Chapter 72 A Wagon Of Bricks.

  Aodhan Setanta was waiting for Lenna in the underground arena. The way to get there was simple and easily pointed out to the duo, it was just a door that led to a set of conjured stone stairs. The stairwell was lined with glowing stones and once at the bottom, it opened up to a colosseum that had seating for only five hundred people around an oblong arena that was fifty yards long and fifteen wide. They could have fit five whole Guild Halls inside of the arena, well, they could have if the ceiling wasn’t a whole floor shorter than an actual Guild Hall. The walls were all conjured and enchanted stone that looked strong enough to hold up to anything short of a Tarasque and Gilgamesh having a brawl. Aodhan was sitting cross legged just on the far side of the middle of the arena. Over a dozen people were already waiting for them but the few dozen people that had been in the Guild Hall had all decided to follow the duo down into the arena. In all, it looked like Lenna and Aodhan would have an audience of around sixty. Much less than Lenna was used to in these situations. She was internally very grateful for the somewhat secluded nature of adventurers. Otherwise the stands might have been packed to the brim. Everyone on or in Primatia loved to watch a good fight.

  “Welcome, Oathbroken Paladin of Clan V’Nova, Lady of Hellfire, Lenna V’Nova, it is an honor to face you in combat, even if it will not be to the death.” Aodhan said and rose to his feet. His bare chest was on full display but he still wore his adventuring boots and a pair of hearty workman’s pants.

  “You honor me, Heir of Divine Rage, Herald of Cu, Chosen Setantan, Aodhan Setanta. May our muscles burn and skills collide like a hammer on hot iron.” Lenna replied the two combatants bowed to each other. Lenna gave Isaac a nod and he returned it before he vanished and appeared in the stands. Lenna was wearing a short sleeved shirt over her underarmor and a pair of her own workman’s pants that were being held up by a belt. Her new pair of travelling boots hadn’t been properly broken in yet but they were well made so Lenna barely noticed

  Aodhan beamed. “You may use your aura but no mana.” He told her and picked his fists up into a boxer’s stance. “It is only fair as I am a berserker warrior, like my demidivine forefather.” It had taken Isaac until that point to notice that the large man’s speech had cleared up a bit. Isaac wasn’t sure if he was drunk before and just hardly showed it visually or if everything that he had just said had been rehearsed enough times that it came out in proper Outerworld Standard.

  “Very well, I advance, Setanta.” Lenna stated and ignited in perfectly interposed black and orange flames. Lenna’s silver underarmor gleamed like clean steel that had just been tossed into the forge. The lower leveled people in the stands all recoiled just from the feeling of being relatively near Lenna’s positively predatory aura, Aodhan just grinned wider. Every one of the massive man’s teeth were on display.

  Lenna exploded into action, they had started just barely out of easy reach of each other, even for the massive Aodhan, but Lenna closed the distance in little more than a blink. Her left fist flew out like a shot from a ballista and Aodhan ducked into it to take it with his forearm instead of his sternum. The blow hardly fazed him and he countered with his left hand. Lenna slipped under it and drove her right into his sternum. Aodhan winced but it didn’t stop him from launching his right elbow up towards Lenna’s chin at blinding speed. Lenna barely managed to lean back out of the way enough before it could take her nose off. His right arm extended as it came screaming back down towards the ground, now on a perfect collision course with the top of her head. Lenna sidestepped as she deflected his hammerfist with her left forearm and threw an uppercut into his left side with her right hand. His left arm took it just above the elbow once more and then his left fist snapped out in a flickerjab that caught Lenna right in the nose and sent her staggering backwards.

  Aodhan took the moment to properly reorient himself on Lenna and flexed both of his arms to help work out the heavy impacts to his forearm muscles that Lenna had just landed. Lenna wiped her nose with the back of her hand but it had already started to heal. He hadn’t broken her nose, it had definitely hit it hard enough to send Isaac’s into his skull, but Lenna was practically made of iron. On top of that, her aura had changed to now very slowly heal her while it was active and her blessing from Lua was always active as long as it wasn’t a new moon and the moon was out, both of which were true.

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  Aodhan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as he did so, his veins bulged and Isaac could feel that the man had just gotten even stronger. It was his turn to launch at Lenna. Aodhan’s right fist came down with the force of a falling building towards Lenna’s forehead. Instead of blocking, deflecting, or trying to dodge the attack, Lenna planted her feet and threw a high right cross with everything she had into the incoming bolder from a catapult. The two fists collided in mid air, one around half the size of the other and they both stopped cold. Aodhan looked momentarily surprised at how Lenna had managed to match his strength before he was forced to take a left uppercut to ribs as Lenna dashed in to capitalize on his momentary surprise.

  Aodhan staggered back a step but still managed to send a left cross towards Lenna which she leaned into and slammed her shoulder into his punch before it could reach full extension. She was still pushed back however and both combatants were able to square off against each other once more. Aodhan had definitely taken more hits but Lenna was the one who had been hit in the face so the winner was far from decided. Even so, the longer the fight went on, the more blows they traded, the more crazed the look in Aodhan’s eyes became and the wider his grin spread. He was clearly having the time of his life. Lenna’s face was as it always was in combat, sharp and focused with no emotion to be seen whatsoever.

  Isaac would be lying if he had said that Lenna would actually stand on even footing when it came to strength with the massive man in front of her. He also expected the massive man to be faster simply because he was a warrior, what he had failed to take into account was how much strength Lenna got from her aura. Her aura essentially added her willpower to her strength which was how they were on equal footing on that metric and Aodhan wasn’t just a warrior, he was also a berserker, which meant that his class didn’t give him as much speed as someone like Edward, who was only a warrior. The bonuses from classes were noticeable but they weren’t all powerful. Isaac knew that first hand as someone who didn’t get any physical increases from his class at all and he had fought plenty of those with a class in melee combat before.

  Isaac was used to Lenna being an unstoppable force but she wasn’t actually faster than he was. Part of that was because he used a lighter weapon and the rest was just because he was lighter on his feet than she was. Lenna did, however, still get a slight speed increase from her class. It was just so minor that all it could do was bridge the gap between herself and Isaac while under those conditions. Where Isaac was a lethal featherweight, Lenna was a fast middleweight with lead in her fists when fighting without her aura, with it, she was apparently a middleweight with the impacts and resilience of a superheavyweight boxer. Isaac was suddenly very glad that she had never fist fought him while boosted by her aura, that was just scary.

  Isaac was taken from his musings as Lenna and Aodhan went at each other. Neither combatant used anything other than their arms like they were fighting a sanctioned boxing match. At first, Isaac didn’t understand why until he realized how solid their stances were. Their feet were planted for almost every exchange and then they shifted onto the balls of their feet to move, dodge, or just generally reposition. The reason they were fighting like boxers was because they both knew that if they didn’t put every ounce of strength into every single one of their attacks that the attack would do absolutely nothing to the other.

  Lenna deflected one of Aodhan’s punches with the back of her left hand and then slammed her knuckles into the side of his face. Aodhan had chosen to take the hit so he could land a solid uppercut into her ribs but her right arm was tucked properly and she took it to her forearm. The hit still landed with enough force to toss her a few feet from him and when they squared off again both fighters took a moment to rub their most recent injuries.

  “You hit, like a wagon, of bricks.” Aodhan’s gravely voice growled through deep breaths.

  “You feel, like your made of, a wagon of bricks.” Lenna joked back though her own deep breaths and raised her fists once more.

  Aodhan chuckled and raised his own fists before they went at each other again. Clash after clash, they traded blows that would crumple platinum level adventurers and everyone in the stands knew it. It didn’t take long for Isaac and the rest of the experienced adventurers to realize that neither Lenna nor Aodhan had gone after any unsportsmanlike targets like the throat, eyes, between the legs, or extended joints. They were just smashing their fists against each other like the other was just a sand-filled punching bag that could hit back. Their fight had gone on for two full minutes before they both backed off and Lenna gave Aodhan a nod.

  “Ready, to get serious?” Aodhan questioned her.

  “Yes.” Lenna replied. “Are you?”

  Aodhan nodded back. “We are both warmed up, yes.”

  For the first time since the match began, Lenna grinned. “Good.”

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler