The power of this punch was enough to shatter a boulder. Xuan Xi didn’t retreat.
Instead, she stepped forward, slightly tilting her body to let the punch graze past her ear, and then—she reached out and placed her hand on Reggie’s arm.
Using leverage to deflect a thousand pounds! Taking advantage of the momentum of Reggie’s punch, she flipped along his arm, her body drawing an arc in the air, and landed behind Reggie.
Reggie was startled and quickly turned around, but Xuan Xi had already created distance.
This move was not the combat style of Western dragons. There was no power clash, purely fighting techniques.
A few low gasps came from the sidelines.
“What was that move just now?”
“It doesn’t look like a dragon’s fighting style, more like…”
“Eastern martial arts?” someone said uncertainly.
In the center of the field, Reggie’s expression changed.
He had originally thought his opponent was an ordinary person with no bloodline rating and no rank, someone he could take down without much effort.
But that move just now made him realize that this girl’s combat intuition far exceeded his expectations.
“Have you studied fighting techniques?” he asked.
“Not really,” Xuan Xi said. “I’ve just been in a lot of fights.”
It wasn’t a lie. In the border town, she was the only “outsider.” There were plenty of Western dragon kids who picked on her.
If she couldn’t win, she’d run. If she couldn’t run, she had to figure something out.
Over more than ten years, she had developed a set of unorthodox techniques that didn’t belong to any school.
Reggie took a deep breath and stopped holding back.
He crossed his arms in front of him, and a deep brown light emanated from his entire body.
The ground began to tremble, and pieces of gravel floated up from the surface, forming a spinning Rock Armor Shield around his body.
This was a signature skill of Earth Element dragons—condensing elemental power to its limit without dragonifying.
“You’d better give up,” Reggie said in a low, serious voice. “You might not be able to withstand my full-powered strike.”
Xuan Xi looked at the thick Rock Armor Shield. There was no fear in her amber-golden eyes, only a calm… calculation.
‘What does she need to do to avoid losing too badly?’
‘She doesn’t need to win. She just needs to prove that she’s not someone who can be trampled on.’
‘Dragonification?’
‘No. School rules forbid dragonification in non-designated areas, and this combat training clearly stipulates staying in Human Form. If she really dragonified, she would probably be working off debt to the academy for the rest of her life.’
‘Then she’ll have to finish in Human Form.’
She closed her eyes. There was a power inside her, completely different from the elemental power of Western dragons.
It was softer, deeper, usually as quiet as a sleeping pool of water, only rippling when her emotions were touched.
‘She didn’t need to fully awaken it. She only needed to borrow a little.’
“I won’t give up,” she said, opening her eyes and looking at Reggie.
Reggie moved.
He didn’t use stone spikes for ranged attacks—in the Rock Armor Shield state, his movement speed dropped significantly, but in exchange, he gained defense and attack power close to Dragon Form.
He punched the ground, and a shockwave spread along the ground toward Xuan Xi.
Xuan Xi leaped up to avoid the shockwave, flipped in the air, and the moment she landed, she had already closed in beside Reggie.
She reached out to grab his arm, intending to repeat the same trick. But this time, Reggie had learned.
The moment her fingers touched his arm, a thin layer of rock armor covered his forearm, making her grip point smooth and uncontrollable. Xuan Xi’s fingers slipped on the rock armor, she lost balance, and stumbled a step when landing.
Reggie seized this opportunity and punched with his other hand.
Xuan Xi couldn’t dodge in time and had to cross her arms to block.
Bam!
She was pushed back five or six steps by the punch, her arms numb and her hands aching from the impact.
If not for her bones being tougher than an ordinary dragon’s, this punch would have been enough to break her arms.
Reggie didn’t pursue. He stood still, the Rock Armor Shield slowly rotating around him like a silent fortress.
“Your technique is impressive,” he said. “But in Human Form, you can’t break through my defense.”
He was telling the truth. Xuan Xi had no ranged attacks, no elemental power. Her strength in Human Form was far from enough to pierce Earth Element’s rock armor.
Reggie’s strategy was simple—he didn’t need to defeat her; he just needed to defend and wait for her to exhaust her stamina.
It was an open strategy. Xuan Xi lowered her arms and looked at her numb hands.
She was thinking about a question. If she couldn’t break through his defense, could she make him break his own defense?
She looked up, a glimmer of light flashing in her amber-golden eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t break through your defense.”
“But you can.”
She moved. This time, she didn’t try to get close.
Instead, she ran quickly around Reggie, nearly twice as fast as before.
Reggie’s Rock Armor Shield made him slow, so he could only rotate his body to keep facing Xuan Xi.
One lap, two laps, three laps.
Reggie started to get a little dizzy. His Rock Armor Shield required continuous elemental power output to maintain, and the constant rotation made his output unstable.
Xuan Xi saw that moment of instability.
She suddenly changed direction and charged toward Reggie’s left.
Reggie instinctively turned to meet her, but at the moment of contact, Xuan Xi suddenly ducked low, slipped under his arm, and appeared directly behind him.
Reggie’s Rock Armor Shield was thinnest at the back—because he had been defending from the front, and the elemental replenishment at the back couldn’t keep up.
Xuan Xi didn’t attack the shield. She kicked Reggie’s knee from behind.
Reggie’s leg gave way, and his body leaned forward. At that moment, the Rock Armor Shield briefly faltered due to his imbalance.
Xuan Xi seized this opportunity, turned her right hand into a blade, and precisely chopped at the side of his neck—exactly where his Reverse Scale was.
Reggie’s vision went dark. He swayed, knelt on one knee, and the Rock Armor Shield completely dissipated. The entire field fell silent.
A girl with no bloodline rating, no rank, no dragonification, had brought a B-Rank bloodline, Earth Element opponent to his knees.
Not by overwhelming power, not by elemental advantage, but purely by technique and wit.
Reggie knelt on the ground, stunned for several seconds. Then he slowly lifted his head and looked at Xuan Xi with a complicated expression.
“You…” he opened his mouth. “Who exactly are you?”
Xuan Xi withdrew her hand, flexed her numb fingers, and said calmly, “I told you. Xuan Xi Hellas, foster daughter of the Hellas family.”
Wald stood at the edge of the field, his gray-white eyes fixed on Xuan Xi, silent for about five seconds.
“Hellas wins.”
His voice still carried no emotion, but Xuan Xi noticed that his gray-white eyes lingered on the marking below her right eye for a moment, longer than usual.
Xuan Xi walked off the training ground and found her hands trembling slightly.
That battle had consumed too much of her energy and concentration.
Her thigh muscles were trembling, and the wound on her arm from the stone spike was still oozing blood, droplets dripping down her fingers onto the ground.
She found a corner to sit down, took out the healing potion her foster father had given her, uncorked it, and poured some onto the wound on her forearm.
White mist rose, and the wound healed at a visible rate, but the pain still lingered.
“Your fighting style is very interesting.”
Xuan Xi looked up and found Hildegarda standing in front of her, still in Human Form, still expressionless.
But there was something different in those amethyst eyes—not curiosity, more like…
Recognition? Or appreciation?
Xuan Xi couldn’t tell.
Hildegarda took something out of her pocket and handed it to Xuan Xi. It was a small roll of bandage.
“Your potion can only stop the bleeding, not heal the wound,” she said.
“Use this. Our family produces it ourselves. It’s very effective.”
Xuan Xi looked at the bandage, then at Hildegarda’s face, and reached out to take it.
“Thank you.”
Hildegarda didn’t say anything else and turned to walk away.
Xuan Xi wrapped the bandage around her arm while watching her back.
She suddenly remembered what Reggie had said earlier: “Who doesn’t know Hildegarda von Edelstein?”
S-Rank bloodline, Thunder-Fire Dual Affinity, legitimate heiress of the Edelstein family.
One of the three strongest among the younger generation of the Western Dragon Domain.
But why would someone standing at the top of the pyramid carry a bandage with her and specifically come to give it to her?
Xuan Xi wrapped the bandage around her arm several times, tied a knot, and looked up at the sky.
The sunset was thick.
The first day at Dragonborn Academy quietly ended under the glow of the setting sun.
What she didn’t know was that while she was wrapping the bandage, on the other side of the training ground, Instructor Wald was frowning at a simple data sheet.
On that sheet was written her name: “Xuan Xi Hellas.”
Bloodline Rating: None. Element: None.
In the remarks column, he had scrawled a line: “Not a Western dragon. Combat style completely different. Unable to assess upper limit at this time.”
He put down his pen and looked out the window at the girl with dark green hair who was wrapping a bandage around her arm.
A complex emotion flickered in his gray-white eyes.
‘A dragon of the East,’ he said silently in his heart.
‘No mistake about it.’