I Can Summon Legendary Figuress

Chapter 36: Explosive

Aizin, this was the name of the young man before Ethan, he had in fact been scheduled to fight Hela, and that would have been his disaster.

Hence the decision to stay as far from her as possible.

However, this Ethan was a nobody.

He was weak.

’Good thing I have a sharp eye,’ he thought to himself.

The biggest obstacle here had been the first batch of fighters, that much was true. But who would have thought they would contain such a crack in their ranks.

A gap wide enough to step through.

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"Ready?"

Davos’s voice resounded through the yard.

Ethan stepped onto the circular sand pit at the center, eyes forward, crossbow cocked and level. He didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t look at Aizin. He looked at the space between them and calculated.

With a nod he summoned both.

Vlad appeared first, a bloody general made real, over seven feet of armored frame radiating killing intent into the cool night air. The pale skin. The fangs catching the moonlight. The long spear gripped loose and ready at his side.

Morgan came in beside him.

She arrived without sound, the seams of her dress moving in a constant slow weave, light and darkness threading through the fabric in alternating currents. Her posture was still. Her eyes were already moving across the yard, reading it the way a practitioner read a battlefield before the first strike landed.

Two humanoid figures standing beside a single summoner.

The crowd registered it.

"Another humanoid."

Hela’s voice was quiet, half to herself. She frowned, but kept the rest of it behind her teeth.

Across the pit, Aizin summoned his own.

A giant dog crashed into existence at his side, its body wreathed in flame from shoulder to flank, the heat it generated pressing outward through the sand in visible distortion. A hell hound specie. Its eyes burned where they settled, and when they settled on Vlad, the growl that came up from its chest was low and sustained.

Aizin himself wasn’t a young talent riding on potential. He was Algar clan, positioned just below the elder seats, the kind of official who had already made himself useful and was simply waiting for time and opportunity to close the remaining distance.

Most of the people held in this compound were that category. High ranking in their own structures, significant in their own contexts, reduced to the same sand pit as everyone else the moment Davos decided to test them.

He sized up what was across from him and didn’t look concerned.

After all, what was standing there was still merely tier 8.

"Begin!!"

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—shuu

—shuu

Ethan fired the moment Davos’s voice landed, two bolts crossing the distance in rapid succession before the sound of the command had finished settling.

Aizin moved left without hesitating.

The bolts missed.

He was still moving when Morgan’s arms came up.

Three waves of compressed air left her in quick sequence, cutting through the yard in the shape of projectiles, the sound of them sharp and clean as they crossed the open sand.

Aizin called the hell hound forward instantly, putting the beast between himself and the attack, the impacts driving into its flank and scattering across its burning coat.

He was already weaving around the hound’s frame before the last wave hit.

Going for Ethan.

Constant and concurrent.

That was the shape of a fight between people who understood what they were doing. Not exchanges. Not waiting. A constant flurry aimed at keeping the other side too occupied to think, because the moment one party found room to think, they found room to close the gap.

—shuu

—shuuu

—shuuu

Ethan moved backward, firing as he went, each bolt tracking Aizin’s angle and forcing adjustments that cost small amounts of time he would never fully recover. The cover of Vlad rose behind him and he stepped into it, letting the armored frame absorb the space between himself and his opponent’s approach.

Aizin didn’t slow.

He drove his sword into Vlad in a quick series of counters, the exchanges fast and controlled, the bladework that came from training rather than instinct. He read Vlad’s size and adjusted for it, knowing that a bigger frame meant slower pivots, shorter windows between each committed swing.

He weaved out of Vlad’s sight line and pushed toward Ethan again.

Vlad couldn’t fully react before the tier 7 hell hound arrived before him, its body dropping low and driving into him, in an attempt to

Pin him.

He didn’t need to.

—boom

—boom

—boom

Three gusts of wind tore from Morgan’s position, aimed at Aizin’s approach line, each one carrying enough force to interrupt a charge even from someone who had already committed their weight forward

. He pulled back half a step and redirected, but the suppressive fire from Ethan’s crossbow was already filling the gap he tried to move into.

He was overwhelmed.

overwhelmed, That was the point.

"Such a setup." Servos spoke from beside Davos, his eyes tracking the movement in the pit without blinking. "The boy really is combat made."

"Yes."

Davos’s smile carried something close to bitterness.

"Plus he’s holding back."

Ethan’s style was suppressive. He wasn’t pressing for a finish. He was maintaining pressure, managing distance, keeping his opponent busy without committing to anything decisive. The observation Davos had made privately was visible to anyone who knew what to look for.

What was less visible was that it was about to change.

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From the back of the formation, Morgan moved.

Several chains launched from her position, long and fast, coiling outward across the sand. They reached the hell hound and wrapped it in a single smooth motion, pulling tight around the beast’s limbs and locking its movement down before it could register what had caught it.

In the same instant Vlad shifted.

—woosh

The bat form took him in a breath, his figure dissolving and reforming in shadow, and he was on the hell hound before it had finished registering the chains, a spear drove downward, pinning the beast to the sand with the full weight of his frame behind it.

The hound was done.

"Hmp!!"

Across the pit Ethan stopped moving.

He turned his back to Aizin.

A beat of silence crossed the yard. The crowd read it differently. Some held their breath expecting a mistake. Some leaned forward.

"Die!!"

The cuts and bruises spread across Aizin’s body had been accumulating quietly throughout the fight. The blood at each wound site began to move.

It drew inward. Congealed. Shaped itself into spherical concentrations hovering at the surface of his skin, each one tight and dense with light threaded through it.

Then they burst.

Bloodlight Flash (Tier 8): This spell allows the user to take blood from opponents, add light magic, and create an explosive effect.

Aizin didn’t register the first detonation before the second arrived.

—boom

—boom

—boom

The explosions tore through him in rapid succession, each one opening a cavity where it landed, the damage accumulating faster than his body could process that it was happening.

His armor held for the first two and failed on the third. By the time the last detonation resolved he looked as though he had been struck by cannon fire across his entire torso.

He dropped.

His body hit the sand and lay still, the outline of him barely moving, chest rising in shallow increments.

Barely alive.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​