The third match, which had almost stopped everyone's breath, ended, and the venue momentarily quieted down.
Sevia La returned to a high platform to rest, receiving treatment to repair minor injuries, while Seraphiel was unconscious and was carried away by medical staff into a special rescue capsule.
Inside such a rescue capsule was a special Time-Delay Device, which could slow the flow of time within the space, buying precious time for medical treatment. Additionally, hundreds of millions of nanomachines could help the patient stop bleeding, stabilize wounds, reconnect damaged blood vessels, support shattered bones, and even assist breathing and temporarily replace the heart's circulation of blood, among other functions.
Of course, such medical means came with an astronomical cost, only provided for free on rare occasions.
The ticket sales and broadcast fees collected from the Winter Festival tournament were used to cover these expenses, with the remainder being additional income for the Star Domain Federal Government.
The burnt and battle-scarred arena slowly descended, then a brand-new fighting ground covered with soil and grass rose up.
"The fourth match, Edith Academy, Hexia Tilan, versus Thunder Edge Academy, Levito!"
Striding boldly onto the battlefield in a deep blue combat suit, the ground where Levito walked let off a faint white smoke, turning some of the grass yellowish-brown and charred.
After taking his stance, he held a spear in one hand, his body slightly crouched, like a cheetah ready to pounce, his gaze fixed on the black-haired girl opposite him.
His talent was no less than Sevia La's, even greater in fact, but due to previous negligence and lack of experience, he was defeated by his opponent. This left him with a pent-up anger, and the girl before him was a rival he acknowledged. He would give it his all, aiming to beautifully win this match and redeem his previous disgrace.
On the other side, Tilan entered the battlefield with a light step. Even though Levito opposite her didn't speak, his fervent desire to battle was almost visibly rolling off him.
'Big brother is kind of impulsive,' the girl thought to herself. Compared to Levito's thirst for battle, Tilan appeared much more natural and relaxed.
Upon the announcement, the magic power that had been building up inside Levito suddenly exploded. He stomped the ground and thrust his long spear forward instantly, its blade glowing orange-hot like a branding iron.
Facing such an attack, Tilan didn't dodge as usual. Her eyes flickered with purple lightning, and then a peacock feather brand emerged on her brow.
"Azure Bird's Inheritance - Divine Sky Swordsmanship"
A Divine Sky Thunder Sword wrapped in purple lightning appeared from the palm of her hand, colliding with the incoming blade, interweaving fire and lightning, and a series of explosive sparks erupted on the battlefield.
After the strike, Levito withdrew his spear with one hand, drawing a huge arc in the air like a burning stick, and slashed down at Tilan once again.
"Divine Sky Purple Lightning - Howling Wind."
After several exchanges in battle, the peacock feather on the girl's brow shimmered, long feathers as if from a peacock appeared behind her sleeves, and then her figure, electric as lightning, wielded the Divine Sky Thunder Sword through the night sky, tracing a straight and twisting path towards Levito. In an instant, the scorching, bronze-like long spear was broken into three pieces, and the oncoming sword edge passed over Levito's body, raising exploding lightning and thunder fire.
After the move, the girl hovered in mid-air, with a peacock-patterned array materializing behind her, her Thunder Sword still glittering. Levito, emerging from smoke and flames, now bore a dark red wound on his front.
He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and looked up at the girl suspended in the air, with a faint grin forming at the corners of his mouth.
"Is that all? I thought I was going to die," he said. Indeed, he had been slashed by the girl's Thunder Sword, but the boiling magic power inside him had also exploded in an instant, with his blood turning lava-like. If the girl had been even a moment slower, he might have turned into a charred husk.
To this, the girl in the air merely shook her head slightly, not bothering to explain.
In fact, she had a much simpler way to defeat Levito – just by raising her hand and fully deploying her own talent, he would be frozen into an ice statue. However, displaying such an extraordinary talent would cause a bigger sensation than the one Temisia had triggered. Levito was regarded as a 'Legendary Level' talent by the Federation, and if she relied on her own talent to suppress his, it could create a storm even surpassing Temisia's impact.
The fact was, not even Temisia had encountered an opponent in the tournament who required her to fully unleash her space and Annihilation talents.
She had thought that attacks like the Divine Sky Thunder Sword were sufficiently fierce and formidable, but the magic power boiling from her opponent was even more special, seemingly associated with a talent for eruption, where flames and high temperatures were only by-products of the talent's manifestation, the girl pondered and analyzed carefully.
While the girl was contemplating, Levito below also leaped up, carrying his spear like an orange-red shooting star streaking through the night sky, and on the vast dome above, unknown when, a vortex of flames had begun to spin.
Rising into the sky, Levito shone like a sun amid a Stellar System, surrounded by countless flames, turning the sky into a magnificent orange-red swirl.
He tossed his spear up, the blade spiraling in three directions, the shaft gradually elongating, with rings of branding patterns emerging on it, and then, like a giant whale absorbing water, the magic power from the vortex poured into it.
'Flame Spear that pierces through stars'
As the Stellar Array in the sky began to rotate, the air grew suffocatingly thick, and Tilan even smelled a hint of scorching.