For the next few minutes, all most of the audience could see was just a grey streak moving faster than any of their eyes could track, moving around its stationary opponent, who was perfectly blocking all of its advances by somehow turning at the perfect time, causing the grey streak to retreat.
I knew that the captain of the Tāizuat had little choice.
This was due to Captain Genunchi's Own, which she had given the name of 'The Spasimo gloves'.
Its ability was quite straightforward and easy to use.
All it did, was emanate red energy that disrupted the structure of all the Da it came into contact with, giving her super powerful attacking ability at close range, but little else.
If her attack landed on a spirit, it would give their shell a good shaking and temporarily paralyze them as their shell tried to restore itself, and if she attacked the surrounding she could punch her way through almost anything.
So her opponents had to be careful around her fists and they would be fine, but that was the current problem now.
Both of the fighters in the arena possessed Owns with no ranged capability, and casting spells would not work. If a spell was cast against Tashinake, he could easily outmaneuver it, and he wouldn't give Genunchi enough time to cast a spell that could actually pose a threat.
And If he tried to use a spell against her, she could just punch it away, making it collapse mostly harmlessly.
So they were currently locked in a statement until one of them caught a flaw because they would not tire out quickly.
Their Da could sustain them for hours if they kept up this pace without using high-energy attacks.
As another advance was stopped, I wondered how she was doing that.
As far as I knew, she Own didn't have this ability, so it could be just pure prediction coming from her familiarity with her opponent, but he would have changed his pattern if that was the case, unless she could predict even that, this was quite unlikely.
The second case would be that this was due to her own sensing technique. A technique that gave you sensing abilities wasn't that hard to find, I knew one myself, but it couldn't keep with this kind of speed. She could have created this technique just to deal with Tashinake, which would mean she would have taken all of his abilities into account.
The last and most likely case was that this was due to a spell she either learned or created. Perhaps one that gave her knowledge of her surroundings, or maybe one that boosted her reaction or movement speed, or it could somehow make her react automatically to pre-determined stimuli. Maybe it gave her all of the above.
There were over seven hundred recorded spells, but I only knew the names of sixty and had learned just 44 so far.
The spells had a few different classifications.
Des: The spells belonging to this category were purely offensive, made for the purpose of attacking and little else. The 'Risiprinde' spell belonged to this category.
Jin: The spells of this category were made for group support. The spells in this category were mostly defensive spells and healing spells along with binding spells like 'Mizage' and 'Lengalt'.
Goi: The spells in this category are mostly used to support the caster themself. There are many kinds of spells here, but a lot of them give temporary boosts and deploy defenses and such. One such example would be the 'Nemean fury' spell, which had been added to the roster quite recently, relatively speaking of course.
Ochnasrele: Quite a mouthful, but this category was for the spells that did not fit the other categories, I knew just two spells from this category. One of them gave me the ability to establish a mental connection with others, and the other gave me a 3d map of the area around me by scanning my surroundings.
I was broken out of my thoughts when the stalemate was finally broken.
Genunchi struggled to keep up with Tashinake as he attacked, retreated, and attacked again from another direction, changing his position in milliseconds.
I could not count them, but I was sure that he was attacking her more than twenty times per second, and she was struggling to keep up.
By the time she moved to counter an attack, another attack was already on its way.
It felt like Tashinake was playing with his opponent, as he could have landed hundreds of attacks by now, but had pulled back before his blades connected.
But I knew that such experienced spirits would have tricks up their sleeves, so I just waited and watched as Genunchi tried desperately to catch her opponent.
It seemed to have become a battle of attrition.
This continued for a minute until one of them seemed to finally lose her patience.
The glow emanating from her gloves started increasing as she failed to catch another feint.
Then a wave of red electricity erupted from her as Tashinake retreated.
I could clearly see that everything the red touched crumbled to dust.
The electricity dissipated and the next instant a blade stabbed into her shoulder and penetrated deep.
For some reason, the blade was not immediately retracted, and this gave Genunchi enough time to grab the sword, which was now being pulled back by its owner.
But it was too late as red electricity sparked on the blade, which had been abandoned by its owner.
Tashinake looked as the blade dropped to the ground, and looked at his opponent who was now covering the wound on her shoulder with an armored arm, trying to keep her Da from moving out of her body and dissipating into the surroundings.
He said something that seemed to cause her to agree by the way she moved her head.
The next instant, they were back at it.
He tried to attack her, and she tried to touch his sword.
But now I knew that Genunchi was on limited time.
The steady, white stream of Da emanating from her shoulder would cause her to lose energy much, much faster than her opponent, who was unharmed, so she would have to do something.
Suddenly, another wound opened in her body, this one on her back, but she did not seem worried.
Same as before, the blade seemed to be stuck on something.
But this time, she did not attack the blade, opting to go for her opponent.
He let go of his sword as he jumped back, but she suddenly rocketed forward, her fist heading straight for his face, only for him to dodge her attack and head for his dropped weapon.
But she suddenly appeared in front of him and landed a solid punch on his face, causing him to fly back a few meters.
Instead of going after him, she used the time he was paralyzed to heal her shoulder.
He climbed to his feet, still shaking slightly, but something was different this time.
He had a grin on his face.
He was now unarmed, and it did not look like he could get his weapons back easily.
His hands started to glow as he took a low fighting stance, waiting for his opponent to come to him.
The fight had entered its third stage.