The silence stretched between them like a taut wire ready to snap.
"Leave," the man had commanded.
Mikail said nothing. He simply stood there, Beelzebub held loosely at his side, his violet eyes fixed on the man with an expression that revealed absolutely nothing.
The man's jaw tightened. His single visible eye narrowed further, studying Mikail with the kind of attention a predator gives prey that refuses to run.
Mikail took a step forward.
Just one. Slow. Deliberate.
The man's body tensed instantly, every muscle coiling like a spring. He interpreted that single step exactly as Mikail suspected he would.
As a threat.
The man moved.
One moment he was standing thirty feet away. The next he was right there, his sword descending in a vertical slash aimed to cleave Mikail from shoulder to hip. The speed was incredible, the kind of movement that would have been invisible to normal eyes. The blade cut through air with a sound like tearing silk, and behind it came a shockwave of compressed force.
'So we are fighting first, talking later,' Mikail thought. 'Fine.'
His body reacted before conscious thought could catch up. Pure instinct born from skills he had never actually used in real combat. Beelzebub came up in a blur of crimson and black, meeting the descending blade with a resounding CRACK that echoed across the damaged landscape.
The force of impact created a shockwave that flattened grass and kicked up dust in a expanding circle. The ground beneath Mikail's feet cracked, spiderwebs of fractured stone spreading outward.
But he did not move. Did not step back. Did not buckle under the force.
He held the block perfectly, Beelzebub angled to deflect the man's blade to the side. His arms did not shake. His stance did not waver.
The man's eye widened fractionally. Surprise. He had expected to overwhelm Mikail with that opening strike, to end the fight before it truly began.
Instead, he found himself matched.
The man disengaged, leaping backward with the same impossible speed he had attacked with. Twenty feet of distance opened between them in a heartbeat.
Mikail stood where he was, Beelzebub now held in a proper guard position. The sword felt alive in his grip, eager and hungry. He could feel its skills waiting to be used, power coiled and ready.
'I was not sure how fighting would actually work,' Mikail thought, flexing his fingers around the handle. 'But it seems my skills translate perfectly. My body knows what to do even if my mind does not.'
The man attacked again. This time he did not close the distance directly. Instead, his sword blurred through a complex pattern, and suddenly the air itself became a weapon. Multiple slashes of compressed air pressure shot forward, each one capable of cutting through steel.
Mikail activated his first skill.
Movement Technique: Shadow Step.
His body flickered, and suddenly he was ten feet to the left. The air slashes passed through where he had been standing, carving deep gouges in the ground. Another flicker, and he was behind a tree. The air slashes obliterated the trunk, sending splinters flying.
The man did not let up. His sword moved in a constant blur, launching attack after attack. The air itself screamed under the assault, pressure waves creating visible distortions.
Mikail moved through the onslaught like smoke, his Shadow Step allowing him to relocate faster than the attacks could track. But he was not just dodging. He was learning. Watching. Analyzing the patterns.
'He is strong,' Mikail observed, appearing twenty feet to the man's right. 'Genuinely skilled. This is not just raw power. This is technique refined over decades.'
The man's eye tracked him despite the impossible speed of his movements. That alone spoke to incredible combat instincts.
"You are no ordinary traveler," the man said, his voice hard. "Who are you?"
Mikail did not answer. Instead, he activated his second skill.
Doppelganger.
The air beside him shimmered, and suddenly there were two of him. The clone was perfect in every detail, down to the way Beelzebub's blade glowed. It moved independently, circling to flank the man from the opposite side.
The man's expression tightened. His stance shifted, sword held in a middle guard that could respond to attacks from either direction.
Mikail and his clone attacked simultaneously.
They moved in perfect coordination, Beelzebub and its duplicate creating a web of crimson and black as they slashed from two angles. The man met them both, his blade a silver blur as it deflected, parried, and countered with mechanical precision.
The clash of metal rang out like bells, a rapid staccato of impacts that merged into a continuous roar. Sparks flew where blades met. The ground beneath them cratered from the force of their movements.
'He is keeping up with both of us,' Mikail noted, genuinely impressed. 'An Exemplar is no joke.'
The man's blade caught the clone's Beelzebub, locking it in place. In the same motion, he pivoted and brought his sword around in a horizontal slash aimed at Mikail's neck.
Mikail activated his third skill from his sword's arsenal.
Sword Intent: Phantom Edge.
Beelzebub's blade extended. Not physically, but in essence. An invisible extension of cutting force that reached three feet beyond the actual steel. When Mikail swung to block the man's attack, their blades did not meet. Instead, the Phantom Edge intercepted the strike while Beelzebub's physical blade continued forward, aimed at the man's torso.
The man's eye widened. He threw himself backward, but not fast enough. The Phantom Edge caught him across the chest, cutting through his reinforced leather armor like paper. Blood sprayed, and the man landed hard, sliding another ten feet before catching himself.
He looked down at his chest. A diagonal slash ran from his right shoulder to his left ribs. Deep enough to be serious, but not immediately fatal.
The clone vanished, its purpose served.
Mikail stood with Beelzebub held at his side, watching as the man pressed a hand to his wound. Blood seeped between his fingers, but his face showed no pain. Only calculation.
"Sword Intent," the man said, his voice strained but steady. "You have reached that level already. How old are you?"
Again, Mikail did not answer. He simply waited, Beelzebub humming softly in his grip.
The man's jaw clenched. He straightened despite his injury, bringing his sword back into guard position. "Fine. No more testing."
Power exploded from the man's body. His aura, which had been restrained before, now blazed openly. The ground cracked beneath his feet. The air shimmered with heat. This was the full strength of an Exemplar unleashed.
He came at Mikail like a force of nature. No more measured attacks or testing strikes. Just overwhelming speed and power meant to crush through any defense.
Mikail met him head on.
Their blades collided, and this time the shockwave was strong enough to flatten trees within fifty feet. The earth beneath them imploded, creating a crater that spread outward with each exchange.
They moved faster now, both of them pushing their limits. Mikail's Thought Acceleration processed the battle at ten thousand times normal speed, allowing him to predict and counter moves before they fully developed. His Dexterity let him execute responses with precision that defied physics.
The man matched him through pure skill and experience. His single eye tracked every movement, his decades of combat allowing him to read intent from the smallest shift in posture.
Steel rang against steel in a symphony of violence. Mikail flowed from attack to defense and back again, his body moving with a grace that felt completely natural despite never having fought like this before. His skills guided him, muscle memory that was not his own but felt earned nonetheless.
The man's blade came at his throat. Mikail activated another skill.
Barrier: Adamantine Wall.
A translucent shield materialized in the air, angled to deflect the strike. The man's sword hit it and rebounded, throwing him off balance for a fraction of a second.
That was all Mikail needed.
He thrust Beelzebub forward, and as he did, he activated two more skills simultaneously.
Flames erupted along Beelzebub's blade, crimson fire that burned with supernatural heat. At the same instant, lightning arced across the steel, blue white electricity crackling and spitting.
The combination of fire and lightning created something beautiful and terrible. The blade became a lance of elemental fury, reality distorting around it from the concentrated power.
Mikail drove it toward the man's heart.
The man brought his sword up in a desperate parry, managing to deflect the thrust away from his vital organs. But he could not avoid it entirely.
Beelzebub's burning, electrified edge carved across his left shoulder, and the man screamed. Not from pain, though there was plenty of that, but from the shock of what he felt in that brief contact.
Power. Overwhelming, crushing power that far exceeded what should have been possible from the young man standing before him.
The man threw himself backward again, landing hard and rolling to put distance between them. He came up in a crouch, his left arm hanging uselessly, blood streaming from both his chest and shoulder wounds.
But it was his face that showed the real damage. His expression had transformed from focused determination to open shock.
"You..." His voice was rough, disbelieving. "Your power... you are at Exemplar level."
Mikail stood in the center of the ruined battleground, Beelzebub still blazing with fire and lightning, his violet eyes glowing in the flickering light. He said nothing, his poker faced expression unchanged.
But inside, a small part of him felt satisfaction. He had tested himself in real combat for the first time, and his skills had performed exactly as their descriptions promised.
The man stared at him, bleeding and broken but still conscious, his single eye wide with a shock he could not hide.