Novel Full 117 Round 2
Ronan’s first punch had a deep impact on the judges , the contestants and the audience who were all now wary of his strength .
However none more so than Percy Draco. One of the major disadvantage that Percy had currently was that the inherent martial arts of the Draco family were not nearly as good as the ones that Ronan learnt from Karna.
The suryavanshi clan that Karna belonged to was a martial clan with top notch martial techniques hence it was no shock that Ronan could easily punch a hole through the martial machine since he had trained his physical body to the very limits.
This was one area in which Percy could never hope to catch upto Ronan . No matter how hard he trained his muscles , strength was not built up in a day and he would always be slower and have less raw power in any head on collision.
This meant that Ronan would walk into the fight with a superior physical build up and knowledge of excellent martial arts that Percy did not have access to.
Realising that no matter how hard he sprinted , his brother was just too hard to catch-upto Percy felt nervous In his stomach as although he did not show his nervousness out in the open. He was shook-up internally.
After long deliberation , Ronan was not allowed to take a second punch and was retired with the highest score possible of 99 , as he reduced the 100 testing machines to only 99 for the remaining participants.
Unhappy with the decision Ronan threw a glance at his grandfather who felt like burying a hole in the ground for letting his grandson down.
Ronan’s face of dissapointment almost made him reverse his decision , however when he realised that the machines costed the state serious money and their damage was too much to bear , he had to stick by his verdict..
Hence Ronan was walked off the arena amongst claps of admiration from the crowd as the round one continued for 1 hour after his performance.
A total of 1200 candidates cleared round one and entered round two , meaning that the pass rate for round one turned out to be under 2% .
Those making round two of the internal selections were already the best of the best individuals and the top talents of the country however number one and two of round one still remained a Draco.
After a short 1 hour break , round 10 large machines replacing the 100 punching ones , as this was the elemental power measuring machine.
These machines costed nearly 10 times the price of a single punching machine and knowing how Ronan especially knew A ranked spells and higher , Augustus made it clear that only spells upto rank B were allowed.
Still to be sure that nothing untoward happened , Ronan was put into the very last slot of round two.
The elemental power machine worked similar to the punching machine however here one had to attack from a range of 20-100 meters from the machine as per the candidates choosing and accurately get the highest reading possible.
The machine graded an attacks power based on the quality of elemental essence inside and the force of impact.
The readings were from 0-99 and the threshold for clearing this stage was set at 65.
This was the ultimate weeding round as a score of 65 was nearly impossible for kids under 18 years of age to achieve , with only the best C and B ranking spells capable of doing so.
In a way this was the elimination round for the commoners who did not have a great technique as it was unfair for them to be participating in such a competition where only the best could thrive.
However the competition ahead would also be a stage where only the elites of various kingdoms and sects would compete and hence in a way losing out here was better than being humiliated on the big stage.
The crowd was electric for round two as they got to witness the best moves of the various kids picked up from the Avalonian academy and hence with various elemental users using various attack techniques it was very interesting to watch .
One after another contestants went out in groups of 10 and used their best shots on the elemental machines to get a score , however even after the first 20 groups had attempted to clear the threshold only 1 out of the 200 candidates from Luna’s home clan was able to clear the threshold with a score of 67.
Grandmother Luna’s clan was considered to be one of the strongest clans in Avalon and one of the top 3 clans if not the top one for sure , hence when even a scion of such a clan was barely able to clear the threshold the other clan leaders became disheartened.
As expected the major clans scions did perform better than the commoners scoring in the low to mid fifties , however only 7 out of the 37 who cleared round one were able to clear round 2.
Only two commoners who had shined brightly in Avalonian academy and won themselves the right to a high grade C level technique were able to clear round 2 and even that was a huge achievement.
The crowd cheered madly when one of the commoners made it big and it showed how much fair Alexander had made for commoners to rise through the ranks with enough talent.
General Sam became very interested in those kids as he noted their names down and asked one of his lieutenants to specially invite them into the army if needed.
In the second last group , Percy walked out on the arena and as usual , the crowd went nuts to see their favourite crown prince in action.
Alexander was the almighty warrior king and the draco clan had an unshakeable image of superior genes and power infront of the commoners , hence anticipation for Percy’s attack was extremely high.
Even Ronan who was usually detatched and did not care about who qualified or not , paid rapt attention to his brothers move to see if he could learn something from it and make it his own.
Choosing a distance of a whopping 100 meters to the target , the maximum allowed under the rules , Percy took a very interesting approach to his attack as the audience was baffled by his choice.
Long range attacks were usually notorious for being weaker than short ranged ones , hence most expected Percy to attack from the minimum point of 20 meters but he chose the opposite.
Forming a flaming bow out of thin air , Percy chanted his spell and shot his arrow 90° perpendicular to the ground straight onto the clouds above.
His arrow looked feeble and completely off-target as everyone in the audience was left scratching their heads as to what was going on.
The judges however instantly recognised the attack as they had seen it in their youths being performed by Augustus , as they looked at the old man in amazement and said ” Isn’t that…? “.
” Yep ” came the reply from Augustus as he did not hide his wide grin at all.
After a full 10 seconds , Percy’s body suddenly combusted into flames as his eyeballs turned into a miniature flame as he said ” Special move : Orions arrow “.
A massive 40 feet tall plated warrior appeared 200 feet above ground pulling a massive bowstring , as he sent a meteoric arrow towards the elemental measuring plate.
BOOM!
The attack produced a sonic boom that sent vibrations throughout the arena as it absolutely destroyed the elemental plate upon impact.
The entire crowd burst into mad cheers as the elemental plate was destroyed with only a score of 99 being displayed ontop of the broken machine as in round 2 Percy Draco achieved the maximum score possible and shattered all records.
The previous high score before him was just 71 , however not only did Percy score 99 he destroyed the entire machine too in convincing fashion as a wide grin could be seen on his face as he did so.
The judges again looked towards The madly laughing Augustus with skepticism as both of his grandsons were absolute monsters whose like was never seen before and the old man had his chest swollen in pride because of it.
Not caring about the losses incurred by the state , Augustus only shouted ” Hahaha i taught him that move , hahaha the kid is just like me …”.
” My grandson , my wonderful grandson , hahaha praise lord Agni “.
As general Sam politely clapped while the other army lieutenants gave a standing ovation to their to be king.
Percy used a peak B ranked move that was the speciality of Augustus in the match , showing how well he had soaked the knowledge from his ancestors.
With only 9 functioning devices left , Ronan was the only one who had to wait for his turn as the other 9 did their moves as he was the very last one to walk out on the arena , the centre of attention of the entire crowd as everyone wanted to see if the second brother could outdo the first one.