13 First Battle Skill

"Round two, starts….now."

As Elder Orcas finished speaking, all the students made haste to the balls in the center of the court. Arbor might have had a clear speed advantage over his classmates before, but now that he was able to circulate his essence throughout his body, he has no opponents.

Orion is directly diagonal from Arbor. Arbor chose to start on the right side of the court this time for no particular reason. He lined up so that two balls were on each side of him. As he got to the center line, he reached out and grabbed the two. This time he was successful in getting them and gave a smile in response.

Arbor directly moved across the court. He is now in front of Orion. "Better hope that you are fast enough, O." Arbor wound up his right hand and got ready to throw at a ball his friend.

"Fuck." Orion cursed.

Before Arbor hurled the ball in his right hand towards Orion, he tossed the ball in his left ball straight up in the air. As the first ball moved its way through space, Arbor studied the miniscule movements in Orions body. He knows his opponents' habits and favorite moves in battle after fighting and studying with him for the past four months. Arbors knowledge towards Orion has told him that he has not opened any meridians in his legs.

A split second after Arbor released the first ball he grabbed the one that is in midair and put it on a different path towards Orion. Orion stepped out of the way of the first ball before the second one smacked him in the center of his chest. Orion slid back two feet before he steadied himself.

Orion gave a couple deep coughs before he walked off the court while glaring at Arbor.

"That's one. Five more to go" Arbor announced. He came to realize that the speed at which he is able to throw the ball with control is only slightly higher that his opponents when they were using only their physical bodies.Three balls were heading his way. He noticed that each of his escape paths are sealed off by the balls. His body shifted positions and flickered out of the way.

"He is so fucking fast."

"Our best luck is to gang up on him."

Arbor continued to dodge every ball thrown by the opposing team. This kept up for a couple minutes. Arbor had no rest as the balls were sent back just as fast as they were sent over.

Inside his soul a small purple book opened up and flipped to a couple of hundred pages and landed on a page titled "Floating Leaf". All of the information related to this page flooded into the mind of Arbor. This caused him to hesitate his movement for a second.

"Huh? Floating Leaf? It seems to be a movement skill.This is the first time any of those things object have acted up. I guess I can disregard them being hostile. Ill have to look more into them after these exercises. What a better time to practice this skill than right now?"

Since Arbor has all of the meridians in both of his legs, he has the ability to manipulate how the essence flows through them. In turn, he can practice a movement skill. Arbor started to change the flow of the essence in his legs and noticed that his movements became nimbler and had a floating feeling to them. His side to side agility and speed increased by five percent upon using the Floating Leaf skill.

Elder Ocas noticed the change in Arbor's movements and furrowed his brows and questioned, "Why did Tagas just start to use a skill when he already clearly has the advantage in speed?"

This is the first battle skill that Arbor had started to train. Therefore, the feeling that he is experiencing right now is completely new. "I feel so light and my movements have a swiftly aspect to them now. That is probably where the name comes from. I'm going to have to practice this later." Arbor was currently thinking. A big grin appeared on his face as he was shifting back and forth.

"Two. And….Three." Arbor had gotten out two back to back to bring the teams to six against eight. He had specifically targeted those whom he knows have no progress in opening the meridians in their legs. These are the easy targets. In between throws Arbor is dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging. Every once and while I would throw a ball and try to get an opponent out, but he always seemed to miss by a split second. There are five people on Arbors team, including him, against four on the other team.

"Hold on, we can you weapons right?" Arbor asked his team. His team told him that he it is allowed. Almost all the other people didn't use their weapons because they were mainly swords and other sharp objects. Simply, these weapons would not be of much use to them. On the other hand, Arbor has a weapon that can be used to hit a ball.

Once Arbor got confirmation, he put his right hand up and behind his back to grab his staff. Arbor twirled his staff around a couple times before planting it upright in the ground to his right. Arbor made eye contact with each of his opponents who are looking at him with a curious gaze before commanding, "Come."

One of the four opponents threw a ball towards Arbors direction after his provocative comment. Arbor gave a smirk and gripped his staff with both hands a quarter of the way from the top, with his right hand above his left he lifted his staff and spun clockwise while moving his body a couple of feet to the right.

The incoming ball traveled the distance of eighty feet in a millisecond. Far too fast for the human eye to see. It was aimed were Arbor was, but now that he had moved it was bound to miss. The staff came around and make contact with the ball and ricocheted back towards the opponent. Unfortunately, the ball did not go directly back at the pitcher. It was of course by countless feet.

The spectators and players are staring at Arbor with dumbfounded gazes after what he had just done. What they were most astonished by is the speed that the ball was returned at. It was almost doubled!

Arbor scratched his head and admitted, "That definitely didn't go as planned."

A few seconds passed before the opposing team took on serious looks. They had won the first match and know that importance of winning the second match. If they win this won they get the contribution points that can be exchanged for a plethora of things from the school. They do not want to take any chances and let the game go into the third round. Thus, they decided to give it their all.

Nea and her teammates know that the dumbest idea is to throw at Arbor, thus they took aim on everyone besides Arbor. At each ball was thrown Arbor made his best effort to get in front of it and hit it back at his opponents.

The more he moved around, the more familiar he got with using the Lofty Leaf technique. While his speed did not increase, his movements and agility became more fluent. All the while, he was hitting as many of the balls he could get his staff towards. Attempting to perfect his swing.

"Nope."

"Damn it."

"Come on."

"Almost got it."

Minutes passed by and a couple hundred balls have been hit by Arbor with the use of his staff. Now it was just Arbor and two others verses Nea and another. He had finally

"Our best bet is for us to throw as many balls as we can at Tagas at the same time." Nea communicated to her teammates. Their team currently has five of the seven balls. Nea is playing with two of them in both of her hands. She used her left hand to throw the first ball and wasted no time to do the same with the second. Her teammate was juggling the other three balls and attacked at the same time.

Before Arbor had realized it, five melon sized metallic objects were heading his way. The balls were in a 't' shape, with one in the middle. Arbor gave a smirk as he stepped to the side and hit all the of the balls in the middle at the same time and sent them back with double the speed.

The two on Arbos side, noticed the fight between Arbor and the opposing team and waited. They know that the balls hit by Arbor were not deadly accurate and decided to make their move off of their opponent's reaction to the balls that Arbor hit.

The two opponents successfully dodge the first wave of attack, but they did not notice the two other balls that are trailing those from the first wave. After dodging the first one, the other opponent was struck by a ball and knocked out. Nea successfully dodge both balls.

"Haha you will have to try harder than that to get me boys." Nea teased right before she got struck in the knee with a ball.

During the small frame of time that her attention was focused on the incoming balls, Arbor fetched another ball from the back of the courtyard. He threw it low enough for it to stay out of her sight as it was looking straight ahead at the first two.

"We won!" Arbor's team cheered.