Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

True Meaning of Martial Arts

At last the moment of truth had come. Mana's worry and excitement were burning hotter with every passing moment, ignited by the gate to the living quarters rumbling open to reveal Damij standing on the other side. This moment was what she was preparing for. She trained long and hard for this moment, learned to recognize and predict patterns and form profiles of her opponents, differentiate them into different categories and become efficient at avoiding and countering any attack. Mana wasn't sure if she was ready but one thing she knew for sure: she was as ready as she could've been during this moment.

Damij's figure appeared through the open gap, the man stood as cocky as ever. Despite her certain degree of hatred towards the man, the magician had to acknowledge that he possessed some flare of charisma as the people appeared to eat the man up. His entire stature, his attire, his skin, his well-maintained hair and his perfect teeth grinning all showed off this man's success. He won every fight in seven minutes but not because his opponents were powerful enough to challenge him. It was because he played with them, not unlike Mana did currently. But where Mana did it to preserve strength or for other, more specific goals, he did it for all the wrong reasons.

The man jumped off without using the cracked and broken up platform. His long black coat rustled in the wind before landing behind the man, the overly dramatic effort of this gent to look cool only pissed Mana off more. Maybe such dramatics would serve right in the new Sun Disc arena but showing oneself off when people were kidnapped and dragged here to die in an unfair fight was just scummy. The announcer began listing Damij's titles and endless events he had won in, not a single mention of the bodies he had left behind. Despite the mass murder he had committed he was still the public's boy, the beloved hero of the audience and Mana felt it. The audience that fell in love with her now wished for her to tragically fall at the final step of the Gauntlet.

"I didn't expect to see you fighting me so soon again..." Damij smiled with that despicable grin.

Mana did not respond a single word. The pain was forcing her body down on her knee, not now... This was the worst time to collapse. Shaking in pain and fury the magician fell on her knee. She felt the taste of blood in her mouth and despite her best effort let some escape down her lip.

"Well, well, what is this? Respect for the champion? I respect that, I'd like so very much that everyone I faced showed this much respect. After all seeing petrified faces of cowards is so much chaff and gets as boring as cardboard over time..." Damij shrugged. He didn't appear to be intimidated at the slightest, still playing the superior warrior just because he was a dropout from the Ninja Academy with the gift of chakra augmentation where everyone else fought on the level of a normal human being.

Mana screamed into the air, the public went absolutely silent. Damij lifted his eyebrow sarcastically, he saw her weakness, he knew that he was getting another free win by having his lessers wear his enemy down.

"I hate you. People like you. People with power who think they are above everyone else, people who use other people's lives as boxes to stand on to appear taller." Mana spoke wiping the blood from her lip. She didn't have much physical chakra left, her body was breaking down, she wouldn't last in the sort of combat that she excelled in. This fight couldn't go like she planned it to go...

Damij smiled and extended his hand taking a combat stance. "Well, since you've had the honor of surviving a fight against me, you know the drill, I believe? Seven mi..."

Mana's body moved before the man finished speaking. Her foot stomped Damij's foot crushing it entirely, every smallest bone in that complicated system of puny bones. Her palm drove right into Damij's face breaking his nose and cracking his lips and his eyebrows, her body flashed and disappeared even in the eyes of the champion of the arena before she dove in down thrusting her foot in Damij's gut and pushing it down, an explosion of erupting pressure started tearing the arena apart and rising smoke covered an area far beyond the Sun Disc arena.