Chapter 686: Duel

"Evolved?" Derek grinned. "A while ago, actually," he said with a chuckle. "Give up?"

"Never!" Garrett shouted, then rushed back in. This time, Derek gripped his loaned glaive with two hands and brought it down with all his strength.

Garrett's swords snapped together, forming an X-shaped pattern and catching the blade of Derek's glaive as it came crashing down. The impact caused his feet to dig into the ground and pushed him back. But before Derek could capitalize, Garrett wrenched both blades apart—pushing Derek's glaive to the side and leaving his center wide open again.

This time, Garrett stabbed both blades into Derek's abdomen. One hit Derek's rib and stopped completely, while the other slid in between two—perfectly piercing his liver. The young man from the Warp Branch ripped the shallow one out, but pushed the other blade all the way through.

Derek let out a light grunt as he was driven through, but he also realized something. Garrett wasn't actually that strong. Yes, in a straight fight like this, he was very skilled with his dual blades and very quick. But the sharpness of the swords was doing most of the work.

"It's a shame," Derek muttered as a small bit of blood trickled out of his mouth.

Garrett's head shot up to look at Derek's smiling face. Seeing the smile—no, the grin—that looked just like the one the hall master always wore, Garrett gulped. Instantly, he tried to pull the sword penetrating Derek out, but Derek let go of his glaive with his right hand and grabbed the hilt of the sword along with the young man's hand as he dumped 200 stat points into his strength and squeezed.

Garrett tugged and tugged, but he couldn't pull it free. Since that wasn't working, he took another route. He slashed out with his free sword. However, Derek dropped his glaive completely since it was in an awkward position and kept him from moving his other hand. Then, he blocked the blade with his forearm. The blade bit into his arm and even through half of the bone, but it halted before it could go all the way through.

After the couple exchanges, Derek was happy to let the young man hit any part of his body other than his neck or his head. His Greater Meditation and abnormally high vitality for his level were doing extra work in the battle, and the evolution that the Origin System had put him and Silvi through was worth a lot more than just growing limbs back.

And with the way Garrett reacted, the young man was not someone with an evolution—at least, he didn't have the same evolution that Derek had. He didn't have one granted by the Origin System. It was possible that he had one of the synthetic evolutions, but also unlikely. Surprisingly, it also didn't seem like his Greater Meditation was anywhere near Derek's own, as it took longer for the young man's nose to stop bleeding than it did for Derek's entire abdomen to heal.

Derek twisted his arm hard and fast, causing the blade to fly out. However, Garrett didn't lose his grasp of the blade, but it did allow Derek to throw his hand up and punch him in the nose again. He pulled the reeling man back to him with his body since he refused to let go of the blade penetrating Derek, and head-butted him again. I think I'm beginning to see why Silvi finds this so fun.

"Fu-owww!" the young man shouted again and let go of the sword stuck between Derek's ribs to clutch at his nose.

Derek quickly said, "Thanks!" then ripped the blade out and stored it in his storage bracelet.

Garrett glared at Derek with murder in his eyes as he backed away with his remaining sword. Derek wiped the blood off his closing wound again, then bent down and picked up the glaive.

"Your meditation skill... it has to be close to its second upgrade. Just how old are you? Did you receive upgrade points that you dumped into the skill? That healing... with an evolution... it has to be at least 70% or higher. That's the only thing that makes sense."

"I don't know," Derek said with a shrug. "What do you think?"

"I think... it's impossible to have it that high otherwise. I've been training mine since I was a child, and mine is only just over 50%. And to have lucked out with an evolution from the system... just where did you come from? You knew it was going to be like this, didn't you?" Garrett gritted his teeth.

"I didn't, actually," Derek said. "I was prepared to lose. I'm not much more than a brute like this."

"You thought you would lose, yet you chose to do it this way?"

"Why not? Beats accidentally killing you," Derek said. "If we used skills, your speed advantage would go away entirely." Derek held up his glaive, then swung, causing a small Spatial Rend to appear in front of him. "Are you faster than space?" he asked. "Can you heal through rends?" He thought about using Void Shift to appear behind the man, but thought better of it.

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It looked like a spatial movement skill to the majority of people, but the hall master had already shown him once that it wasn't as foolproof as he originally thought it would be. He could probably get by with using Active Void Shift like Silvi, but there was no reason to risk it. It would be meaningless, after all.

"Spatial Rend?" Garrett clenched his jaw. "So that's your affinity..." he muttered. "So your skills..."

"Mostly involve separating you from yourself in the blink of an eye... no... faster than that," Derek said.

"I see..." Garrett said. "Well, this still isn't over!" He worked himself back up, gripped his remaining sword in both hands, then launched himself back toward Derek.

The young man was even quicker with just one sword. Instead of parrying or blocking Derek's blows, he completely dodged him. He would slip under a slash or tilt back just enough for Derek's blade to graze his throat, then dive in. The man cut, slashed, and stabbed. But, as soon as Derek went to grab him, he would disappear. Garrett made sure that none of his cuts were deep enough for his blade to get hung up in Derek's body.

From an outsider's perspective, it looked like a completely one-sided duel. It looked like a brute getting slaughtered. Every second, another cut appeared on Derek's body as Garrett moved in and out, in and out. He would slash Derek's Achilles—causing his foot to buckle, but it would regenerate too quickly for Garrett to follow up.

Other than the dried blood on his face from his repeatedly broken nose, Garrett didn't seem all that worse for the wear. Derek, on the other hand... his body was drenched in blood—all of it his own. Some was dried, some was fresh. It was insane to outsiders—other than Alex and Hall Master Sheen—how much punishment he was taking.

After all, just because someone could heal quickly didn't mean that they didn't experience the pain of the injury. Yet, as Derek was cut up over and over again, he hadn't made more than a few grunts in acknowledgment that he, indeed, did feel some pain.

One thing was certain, though, Garrett was doing everything in his power not to get grabbed by Derek. He knew that if Derek ever truly got a hold on him, he wasn't going to let go again. However, though it wasn't agreed upon, it was understood between the two of them that there would be no use of potions in the duel, and Garrett was becoming tired.

Moving at such speeds for so long was a drain on his Stamina. Derek hadn't had to worry about his Stamina for some time now because of his regeneration through his endurance, and, of course, the way he fought. Derek didn't actually move around and attack all that much—as he was focused more on single, heavy attacks and mana-based skills.

Garrett, however, was not unlike Avery in the way they moved—though much faster and maybe even more precise at the moment because of the level and rarity differences. So everything that the young man did ate up a small portion of his Stamina.

Standing still and blocking the occasional attack to the neck or head took next to no Stamina from Derek. Yes, Derek was in pain; it definitely hurt, but the pain was taxing most of all on his mental fatigue—and he'd had a pretty good night's sleep the previous night.

In a test of endurance, at their current levels, Derek wouldn't put anyone above himself. His regeneration, his evolution, his resistance skills... they were all his main focus. After an hour and a half of fighting, the crowd finally started to realize that the duel wasn't going the way they thought it had been the entire time.

Garrett was finally slowing down. Derek's wounds were healing fully before the next set could be inflicted. Before, Garrett was just a little faster in inflicting wounds than Derek was healing, but as the battle progressed, they became even. Now he was ahead.

But Derek continued to turtle and wait. It wasn't the most glorious way of fighting, but there honestly wasn't much else he could do without using his skills. Finally, after all that time, Derek saw his chance.

In a move that Garrett had already done multiple times—one that Jace had also done when they fought back during the invasion—Garrett slipped past Derek's defenses, got low, then aimed for his hamstring. But this time, the young man was just a bit too slow.

Derek brought his elbow down on the back of the young man's neck—which sent the man sprawling to the ground face first. Garrett tried to roll and right himself, but before he could, Derek had already dropped his glaive and was on his back. He grabbed the young man's wrist holding his sword with his right hand, then he grabbed the man's free wrist with his other.

Derek pulled the man's arm to the center of his back, then pushed... hard. With a sickening crunch, Garrett's shoulder broke out of its socket and the young man released a cry of pain. But Derek didn't stop. He moved the other arm to the same position and did the same thing.

This caused Garrett to finally drop his second blade—which Derek quickly picked up and stored in his bracelet. Garrett grunted in pain as Derek let loose of his left arm and grabbed onto the side of his neck with one hand, then his bicep with his other.

"Give up!" Derek said.

"No!" Garrett shouted back.

"Give up, or I'm going to do more than pull your shoulder out of its socket," Derek shouted for all to hear. Then, he pulled at the man's arm while pushing at his neck. At first, it didn't do much more than cause fresh pain in the already dislocated arm, but after a moment, he felt something give. The tendons, ligaments, and muscles that once helped hold the arm in the socket started to rip and tear one by one.

With each give in a tendon or muscle, Garrett let out a fresh cry of agony. Still, the bull-headed young man refused to yield. It wasn't until the skin around his shoulder stretched

taut

and began to split that Derek asked again, "Admit defeat!"

"Ugh!" Garrett grunted.

"You're in a position you can't get out of. Know your limits!" Derek shouted. "Don't be an idiot."

"F-fine!" Garrett finally shouted. "I... I yield."

With that, Derek let go of the young man's arm and stood. Garrett rolled over and banged his other shoulder against the ground—forcing it back into place. Then, he sat up and grasped his dangling arm with his other and held it in place. The man let go for a moment to drink a health potion, then grabbed it again. He stared daggers at Derek, but in the end, relented.

"You win..."