Universal Power System

As soon as Mikhail said that, he didn't even let the shiver reach Mako's spine from hearing that name at a time like this as he was the first to make a move, launching himself at Mako with incredible speed and strength, his fists glowing bright with red flames.

[Phantom Shift has been activated]

Even though Mako was caught off guard, he was able to react fast enough to the incoming punch and quickly sidestepped the attack, dodging the blow.

From Mikhail's perspective, it looked like he had made contact with Mako's face as he released all the fire aura concentrated in his fist upon supposed contact which released a giant fireball.

If Mako was unable to move out of the way in time, the fireball was so hot and strong that it would have melted Mako's face right off. However, soon the afterimage of Mako disappeared, and with the fireball having no contact launched itself forward and blasted a tree that was 40 meters in its direction.

After that first exchange, there was a brief pause where Mikhail just stood in the exact position with his fist extended outwards. He kept staring at the tree 40 meters away from him that got blasted by his rogue fireball and was currently up in flames.

He suddenly had a huge smile on his face and even began grinning as he stared at his own fist. Mako used this opportunity to create some space between the two of them and tried to see if he could get a read on this guy using Analyze.

[Analyze]

[Skill Failed (opponent level too high)]

Not surprisingly, Mako's skill failed which meant that he was in for a serious battle.

"Hahaha! It has been a hot minute since someone was able to dodge my Blaze Punch! He really didn't lie when he said you were strong enough to take on 30 men at the same time." Mikhail said while laughing.

That statement confirmed in Mako's mind that Mikhail was indeed sent by El-Diablo to take revenge for infiltrating and destroying his prison warehouses.

He didn't know how he was able to figure out his identity since he was always careful and never did let anyone see his face during any tournaments and destroyed all the evidence when they destroyed the warehouse, but it seemed that Mako had still overlooked something which had led El-Diablo to learn who he was.

Mako was now in some serious trouble because he was only able to beat all those guards at once because of his Rage mode. After all, they were all quite weak and had easily activated it which was why he was able to deal with them so easily. If Mako didn't have Rage mode, then he would have not been able to defeat all those men by himself at all.

Granted, Mako had grown a lot more since that time and had become a lot more strong, and if he wanted to he could defeat 30 men now but even now he was nowhere as strong enough to do it without getting seriously injured because while he would be dealing with a couple of them, the rest could attack him freely.

It was because of Rage mode that Mako was able to defeat them since Rage mode deactivated part of Mako's brain that was responsible for feeling empathy and using logic and reason so that he could fight wildly. Additionally, While Rage mode was active Mako got covered in red flames that look a lot like the fire ability and gave Mako natural protection.

El-Diablo didn't know about the fact that Mako had Rage mode and assumed that he was naturally strong enough to defeat all those men and had sent a person who could match up to the strength of that "Mako" who could supposedly defeat 30 men in one go.

Who would have thought that the person behind the destruction of four prison warehouses, defeating multitudes of guards at once, and costing El-Diablo a huge amount of credits was merely an eighteen-year-old boy who had just awakened his powers two months ago? Mako had dug his own grave here by rushing too quickly and not acknowledging his own limits and had just gotten lucky.

Now that Mako knew who Mikhail was working for, he quickly understood Mikhail's plan that he had been trying to implement since the beginning of the test.

***************

Mikhail had been trying to eliminate Mako since the very beginning.

When he was supposed to jump off the plane, Mako's fears were amplified so much by Natasha that he wanted to fail the test and not jump thus eliminating him from the test.

However, Mikhail didn't factor in the fact that Mako's grandmother would show up in her grandson's vision at the time of need and encourage him to face his fears making it so that he broke out of the fear trance and jumped out of the plane with Bill just in the nick of time. A phenomenon that even Mako couldn't explain at this point.

After Mikhail's accomplice, the imposter had identified Mako to be with Iris and Erin's group, Mikhail launched an assault using the hypnotized Silver Wolves, but Mako was able to escape from there too.

It was at the time that Mako had confronted the imposter using his strongest aura which made him confirm that Mako was indeed as strong as El-Diablo had said, and so he retreated to report back to Mikhail.

After this, Mikhail only saw one way to finish this once and for all and that was to create a situation where Mako was forced to fight Mikhail alone one on one.

Mikhail was confident in his ability to defeat Mako and eliminate him from the test which is what he wanted in the first place. This was because he really couldn't kill Mako during the test. After all, the patrolling officers would stop the fight the moment they think the cadet is going to die from a blow.

However, if he was to eliminate him, then Mako had no way of getting into military school early which was one of the privileges given to those who were able to achieve the special class.

This would make it so that Mako would have to try again next year to get into military school or at least spend three months back in Emerald City before being admitted into the military school regularly if he was still able to get accepted into the regular or advanced class due to his performance.

Either way, he would have to return back to Emerald City for a while, where he would be unprotected from the military and El-Diablo could enact his revenge, and something told Mako that El-Diablo wanted to take his revenge by himself in person.

****************

After understanding that his life was riding on this duel, Mako knew he couldn't afford to lose this duel and he was willing to do whatever it took to defeat Mikhail.

*DING!*

[New Quest Received]

[Defeat Mikhail Fedorov]

[Rewards: ???]

[Penalty: ???]

Right on cue, the system turned Mako's life-or-death situation into another quest but this time, both the rewards and the penalty was hidden. The quest really didn't affect Mako as he was planning on doing so even without the quest, but now he was going to get something out of it as well.

Judging from their earlier exchange, Mako concluded that Mikhail was indeed faster than him but was still detectable through his perception.

Mako had no idea how strong Mikhail was or how many abilities did he have in total. He didn't know just how destructive his fire ability was considering he had never seen a fire ability user with pure red flames.

However, Mako would have an idea real soon of Mikhail's abilities as the staredown had come to a close with Mikhail lighting his fists with red flames once again and rushing toward Mako, restarting the fight.

[Motion Sense has been activated]

Mako ducked under the first punch, and with lightning-fast reflexes, landed a couple of blows to Mikhail's abdomen which felt really solid. Mikhail didn't go unfazed by Mako's punches, but they weren't strong enough to knock Mikhail back and he continued his assault with the flaming punches.

This time, Mako retaliated with a swift kick to Mikhail's shin; however, Mikhail was able to catch him as he was in the middle of the kick and proceeded to give a massive blow to his chest making him drop his Storm Caller staff and be launched several feet back.

[-30 HP]

[User has three fractured ribs]

The system notified Mako of his injury as he came to a stop after being launched back several feet by Mikhail's punch which Mako didn't quite appreciate at the moment. Mikhail didn't want to give Mako the chance to recover so he quickly rushed forward and proceeded to give a massive kick on Mako's back launching him once again many feet back.

Blood burst out from Mako's mouth as he was tossed back by Mikhail's powerful blows. Mikhail wanted to keep up the pressure but Mako stopped him from doing so as he quickly started to rapidly fire fireballs toward Mikhail's general direction.

The fireballs weren't enough to deal serious damage to Mikhail and since Mako was shooting from so far away, he could easily dodge them as well, but Mako wanted exactly this to happen in the first place.

Mikhail created some space between himself and Mako as he dodge his fireballs which Mako used to his advantage. He slowly started to pick himself off the ground while still firing fireball at Mikhail.

He quickly got back on his feet and finally stopped firing fireballs at Mikhail.

"You are just wasting your energy on useless moves!" Mikhail taunted as he rushed toward Mako once again but Mako was ready for him this time as he quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a smoke bomb that he had found in his very first loot crate.

He quickly activated the smoke bomb and threw it right next to his feet creating a huge cloud of smoke that temporarily blocked Mikhail's visual of Mako.

Mikhail didn't let this slow him down as he ran head-first into the smoke and started throwing blades of fire in random directions, trying to hit Mako.

"Playing Hide and Seek, are we? Fine! I'll play!" Mikhail shouted like a madman as he continued to conjure and throw red blazing blades of fire inside the smoke.