A new day arrived with many possibilities.
Today, Eren was aiming to use his challenger passes. He made use of the data he collected over the flying platform to zero in on the first five weakest students.
The butcher unabashedly issued challenges to these five weak-ass students. Of course, by now, Eren was recognized as one of the top fighters in his class. So even if they had to accept these challenges, they didn't go beyond the minimum participation amount despite Eren's nudging.
Eren quickly beat up the first four students mercilessly while experimenting with his spells combo. As a result, he was soon going to run out of mana after his fourth battle. That's why he had decided to finish his fifth and final match of the day.
But his opponent had other plans!
Ramy Richards was a straight shooter. He wore his heart on his sleeves and talked at length about what he was feeling at the time.
That wouldn't have been a major problem in itself if he hadn't had a lisp. His Rs would turn into Ws because of his speech impediment.
Therefore every word that had the letter R in it would be pronounced weirdly by Ramy Richards.
"You… Ewen Idwil... why don't you pick up fights with othaw students of your level? You cleawly know we aaw not youw match.
Such wanking battles won't give any leawning expewience to eithew you or us weak students. So why partake in these meaningless battles?"
Ramy started speaking before the countdown to the battle started. His speech made an explosion of laughter go off in the audience surrounding the battlefield.
"Hahahaha!
Wanking battle he says!
Kkkkkkkkk!
This was the biggest fumble Richie has made thus far. I'm gonna die of stomach ache."
One student started rolling on the floor after expressing his inability to control his laughter.
"I wouldn't want to be part of such a battle if you ask me. Say, what will be the rules of this 'wanking waw'?"
"Hehehe! Well, it depends. There should be categories like the longest wanker, the quickest wanker.
Then there should be categories based on the let's say the 'produce'. Its quantity can be one such criterion for declaring the winner between two 'wankers'. Hahahaha!"
The students kept on finding new things to talk about on the subject of wanking. The laughter only increased in its liveliness as a result.
So far the students had found alternate pronunciations and their respective meanings for some of the most popular terms.
For example:
Wanker: someone who partakes in wanking wars!
&
Wanking journey: a process a wanker has to go through to become the ultimate wanker of their generation.
Now every male student talked about being a wanker than their peers. Of course, the girls laughed at the jokes too. But they maintained a certain decorum. Or at least they tried to.
This gender-encompassing fumble was too wild to handle even for the battle referee who happened to be Julie Ekheart. She kept her hand pressed against her lips to control her laughter and nudged the participants to start the battle.
Apart from having such a lisp, Ramy was also gifted with the ability to keep a straight face in any situation. It held true even when his lisp turns a serious situation into that of a comedy.
He had been doing this from his childhood after all. He had a lot of experience handling such situations. So he didn't break his serious face and kept on staring at Eren who was also struggling to tame his laughter.
"Well… why don't you answew me…"
"Please don't speak anymore Ramy.
Listen, man, I'm doing this for the quickest and easiest way to earn Merps. I don't have any ulterior motive to humiliate my opponents. Why don't you quit as soon as the battle starts?"
"Haah! You wish. You think I'm not stwong enough. But I'll wweck (intended: wreck, pronounced: wake) your ass as soon as you come in my attacking wange!"
Ramy just couldn't keep his mouth shut and his fumbles at bay. His declaration of "'waking' Eren's ass" caused another bout of laughter to spread among the crowds.
That's right! Even the crowds of the audience surrounding other battlefields had turned into the spectators of Eren's match with Ramy.
Eren had a headache handling his current opponent. He was dragging the match unnecessarily without signaling to Julie of his readiness so that the countdown could start.
Just when the butcher thought of saying something, Ramy nodded his head at Julie indicating he was ready. The countdown started soon as a result.
This time, the gem dragged the match longer by executing Sedated Perception autonomously again. Eren wasn't as surprised as he was the first time. But this uncalled-for spell execution still confused him. Ramy was still far away from him. And the countdown wasn't over yet.
But he soon got the answer as to why the gem executed the spell!
"Beware! This guy is crafty. He is using silent incantation."
Eren heard a gender-neutral voice in the almost stagnant world. He didn't ask stupid questions to that voice like 'who are you?' because it was already apparent to him that it was the gem.
He also didn't ask the gem as to why it started to talk to him now all of a sudden. He had already realized that he didn't hold the initiative in their talk. If the gem wanted to speak to him, it could. And there's nothing he could do about it if the artifact decided to maintain silence.
Therefore, Eren mentally nodded at the suggestion while replying:
"Alright! Thanks for the heads-up. Let's talk someday about our situation when you think the time is right."
Eren focused on his current battle for the time being. He replayed the gem's warning in his head.
Only now did he realize how cunning Ramy was. He had been using silent spell casting all this time. No wonder he was trying to drag the match so much.
And Ramy could do that while speaking in between. That meant his casting type allowed him to hit pause on the incantation.
That meant his spell type was derived from two schools of spells, which allowed him to cast the silent incantation spells while being interrupted.
Such spell type places less burden on the mana circuit and focuses more on controlling the surrounding mana.
Of course, since he was controlling the surrounding mana with his mana sense and not employing the mana circuit that he could control with better efficiency, the casting time was long. And any interruption would stretch it even longer.
But the advantages of such a spell type made up for its disadvantages.
First, it would catch the opponents off guard if cast carefully. Second, it wouldn't deplete the user's mana as much as it would if they employed their mana circuits.
That meant they could battle with their opponents for longer.
And lastly, since the surrounding mana was getting used in the casting of the spell, the limiter on the spell's output wasn't dependent on the user's mana storage. They could cast such spells with the enhanced output if their intelligence and mana sense allows for.
In short, Ramy had the potential to seriously damage Eren if his attacks landed on the latter, despite their differences in the BTP value. Winning the match was still a far-fetched idea in most likelihood. But Ramy seemed optimistic.
He was probably trying to catch Eren off guard by distracting him and the audience with his fumble. His innocent fumble was probably faked too.
The guy knew that his lisp would prevent him from speaking such words normally. Yet he still did it. He was aiming to take down the mammoth standing in front of him that was Eren with the element of surprise by his side.
Eren wasn't aware of Ramy's battle style from his previous timeline. That's because the latter wasn't that famous.
It must've been because every opponent of his at that time would have taken countermeasures against him once his spell type and its weaknesses were revealed. Eren wasn't a spectator to these events in his previous timeline. So he couldn't have known.
'*Sigh! I can't never really underestimate an opponent, can I?' Eren thought to himself.
He saw a faint intrinsic diagram forming in front of Ramy. It was the manifestation of the spell's activation. Since Ramy wasn't using his mana circuits to execute his spells, this manifestation was natural.
Eren saw that the countdown was soon going to turn to zero. He kept his spell combo experiments aside for now. What he needed to do right now was to take down Ramy before he could cast his spells. He wasn't a fan of being injured by a newbie with his craftiness after all.
Eren executed Blitz Steps as soon as the counter hit zero. The battle ring was laid over a sensor array. It could disqualify him if he casts the spell before the countdown finishes. But it apparently didn't stop Ramy from breaking the same rule because of the spell's peculiarity.
Eren quickly reached Ramy's back and performed a lightning-coated chop on the back of his opponent's neck. The difference in their body stats and the effect of Sedated Perception was enough for Eren to pull off such an act.
Ramy's spell diagram started dispersing in the air right after Eren's chop landed on him. The guy started closing his eyes, indicating that he was about to faint.
Sedated Perception got deactivated right after that. Eren looked at his opponent who by now crashed onto the ground.
'You almost got me, Wamy Wichards! Almost!'
The butcher had this thought as he turned to leave the battle ring.
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