"Roman, you sit down. I'll teach this pig-snout a lesson with my fist!" roared Thrax, cracking his fist, teeth clenched.
Undeterred, Julian replied, "I'm here to make sure you don't embarrass us, Thracian."
The other acolytes who were eating looked toward Emery's table. Some stood up, stretching their heads among the gathering crowd.
"Come on, fight! I wanna see some blood!"
"I hope someone dies! That'll make it more exciting!"
Fighting between acolytes weren't prohibited but killing or rendering a fellow acolyte permanently disabled was punishable according to the academy's regulation. The reason why duels or fighting was still acceptable to a certain degree was that it could pave the way to becoming a stronger acolyte.
"Huh! You dare! A frog at the bottom of a well doesn't really know how high the sky is! You trash!" spat the acolyte in front of Thrax's face.
Thrax pushed the kalios boy and readied his fist. He was a man of honor and was trained to never back down and give up. On this third day, he had succeeded in mastering the basic spirit of the fire element and believed he could take down this arrogant boy. He actually hadn't mastered a spell yet, but he had some understanding and preferred to pummel this pretty boy's face with just his fist.
He was about to jump over and pin the boy to the ground but his leg became frozen, he couldn't move.
"I don't need you to interfere," said the blond-haired pretty boy on the ground to his friends, he had used his understanding of the ice element and had frozen Thrax's leg.
"AArrgghhh!" Thrax struggled to free himself but he was stuck on the ground.
The blond ice element acolyte hurled another ice spell toward Thrax's immobile body and tried to get up.
Thrax had heated up his body with his understanding of the elemental fire, vaporizing the ice on his leg but he was too late. The ice bullet was only an inch away from him when Julian placed his arm in the path of the ice bullet preventing it from reaching Thrax.
Julian pulled back his uninjured arm that was emitting a faint yellow glow.
This was the spell Julian had mastered after comprehending the basic earth spirit cultivation technique and training with Darius. But since he had just acquired that spell, Julian could only turn the skin on his arm as hard as a rock. Transforming the skin into a rock made him not feel any pain but the freezing properties of the ice spell still affected Julian's stone arm so that even if it was not injured, it had become frozen and Julian couldn't move his fingers.
Julian's arm formed chunks of ice like Thrax's legs. He waved his arm, but it was for naught as it was truly frozen. If Julian had used his stone skin spell against a different element attack like fire, sharp or blunt force, the stone skin would have worked but it wasn't effective against the ice bullet, which was its main strength was to freeze.
Emery, Klea and Chumo also stood up for they couldn't just stand by and watch Thrax and Julian fight for them.
The acolyte formed another ice bullet directed to Julian.
Julian blocked it with his other arm and the freezing properties of the ice bullet made both of his arms unusable.
Thrax didn't stay still and crushed the melting ice on one of his legs with a punch, shattering the chunks of ice into millions of pieces on the ground.
The pretty boy acolyte raised both of his hands in the direction of Thrax and Julian, forming another ice bullets. It looked like he intended to freeze both of them from head to toe at the same time.
[Ice Bullet] [Ice Bullet]
Emery had seen how the ice bullet came into contact with Julian's second arm. Could it be perhaps what he was thinking? But there was no time to think more about it as the acolyte's ice bullet was about to touch Thrax and Julian. He quickly grabbed the bowl and spoon on the table and threw it at the projectiles. The two items came into contact with the bullets in the air and froze both the bowl and spoon before falling on the ground.
Emery made a fist at the conjecture he had made and saved Thrax and Julian from being fully frozen.
"Nice one, Emery!" exclaimed Klea.
Since Emery had interfered, the two acolytes from Kalios nodded to each other and came forward readying their spells when a great wind pushed the two of them including the blonde acolyte three steps back.
"Gust of wind!" Klea had shouted. It was her spell.
The three acolytes were surprised for a few seconds before recollecting themselves. They were about to reply in kind with their spells when a purple spark ignited from Klea's palm.
Klea waved her hand and said, "Lightning arrow."
The spark of electricity shot from Klea's hand and precisely destroyed the ice that had frozen Thrax's other leg and both of Julian's arms.
The acolytes from Kalios looked surprised and the blond boy muttered, "Two spells already! It's only the third day and this girl is able to use spells from two different affinities."
They then stopped their spells and suddenly looked at each other, seemingly discussing and nodding amongst themselves while glancing at Klea from time to time.
The arrogant blonde boy, who seemed to their leader, said, "We'll let you guys off this time. Let's just say we're suddenly feeling generous today."
He turned around and bumped into Chumo standing behind them. No one had noticed how Chumo, the black-haired boy, with his hair tied to a bun, managed to get around them, even the onlookers. All they knew was that Chumo just suddenly appeared at the back of the blond hair boy.
A large crowd had gathered but the battle was over as the acolytes from Kalios walked away. If they had continued, Emery and his friends would most likely lose. And even though they had managed to prevent the youths of Kalios from humiliating them, in the end if it weren't for Klea they would've most likely lost the fight.