they refused to fight.

Kaden got tempted to sneak in to one of the two training halls where the seniors were.

"At least those fights would be interesting to watch." Kaden thought after watching yet another student dancing around on stage for 15 minutes, only attacking rarely so it didn't seem like he was running away and refusing to fight.

Nevertheless, Kaden decided not to pursue that idea. The 9th match was being fought on some of the arenas now, it couldn't be much longer.

After what totaled to hours of waiting and a bunch of mediocre fights, Damien finally went up and took his turn, letting them go home.

At the end the day, the 400 first year students had been whittled down to a top 200. With the experience today, Kaden couldn't wait for the future tournaments. Next time he would get to skip the initial mess and everyone would be properly seeded.

…

Early morning, on the second day of the tournament.

Today, all the students who lost would gather in one of the smaller training halls. They they would fight each other and receive their final ranking.

The 200 students still in the tournament would also be further decreased down to 50.

This time, Kaden's first opponent was coincidentally a classmate of the student he had fought yesterday. The moment Kaden stepped on stage, the student went over to the referee and said a few words, forfeiting the match. It was likely that he had seen Kaden's fight yesterday and deemed his chances hopeless.

Winning the match by forfeit made Kaden quite disappointed. If his opponent didn't give him a chance to show off his skills, the academy wouldn't take notice.

Aside from Kaden's instant win, Damien and Chet also managed to defeat their opponent pretty swiftly. Once again they found themselves forced to wait for the slower matches to end.

They didn't want to sit around this time though, so they went to the school cafeteria and ate lunch. Today they would have two matches, so it was good to relax for a bit and prepare.

Inside of the cafeteria.

At some of the other tables, students were in a good mood, celebrating their advancement.

It made sense that some students were happy, there was probably a few who had advanced and gotten a better rank then they had. However to them, merely entering the top 100 was not worth celebrating, if they were knocked out of the tournament at this point, their rank would fall.

Back in the training hall, the matches were progressing surprisingly fast today. It didn't take very long for the top 100 matches to begin. Even though the matches today were supposed to be more fair, they had all ended a lot quicker.

This was because the students in the top 200 were more daring because they already had a win under their belt. They took chances and fought their opponents head on, instead of just trying to waste time. This, and the fact that there were less fights, let the matches finish a lot quicker.

Kaden soon found himself on stage again, preparing to fight his new opponent. By now the vast majority of the top 100 was elite and special class students, only a few common class students remained.

This was where Kaden's plan would go through it's true test. He had to keep up his show of domination all the way to the end, even though all the remaining students were capable.

Since the battles were getting harder now, Kaden was also taking it a lot more serious. From the moment he stepped on stage, he was keenly watching his opponent, keeping an eye out for a weak point he could take advantage of.

However…

To the unlucky girl he was facing, it looked more like he was glaring at her. They were classmates but had never talked before, she couldn't understand why. The poor girl felt wronged, wondering what she'd done to make him angry.

"Are you ready?" The referee asked them.

Kaden nodded, keeping his eye focused on the girl's legs. He hadn't found a weak point just yet, making it clear that the girl was skilled.

The match began, but this time Kaden acted differently from his previous fights. Instead of charging forward instantly, he stayed put in his position.

On the other hand the girl was also hesitating. Since she knew of Kaden's plan to defeat her in one move, she had been expecting him to attack first.

Kaden just kept standing still, waiting for the girl to show her hand. This time he was fighting against someone in the top 20 on the rankings, even if he would win 99 out of 100 times, he couldn't afford to get careless here.

The girl was getting tense, standing in front of Kaden it felt like thousands of tiny needles were pricking her skin.

Soon she was unable to endure the uncomfortable feeling any longer and decided to make the first move.

BAM!

Just as she went in for her attack, her legs were swept out from under her and gravity pulled her into the ground. The back of her head hit the floor first, knocking her unconscious.

Kaden stood with his arms crossed, not expecting her to get back up. He'd been suspicious of her legs from the beginning, but at first glance it couldn't be considered definitive. It wasn't until she attacked that her opening showed as her footwork got sloppy. Kaden had reflexively taken advantage of it and targeted her legs in his attack.

Seeing as the girl still wasn't moving, the referee called the medical staff and they took her away. If she turned out to have incurred some damage, they would put her in a medical pod so that she would recover quickly.

…

Beneath the stage Raphael had some free time and had come to take a look.

After he saw Kaden take care of his opponent so easily, he was starting to get nervous. When he had overheard Kaden saying he would beat everyone in one move, he thought of it as mere arrogant boasting. But the reality before him was shaping out to be different. Now Kaden had already advanced to the top 50, only using a single move for each of his fights. Raphael knew he wasn't able to do it himself, even if he had fought the exact same people Kaden did.

But he couldn't let himself get shaken now. Even if the thought of losing to Kaden was starting to take root in his head, he was still confident that he could beat Chet. As long as he beat Chet, he would win the bet.