Oh? A magic portal like that Lanner girl though by comparison hers was quite lacking, but that was neither here nor there because the man somehow emptied out an entire space that had several of lifetime's worth of brooms onto the floor. One of those brooms was handed to him telepathically and he grabbed onto it, examining it not so closely. Yup, the broom was made of broom. Smartassery aside, there was a warm smile on his face when he looked down at the broom and a faint feeling of nostalgia flickered inside of him.
It was a long ago, he must've been around five or so, but he had a vague memory of the onetime his father brought him to see the Magic Knight Exam like so many parents must've done so today. It was an echo of a memory, and the details were scratchy, but if there was one thing he remembered were the contestants soaring through the air. He remembered wondering how it must've felt to soar in the air, how free it must've felt.
However, his attention was brought back to the geezer who explained the details of the next test that should have been standard, except there was a slight amendment to it. Ludo's eyes fell upon an innocuous chest and the official quickly snatched from its contents to show a ball with hummingbird wings and a halo. They were to catch whatever these angelic spheres were in order to make it through to the next round, except the catch was that there were only a hundred of them and by a glance there were well over three hundred contestants.
"Damn, they're really trying to cull the numbers this year," Ludo muttered to himself. There was no need to do quick mental math that this was going to be an absolute cluster fuck. They were going to be dog piling each other fighting desperately to get their hands on a golden sni-, sphere with tunneled vision. Heck, he was already getting funny looks by people who stood next to him and even tried to get some distance like the neutered dogs with their tails between their legs that they were. It was embarrassing to be even in the same social class as them. Where the hell was their pride in themselves? Was surviving the only thing they would settle for?
Ludo took a deep breath and exhaled with closed eyes. Instead on focusing on others, he needed to focus on himself. The goals of others made no difference; no matter what, he was going to be coming out on top. His eyes opened with determination grinning in his eyes.
His grip tightened on his broom when the light blinked red, then yellow, and then...
All bedlam broke loose. It was like an aerial bar fight for every man for themselves. There was absolutely no class in this sort of brawl. It was perfect. However, first he needed to take flight. That and he needed to figure out how to fly.
"Alright, it's no different than usual. Do what you always do." Ludo said to himself. He felt his mana move through his body, down his arms, down his hands, past the tips of his finger, and into the wood. Slowly, Ludo's feet lifted off the ground as he hovered a few inches from the ground. The corners of his mouth curled into a satisfied smile, and he turned his gaze to the havoc happening in the air above him. That smile turned into a shit eating grin. "And here... we... go!"
To say Ludo rocketed into the air was an understatement. One moment he was hovering place and the next a cloud of dust was kicked up from where the commoner was flying up towards the big ol' barfight in the sky. It felt every bit as liberating as he imagined flying would be, the sensation of defying the forces that tethered him to the ground. "This is so awesome!" Ludo, in the face of danger, was laughing with joy while he could hear his heart beating between his ears.
Arrows rained death from above and while Ludo had no fancy weapons to slash at it, he had old reliable. Serpents of poison flung themselves at the arrows while their caster blazed forward. Once through, he was greeted with the sight of someone very eager to smash his roguish face in with a magic stone hammer.
Quickly, Ludo towards the mage, ducking and aimed slightly downward just enough to avoid getting his head turned into scrambled eggs and grabbed the mage's broom with both hands. Using the momentum, he swung his body around and slammed the overeager mage's face with the sole of his boot. However, there was strange about Ludo; his foot was covered in a layer of purple energy. The mage not only lost a tooth from the impact of the blow, but his face was burning as he was knocked off his broom, hurtling towards the ground.
Ludo was swiftly landed on that mages' broom and decided to hijack it. A bolt of ice flew by him, and he glanced towards the caster before twirling the extra broom in his hand and threw it like a javelin as hard as he could. It hit the ice mage square in the forehead and knocked them out cold, their body slumped against their broom.
Ludo decided that it was time to go even higher. It was an odd move because he was not only flying away from the mages, but from the Angel Spheres™ as well. He was as high as he could while still being considered within the coliseum, his eyes glancing around to make sense of the visual noise. Luckily for him, he could see a group of hopefuls chasing and biting at each other to get an Angel Sphere™, none the wiser that his sights were set on them.
"Jackpot," he chuckled. Poison swirled around his body once more, giving them teeth and slithering bodies that dived down towards his targets. Lucky for them, one of them saw the attack from the corner of their eye and shouted to look out from above. His attacks barely missed and now he had the attention and ire of the group. "Ladies, gentleman. My apologies, but you really should be watching you backs." To their confusion, they turned back to see that the serpents were turning back towards them with open jaws and were scrambling to dodge. Meanwhile, Ludo kept sending more and more at them. Of course, they tried to retaliate, but it was hard to get aim their sights when they had to deal with his onslaught. Even if they destroyed one, there was always another.
To the untrained eye, it looked like all of his attacks were being dodged or countered by his opponents, but to anyone with combat experience they knew exactly what Ludo was doing; all of their flight paths were completely cut off by him. Ludo was manipulating the entire space to make sure that they could not leave nor could they properly counterattack. He gave them no quarter. However, they weren't the only ones he was manipulating. The Angel Sphere™ doesn't move entirely randomly, it reacts to its surroundings otherwise it would not be able to avoid its pursuers. Knowing this, all he had to do was manipulate its path.
It was about time he wrapped this up. From high above he still had that grin on his face and mockingly waved at them. "Buh bye~" Ludo grasped his hand into a fist and the serpents homed in on them with perfect accuracy. Should they even try to use reinforcement to enhance their defenses, the fangs would break through and sink into their flesh, poison entering their veins. The effects were instant; first they felt their limbs go heavy and then stiffened. Without the use of their arms and legs, they would lose their balance and fall of their brooms, plummeting towards the ground.
At the same time, Ludo dived down towards the sphere amidst the bodies falling as fast as he possibly could. The sphere itself shot downwards too and he gave chase to it. They were racing towards the ground and the tip of Ludo's fingers were barely scratching its surface. "Come on you winged fuck!" He shouted in frustration, leaning forward as much as he could. With a stroke of luck, his hand grasped the sphere. and he held it in his fist.
He held the sphere to his face with an excited, smug grin. "Ha! Got you, you little- Shit!" His eyes widened when he realized that he was about to collide with the ground. He pulled with as much force as he could, and his feet barely skidded across the coliseum's tiles before Ludo pulled himself back up into the air.
He flew as high as he possibly could again, keeping an eye out on the competition. A purple aura just like before formed around his hand that held the sphere. Good luck to anyone wanting to grab it without their flesh being eaten. All he had to do now was hang tight and do whatever he needed to do to protect his sphere from desperate competitors and from errant attacks.
Well, except someone else was up there with him. It was that fire mage from the tests prior. To show that he was not after her sphere, he held his up nonchalantly. "Sup."
Xaltwind,
bubbamoo,
thedarkness,
Urizen,
ColdAtlas,
Damycles,
CitrusArms,
shylarah,
Vesuvius00,
imia
