Despite being one level below Garret, Quinn was matching his strength in their fight together.

Garret threw punch after punch towards Quinn, and he blocked them, using his mud to absorb the impact.

Then, Quinn wrapped his mud around Garret’s hand, and flung him to the ground.

Garret rolled back onto his feet, recovering quickly, and charged at him, fists ready. Quinn took his two punches head on, locking the two into a stalemate.

Garret was a level 4 strength user, and that granted the ability user some additional stamina. Meanwhile, Quinn had only recently become a level 3 earth user, so in terms of pure endurance, he was outmatched. Still, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have his own tricks.

"Hey buttface! Try to actually hit me this time!" Quinn called out.

"Hit you?!" Garret yelled, confused.

He shoved Quinn’s hands to the side, and swung at the glasses-wearing boy, to which Quinn had ducked under. Then, he shifted one of his gauntlets into an earth javelin-like shape, and jabbed it right at his opponent’s face.

Even though Garret had successfully moved his head out of the way, a thin line of red formed on his cheek.

"Finally... you’ve made me bleed," Garret smiled, before winding up a devastating punch right into Quinn’s shoulder.

The hit had caused the sand around them to blow away, forcing Quinn to stumble backwards as he grabbed where he was hurt. The pain throbbed, and he felt something else sharp inside too, making him fear that he had a broken bone.

’Crap—!’ Quinn quickly thought. He didn’t have the healing, nor the durability that a vampire did, so this was going to greatly impede his fighting.

With his uninjured arm, Quinn tried to retaliate by preparing a faux blood spray, but Garret had grabbed it, interrupting the attack.

"What?!" Quinn gasped.

"You said to hit you," Garret commented, smirking.

Then he slowly raised his other arm, as if taunting Quinn, before swinging it down.

It was about to land onto his injured shoulder again. However, that was when Quinn shifted his earth gauntlets to make crude armor where he was about to be hit.

The chop had broken the earth, and it hurt a little underneath, but overall, Quinn was fine.

’I didn’t want to make armor just yet—’ Quinn thought, ’it’ll use up a lot of MC, but I might not have a choice.’

He kicked his foot on the ground, and shifted the sand under Garret to move him away. Quinn dug his hand into his mud pouch, forming mud gauntlets before shooting tri-spikes at Garret.

Garret smacked them away, then grabbed a few to throw back at Quinn. He had raised his arms to block, shifting the mud into a crude shield just in time.

Taking a step back, Quinn saw Garret charging at him. He was charging up his MC around his fists, ready to prepare a devastating attack, when several strings had suddenly tied themselves around Garret’s arm.

Garret looked mildly surprised by them, but took a second to rip them off. Looking past him, Quinn could see a familiar face looking pretty happy with himself.

"Yo, what’s taking you so long? Aren’t you supposed to be two levels higher than me?" Fex teased, then vaguely gestured to Garret’s appearance, "Dang, he’s not even that much bigger than you, Quinn. In fact, he might be smaller! How is he beating you?"

While Fex was teasing his appearance, Garret jumped back seeing as he was now outnumbered. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"Two against one? This is hardly fair," he protested.

Even though Garret believed that Fex was genuinely a level 1 user, he knew better than to underestimate what having a second person in a fight can do.

"Hey, think of it like this," Fex smirked, "A level 3 plus a level 1 equals a level 4, correct?"

Garret squinted at Fex, "Hmm... I suppose the math does make sense, yes."

"See?" Fex smiled before shooting one of his strings at Garret’s arm.

Fex tugged at it, hoping to get him off balanced when Garret charged at him with a fist. He threw several punches, but Fex moved his head side to side on them all. Unsheathing a dagger from his waist, Fex tied a string around it, then whipped it at Garret’s chest.

Instead of embedding into him, Garret had grabbed it, and threw it back. Fex side stepped out of the way of the dagger, then widened his eyes as he saw an earthen figure charge into Garret.

’While Garret was distracted by Fex, it gave me enough time to make a full suit of armor,’ Quinn thought.

Quinn had tackled him to the ground, and Garret threw a punch at the figure’s head. A chunk of earth flung off, revealing Quinn’s face underneath.

’The only problem is that it uses a lot of MC to constantly shift the earth so I can move around inside."

Quinn tried to pin Garret down by the shoulders, but he had managed to lift Quinn and toss him off to the side. Quinn rolled over, getting back on his feet.

Garret had only managed to get onto his knees when Fex wrapped a handful of string around his arm again. He grabbed the cluster of string and ripped it off.

"Why are you spamming the same attacks again?" Garret asked, a little confused, "Isn’t that boring?"

"So you don’t expect this," Fex smirked, then embedded a puppet string into Garret’s forehead.

With a flick of a finger, Garret’s upper body had slammed onto the sand. Then, twisting his foot on the ground, sand began to swirl around Garret, and embed him into the ground. For extra measure, Quinn shot out his earth armor around Garret, thereby trapping his opponent.

Garret’s whole body was fully covered in earth, except for his head. Despite being defeated, he seemed pleasantly surprised.

"Woah, I did NOT expect that at all! You two fought well!" He said with a smile, "I’d love to fight against you guys again sometime!"

Quinn winced in pain before walking over to Fex, tightly holding his most injured arm.

"You think this was just a sparring match?" Quinn angrily muttered, "Your team was trying to rob ours!"

"Well yeah, but it’s not like we can gain any kind of gear some other way. Forget trying to rise up higher by being nice," Garret scoffed.

Quinn glared at him, disgusted, "You’d even beat up someone weaker than you, and take what little they have?"

It was Garret’s turn to get insulted, "Hey! We fought fair and square, and I’ll be there for my friends because we’ve been through it thick and thin. I bet you’ve helped yours with something that was morally questionable at least once."

Quinn opened his mouth, about to give Garret an earful, but before he could respond, Fex got between the two of them.

"As much fun it is watching you argue with a head, we should probably think about getting those injuries healed."

Fex pointed at Quinn’s multiple cuts, and shoulder, which made Quinn glared at Fex for a moment. That was when Quinn took in a deep pained breath, then walked over to where Erin was.