CHAPTER 129: DO YOU YIELD?

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It took the whole walk to the Mage-Knight Training Classroom for Delia to completely get rid of the flushed expression on her face for having to watch Caius and Eloise make out for five minutes. It got so close to becoming something else that she couldn’t look away.

Now that she and Caius stood on top of the stage a few feet away from each other, she had managed to put on a very serious expression as she stretched her muscles before she smirked at him,

"Ready?"

"Sure," Caius said and then looked like he might have been forgetting something as he asked,

"What were the rules again?"

"Just one," Delia said, "No Magic."

Caius nodded.

"Right, right," he said and closed his eyes for like a second while his head moved for the nod. By the time his eyelids were lifted again, Delia’s fist was an inch from his face.

With his eyes widening at how quickly she got to it, Caius managed to raise his arms in time to block the blow.

*Bam!*

He slid back a few steps and before he was even stable again, Delia was already spinning to deliver a kick to the side of his head. Again, Caius blocked it, this time he was able to remain in place and attempt a counterattack which was to slam the back of his hand into her midsection.

He barely put any of his muscles to work. But he had just fed on Evolution-Trigger charged blood so he was operating at fairly the peak of his capabilities. True muscle potential drawn or not.

"Oof!" Delia let out a breath but was already tossing more blows at Caius’s face. He deflected a few, saw an opening, and lunged to take it, only to receive a knee hit to the side of his head.

"Ngh," he groaned and stumbled backward, reeling. He realized now that the opening had been revealed specifically to bait him. Delia took advantage of his disorientation then by dashing forward and sending a flurry of blows.

Caius deflected a few and tried to counter only to have every one of his attacks miss as Delia stepped in close, placed a leg between his wide stance to strike against his knee, and break his balance.

She smirked as she made that move.

"And now you fall," she said with a fist drawn. She struck the fist forward and then saw Caius’s smile.

There was a gleam in his purple eyes as he slammed a palm into the back of her fist, parrying it.

’That’s fine," Delia thought.

She meant that. The blow was meant to be the cherry on the cake. The main purpose of this move was to break Caius’ stance and get him on the ground where she’d have the advantage to bring this Spar to an end early.

And then Delia felt the wobbly shake in Caius’s leg stop. His knee became akin to an immovable force and she realized she had been tricked. She had been lured into a false sense of security.

Just as he parried her fist, Caius grabbed the front of Delia’s shirt, his hand digging in so deeply that he grabbed her underwear and pulled it a bit away from the stable position it needed to be to hold her breasts in place.

Delia blushed so hard that her bronze cheeks looked to have been set aflame and then the blush left when she felt herself getting lifted off her feet as Caius pulled her over his head to slam her back into the ground.

*BAM!*

Caius hadn’t meant to put so much force into his move and winced a little when dust bellowed from the concrete stage.

But Delia was not knocked out. Besides a deep groan of pain from the impact, she looked quite well.

After a quick assessment and, assured of her wellness, Caius smiled.

"So I win, then?" He asked lightly.

Delia grabbed his arm.

"It’s not First Fall, dumbass," She said and raised her knee to sink into his side in a strike that caused Caius to groan in pain. And then she used her knee to heave him off her body, and over her head until his back hit the ground.

By the time Caius was wincing at the pain of the fall, Delia had straddled him and thrown a punch at his face. Caius moved his head to the side so her fist struck the concrete instead.

"Arrgh!" Delia cried but Caius had kicked with his feet away from under her before going a flip so he was standing upright again.

"So if it’s not ’First Fall’, it’s what then?" Caius asked as Delia stood to her feet shaking her fist at the pain.

"It’s first to yield," She said and was dashing at him again.

In a few minutes, the two had exchanged a few blows. Della always went after his face.

"It annoys me to even look at it," she said through gritted teeth when Caius pointed that out.

She tried to sound as annoyed as she could but it was not all too hidden that she liked how he looked much more than she would have preferred. She felt that messing up the face’s perfection early might help her really dislike him as much as she wished to.

Caius’s lips twitched. It was for a similar reason that most of his attacks were to her midsection. Only he wasn’t doing it out of a sense of denial. He liked her face and didn’t want to harm it. He would have preferred to avoid body shots as well but this was still a Spar. He still wanted to win. If for nothing else than to get her back for that strike to the side of his head last week.

He put it past him already but how could he deny the part of himself that was still prideful enough to care about silly things like who won a Mage-Knight Spar and embarrassed the other in a gathering of their peers and the presence of two Professors.

Not going after her face didn’t mean Caius was pulling his punches, however. As the Spar continued and they threw more punches and kicks at each other, Caius landed more hits than Delia did. He had a bruise on the side of his face from a couple of repeated precise attacks to that spot but her entire midsection seemed splotched and ached with every move she made.

She had the advantage in technique born almost entirely of natural instincts and the fact that she had been a Mage-Knight in Training for much longer than Caius had. But there was very little she could do against a Vampire at the Peak of their Circle. Especially one who could use the Von-Helsing Regimen to call his muscles to action.

At some point, in frustration, Delia’s mana surged and wind appeared to back up her dash in the first introduction of magic into their Spar. The look on her face told Caius she was aware that she had just broken their one rule but he made no mention of it. He merely joined her in magic use.

It hardly made a difference anyway.

Delia had way more spells in her arsenal and knew how to incorporate them into her moves but she still couldn’t gain the upper hand. Eventually, in a complete forgoing of what their Spar had started with, Caius cast ~Fireball~ and Delia cast a Lightning spell. The spells collided, reacted with each other, sapped the casters of their physical energy, and imploded to cause an eruption of dust.

*Booooommmmm!!!*

When the dust settled, both Caius and Delia were on the ground. Caius was on his back, smiling at the ceiling. Delia was doubled over, coughing and then groaning in exertion.

"Do you yield?" Caius asked. It was an interesting question to ask considering they were both on the ground from what appeared to have been stalemated final moves.

Delia eyed him just as her coughing fits died down.

And then she let out a sigh.

"Yeah, I yield."

It was a formality anyway. She yielded the moment she used Magic. Their Spar had ended right then and whatever followed was something else entirely.

"How?" Delia asked at some point, now lying on her back but breathing a bit hard, "How have you gotten so much better?"

"I trained," Caius said.

"It’s only been a week," Delia said.

Caius smiled lightly.

"A week is a long time."