Way of the Knights

---

What happened was simple, and fast. 

As soon as the referee started the match, the twins played rock, paper scissors. 

Pyra threw rock while Mira threw paper. From the nature of the game, Mira wins. As since Pyra lost, she directly admitted defeat and walked out of the arena along with Mira, leaving behind a dumbfounded crowd. Even the referee and the whole management was surprised by this, but it seems that the twin never had any intentions to fight with each other at all. 

Back in the room of Albert and the rest, Raven roared in laughter as he found this scene extremely amusing and hilarious. 

"Well, well! What a match isn\'t it?" He said while wiping some tears from the corner of his eyes. "In the end, we can\'t really expect them to fight against each other now, do we?"

"I guess not." Albert shook his head while still a bit frazzled on his seat. "They don\'t seem to care about what other people might think, even more so for the prize itself."

"Although this match, if I could even call it that, has been strange and fast. Just like Nephew said, we really can\'t expect them to fight against each other. In the end, this might be a silent opposition from the twins to those who thought that pitting them against each other was a great idea."

"I agree." Raven nodded, "Look, neither of them even bothered to wait until the declaration of the winner. The faces of those excited for this \'fight\' are quite fantastic too!"

Looking outside, the whole stadium was still silent from what happened just now. 

Those who were expecting a fantastic and heated battle, were left feeling extremely aggrieved and disappointed. They anticipated the most for this match since they are expecting the twins to be equally powerful and thus, will cause the fight to be extremely intense and heated. 

But it was a pity that neither the twins were having any of that. 

They didn\'t come here to entertain the crowd, be objectified and be used to hurt each other. In truth, the attraction of the ticket for a Spiritual Treasure wasn\'t so alluring to them at all. If one of them could claim the first place, then its good. If they can\'t, then there\'s no need to force it. Either way, just by participating in the tournament, they\'ll receive a spiritual treasure ticket anyway. There\'s no need for them to risk a limb for that. 

In the end, the referee announced that Mira had won the battle, which didn\'t even garner any cheers or applause from anyone. The whole stadium\'s atmosphere was awkward and silent. Even the referee himself doesn\'t know how to disperse this situation. 

In the end, he just made an announcement that the fourth match of the day will occur shortly. 

This battle is between Ryan Northson and Madman Floyd. 

When Raven saw who\'s going to fight next, he couldn\'t help but feel some sort of anticipation bubbling within him. 

It didn\'t take long before the participants were called. 

Coming from the left side, was a tall man who had a long silver hair and lashes. His face was calm but it also radiated a profound coldness within. The maroon uniform of the sect he wore further accentuated his etherealness. His movements were gentle and elegant, he had an aura of a noble around him.

"Oh my! Who is he?"

"So handsome!"

"It\'s the Pale Ice Prince! Ryan Northson! God, he looks so good on that uniform!"

"Pale Ice Prince? That fits him quite nicely."

"I wonder if he\'s betrothed already?"

"Whether he is, or he isn\'t. It\'s none of your business."

"Hmph! How rude."

The crowd exploded in cheers and fanatical screams as soon as they saw Ryan walking towards the arena. Ryan on the other hand, doesn\'t appear to care about what they say or what they want to say. He didn\'t even spare a single glance to the crowd. 

This man, is Ryan Northson. Known to many as the Pale Ice Prince and was also rumored to posses a Perfected Deity\'s Champion Physique. 

On the right side, comes a man with a long spiky hair. He was similarly tall and his body was also bulky. Some people who looked at him felt repulsed by his rough appearance. This man\'s face has at least five large scars. His pupils were dull, almost lifeless even. It was as if he was operating in an unconscious manner. He was wearing a long black cape on top of his uniform. And unlike Ryan\'s aura, his was filled with violence and aggressiveness. 

This man, was known as Madman Floyd by many people. 

Although many people noticed his presence, no one dared to say anything about him, specially those who have heard rumors about him. They kept everything to themselves and waited until the match starts. 

As soon as the two of them stepped onto the arena, the referee did the usual ceremony of reminding them about the rules and so. After that, he started counting down. 

"Three! Two! One! Begin!"

As soon as the referee signaled the match to begin. Ryan clenched his hand into a claw, he then brought it up as if he was swiping Floyd into pieces. 

In a blink of an eye, a tall glacier appeared on the arena, encasing a large portion of it as well as sealing Madman Floyd within. 

White mist escaped through Ryan\'s lips. The whole stadium was stunned into silence. The chill that being released by the enormous glacier added to the chill everyone felt on their spine with how quick and decisive Ryan was in this battle. 

Amidst the silence, Ryan stood calmly. He stared at the glacier formed by his Ice Laws and pondered about something. 

However, due to the pin-drop silence of the stadium. What\'s supposed to be a minuscule sound of cracking was amplified, causing many to be startled. They all watched curiously, and all of a sudden, the enormous glacier shattered into large chunks, falling into the ground and causing the whole stadium to tremble.

Within the falling remains of the enormous glacier, the tiny silhouette of Madman Floyd could be seen stretching his neck left and right while holding an unreasonably large cleaver. 

Madman Floyd\'s cleaver had no proper handle, it was only covered by some cloth/bandage. The edge of the cleaver was chipped in many areas, and it was as wide as two people. The cleaver\'s tip wasn\'t sharp, its overall shape was rectangular.

Floyd holding his cleaver by his shoulder made a striking impression on those who sees it. Specially in addition to the steam surrounding his body, his sharp gaze and his devious smile. 

"Yo! Freezing people without any warning is rude you know?" 

Although Floyd said it this way, no one could tell if he\'s actually upset or not due to his fiendish grin. 

A cold smirk appeared on Ryan\'s face as he mumbled: "I wasn\'t expecting this to be easy anyway."

Upon saying that, a thin and pristine looking white sword appeared on his hand. He then assumed as stance and prepared for the clash that was about to ensue. 

The fiendish grin on Floyd\'s face widened. He lifted his cleaver, tightened his grip and snarled as he struck down with an incredible momentum. 

The force behind Floyd\'s strike could be felt within the whole stadium. Winds howled and the reinforced arena was almost cleaved in half. 

Ryan was relatively calm as he faced Floyd\'s attack head on. He simply lifted his sword and started gathering his energy. As the attack closed in on him, Ryan\'s sword hummed and released a milky white glow. 

"White Emperor\'s Stance - Winter\'s Embrace." 

A dense white mist suddenly appeared out of Ryan\'s sword, the mist moved fast and engulfed Floyd\'s attack in no time. Whatever the white mist touched, was frozen. This includes the force behind Floyd\'s attack, causing an enormous fin-line glacier to appear within the arena. 

But Ryan was done yet…

After freezing the attack, he brandished his sword and retracted horizontally. 

"White Emperor\'s Stance - The Winter Gathers…"

The fin-like glacier was gathered through Ryan\'s sword, the chill it possess intensified and could felt by everyone who\'s watching. Then, Ryan unceremoniously performed a thrust to finish the move. 

"..and Hails!" 

Ryan displayed his mastery of Ice Laws using this move. The temperature within the stadium dropped at an alarming pace. The whole arena wasn\'t simply frozen, instead Ryan legitimately caused winter and used his authority to make the winter hail. 

Compared to a normal hail however, Ryan\'s hail caused literal blocks of ice to condense and fly towards Madman Floyd without any mercy. Additionally, given how excellent Ryan\'s control over his Ice Laws, he could also condense spears made out ice and haul it towards Floyd. 

What shocking is that, Floyd didn\'t even had any desire to defend himself. He simply stood there with a fiendish smile in his face and allowed whatever\'s coming his way to hit his body. Everyone was expecting him to be wounded and bleed but nothing happened to him at all. 

In fact, Floyd\'s fiendish grin became even more pronounced as he said: 

"Good! Keep it up! Haven\'t had a nice massage recently!"