'Once I would have been forced to wear a goddamn shirt with the risk of my sleeves getting grabbed. This thing Lith calls a "sports bra" is really useful.' Jirni appreciated her tank top while fixing her blonde hair into a small bun.
The skin-tight combat gear emphasized her hourglass figure, making even her opponent swallow a few times. Jirni's diminutive stature made her curves stand out and her husband wish he could murder everyone in the room.
"You both know the rules." King Meron conjured the First Blood array, that would paralyze those within its premises the moment one of them bled.
"The victory belongs to the person who manages the injure the opponent first or pins them to the ground. Fight fairly and remember that the honor of your households is at stake. Begin."
Both contestants assumed a combat stance, but didn't move from their respective starting point. Jirni was wary of Irehein's long limbs and him of her counters.
"I'm sorry to meet you under such circumstances, Lady Ernas. I always respected both you and your husband." Irehein said while shifting his body weight in several feints without taking a single step.
"Sweet words coming from someone who sided with our enemies." Jirni, instead, remained still as the surface of a lake.
"No one ever got rich being nice." Irehein shrugged, using the motion to hide the change of his stance that would otherwise signal his strategy.
On paper, Jirni was an easy mark. Shorter, lighter, older, and with slower reflexes than him. All Irehein needed to do was to hit her once while making sure she wouldn't scratch him with her nails.
He was aware of Jirni's craftiness and how the rules of the challenge gave her an edge he couldn't afford to overlook. Irehein focused on her shoulders to anticipate the movement of Jirni's arms and with it her footwork.
A veteran like Jirni would always prepare both her attack and defense before moving, something that Irehein could use as a road map to victory. Yet she remained motionless while he charged forward, keeping her guard neutral as if she was focusing solely on the defense.
"Slow." Jirni sidestepped the split-second before his arms reached her own, using the momentum to spin faster and kick Irehein's left calf with all of her strength.
Unlike other kinds of kicks, hits on the calf instantly caused great amounts of damage and pain, making even a man as big as Irehein stumble during his charge and sending him to slam against the barrier that separated the fighters from the spectators.
"Clumsy." While Irehein was forced to use his hands to not hit the barrier head-first, risking a nosebleed, and his left leg was still partially numb, Jirni kicked his calf again in the exact same spot, forcing him to kneel.
"Unprepared." She struck at the back of Irehein's head with a knife-hand, severing his spine and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down.
Irehein fell onto the ground like a stringless puppet, screaming at the top of his lungs in fear. He felt no pain but he was perfectly aware that unless a rejuvenator cured him, that kind of injury might require months of therapy to heal.
"Maybe no one ever got rich being nice, but you should have known that biting my husband's hand and now mine would have consequences." Jirni ignored his screams and stood at the center of the array in defiance.
"Anyone else?" She looked at her opponents in the eyes, making sure that they got the second part of her message that said: "If you come at me hiding behind the law, I'll use it to my advantage to crush you."
"Lord Irehein, the fight isn't over unless you bleed or surrender." The Queen replied to the man's plea for help the only way she could.
His body was broken yet intact and Jirni had ceased her attack, leaving Irehein only one way to end the duel.
"I yield. Now someone heals me!" Seeing an adult man groveling in the dirt while crying in despair was a hard sight to behold.
Jirni left the array the moment it started to fade and brushed against Archmage Deirus on her way to the changing room.
"Nuragor is done for. You're next." Her voice was a soft whisper in his ear, yet it would haunt his sleep for a long time.
***
Village of Lutia, Solus's Tower, a week after Lith had returned from Jambel.
Solus achieving a deep cyan core had caused her tower form to grow bigger, larger, and had added two new floors instead of just one.
The second underground floor, located directly below Lith's labs, contained what in the future would be his personal crystal mines. Being the closest floor to the energy flux coming from the mana geyser, the tower's basement was the perfect environment to grow crystal veins.
The tower walls were naturally capable of condensing and focusing the world energy, which would allow the magical gemstones to grow at an accelerated rate. Unfortunately for Lith, it would still take over a century to grow something he could actually use.
The realization disappointed him, but it also provided him with an unexpected and priceless source to boost his scarce resources.
After studying how the artificial crystal mine worked, Lith had planted inside the walls the purple raw crystal he had taken from the orc shaman and all the weaker and smaller gemstones he had found during his travels.
The mines had a small effect on already cut crystals whereas raw ones would both keep growing as if they had never been mined and hasten the nucleation process of new crystals that would branch out those already formed.
On top of that, unlike a natural mine, the floor was perfectly insulated from external energy sources, making it safe for Lith and Solus to practice their magic without the risk of unstable crystals exploding.
Since the mana geyser was also required to keep the tower form and fuel Lith's experiments, Solus was able to regulate the flow of world energy according to their schedule.
"Whenever we are studying or resting, I can channel everything into the mine to accelerate the crystals' growth rate, but whenever we Forgemaster something or I'm not in the tower form, the process stops." Solus said while they were checking the development of old and new crystals.
"It's still better than anything I could hope for." Lith replied. "A normal mine would require specialized workers, around the clock security, and be kept a secret to not have it seized by the Kingdom.
"This way, instead, we've got our own portable mine. On top of that, its ability to refine all crystals we own has not to be underestimated. The orc's crystal is so big and pure that, given time, it might easily become white.
"Also, not only does the mine allow us to further refine even already cut crystals, but also to recharge and enhance red, orange, and yellow gemstones that would otherwise be disposable."
To not waste a single ounce of world energy, Lith had bought lots of yellow crystals and filled the tower walls with them. Yellow crystals were powerful but relatively cheap because they were the highest tier of crystals incapable of self-recharging.
Lith hoped that using already formed gemstones as a foundation would help the mine to develop faster and provide him with valuable resources within an acceptable time frame.
